Feedback needed on homebrew mini-campaign

[Moldek]

In a couple of months I'll be meeting an internet friend IRL, and we are planning to have a small warcry campaign.

I am designing 3 scenarios. The idea is that our warbands are searching for an ancient book called the Liber Oculus, hidden in a forgotten and cursed library. The power of the book is said to have turned everyone who read it insane, but surely that won't happen to our dear protagonists 😁

Here are the scenarios :

 

1 - After a long search, the warbands have found the old realmgate that leads to the cursed library. But a rival is here! They need to get their men to the library first.

Terrain : lots of terrain, with a realmgate placed in the middle on a platform. 3 random doorways on the battlefield are marked with a token.
Deployment : something like "bloodbath" (3rd one in the rulebook, p.154)
Scenario :
The realmgate is activated by killing a model next to it. For that purpose you can attack your own models. It has to be with an attack of range 3 or less.
Roll a dice for each model that goes through the activated realm gate: on a 1 the realmgate malfunctions and the model is transported next to one of the marked doors, opponent's choice. On a 2+ you get to the library.
The winner is the first player to get 3 models to the library.

2 - Books are scattered amongst the ruins of the library. Many contain arcane secrets and deadly traps, but only one of them is the Liber Oculus. The one who finds it and escapes will obtain tremendous powers.

Terrain : not many platforms, but a lot of walls set up to evoke a twisted labyrinth.
Deployment : Asymetrical, where the loser of the previous round only has it's dagger first round and has the shield and hammer coming in 2nd and 3rd; and the winner has everyone on the board.

5 treasure tokens are placed on the table, more than 4 inches apart from each other and the table's edge. 2 or them are traps (one invokes a chaos beast that attacks the model immediately, the other teleports the model anywhere on the table, opponent's choice), 2 of them immediately grant a randomly determined minor artefact to the model, and 1 is the Liber Oculus.
When a fighter first takes a treasure, the contents are revealed immediately. Once the Liber Oculus is found, the winner is the one who manages to get off the board with it. The corrupting power of the Liber Oculus is such that the model carrying it has to roll on a random madness table every turn; that can cause him to drop it, run towards the center etc.

3- One warband has seized the book; but to harness it's power, a dangerous ritual must be completed.

Terrain : An empty space or big platform around the middle to act as an altar / pentagram, surrounded by spikes and other dangerous terrain.
Deployment : Something with the previous winner's forces set up near the center, with the attacker coming in from various table edges.

The victory condition is similar to the card "The Ritual" : one objective token (the Liber Oculus), every round the defender scores 1D6 ritual points, with maluses if there are ennemies within 3 inches of the objective. If after the 4th round the total is equal or inferior to 12, the ritual has failed and a powerful demon appears, attacking everyone in sight. Then the goal is simply to get your warriors out of here.

As you can see I'm going more for narrative flavor than competitive balance. I'm open to all ideas and feedback, especially if you spot stuff that could make the game to lopsided, or anything that could be improved. If that helps we'll be playing Cypher Lords (just a one box warband I think) vs Legion of Nagash (with a bit of every unit in it).

[Lior'Lec]

     I like the narrative you’ve built but on the second battle you’re potentially going to have a similar issue as some convergence and story battles (as pointed out in the Unmade Convergence thread). If the players know that a battle group always starts on the table then players are encouraged to stack that group with their best fighters rather than a balanced warband.

     One idea I’ve had to address the issue is to make it a random group: roll a die, on a 2-5 they use the same group that the deployment lists but on a 1 or 6 another group is used (dagger, hammer, shield; remove the deployment’s normal group and 1 becomes the first 6 becomes the second). This could be applied to any scripted battles that have a single battle group always starting on the field. 

[Moldek]

6 minutes ago, Lior'Lec said:

     I like the narrative you’ve built but on the second battle you’re potentially going to have a similar issue as some convergence and story battles (as pointed out in the Unmade Convergence thread). If the players know that a battle group always starts on the table then players are encouraged to stack that group with their best fighters rather than a balanced warband.

     One idea I’ve had to address the issue is to make it a random group: roll a die, on a 2-5 they use the same group that the deployment lists but on a 1 or 6 another group is used (dagger, hammer, shield; remove the deployment’s normal group and 1 becomes the first 6 becomes the second). This could be applied to any scripted battles that have a single battle group always starting on the field. 

Yeah that's true. I like your idea of randomizing the battle group. I think I'll either do that or have the players choose their battle groups for the whole campaign, and make sure that the deployments are diverse enough so you're incentivized to keep them balanced. I don't expect this to be a problem with my opponent but I'd like to make the campaign reasonably fair so that I can share the final document for other people to use.