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So I'm 10, or have the maturity of a 10 year old, because I like Maelstrom more?

I'll even play it without discarding objectives, because doing so is simply a way of making the point count higher anyway. I was even surprised the first time someone said anything about it to me. Now it just seems to be the way people here play, and it makes sense to me.

Most of the time people want to play the modified version so that both players always have something they are able to be working towards.

So if you guys want to say that using houserules in a game that basically needs houserules on a fundamental level to function is still that game, but playing a variant within that game with houserules that simply make it more exciting to those using said houserules means you're no longer playing that variant, fine. Then I should have chosen "other," but that still doesn't push me into eternal war, so eternal war is still losing the poll. That still means that a majority of people find eternal war less exciting.

My favorite version of the game was controlling table quarters - whoever exerts more control of the board - wins the game. There is just too much luck involved in maelstrom - usually revolving around who draws the most D3's. No one I play with wants to play anything else though.

 BossJakadakk wrote:
So I'm 10, or have the maturity of a 10 year old, because I like Maelstrom more?

No, mature adults can prefer Maelstrom, and is is possible for them to express that preference in an grown-up manner. You, however...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 BossJakadakk wrote:
So I'm 10, or have the maturity of a 10 year old, because I like Maelstrom more?

No, mature adults can prefer Maelstrom, and is is possible for them to express that preference in an grown-up manner. You, however...

I, however, what? All I did was infer from the wording of the responses that maelstrom should only be considered appealing to children.

Channeling Gollum, I both love and hate maelstorm. Most of my victories have come in maelstrom, but maelstrom makes them a bit hollow. But being outgunned as badly as I am, I can't bring myself to pick eternal war.

Yeah, I've had games where I won even though I was outplayed and outfought, just because of the luck of the draw on pointless random objectives. Doesnt really feel like a win and makes me feel bad for my opponent. Ive also been on the other side, which is infuriating.

That said, I've had much the same issues with Kill Points (as opposed to the old 2e-4e Victory Points) too, so its sadly not new.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah, I've had games where I won even though I was outplayed and outfought, just because of the luck of the draw on pointless random objectives. Doesnt really feel like a win and makes me feel bad for my opponent. Ive also been on the other side, which is infuriating.

That said, I've had much the same issues with Kill Points (as opposed to the old 2e-4e Victory Points) too, so its sadly not new.

Yeah kill points are terrible. I don't mind the tie breaking secondaries but winning because of first blood never feels too great unless the initiative was stolen or something.



But ya, playing modified maelstrom and not mentioning the first part while arguing why one prefers maelstrom seems weak to me. The honest argument would be maelstrom can be improved but it does have some issues. I would say the same of eternal war missions. GW forgot the upside of fast attack and or heavy support but kept the vp's for some reason. Relic is still bad. Kill points are bad. Emperor's tie is bad. Scouring isn't very good. Big guns is ok. The only good one is crusade. And only if you actually follow the rules and place objectives before either side knows what deployment it will be. And even then, crusade is 3-5 objectives, that one factor drastically alters games and how they'll play out.

But crusade at least has end game scoring on the objectives, holding for 4 turns only to have your enemy wipe you off and claim an objective shouldn't reward you anything. You died.

And in any case, malestrom or eternal war, it's pretty moot with a lot of the sand boxes er gaming boards we see out there with minimal terrain and certainly no los blockers. If you're complaining about eternal war but your gaming board resembles a golf course, solve the first problem before even talking about scenario/mission. Los blocking terrain, it's whats for dinner.

 Vaktathi wrote:


That said, I've had much the same issues with Kill Points (as opposed to the old 2e-4e Victory Points) too, so its sadly not new.

Kill points is also bad it might even be the worst mission of 40k that you could possible play right now.
It favours death stars and tons of players love it for this reason but it is bad really bad.
There is just no way that a mission that gives max 7 victory points to player a and max 30 to player b is a good mission.
I don't wan to be able to predict the outcome of the battle just by counting at the amount of units.

This doesn't make mealstorm a good mission. Mealstorm even includes the same mechanics with cards like killl one unit etc.
It only deluded them with more unfairly balanced objectives.

Okay..... I've played both. I played 40k a lot before the 'birth' of Maelstrom games, and loved it, and played Maelstrom of War and loved it. Both have bits I hate as well.

Both, annoyingly enough, can be summed up by Jetbikes.


Eldar Jetbikes have ALWAYS been my most hated unit - even before the current incarnation made them super-scoring, BS4 and armed with scatter lasers for a pittance of points, they ruined games because a player could pay a few points and have three bikes which would play keep-away the entire game and then on turn 5 turbo-boost anywhere they damn well liked on the board and go "contesting your objective. Sucks to be you, I guess", and the fact that I'd been holding the objective for 4 turns and would have wiped said squad out in a fraction of the next shooting phase (if there had have been one) meant nothing.

Being able to camp on a couple of objectives and shoot the snot out of opponents also was little fun. And lo, the gun-line army was born. Kill points is annoying because as noted it favours elite 'death star' smashy units, but then that's exactly the same unit type screwed over by multiple objective games, so I'm fine with that.


In Maelstrom games, getting points throughout the game means holding objectives always matters. But because you never know which damn objectives it's going to be, it helps less than you might think. What you really need is a very fast unit which can relocate to the objective that matters, throw down immense firepower to clear defenders off it, then use an assault move to occupy it instead..... like, say, Eldar Jetbikes. Taking objectives in the midfield in the first couple of turns, and enemy objectives in the mid turns, is nigh impossible with footslogging armies and one reason they struggle to achieve anything.



So. Rant over. Having said what I think are fun but bad mission design, what are good missions? I do like the horus heresy missions (shatter strike is a very good one - requiring you to move, but also to move through your opponent, and also to leave non-troops units at home), but to my mind the best designed mission I know of is the Epic: Armageddon tournament scenario.

There was only one mission, played in essentially every game, and it was always interesting. It had 5 mission goals, and 6 objectives (two placed in your board half - one by each player, one on your board edge, and the same on your opponent's side)

Goals were

1) Hold The Line - control all 3 'friendly' objectives
2) Take and Hold - control 2 'hostile' objectives
3) Blitzkrieg - control the 1 'board edge' enemy objective
4) Cleanse - no unbroken enemy units in your board half
5) Break Their Spirit - destroy the most valuable (points)enemy unit

From the end of turn 2 (might have been 3) onwards, you claim a win if you have completed at least 2 more than your opponent has. Obviously Break Their spirit only has to be done once.

It made for tense games - and yes, your 'effective' mission could change during the game, but not at the expense of what you were doing before - moving a unit into the enemy deployment zone denies them cleanse, but costs you hold the line if it was holding a friendly objective, etc, etc.

locarno24 wrote:


So. Rant over. Having said what I think are fun but bad mission design, what are good missions? I do like the horus heresy missions (shatter strike is a very good one - requiring you to move, but also to move through your opponent, and also to leave non-troops units at home), but to my mind the best designed mission I know of is the Epic: Armageddon tournament scenario.

There was only one mission, played in essentially every game, and it was always interesting. It had 5 mission goals, and 6 objectives (two placed in your board half - one by each player, one on your board edge, and the same on your opponent's side)

Goals were

Spoiler:

1) Hold The Line - control all 3 'friendly' objectives
2) Take and Hold - control 2 'hostile' objectives
3) Blitzkrieg - control the 1 'board edge' enemy objective
4) Cleanse - no unbroken enemy units in your board half
5) Break Their Spirit - destroy the most valuable (points)enemy unit

From the end of turn 2 (might have been 3) onwards, you claim a win if you have completed at least 2 more than your opponent has. Obviously Break Their spirit only has to be done once.

It made for tense games - and yes, your 'effective' mission could change during the game, but not at the expense of what you were doing before - moving a unit into the enemy deployment zone denies them cleanse, but costs you hold the line if it was holding a friendly objective, etc, etc.

I'm going to try that this weekend - it sounds great!

locarno24 wrote:

There was only one mission, played in essentially every game, and it was always interesting. It had 5 mission goals, and 6 objectives (two placed in your board half - one by each player, one on your board edge, and the same on your opponent's side)

Goals were

1) Hold The Line - control all 3 'friendly' objectives
2) Take and Hold - control 2 'hostile' objectives
3) Blitzkrieg - control the 1 'board edge' enemy objective
4) Cleanse - no unbroken enemy units in your board half
5) Break Their Spirit - destroy the most valuable (points)enemy unit

From the end of turn 2 (might have been 3) onwards, you claim a win if you have completed at least 2 more than your opponent has. Obviously Break Their spirit only has to be done once.

It made for tense games - and yes, your 'effective' mission could change during the game, but not at the expense of what you were doing before - moving a unit into the enemy deployment zone denies them cleanse, but costs you hold the line if it was holding a friendly objective, etc, etc.

I believe the Supremacy Tactical cards are more or less what you want

locarno24 wrote:

There was only one mission, played in essentially every game, and it was always interesting. It had 5 mission goals, and 6 objectives (two placed in your board half - one by each player, one on your board edge, and the same on your opponent's side)

Goals were

1) Hold The Line - control all 3 'friendly' objectives
2) Take and Hold - control 2 'hostile' objectives
3) Blitzkrieg - control the 1 'board edge' enemy objective
4) Cleanse - no unbroken enemy units in your board half
5) Break Their Spirit - destroy the most valuable (points)enemy unit

By "no unbroken enemy units," does that just mean units at full strength? As in, any enemy units on your side of the board have taken at least 1 casualty?

That does sound really fun

Maelstrom all the way for me. And this from someone who didnt touch them for a year. Much more interesting, dynamic and overall fun.

My preference:

1. Modified Maelstrom
2. Maelstrom
3. Not playing
4. Eternal War

 kronk wrote:
My preference:

1. Modified Maelstrom
2. Maelstrom
3. Not playing
4. Eternal War

No "Modified Eternal War" on there?

Eternal War is straightforward and easier to set up.

Maelstrom is actually more rewarding for focusing on objectives and planning.

So, six to one, half dozen to the other really.

Eternal War is a thing of beauty for drop in games or even organising tournaments as the simplicity is key there.

But Maelstrom is more rewarding and gives the underdog more of a chance.

I prefer Maelstrom. I think that at this point, 20 years of 40K, if it wasn't for a very new way to play 40K I would have quit at this edition. Eternal war missions seem to me to be more or less the same missions from all the last editions I've played.
One of the things I like about Maelstrom is that I score point when I complete an objective so even when I don't win a game I have points on the board.
I tried ITC for the first time last weekend and was less than trilled with the way points are scored. Objectives are of less value than kill points so to win a game one would simply have to game the kill points and occasionally hold an objective. I'm very tired of kill points.
As far as Objective cards that can't be done at all. We simply discard them and draw another.
I have also tried the other new card set but at this point I don't know how well suited my Orks are to those. (yet)

So far every game with Maelstrom of war has been different and entertaining .

Played another game of Maelstrom at the insistence of the friend that I was playing and a couple of things happened which makes me remember some reasons why I dislike this scenario type:

(1) Yes, the your Tactical (or other) Objectives are random in the sense it depends on which cards you draw, but there's a difference between drawing genuinely impossible objectives (which a lot of people House Rule to say that you can discard those) and practically impossible objectives:

Take, for example, the objectives I drew: First Turn I drew three objectives, two of which were Capture Objective 4. Now, that objective was solidly held by my mate's Warlord and his squad (which could easily shred everything I had), so I discarded one in the hopes I might get a Tactical Objective which was better for me). I got the Capture Objective 1 card, which was another objective that was held by my opponent from first turn and was even further away.

This should illustrate that although the objective you can get are random, they tend to heavily favour one player or the other (whether that's favouring you because they're relatively easy to get, or your opponent because they're very difficult or practically impossible for you to get). If nothing else, this is reason number one why I dislike Maelstrom.

(2) Units spend a lot of the game camping objectives that would be impractical to leave alone on the chance that you get a card for that objective. For example, my mate had two entire squads camp on objectives near the back of the field just in case they got that objective. Those units did literally nothing other than sit there the whole game.


I know that Eternal War still has Objective Markers, but as a general rule, there is less of them (enough to be relatively significant in my experience), meaning that the games are often less focused on objectives that are practically impossible and more on the strategic gameplay. This is why I love The Relic, The Emperor's Will, and Purge The Alien so much (notice they're all Eternal War missions with low/no objective marker counts). Plus the VP's for Objective Markers are scored at the end, meaning there's less instant gratification and less YOLO-Squading for the sake of VP's at the end of your player turn.

My point is that there's is enough in Maelstrom Missions to force strategic gameplay, fun, and interest without all the shenanigans of random objectives.

It's OK. I played Maelstrom over the weekend. It was nice when so many of the objectives cards just happened to be where we were already camped. It's really good strategy to deploy right on top of them before the cards were drawn. And then to draw bonus VP cards for killing when you're about to kill stuff. Strong tactical play there...

My buddy has a great time playing 40k Maelstrom with his 9-year old child. Or rather, his kid loves Maelstrom. Especially with the common modification to remove "impossible" cards. His kid wins a bunch of games that way, so the "Maelstrom is for 10-year-old kids" is an absolute fact.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It's OK. I played Maelstrom over the weekend. It was nice when so many of the objectives cards just happened to be where we were already camped. It's really good strategy to deploy right on top of them before the cards were drawn. And then to draw bonus VP cards for killing when you're about to kill stuff. Strong tactical play there...

My buddy has a great time playing 40k Maelstrom with his 9-year old child. Or rather, his kid loves Maelstrom. Especially with the common modification to remove "impossible" cards. His kid wins a bunch of games that way, so the "Maelstrom is for 10-year-old kids" is an absolute fact.

Yeah having good control over the board at all times is useful in maelstrom rather than just rushing to the objectives at the end of the game, because that's what would happen in a real battle, both armies just agree to stop killing each other after a certain amount of time and you get to keep whatever is next to you right at that point. And I don't get your point about getting a card for killing things, do you have turns where you just decide not to kill the enemies?

And yeah your mates kid likes it, it doesn't stop other people who are older liking it too. Also the common modification is to remove totally impossible ones, not very difficult ones too, which I believe is what you mean when you type "impossible".

The point is that Maelstrom is luck, Eternal War is skill. That the cards simply randomly give you points, rather than you working for them.

Far be it for me to turn my nose up at those adults who enjoy a robust game of Tic-Tac-Toe, Rock-Scissors-Paper, Checkers and/or Chutes & Ladders. I will, however, continue to mock their claims of any being a "deep" game requiring "strategy" and "tactics."

As opposed to the "strategy" of rushing forwards to the objectives on turn 5 and hoping for the 1 in 3 chance of the game ending? Is that not luck then?

Yes the cards are random, but a well designed maelstrom army will be able to complete the majority of them relatively easily, so it shouldn't matter as much what you draw, and you can discard the one or 2 you won't be able to do. The real skill is being ready for anything and adapting your plans to suit what you need to do.

Just because you need lots of luck for you to get the cards you need with your gunline army that needs to draw cards like hold the line or secure an objective you are already on doesn't mean that it is so bad for everyone.

JohnHwangDD,: You're drawing a false dichotomy. There are only 36 cards, many of which are duplicates. You know what you and your opponent might draw and can pre-plan accordingly.

The cards are also random in poker, but I hardly think that makes it a game lacking in skill; The cards give Maelstrom a layer of contingency planning that Eternal war simply doesn't have.

In honesty, I often I find this a layer too much. If I want a quick or easy game, for example, I'll play an Eternal war mission.

Maelstrom IMO is more engaging and brings the focus on objectives throughout the game instead of just grabbing objectives at the end (or just going for the tabling). The problem with Maelstrom is that GW is bad at writing rules (this seems to be a recurring theme with GW for the past few years....) so they have a lot of holes in their design which people understandably try to fix with house rules.

I don't agree that Eternal War is more skillful as it often times devolves into "kill everything and jump on objectives on turn 5". The missions are predictable which adds stability but the gameplay generally ignores objectives so the strategy comes from mostly just trying to beat the other army and not so much about how your scoring. Maelstrom is more random but it favors board control heavily and it often times forces decisions between taking the objective or attacking the enemy force which adds a lot of risk management to the game.

Also, you holding your objectives is only half of it. You will end in a draw if you aren't also trying to stop your opponent from scoring. So you keep track of what they've drawn and watch objectives that haven't been pulled because there is the chance they'll pull 2-3of them by the end of the game.

That takes serious thought and a tactical approach to the game.

How hard is your buddy trying to beat his 9 year old? Seriously.

Really... another thread that is starting to devolve into ''Your preference is WRONG because my preference is different''. You may as well argue over which flavour of icecream is better.

Personal preference is a real thing guys.


Go on, take this comment as a personal assault to something you said - even though this isn't targeted at someone specific.

I like vanilla...

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I like vanilla...

Vanilla? Strawberry is the one true flavor of icecream. All those that deny it are my enemies.

Vankraken wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I like vanilla...

Vanilla? Strawberry is the one true flavor of icecream. All those that deny it are my enemies.

I dare deny it. Mint choc chip is obviously the best flavour. I will prove it by beating you in a game of Maelstrom of War 40k, I don't care if you prefer Eternal War, maelstrom is definitely better for everyone.

Wulfmar wrote:Really... another thread that is starting to devolve into ''Your preference is WRONG because my preference is different''. You may as well argue over which flavour of icecream is better.

Personal preference is a real thing guys.

Go on, take this comment as a personal assault to something you said - even though this isn't targeted at someone specific.

I don't believe it has, to me it seems people are discussing the relative merits of each set of missions and WHY they prefer one over the other, not just saying "I'm right and you're wrong and you're an idiot for thinking something different to me!".

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
My buddy has a great time playing 40k Maelstrom with his 9-year old child. Or rather, his kid loves Maelstrom. Especially with the common modification to remove "impossible" cards. His kid wins a bunch of games that way, so the "Maelstrom is for 10-year-old kids" is an absolute fact.

Man, there's awful lot of salty people here. Seriously, I've seen a lot of sour responses because people like Maelstrom over Eternal War. Who's the child here?