Team vs. team

[Schmidt]

Get a stratego board and play king of the hill or deathmatch
Both should be played with two 4 player teams with equal equipment ( 2 helmets, 2 shields, 1 crossbow, 2 chain mail, full set of spells for each team)
Koth: occupy both of the two swamps with at least one mini in each for 1d3 rounds
Dm: play to 10 deaths, dead minis respawn after 1d3 rounds

[Daedalus]

The Evil Quest thread by Cornixt brought back to my mind an idea I had some time ago:

Two teams starting in opposite corners of the board.
One team would be the heroes (the four standard heroes?), the other would be an equally strong team of monsters.
They would explore the board from different directions, fighting each other.

The main "promblem" would be how to set up the rooms, as there is no "evil wizard player" who knows the map beforehands. Well, I don't think of this as a problem, the whole idea circles around how to do this the best way.

There are, in fact, at least three main questions to consider, and I'd like to know your opinions about these:

1-Map
The above-mentioned "problem". As the monsters are exploring the dungeon themselfes, there is no Gamemaster to set up the rooms.
Possible solutions I thought of so far:

Here's another one. Use two maps. One is a Hero map created and ran by the Monster player, and the other is a Monster map created and ran by the Hero player. The maps have some shared rooms and corridors in common which are determined beforehand by both sides, but each map fills those areas with different contents. Once a room is explored on a side's map, it is established and may not have the room contents of the other map placed within it, even if empty. The first few starting rooms and possibly corridors (about a quadrant) will only be explored by each team, so they need only be included on the opposing faction's map. This will preserve some exploration aspects. More exploration could also be reserved for Quest goal rooms. A key or some other mechanic could restrict entry in some way for one faction.

2-Monsters
Monsters have in general weaker stats than heroes. How to balance the forces?...
...- Use more monsters, each controlled by it's own player, to match the strenght of the heroes. This is quite obviousely impractical (expecially for European one body point monsters), and I include it here only for completenes.

Although it takes a lot of effort, I wouldn't dismiss this solution with its variety. The Road Warrior use of minions in his fifth Quest of Dealing with Death shows a balance is possible. The threat of standard monsters vs. Heroes has been measured in the Moster Slaying Cost thread. Of course, there are a lot of variables beyond one-on-one combat measurement, but it provides a starting point. Experienced players could possibly work with this guide to create viable opposition on their maps.

Well, when I say experienced I mean they would need to playtest this method before it would start to work. There's a lot of room for abuse. But with monster slaying cost values as a starting point, values could be derived and assigned to each side to more or less even things out. Other controls would be needed, such as agreeing not to place more than X BPs worth of monsters in any room on an opposition's map. Yeah, it ain't quick and easy, but maybe possible if some of the groundwork is laid out.

- Use really strong monsters. A gargoyle can hold it's ground against a beginner barbarian, and the chaos sorcerer has no fixed stats, anyway. The drawback is, there is only one gargoyle in the set. A team of a gargoyle, a chaos sorcerer and two chaos warriors may have a chance, but it is too unbalanced inside. Players want to have equal chances as other players, even players of the same team. Who wants to play a chaos warriors when the gargoyle takes all the glory?
- My favorite: Give them minions. The "evil" characters should be in the mummy - chaos warrior - warlock league, and each have some lesser monsters to control the way heroes control mercenaries.

I like combining both of these methods. Some possible combinations include a Chaos Sorcerer with Summon Undead and some other spells, a band of Chaos Warriors, and a Fimir leading a band of Orcs and Goblins.

3-Objecitve
How would the winning team be determined?
Just wiping out the opposing team?
Conquer the dungeon (how would that be determined?)
Capture the flag?
Solve a more complex quest objective?
Sove a different individual objective per team?

What do you think?

Conquer the Quest by gaining the most gold.

Furthering my two-maps idea or usable for a common map:

• A Quest goal can be protected by one side.
• A Quest goal room could be known to one or both opposing sides and be part of the Quest to prevent entry of the opposing team.
• Each team must both prevent a Quest goal from being achieved by the opposition and achieve it's own Quest goal