Aristeia! - Scenario Breakdown - Broken Land

Enter the Broken Land

Broken land is a unique Scenario, with no direct counterpart on the "A-Side". It does draw some elements from King of the Hill and Scorched Earth, but creates a unique blend all of its own with unique opportunities and challenges.

As always this, and all the Aristeia! Scenarios for the current season of the AGL, are available from the Downloads Section of the Aristeia Website. Once you have played a few games with the introductory set of Scenarios in the Reference Guide I highly recommend checking these out.

You are starting from the (fairly typical for Ziggurat scenarios) choice of either the "even" numbered Deployment Zones or the "odd" numbered Zones. This choice is in the hands of the Underdog and you are (again, as is typical for the Ziggurat scenarios) deploying exclusively inside your zones. This setup makes it tough for Melee Aristos to set up for first turn Frags against opponents who have not yet activated, but as always the short distance to the Ziggurat means that they will have an easy "swing" at any who have moved in to score. And, as we'll discuss below, late activation of a Melee Aristo can be decisive.

The scoring Ziggurat is moved every round, even if there is no scoring. It must go into an unoccupied Ziggurat if there is one, but if every Ziggurat has one or more Aristos present it can go down on any different Ziggurat (pushing the Aristos in it to the Centre Deployment Zone). This means that you may sometimes want to deliberately occupy non-scoring Ziggurats in order to get your strongest pick for the following round (or to set up lock down plays).

Having more Aristos on the Scoring Ziggurat reaps two VP, while drawing earns one VP each (even if you draw with 0 Aristos in the Scoring Ziggurat). But this aspect of the scoring can be overshadowed quite quickly under ideal circumstances, with both scoring Frags against opposing Aristos in the Scoring Ziggurat AND scoring Frags with your own Aristos FROM the Scoring Ziggurat earning points. Timing is key here, as you'lll want to activate your own melee strikers later in order to target Aristos already in the Scoring Ziggurat, so look to move in your ranged strikers early (to kill and then score).

This means that you are rewarded for bringing both melee strikers, especially those with mobility and positioning advantages, (Valkyrie and Mushashi remain top picks here) and ranged strikers, especially those with excellent range, (Dart and Lunah say hi) to really score well. There's possibly even an argument in favour of taking a hyper-aggressive team with a couple of ranged strikers, a melee striker and a Tank/Healer/Damage Enhancer to help keep them up. Dart, Koorie Queen, Valkyrie and Hannibal is an option for dedicated PanOceanian managers. If your opponent doesn't see what's happening (or, at least too late to stop you) you can pull off a Round 2 victory.

We've had a couple of matches of Broken Land in the Tempest Hexadome, but this example is probably the best one for how the Scenario plays out in practice:

Not every match is going to be quick however. Frag based strategies are notoriously unreliable, especially early in the match, and many a match will play out into the later rounds as our example above did.

With the relatively slower scoring per round, and the potential for a series of well timed and positioned Frags to swing the scoring, defending a lead can be tough (because it's often going to be a narrow lead). Don't overlook opportunities to put damage onto key scoring pieces for your opponent (especially if they didn't bring any healing) so you can exploit the Frag scoring in a later turn. Also be very careful with your own Aristos, try not to put a wounded Aristo into the Scoring Ziggurat early as you are begging to hand off VP.

All in all, this is a fun Scenario which I'd highly recommend. It can be slower paced, but aggressive teams can produces explosions of scoring which will be highly decisive. This makes it an exciting and engaging Aristeia! experience.

Let us know what you think about this Scenario, and our writeup. Obviously these are part of a series, so we'd love to know if this suits what you want to know about Aristiea! Scenarios in general.