Hey longbeards,
The past Saturday my brother and I played a custom narrative Stormvault battleplan that I thought you would like. It was called "Get Off My Lawn", it was based around a group of neutral Dispossessed defending their relic (the center white statue on the dias in the pictures) from the invading Nighthaunt and Seraphon armies that were trying to get to the Stromvault. The idea was the Stormvault was underneath the Duardin relic which they were not aware of. While the Dispossessed were not one of the active armies (I only own 500 points of them), they kind of ended up being a star of the battle.
We set up on opposite sides of the table going the long way, basic deployment. We placed 10 Ironbreakers, 10 Irondrakes and a Warden King around the central dias and basically treated them with similar rules as an endless spell (we did not use the Dispossessed alliance abilities). Whoever got to go second during a round got to activate the Duardin before the other player's turn, the Dispossessed were able to do anything they wanted during this turn except moving off the central dias (but they could charge off of it if they were able to). Once all the Duardin actions were taken, they were done for that round (for example, they could not be activated during a combat phase) Another part of the Dispossessed presence was they were actually claiming the objective and could steal it from either army (we played each model is 1 point and a hero is 10 points). The player with the most points at the end of round 5 won a major victory (the if the Dispossessed had the majority of points then we both would have lost).
What this ended up being is a really strategic game of each of us trying to take control of the Duardin. For example, I conceded a turn in order to prevent the Duardin from charing and locking an important unit in combat while out of position. I got very lucky that the unit survived relatively unscathed during the shooting phase. Another interesting development of the Duardin's presence was the Seraphon ended up trying to kill enough of the Nighthaunt models in order to allow the Dispossessed to steal the game from the Nighthaunt at the end of turn five.
Overall, we had a blast doing this and the Duardin did not have an overly strong presence but enough of one to make the turns matter. Once again, this was a narrative battleplan that I think could have been out of hand in a more competitive match. The Irondrakes ended up being killed early due to them almost taking out a Stegadon with a flamethrower out in a turn. But in true Dispossessed fashion 6 Ironbreakers and the Warden King were present until the end of the game shouting and grumbling about dinosaurs trampling the lawn and ghosts scaring the birds away.