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Capture the Flag

By Peter Barnard

Introduction

Capture the Flag is, in my opinion, the best mode of Unreal Tournament, and after getting rather bored with the same old missions, and the tedium of tweaking 1000 point and higher army lists, I wanted a new way to play. I also wanted a way for my troop units to be more flexible, especially heavy weapons in troops squads. The combination led to these rules.

Choosing an Army

Your force comprises of one TROOP choice of up to 250 points.

These may be chosen from any army list with the following proviso

Troops chosen must be eligible under the standard army lists or the following Codexes - Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Chaos Space Marines, Dark Eldar, Orks, Tyranids, Tau, and Necrons. You may not use add-on Codexes like Blood Angels, Armageddon, or Catachan.
No vehicles of any kind. This includes transport vehicles.
No models with more than ONE wound allowed.
For the purposes of the scenario all miniatures are considered INDIVIDUAL models. Selection of wargear must still conform to usual conditions - no bikes, terminator armour etc

Terrain

This scenario is always played on square table for four players, or rectangular for two players.
By a random method each player is assigned a deployment area. This is a TWELVE inch square in the centre of a table edge. (Short table edge for two players).
The players now place their flag and flag base in the centre of the deployment area. A flag base is a 40mm square.
Players now in turn choose and place a terrain feature ANYWHERE on the table. Buildings or similar are suggested for a home base.
Instead of placing a terrain piece a player may PASS. Once all but one player has passed at least once, terrain placing stops.

Objective

The aim of the game is to recover your opponents flag, whilst retaining possession of yours.
Your opponent in a four player game, is the player whose deployment zone is directly opposite yours.
You win the game if at the end of any turn, your flag and your opponents flag are on your flag base.

The Game

Climbing up terrain counts as difficult terrain. If you do not have enough movement to make it to a position where the model can be placed, that model does not move this turn (e.g. trying to reach an upper level of a building, or crossing a fence.)

To pick up a flag, simply move past it. Picking up a flag does not end your move. Once a model has the flag, they may not voluntarily relinquish it. The only way to take a flag from a model is to kill that model. In the context of this scenario you may fire upon your own troops.

Characters that are killed are NOT dead. Place them on the Just Dead box of the re-spawning table (See Respawning)

During this scenario the turn sequence is as follows

Determine initiative (roll 2d6 or choose a playing card)
All players move in initiative order
All players shoot in initiative order
All players make assault moves in initiative order
All combats are fought
Check for victory

Since all models are considered individuals, heavy weapons are not affected by other squad members moving, you may split fire, and morale in close combat only occurs if two or models from the same squad are involved in a fight or in the case of the moral high-ground.

Respawning

The Respawning table contains five areas which should be drawn or marked on a sheet of paper or card.

Just Dead

Respawning

4+

3+

2+

Dead models move right along the chart until they are re-spawned. At the end of the turn, move models one step along.
Just killed models are place in the Just Dead box. They may do nothing
Models in the Respawning box are spending a turn being re-born
Models in the boxes marked 4+, 3+, 2+ boxes must roll this number or over at the start of their player’s movement to be replaced on the table. Models in the 2+ box do not move along the track at the end of the turn.
Respawned characters may be placed anywhere inside that player’s deployment zone.

Other variants

Use different selection types (e.g. Elites)

Allow any troop choice

Remove minimum unit size

Allow any model to have any wargear

Design Notes

Before you get on your high horse and lambast me for forbidding your favourite Codex, stop. I did this deliberately. This game is meant to test tactics and luck. Many of the add-on codexes contain strange rules variants, which have a serious impact on play balance. By removing these we can be assured of a reasonablly balanced game without ambushes, armoured companies or Death Guard.

The system doesn't cover one very important factor of Unreal Tournament - picking up weapons. I have ignored this to reduce notekeeping and confusion. If you want to create counters and rules for changing weapons, feel free, though you may want to give each player identical teams otherwise the Imperial Guard player will complain when the squad of marines steals their las-cannons.