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 vipoid wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
What about the added dynamics which come from objectives changing through the battle to another which you can't foresee 100 %? Is that a big loss or wouldn't they be missed?

Well, I certainly wouldn't miss it. To me, it doesn't come across as dynamic so much as schizophrenic.

I find it incredibly narrative/immersion breaking when in the space of a battle that, in real time, is only supposed to last minutes your orders might change significantly 6 times.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
What about the added dynamics which come from objectives changing through the battle to another which you can't foresee 100 %? Is that a big loss or wouldn't they be missed?

Well, I certainly wouldn't miss it. To me, it doesn't come across as dynamic so much as schizophrenic.

I find it incredibly narrative/immersion breaking when in the space of a battle that, in real time, is only supposed to last minutes your orders might change significantly 6 times.

Yeah, one moment it is of vital importance to capture that hill in front of you. Then, once you've spent ammunition and lives securing it, your orders come in telling you that holding the ruins at the bottom of the hill which you were just in is the most important thing to do.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
What about the added dynamics which come from objectives changing through the battle to another which you can't foresee 100 %? Is that a big loss or wouldn't they be missed?

Well, I certainly wouldn't miss it. To me, it doesn't come across as dynamic so much as schizophrenic.

I find it incredibly narrative/immersion breaking when in the space of a battle that, in real time, is only supposed to last minutes your orders might change significantly 6 times.

Yeah, one moment it is of vital importance to capture that hill in front of you. Then, once you've spent ammunition and lives securing it, your orders come in telling you that holding the ruins at the bottom of the hill which you were just in is the most important thing to do.

It also seems weird that you get points for walking to the important hill, but not for capturing it. As it, you're clearly not capturing it because your opponent can also get points for walking to that very same hill later in the game. Hell, you can get points for walking to that hill again.

Are we battling over the best location for a photo-shoot?

 vipoid wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
What about the added dynamics which come from objectives changing through the battle to another which you can't foresee 100 %? Is that a big loss or wouldn't they be missed?

Well, I certainly wouldn't miss it. To me, it doesn't come across as dynamic so much as schizophrenic.

I find it incredibly narrative/immersion breaking when in the space of a battle that, in real time, is only supposed to last minutes your orders might change significantly 6 times.

Yeah, one moment it is of vital importance to capture that hill in front of you. Then, once you've spent ammunition and lives securing it, your orders come in telling you that holding the ruins at the bottom of the hill which you were just in is the most important thing to do.

It also seems weird that you get points for walking to the important hill, but not for capturing it. As it, you're clearly not capturing it because your opponent can also get points for walking to that very same hill later in the game. Hell, you can get points for walking to that hill again.

Are we battling over the best location for a photo-shoot?

Now have the image of Space Marines posing on the top of a hill with selfie sticks, pulling duck faces.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

Chaospling wrote:
What about the added dynamics which come from objectives changing through the battle to another which you can't foresee 100 %? Is that a big loss or wouldn't they be missed?

Well, I certainly wouldn't miss it. To me, it doesn't come across as dynamic so much as schizophrenic.

I find it incredibly narrative/immersion breaking when in the space of a battle that, in real time, is only supposed to last minutes your orders might change significantly 6 times.

This is my experience as well. I play wargames for the strategy and narrative. Maelstrom fails in both.

I really like some of the Alter of War books, they are pretty fun for a more narrative feel and they can make a great base for a narrative campaign mission. In a DA/IK/Skitarii(I have to many armies) vs CSM we use the hunt the fallen mission as a nice template for an extra objective I am always working on in addition to the normal mission.

When 7th first came out, like most people posting here I found Maelstrom to be a horrible idea. It upset the plan I had in mind for dismantling my opponent. Yet, after several months of slogfests, LoS BS, and tall model shenanigans, I noticed that the game had shifted from a tabletop wargame to a tabletop boardgame. At first I was pissed, then I was curious, and finally I got it: Maelstrom lets me play with my opponent, not against my opponent.

The game for me shifted from 'Ard Boyz Evry Day, All Day' to 'let's see who's the better player'. I started to tailer my list to beating Maelstrom, not my opponent. My enjoyment of the game returned, because it was no longer a rock-paper-scissors match up, it was a master class chess match with artillery and supersoldiers. Maelstrom makes me a better player because it trains me to think on my feet as each new complication emerges. Instead of talking smack with my opponent, we actually have fun conversations about whether or not the objective is a crate of toilet paper or a case of spoiled pickles. Turns the game from Win at All Costs to Capture the Flag.

Add in tall terrain and mysterious objectives, and you now have a game where melee units can get close enough to charge, gunlines have to move, tall models can't see across the table, and flyers have predictable routes. The game goes from broke to fun, from horribly unbalanced to surprisingly playable.

On Maelstrom, I have to give it to GW for adding a good mechanic to break people out of the cancerous community mindset 40k has become over the years. To those that continue to hate change and hold on to yesteryear for dear life, all I ask is for you to take a step back, take a clear breath, and play the game against the cards and not against your oppnent. You might just have some fun.

SJ

Why to I suspect that the people who think maelstrom is more tactical are the sort of people who'd describe roulette as a complex strategy game.

Also, Maelstrom doesn't make you think on your feet. If anything, it does the exact opposite - it makes you not think at all. There's no need to think and plan over multiple turns, because you're just told what to do each turn. That's not "thinking on your feet" that's just following orders.

Also also: "Maelstrom lets me play with my opponent, not against my opponent" I don't even know how to address all the levels of absurdity in this statement, so I'll just make do with several faceplams:

 vipoid wrote:
Why to I suspect that the people who think maelstrom is more tactical are the sort of people who'd describe roulette as a complex strategy game.

Also, Maelstrom doesn't make you think on your feet. If anything, it does the exact opposite - it makes you not think at all. There's no need to think and plan over multiple turns, because you're just told what to do each turn. That's not "thinking on your feet" that's just following orders.

Also also: "Maelstrom lets me play with my opponent, not against my opponent" I don't even know how to address all the levels of absurdity in this statement, so I'll just make do with several faceplams:

Not my issue that you can't relate. As I said, it's a nuance of the game; some people are just tone def to nuance.

SJ

I'm not convinced you know what a nuance is.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Maelstrom lets me play with my opponent, not against my opponent.

It's more like you're playing separate games with no connection to each other but just happen to be on the same board. Again, no thanks. The entire point of a strategy game is to pit my army and my mind against an opponent's army and mind.

Yeah, Maelstrom is far more disconnecting from any sort of tactics or opponent interaction. "Cast a psychic power, gain VP's", ok, well, nothing my opponent can do about that, and basicallya s long as I have a psyker I can do that, if I have muiltiple psykers I gain multiple VP's. Sweet, free VP's for doing something that required zero effort and my opponent could do basically nothing about. So much of Maelstrom is like that.

It's whack-a-mole, not any sort of coherent tactical engagement.

RULE #1 here guys - debate the point, do NOT attack the user.

Another Maelstrom hater here. I used to love the old '1 to 3 objectives, capture them by the end of the game' style of mission. I could plan turns ahead and my opponent actually had to hang around there if they wanted that point, there was no grabbing the objective and then running away again but still getting the point. If they wanted it then they would have to position carefully and suffer my bombardments as I spent a few turns softening them up with my tanks before sending my infantry in to clean up.

Now I have to send everything everywhere, my opponent can grab an objective and then run off and some of the missions dont even make sense. All in all maelstrom is about as tactically and strategically deep as a game of snakes and ladders.

I dislike Maelstrom for a few reasons. As someone who plays Imperial Guard a lot we lack the mobility to take many of the objectives that are all the way across the board, so it's difficult to score those cards. It's even worse when I pull blood and guts, Kill an enemy in the assault phase? Yeah, cause that's going to happen. It's a decent concept, but poorly executed. I still prefer Eternal War missions.

I did actually pull off an assault mission with my IG. A unit of Khorne Bezerkers suffered a sudden cessation of existence when two tanks looked at them and the sole survivor was charged by my power armoured demon blade wielding Inquisitor.

I wonder how much better Maelstrom would be if GW put some thought into it and gave each race their own deck, so the IG one would be mostly hold objectives in your deployment zone and only 1 'kill a unit in assault' card that gave a tong of VPs.

Tau would have no 'cast a psychic power' BS.

Orks could have a lot less objective ones and a lot more kill in assault ones.

It would still probably hurt people who like taking an army and playing it more in line with how a specific chapter is supposed to play rather than how the faction plays, but it would be a step up imo.

So what kind of missions would you prefer instead of maelstrom?

A fixed mission like "the player securing objective 5 at the und if the game wins"
Or dynamic missions like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit and your own unit I side the enemys deployment zone"

I'd say there was nothing terribly wrong about the old objective system, where you just count who has the most at the end. I thought that adding the killing of the enemy HQ was a good addition in 6th as a VP, but first blood is dumb in a I Go You Go game, it seems like it might as well be giving the extra VP to whoever wins the roll to go first.

I'd also say 5 objectives are too many, and that only scoring at the end might be an issue.

Something not unlike warmachine could be good with control zones, at the end of each player turn you get a VP for being in a zone without your opponent being in it, and you stack VPs until the end so that a last turn rush wont negate 5 previous turns of securing the objective.

Asymmetrical objectives are fun, as are secret objectives, but Maelstrom just gets it so wrong. Drawing a secret card at the beginning of the game that you only have 1 or 2 of and you hang on to all game could be fun, perhaps then giving you 3VPs for killing the enemy HQ or psyker (redrawing if they don't have one). These would then be secondary to the main objectives, designed so that securing all the zones ensures a win, but if you can't pull of the win that way the secondary objectives are the tiebreakers.

 kodos wrote:
So what kind of missions would you prefer instead of maelstrom?

A fixed mission like "the player securing objective 5 at the und if the game wins"
Or dynamic missions like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit and your own unit I side the enemys deployment zone"

Well, to quote what I said earlier:

 vipoid wrote:
What might have been interesting is if maelstrom had random missions, but you only got 3 of them at the beginning of the game (no new ones are drawn) and had the entire game to complete them. Neither player sees his opponent's cards until the end of the game.

Of course, this would also require that the missions have a certain level of difficulty (so 'cast a psychic power' and such are out), are possible (so, no killing a flier your opponent doesn't have), and all of similar difficulty and reward.

Hell, it might work to just give each player 3 cards with different numbers on them - which represent the objectives they have to hold at the end of the game. Neither player sees his opponent's cards, so they don't know what objectives the other needs to win.

Anything like that would, I think, be a lot better.

One thing I'd like to add is that stuff like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit" probably isn't a good idea when IK armies are a thing.

"Okay, so far I've destroyed 3 50pt guardsman squads and 2 65pt chimeras. That's 5 victory points for me."
"Well, I've destroyed a 400pt Imperial Knight... guess that's one victory point for me."

I thinking of a mission system with primary and secondary missions with victory points being old school (a 65 point unit gives 65 victory points) and fixed missions to determine the winner.

I am just not sure which one should be the primary mission (normally I would see victory points secondary, but I also a dynamic mission system like maelstrom would work with victory points being primary)

 vipoid wrote:

 kodos wrote:
So what kind of missions would you prefer instead of maelstrom?

A fixed mission like "the player securing objective 5 at the und if the game wins"
Or dynamic missions like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit and your own unit I side the enemys deployment zone"

Well, to quote what I said earlier:

 vipoid wrote:
What might have been interesting is if maelstrom had random missions, but you only got 3 of them at the beginning of the game (no new ones are drawn) and had the entire game to complete them. Neither player sees his opponent's cards until the end of the game.

Of course, this would also require that the missions have a certain level of difficulty (so 'cast a psychic power' and such are out), are possible (so, no killing a flier your opponent doesn't have), and all of similar difficulty and reward.

Hell, it might work to just give each player 3 cards with different numbers on them - which represent the objectives they have to hold at the end of the game. Neither player sees his opponent's cards, so they don't know what objectives the other needs to win.

Anything like that would, I think, be a lot better.

One thing I'd like to add is that stuff like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit" probably isn't a good idea when IK armies are a thing.

"Okay, so far I've destroyed 3 50pt guardsman squads and 2 65pt chimeras. That's 5 victory points for me."
"Well, I've destroyed a 400pt Imperial Knight... guess that's one victory point for me."

It's the same fundamental problem KP's have always had. Treating each element of maneuver as though it's just as valuable as any other element of maneuver is terrible game design, it's there to be simple, nothing more

I can attest to disliking kill point games with a passion. It encourages a very specific playstyles, and my main army of Nurgle daemons w/summons tend to lose even when there is only a single unit on the enemy side at game end. There's a reason I avoid playing the two impguard players at the store here: they play purge the alien every time and both use all tanks and baneblades. Fun for them, but is it boring to just watch them crawl forward and blast units off the board

autumnlotus wrote:
I can attest to disliking kill point games with a passion. It encourages a very specific playstyles, and my main army of Nurgle daemons w/summons tend to lose even when there is only a single unit on the enemy side at game end. There's a reason I avoid playing the two impguard players at the store here: they play purge the alien every time and both use all tanks and baneblades. Fun for them, but is it boring to just watch them crawl forward and blast units off the board

That's odd, IG armies typically are amongst the worst when it comes to playing KP games, as their units typically tend to be cheap, numerous, and easily destroyed.

Kill Points tend to be an auto-lose for my DE.

If you get a chance, have a look at how BattleRider from GDW handled missions, in effect you are not playing your opponent, you have a mission to carry out and are playing that. The enemy is just in the way.

Perfectly possible for both players to win, or be defeated.

10 missions for each side - 20 in total, 10 aggressive and 10 defensive. Each has three levels of victory, you game point value is determined and you design a force - the mission will tell you what percentage of this force you can bring.

Victory depends on the ratio of your force to the enemy, so if outnumbered heavily you may only have to observe the enemy for a few turns then pull back

I like how Maelstrom introduces the idea of doing something other than spending six turns annihilating your opponent. Its brought life into my Tau gunline by forcing me to do more than sit at the edge of the table and shoot, and I've actually had my Nid horde win over overpowering gunfire by taking objectives my opponent didn't.

But, in the end, like many things GW, I think it's a good idea poorly executed.

At the least, all objectives should be pulled at the start of the game. Any "secure objectives" should swing both ways. Maybe around turn 3 or so one or more objectives can be changed out.

But that is the problem. What imporatance does it have what GW wanted to do, if they left armies without the ability to actualy play the game. They could have just not updated IG, with cheaper flyers the codex would be a lot better. But they nefed it for 6th ed, and made it unplayable in 7th, before 7th even started. I love dynamic games with different objectives. But what GW did only helped armies that were already on the top and nerf my army even harder.

 vipoid wrote:

 kodos wrote:
So what kind of missions would you prefer instead of maelstrom?

A fixed mission like "the player securing objective 5 at the und if the game wins"
Or dynamic missions like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit and your own unit I side the enemys deployment zone"

Well, to quote what I said earlier:

 vipoid wrote:
What might have been interesting is if maelstrom had random missions, but you only got 3 of them at the beginning of the game (no new ones are drawn) and had the entire game to complete them. Neither player sees his opponent's cards until the end of the game.

Of course, this would also require that the missions have a certain level of difficulty (so 'cast a psychic power' and such are out), are possible (so, no killing a flier your opponent doesn't have), and all of similar difficulty and reward.

Hell, it might work to just give each player 3 cards with different numbers on them - which represent the objectives they have to hold at the end of the game. Neither player sees his opponent's cards, so they don't know what objectives the other needs to win.

Anything like that would, I think, be a lot better.

One thing I'd like to add is that stuff like "victory points for each destroyed enemy unit" probably isn't a good idea when IK armies are a thing.

"Okay, so far I've destroyed 3 50pt guardsman squads and 2 65pt chimeras. That's 5 victory points for me."
"Well, I've destroyed a 400pt Imperial Knight... guess that's one victory point for me."

You can blame 7th edition for including all the pros of LoW but not their cons (ie +1 to Seize, 1 VP for every three HP/wounds inflicted). Because, you know, reasons.

Maelstrom is the best thing that has happened to 40K since I picked up this game. It turned static games of gunline play and fly the skimmer on top of the objective turn 5, into a dynamic, rewarding game.

Now of course you can't play Maelstrom as is, it needs a few tweaks. Most of our games use a nice mix of Maelstrom (3-4 cards per turn, discard all impossible cards immediately and one of your chosing at the end of your turn, tactical Warlord traits forbidden), Eternal War and secondaries (First blood, Warlord, Linebreaker). Mission-wise, 7th ed is the best 40K has ever been.

On the flip side, GW has completely given up on their attempts to produce balanced rules. They have basically said 'sod it and let the players sort it out between them'. Play testing is gone. A game of 40K has never required as much social contracting as it currently does. To not waste hours of your life you're forced to agree upon a lot of things before a game.

Allies, Flyers, Free Stuff (summoning and formation special rules), the death of the FOC slot and introduction of Apocalypse rules (Superheavies, GMCs, D-weapons) are breaking the game and needs to be reigned in. As per usual, this is done by tournament organizers.