I wrote up a sample "massive battle scenario" ... maybe as a model for others to use in their own games and to request comments from more experienced game masters. In short, I hope to run a massive type engagement without getting bogged down in basically a pen-and-paper Warhammer 40K match. Each battle event focuses on a single one of my PCs (Sergeant, Medic, Weapon Specialist, Heavy Gunner) with a single combined event if the Sergeant isn't aware enough to notice any of the things happening around them. The true focus of this game session will be the aftermath of this battle, so I want this part to move swiftly. During the events, I will narratively explain how the rest of the squad is still fighting the various charging enemy forces, it just isn't worth rolling out this firefight as the events are more vital to the final outcome. Difficulties, damage rolls, and Victory Points breakdown easily tweaked for your own play group and style

The situation: Players are on trench duty in a large-scale war against a mutant uprising. The PC sergeant is the officer-in-charge of this section of the line at the moment, friendly forces comprised of a few squads from their platoon and some special weapons squads (actual numbers/armaments not really important). The event starts with a charge by a group of mutant heavies directly at the section where the players are setup.

1. Preliminary Event - Beat back the first charge
   1. Use formation combat rules to fight a formation of 10-20 minions. Due to fog/haze/smoke/cover they start at 45 meters in open ground, running straight in. Players will have 3 rounds of shots before the mutants get a charge and drop down into the trench. I can obfuscate the effectiveness of allied fire on this charge to modify how many mutants drop into the trench for a quick close combat
2. After the initial combat, the PCs area is clear enough to allow them to become aware of the entire strategic situation
3. Event One - A Horde of Mutants is Distracting (Heavy Gunner)
   1. Sergeant take a Battle Field Awareness Test(+0)
      1. If failed, proceed to Event Two(a) - Gas Attack(Medic)
      2. If succeeded: See some vehicles using the distraction of the assault to roll foward some light artillery
         1. Sergeant Command(+0) test to get all Heavy weapons teams(autocannons) organized for a concentrated volley
         2. Heavy Gunner PC makes three attack actions (standard attack or semi-auto burst) against the vehicle. Modifiers are +10 for short range but -10 for smoke/haze/fog. Additional (+X) to Ballistic Skill tests where X is the successes of the Command test.(-X) to the Ballistic Skill test where X is the failures of the Command test.
         3. If a vehicle is destroyed or has motive or weapon systems cripppled, award 5 Victory Points
         4. Otherwise, vehicles are driven off by the heavy fire but not destroyed, award 2 Victory Points
         5. Proceed to Event Two(b) - Down but not out, hopefully (Medic)
4. Event Two(a) - Gas Attack (Medic)
   1. Sergeant take a Battlefield Awareness Test(+10)
      1. If failed, proceed to Optional Event - The Line Breaks (Whole Squad)
      2. If succeeded: Unengaged enemy light artillery manages a salvo, detonating some sort of gas towards the trench line
         1. Sergeant Command(+0) to get troops maneuvered out of the way, respirators on, etc
         2. Some troops are still affected by the gassing: eyes burning, coughing, vomitting (optional: give non-medic PCs a Toughness test or affected in some way)
         3. Medic makes Trade(Chymist)(-20) test to scrabble together counter-agent from medkit components
         4. Medic makes Medicae(-10) test to treat sufferers and get them back on the firing line
         5. Add successes/subtract failures for Command, Trade, and Medicae tests
            1. 5 Victory Points for 6 or more successes
            2. 2 Victory Points for 1 to 5 successes
            3. Proceed to Event Three- Aim for its Heads (Weapon Specialist)
5. Event Two(b) - Down but not Out (Medic)
   1. Sergeant takes a Battlefield Awareness Test(-10)
      1. If failed, proceed to Optional Event - The Line Breaks (Whole Squad)
      2. If succeeded: Trench line is holding but lasgun salvos to the south are starting to falter. Notice Commissar InsertName who was inspirting squads there prone on the friendly side of the trench, writing in the open ground, struck sensless by a lucky blow
         1. Sergeant Command(+0) to get troops covering fire to keep Commissar safe and clear an approach vector
         2. Medic takes Dodge(+0) test to safely rush over
            1. Takes 1D10+3 I ; Pen:0 damage for 1 failure, repeat damage for every two failures after the first
         3. Medic takes Willpower(+0) test to represent effects of pinning fire
         4. Medic takes Medicae(+0) test to quickly administer First Aid and a Stimm injection
         5. Add successes/subtract failures for Command, Willpower, and Medicae
            1. 5 Victory Points for 3 or more successes
            2. 2 Victory Points for 1 to 2 successes
            3. Proceed to Event Three- Aim for its Heads (Weapon Specialist)
6. Event Three - Aim for its Heads! (Weapon Specialist: Sniper)
   1. Sergeant takes a Battlefield Awareness Test(+0)
      1. If failed, proceed to After Action Report
      2. If succeeded: Look, it's the mutant leader!
         1. Sergeant Command(+0) to organize a salvo to clear a firing lane for the squad's sniper
         2. Weapon Specialist takes a Called Shot action
         3. Add successes/subtract failures for Command and Ballistic Skill test
            1. 5 Victory Points for at least one success
            2. Otherwise 2 Victory Points
            3. Proceed to After-Action Report
7. Optional Event - The Line Breaks (Whole Squad)
   1. Sergeant need not take a Battle Awareness Test, it is obvious the mutants are overruning the entire position
      1. Sergeant takes a Command(+10) test to organize a counter-assault
      2. Each player chooses to make a Weapon Skill (+10) or Ballistic Skill (+0) test
      3. Players that choose Weapon Skill, take a Toughness(-10) test
      4. Players that choose Ballistic Skill, take a Dodge(+0) test
      5. Each player receives a D10+3 I; Pen:0 hit to the body for the first failure, repeat damage for every 2 degrees of failure after that
      6. Add successes/subtract failures for Command, Weapon Skill, and Ballistic Skill tests
         1. 5 Victory Points for 8+ successes
         2. 2 Victory Points for 2-7 successes
      7. The battle ends, proceed to After Action Report
8. After Action Report
   1. Sum all Victory Points
      1. 15 points: Stunning Victory
      2. 10 points: Major Victory
      3. 6 points: Minor Victory
      4. 3 points: Bloody Impasse
      5. Less than 3 points: A Shameful Rout

I quite like it, but I wish the Sergeant wasn't gating everything there.

On the one hand I agree completely with why you've done it. The Sarge runs the squad, is the squad/leader aware of or able to organise these goals.

But another part of me thinks that the sarge is probably going to miss >half of those rolls, which means you've spent time preparing it for no payoff, and all of the effort to involve every player will fall apart if the medic never gets something to do.

In mysteries, I eventually managed to stop asking for rolls to find clues. Nothing was ever gained by the investigators failing to find a book in a library, so I made it easy to find but tricky to work out how to use. The idea isn't Fail Forward, they can still easily mess everything up, but it's decisions and gambits that can go bad instead of purely random chance.

Is there a way to take that approach? The opportunity is obvious (look! we all saw the commissar get wounded!), but doing something about it is tricky (can the sarge maneuver us over there without us taking fire?).

To be clear, you are gated by Battlefield Awareness tests ... but that is exactly how the Massive Battles in the rulebook work, unless I'm misreading something. However, (at least to me) I'm not limiting that roll strictly to the Sergeant. With my PCs, the Medic PC is actually the brainy one, so he can lead on the Logic or Scholastic Lore(Tactica Imperialis) rolls (which are how you do Battlefield Awareness tests) with the Sergeant assisting.

Sure, there is the possibility that the the events could be missed and it falls through the "The Line Breaks" event, but that's the way it goes. Defeat has to be an option. Again, this is designed to move fast. I expect I can handle that battle scenario in under an hour of game time.

Alternatively, one could remove the slight branching structure of the event and go linearly through each event, keeping track of various successes and failures and turning it into exactly how many causalties the allied forces have all sustained. "We survived and beat back the hordes, but a lot of good men died today" versus "The wave of mutants broke like a wave on the shore against the Imperial line, with barely a drop of righteous blood spilled"

Additionally, my Sergeant PC has his eyes set on promotions and having more troops under his command. If he messes up his first real command, he might want to rethink about putting so much XP into being a killing machine and focus on that which would make him a better leader of Guardsmen

Oh, you're definitely doing it correctly. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

It's even better that you're replacing just the sarge's Maneuver test with relevant skills from other PCs. By RAW, seemingly, only one player gets to take part.

What I've been thinking about for my game is how to balance the spotlight on the sergeant. I am intending to not require tests for awareness, but put the emphasis on the command/maneuver tests to avoid taking fire while pursuing that goal.

So in my hypothetical game, they easily see the commissar go down. When the sarge asks me if he can get over there, I say it depends: you could, but if you roll poorly your squad is going to take hits and waste ammunition.

((DoF x 1d5 ammo loss (very loose honour system on what that should be for special/heavy weapons)

Number of hits based on DoF spread throughout the group))

The medic still needs to do his thing, which could also fail, but in the mean time they have lost strength and resources because of bad luck or a novice commander.

That could go badly. It could go very badly. If they have been having trouble during the battle, they might decide not to risk the move at all. Or decide it's worth the risk and be big **** heroes.

I'm very happy for my PCs to fail in their goals. I'm very happy for them to lose battles, make mistakes, or try a gamble that doesn't pay off. But I don't think there is anything interesting to be had in them failing a roll to spot a development.

None of that is a criticism of your system, it's just how i would prefer to run a mass-combat system.

More related to your system, is it deliberate that events like the gas attack only happen if the sarge makes his Awareness roll? I've got no problem with the schroedinger approach, but it did surprise me a little. I suppose that the gas attack would be too lethal if they didn't see it coming?

I haven't been able to make ammo a real concern in my games (if your lasgun is running out, the combat is really slogging out long in my opinion), so an ammo loss penalty seems pretty insignificant, unless it is something for like the flamer but then you really are just punishing one player.

As for the gas attack, it still happens but only in a narrative sense, basically if the Battlefield Awareness roll fails for the Medic event (either one), it falls through to the "The Line Breaks" event ... you can assume the gas attack contributed to the enemy getting to and into the trenchline.

So in my hypothetical game, they easily see the commissar go down. When the sarge asks me if he can get over there, I say it depends: you could, but if you roll poorly your squad is going to take hits and waste ammunition.

((DoF x 1d5 ammo loss (very loose honour system on what that should be for special/heavy weapons)

Number of hits based on DoF spread throughout the group))

The medic still needs to do his thing, which could also fail, but in the mean time they have lost strength and resources because of bad luck or a novice commander.

Yeah I wouldn't say Euthan's system is bad at all, i think its a very well made encounter, but i like this more graded approach. less of a "fail this roll and it all goes to ****" and more of a "the worse you fail the worse it gets".

i think at the massive battle level this is more representative of the guard: with the imperial guard command descisions are more about how many casualties they suffer as opposed to if they suffer any casualties. i think the RAW for most of only war are terrible anyway, i've literally never had a session without finding at least 1 rule that is total rubbish haha so feel free to modify the system to fit your needs XD

Yeah I wouldn't say Euthan's system is bad at all, i think its a very well made encounter, but i like this more graded approach. less of a "fail this roll and it all goes to ****" and more of a "the worse you fail the worse it gets".

It's not even that it all goes to hell, it's just that, by RAW, we skip interesting encounters instead of doing anything with them. Roll Awareness to spot their munitions truck is coming up the rear. You didn't pass on a 30%? Well nevermind then. They continue to be well supplied.

But knowing the truck is there, trying to bring your team around to do something about it, failing the 30% abstract-demolition roll, then losing a couple of comrades and your medic gets wounded...

Now you have to fight out the massive battle with those consequences.

Despite giving the Perception roll for free, I'm actually being less kind to my PCs.

I ran this scenario over the weekend and I feel that it went as well as I could have hoped.

With the Medic taking the lead on the Tactics tests and the Sergeant assisting, they did pass every Battlefield Awareness roll. They used a Fate Point (or two?) to reroll the Awareness test to ensure they passed as they realized the importance of the noticing the flow of the battle.

The events went pretty much as I expected, although the players went off the rails a tiny bit (LIKE PLAYER CHARACTERS DO, THE JERKS), but improvising on the fly is part of the fun of gm'ing, no? If you were curious, the sergeant ordered the nearby NPC squads to rescue the Commissar as the Medic went safely down the trench to check it out. As a result, a NPC character was shot and the medic had to choose between the Commissar and the grunt.

In the end, they passed every event with flying colors. Perhaps I made everything a bit too easy, or should have increased the number of successes they needed for certain parts.

More importantly, however, each player had an important role in the battle and the whole scenario played out in just under an hour of game time. THAT was really what I was going for, as the massive battle scenario was more a way to use dice and gameplay to illustrate the current status of the players' war (since there was a big change since the previous session, which included a time-advancement of 6 months)

I think if you want to flesh this type of format out for a longer scenario and ensure that things get interestingly worse with each failed Battlefield Awareness test would work out great.

glad it went well, it was well planned so good for you and your group

But not even a single comrade death? doesn't sound like the guard to me haha

I did a large scale battle with my players a few weeks ago, using the rules for Battlefield Awareness and Maneuvers. I set it up, however, in that the number of failed or succeeded BA tests determined the outcome of the battle.

So it was less of "You didn't get this roll, everyone dies" and more of "The more Battlefield Awareness rolls you fail, the worse your company does" before it went over into how bad did they lose.

Doing stuff like this highlights the importance of advances that aren't just BS/AG/T