"Ever play/design a scenario going from Epic to Skirmish?" Topic

I have always been interested in putting together a scenario where players would go from controlling 6mm scale figures, until certain goals are achieved, events were completed, and locations accessed, at which point those forces would be switched to their corresponding 28mm versions on a larger table, with terrain scaled to suit. This would all be part of the same game/scenario. I was thinking I'd need 2 different sets of rules, and the more detailed skirmish level game would include a fun narrative and the final challenge where victory would be determined. To this end, I've been painting up a bunch of old 6mm scale 40k and other tiny SciFi stuff and matching it with corresponding 25/28mm figures and vehicles; converted and painted to match. There are some obvious challenges in game design trying to do this. I was wondering if anyone else had tried such a scale and mid game rules swap, and if so, what rules worked well for both phases? Hint: I stopped buying 40K rules 20 years ago and don't plan on going back.

Yes, I am fiddling with two levels of play for Cynthia Ann's War. Larger force game has each activation card representing a group of 5 or 6 up to a dozen or even 20 men. A hit removes a horse and rider, no details. The whole group acts as one in terms of morale etc.

But I want to be able to move down to where each card activates a single man. A hit is rolled to see nether horse or rider, and a d6 for severity, maybe even roll for hit location. So men can be wounded, able to shoot but not move, or vice versa. Or pinned under horse. Friends and enemies can try to rescue or finish off. So very granular.

That requires a switch in TIME scale too, if I resolve a close fight lasting seconds, while larger groups are frozenn in place until it is resolved.

It is more clear in my mind than in the written rules, so far!

OK, you could do that, but why? Wouldn't you be better off fighting the "war of outposts" with smaller number of larger castings, and then switching to large numbers of small figures once the skirmishers have/have not seized Remagen Bridge and/or spiked the guns of Navaronne?

You might go back to the larger figures in the pursuit phase to see whether Socrates gets his band of hoplites to safety or Napoleon makes it back to Paris to blame Grouchy.

Not the way described, but I have done several games where certain engagements in a larger game would spawn a temporary smaller skirmish game that would aggregate up to the larger battle. The small game usually has steps 4x the larger game's.

Rules aren't really the problem … you can map any system's outcomes to another's. The challenge I found was player coordination and game flow. It's basically the same challenge for all multi-scale games.

What I did was play a skirmish first, the winner would get a small modifier in the epic battle. Something like +1 to a single spotting roll for taking a good vantage point. That way the skirmish/epic rules don't have to be related.

Thanks for your thoughts. I agree that time might also have to be scaled along with distances and granularity of the game, for sure. I am thinking now maybe the epic scale game could be played in order to take out an enemy base's force field generator, and after that is accomplished, certain elite units could enter the complex (but still at least most of the action would happen outside of any buildings at 28mm scale). These special forces would have to blow up the Special Doom Project, or maybe capture the McGuffin, then jump in their vehicles and get outta Dodge. I also agree that an Escape Phase could be fun, going back to epic scale to see if the intrepid warriors could actually survive after completing their mission. Understand a campaign of sorts could be run at different scales, with the results of a skirmish game impacting a large-scale battle (they have the plans for the Death Star, and there IS a weakness), but that does not hold the same amusement value, for me at least, as running the whole thing as a single scenario on 2 different tables at 2 different scales. Fortunately, I'd be doing this in my basement mancave, so I don't have to worry about set ups taking too long or taking down the game after a couple hours and such.

I've something similar in mini campaigns. I don't think the miniature scales are set, you could do it many ways; but a small reconnaissance/raid/forlorn hope game that leads into a bigger battle ass a matched pair sounds good. The winner of the first game has to get a suitable reward though.

I have found for myself, and for some of those with whom I play, that we get really excited about whether Ranger Smith can get unpinned from his dead horse and find his weapon before the Comanche can notice that he is still alive and finish him off. But there needs to be, at least for us, a context to that very focused event. So we want to have a larger battle raging around it. I can put 40 or 50 beautiful miniatures on the table for each side, and that is the point. I want to play with my toys! But the play is best when this toy and that toy are interacting in a very granualar way. So, two levels of play.

We do play long games that feature very small scale (1 or 2 platoons) or even less at the actual emgagement level, but with much of the overhead of bigger games; allocation of critical resources, timing of replacements when troop are exhausted or out of ammo, fuel etc. These are long games in that they may take several eveings to play and can cover from initial reccoisance, to the final engafgemet at a stop line. I do not seee it easily fitting into one evenings game.