All the feedback for WOTH was fantastic and I’m looking at doing a post soon trying all the different options and seeing the pros and cons. If you’re wondering what I’m on about, the post and comments are here:
https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/01/10/deceptively-difficult-deployment/
So in taking a small break from WOTH to gather data, and to come back to it fresh, I fell hard back into Darkfell, doing a rather ‘full on’ post last time. I really went into the mechanics of what was going on and that’s here:
https://deathzap.co.uk/2024/01/10/goodies-vs-baddies-darkfell-the-wager-battle-report/
After that game, I realised a couple of things, primarily that the game needed more. Special rules or character classes to add that but extra on top. However keeping things simple for now, I’d just like to look at the scenario.
I’ve been playing the Close Little Wars scenario which is: Get half of your forces into the enemies deployment zone, or eliminate the entire enemy force. It’s a surprisingly robust little scenario, and works pretty well some of the time. I just don’t think it gives you enough to consider in the context of my Darkfell rules.
The game in the pictures on this post had a fairly basic set up, however with the road across the middle of the board I’d created a no man’s land. Naturally this lead to figures taking cover and taking pot shots at each other, trying to grind down the other side, while the melee focused characters waited for their opportunity to cross. It wasn’t the most exciting or dynamic game (but having said that I am always excited when one of my rulesets does mimic something of actual combat).
I think what the scenario needed to do was apply more pressure to the forces as it’s a good option when your running low on wager points to not do anything on your turn and save what you have left for defence until you can build back up. If the scenario applied pressure itself, or enables your opponent to apply pressure in a different way it’ll lead to more difficult choices and less conservative play. I don’t like the idea of a game that encourages you not to play it.
A lazy option are your classic ‘objectives’, points on the ground to fight over. I enjoy them in other games (40k, OPR), but I’m not a fan of them in my own games. Objectives in the real world are actual things, a hard point or high ground, something to give you a tactical or strategic advantage. Obviously in a small scale skirmish game with only a few figure per side those things are smaller, an elevated position, a brick wall, my point is they should be things that actually help you in the fight rather than things that give you ‘objective points’ whatever they are.
I’ve thought about shrines before, monuments that funnel arcane energy into the world, things that are worth taking and holding as they buff your forces. The easiest way to implement them would be to have them add wager points, or take points away from your opponent. So, those standard objectives but with an actual purpose already within the rules.
Assassinating enemy characters (another standard scenario) is already built into the rules themselves as you lose wager points each time one of your characters is slain, but to make that a more significant part of the game, I could increase the wager points lost.
Collecting loot could also be a good direction to go in. Having multiple stashes across the board with points being earned for the amount of loot a player’s characters can carry off of the board. Such a scenario can have broader implications in terms of a campaign. It could also make solo play more viable. If I have a board with zombies or monsters of your choice guarding loot, your job is to get your guys in, steal loot and get out before running out of wager points.
I’m also considering a ‘rivals’ system, where each character will have a specific enemy they’d want to take out more than any other, and if successful you’d either gain wager points back, or you will cause your opponent to lose more than normal. As long as it wasn’t too much of a headache, keeping track of who was after who, it could be a fun challenge of getting the right characters into the right positions to take out those specific enemies.
Just throwing out a lot of ideas. Let me know any thoughts.
Deathzap 
With the rivals, it could change the nature of the game, as the figure would prioritise getting into position to take out the rival. So the figure might be yours to control until it saw its rival, at that point you are just moving the figure as the figure pursues its own agenda