Avengers 2012 Movie - 10th Anniversary - Scenario

[bmon]

Happy 10th Anniversary to one of my favorite movies!

Theatrically released 10 years ago today!!

In honor of the movie, I am getting some friends together tonight to play through a scenario I have long been developing. This scenario uses C3G figures to fill in the gaps (Official Marvel Heroscape figures are used for the other relevant characters). It also uses Grishnakh's buildings and Interactive Terrain Feature rules. We do not play Super Heroscape without his rulesets. I also use McMeeple's staircase rules for the shorter buildings (using Grishnakh elevators for any buildings over 2 stories tall.) I highly recommend these rules and the great work done by these folks. Here are some links to these things...

Grishnakh's ITF and Building Rules:
Interactive Terrain Features Rules
Building Rules
ITF Reference Chart
Grishnakh's Custom Terrain Thread (for all his great work)


McMeeple's Stairs:
Stairs Rules


Character Cards (C3G Included):

Captain America - http://www.hasbro.com/common/images/...1B9A516F13.jpg
Iron Man - http://www.hasbro.com/common/images/...432E086DAE.jpg
Hulk - http://www.hasbro.com/common/images/...053E425FD8.jpg
Thor - http://heroscapers.com/c3g/released/...Thor_comic.png
Black Widow - http://www.heroscapers.com/c3g/relea...idow_comic.jpg
Hawkeye - http://heroscapers.com/c3g/released/...keye_comic.jpg

Nick Fury - http://heroscapers.com/c3g/released/...Fury_comic.jpg
SHIELD Agents - http://heroscapers.com/c3g/released/...ents_comic.png

Thanos - http://www.hasbro.com/common/images/...39781BBD1A.jpg
Loki - http://heroscapers.com/c3g/released/...Loki_comic.jpg
Anti-SHIELD Agents - http://www.hasbro.com/common/images/...C8034863F8.jpg

Spoiler Alert!

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Scenario Background:
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The Avengers (Release Date: May 4, 2012)

"When Thor's evil brother, Loki, gains access to the unlimited power of the energy cube called the Tesseract, Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., initiates a superhero recruitment effort to defeat the unprecedented threat to Earth. Joining Fury's "dream team" are Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, the Black Widow and Hawkeye."

Time to activate the "Avengers Initiative" and stop Loki's assault on the city!

In this slightly alternate universe, Thanos does more than leave Loki to fetch the Infinity Stone, but rather attacks earth with him. Bent on their own indivdual aspirations -- Loki to rule earth and Thanos to retrieve the Infinity Stone -- they use death and destruction to try and fulfill them through fear. Rather than using Chitauri as the invading army, they open the wormhole to teleport minions from the worlds of Heroscape and call upon units from the Utgar and Valkrill generals (the armies known for evil and chaos, respectively.)

The Avengers must take out both Loki and Thanos, shut down the wormhole, all while reducing the amount of death and destruction to the city and its civilians.

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Scenario Summary:
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This is a four player scenario. Two players play as the Heroes (Defending Team) while two players play as the Villains (Invading Team). The 6 Heroes (Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye) are split evenly (3 each) between the two Hero players. The Villains are split up so that one player controls Loki and 2 squads of Microcorp Agents and one player controls Thanos and the teleported minions.

Loki and his agents (anti-S.H.I.E.L.D. recruits) have set up the Portal Generator on a rooftop of their choice. Thanos directs where the Worm Hole is opened so that his minions can invade the city. These invading forces look to cause as much death and destruction as possible.

The Heroes enter the battlefield from the road, each of the two groups of heroes entering from a different direction. Each group having secured their entry point and trying to usher civilians through it. First priority is to deactivate the portal. To do this effectively, they will need Loki's Scepter, but will need to take him out to get it. But they also can't let Thanos and his minions cripple the city.

Nick Fury is watching from the Helicarrier. If things start looking too grim, he will drop in with backup. These forces will become available to the first Hero player to lose their group of heroes.

The scenario ends once the portal is shut down and all Invading units have been destroyed, or, alternatively, all Defending units have been destroyed (backup included).

There are two ways to play this scenario, with option A as the best option.

Option A) Play this scenario twice, flip-flopping teams so that each team plays each side. Compare death and destruction points after completing both games. The Hero team that prevented the most death and destruction is the winning team.

Option B) Play this scenario once, if the Villains team scores 40 or more points, the Heroes have lost!

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Scenario Template Rules:
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[Template = Death and Destruction]

1) Objective - Invading forces gain points from civilian kills and destroyed ITFs (Interactive Terrain Features). Defending forces work to prevent these points.

2) Points - Each civilian killed is worth 1 point. Each ITF destroyed is worth 1 point; however, ITFs that span multiple spaces in setup are worth 1 point for each space they occupy. Wreckage is not worth points to destroy further as the destruction has already been done and scored. Other kills, such as heroes, are worth 1 point each, as well.

3) Civilians - Civilians cannot take a turn and cannot attack. They have 0 defense, but have a Flee ability (see below).

4) Flee Ability - Civilians have a Flee ability, controlled by the defending forces, as follows: When a Civilian is attacked, once that attack is resolved, you may move up to 3 Civilians up to 3 spaces each. Civilians moved by Flee must be within 6 clear sight spaces of the attacked Civilian and will take any leaving engagement attacks.

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Scenario Specific Rules:
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1) Portal Generator - Deactivate: Any figure starting their turn adjacent to it, may roll the D20. If a 20 or higher is rolled, remove the Portal Generator from the battlefield. This does not count as a destructible object and cannot be interacted with aside from these deactivation attempts.

2) Loki's Scepter - Loki starts the game with this item on his character card. If in a hero's possession when that hero attempts to deactivate the Portal Generator, add 10 to the D20 roll.

3) Worm Hole - At the beginning of the game, place the seven 0-height terrain tiles on empty spaces anywhere on the battlefield. Each piece must be adjacent to at least two other pieces and must all be contiguous. When placing new units for control by the Thanos player, they must be placed on a worm hole space. If a new unit cannot fit on a worm hole space, that figure is forfeited. If the Portal Generator is destroyed at any point during the game, immediately remove the Worm Hole tiles. When this happens, new units may no longer be placed, however, the units already on the battlefield stay in the game.

4) New Units For Thanos - At the start of each round, before order markers are placed, if the Portal Generator is still present/active, the player controlling Thanos gains 100 points (additional +10 possible, see setup rules below) to spend on additional units and may purchase them at this time. Any unspent points may be used in future rounds. Any units purchased with these points must be from the Utgar or Valkrill factions and must be placed on the Worm Hole spaces according to the rules above.

5) Super Powered Units - All Utgar or Valkrill units being placed that are Huge bipedal figures are granted the Super Strength attribute.

6) Secured Exit Points - Of the 3 road entry points (the map's three different groups of outer edge ashpalt tiles), two of these will be used as entry points for the Hero team. The two chosen entry points are considered Secured Exit Points. Any civilian on one of these outer edge asphalt tiles may move off the map and removed from the game as they are considered permanently safe.

7) S.H.I.E.L.D. Backup - If a Hero player has his last hero defeated, that player gains control of Nick Fury and one squad of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents. At the start of the next round, after the Thanos player gains unit points and spends them (or decides not to), the Helicarrier Drop Team ability must be used with those figures to place them on the battlefield. This backup/drop team can only be used once per game, but remain in play once there.

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Scenario Map Setup:
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Blue Squares = ITFs
Green Circles = Civilians

One Elevator for each tall building
One Staircase for each short building
(Building doors are ground floor entrances, and one entrance on roof)

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Scenario Setup Order:
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1a) Loki player places Loki and all 6 Microcorp Agents anywhere on the map except the map's outer edge asphalt tiles. This player also places the Portal Generator on one of the 6 rooftops. Incentive: If the Portal Generator is atop the Felicia's Fine Jewelry Building, the Thanos player gets an additonal 10 points at the start of each round. [The jewelry store building happens to have a power source for the city block, which provides greater supplementary power to the generator.]

1b) Thanos player places Thanos and 7 Worm Hole tiles. Neither this figure nor the tiles may be placed on the map's outer edge asphalt tiles. Thanos also starts the game with 100 unit points. This means that at the start of round 1, the Thanos player will have 200 unit points to spend (or 210 if the generator is atop Felicia's Fine Jewelry Building.)

2) The hero team divides up the 6 heroes so that each player has 3 of the 6 figures. Each hero player then places their 3 figures on one road entry point - each hero player choosing a different road entry point.

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Scenario Tips:
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- If the portal remains open for more than a few rounds, the amount of points and units for the Heroes to clear off the battlefield can become too much to overcome.

- Picking up ITFs and smashing them into other ITFs are faster point accumulation than simply attacking a single ITF.

- Huge bipedal figures (Super Powered Units) are helpful for Thanos to destroy ITFs, but can have mobility issues as they have no means of reaching rooftops and are slow in killing civilians.

- Loki can be tricky to pin down with his Deceptive Teleportation ability. It may take coordination between multiple heroes to do so.

[bmon]

Fear not. The city has been saved!

The heroes (<player-1> and <player-2>) valiantly fought off Loki (myself), Thanos (<player-3>), and their minions. <player-1> took control of Thor, Captain America, and Hawkeye, while <player-2> took control of Hulk, Iron Man, and Black Widow.

I set up the city in the starting configuration earlier in the day. It looked like a peaceful, ordinary city block. But later that night, Loki and Thanos came to party.

Loki set up the portal generator atop the Jewelry Store building. Thanos opened the portal in the road intersection. The Avengers split up and came rushing in to expel the threat. <player-1>'s group of heroes entered at the top road entry point. <player-2>'s group of heroes entered at the left road entry point. Those road entry points were considered secured exit points where the civilians could safely exit the fray (as they scatter from the violence around them.)

Some of the first units Thanos teleported in were none other than Krug and some Arrow Gruts (a couple of classics). They got to work right away. Krug smashed a car over Black Widow, who somehow managed to completely evade it, though a civilian was not as lucky. The civilians dropped fast as the Gruts scampered all around, letting the arrows fly, and also as Loki's agents on the rooftops picked them off. Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk took to the skies (Hulk with Super Leap) to try and track down Loki. Loki was carrying the scepter that was pretty necessary in shutting down the portal (increases a 5% deactivation attempt to 55%). Along the pursuit, they took out the agents little by little.

Loki was hard to get to, but a lot of damage was being done to both Loki and Thanos as they were both down to a life point or two remaining. Aside from the portal being open longer than it should, things were looking good for the heroes.

But then Hulk became the first casualty. After a couple of big hits from Thanos, Hulk was quite wounded. Loki picked up an air conditioning unit and chucked it up at Hulk. It killed him. Iron Man was taken out shortly after that too. Things briefly looked grim for the heroes.

They battled back though and were able to finish off Thanos and, more importantly, Loki, which allowed Thor to pick up the scepter and fly over to the portal generator. He deactivated it on his first attempt.

Captain America and Black Widow were busy trying to keep the streets clean and it wasn't long before Thor was able to come down and help (after shutting down the portal generator.) After a round of cleanup, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, and Hawkeye stood there with empty streets (aside from some wreckage). There was no surviving Iron Man to suggest a shawarma restaurant, but at least the city was safe.

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Technical Details:

The villains scored 46 points. This was more than the playtest the night before when the villains scored 43 points and more than the casually chosen 40 point mark for villain victory. I still felt there could have been more focus on going after Loki sooner and getting the portal shut down sooner, but only more playtesting can determine whether a 40 point threshold is valid or not. The best thing to do would be to play with this group again and flip-flop sides. If <player-3> and I could keep the death and destruction to 45 points or fewer, we would win. Also, there were 9 civilians permanently saved; this could be used as a possible tie breaker (in case <player-3> and I were to tie the 46 points exactly).

I still think the scenario feels right. Some comments were that civilians should be worth more and destruction should be less of an emphasis. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I do agree that it seems weird for a villain to elect to shoot a garbage can rather than shoot one of the heroes. While that is a bit anti-thematic, I think it provides more meaningful decisions. The heroes are meant to win the game, it's just about what level of death and destruction the villains can reach. There are times when it makes sense to try and attack heroes, but scoring points is the goal.

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Anyway, it was a great time! This was a project years in the making and I'm pleased with how well it came together. Each time I've played, I've felt like there were interesting decisions and loads of fun playing out one of my favorite movies.

I recommend the scenario. We will definitely be playing it again! Though I might need to take a little break from it. The last week has been heavy with preparation and playtesting!

[Ericth74]

Sounds fun, looking forward to reading about how it went.

[Tornado]

Awesome. Great scenario.
Hard to beat what Grish came up with. His character cards are great as well.

[Splash]

Gah, 10 years!
I feel old now.

Good luck, looks like it'll be a ton of fun.

[bmon]

Thanks guys for your comments! I updated the second post with a write up and pictures from last night. Enjoy!

[Tornado]

Great pics.
Always love those buildings!
CityScape is where it is at.

[Sherman Davies]

Nice pics, I like the idea of using road tiles as "sidewalks" for the city blocks.