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One of the big complaints about the new Tactical Objectives / Maelstrom of War missions is the potential for the game to be practically decided without either player taking any action. It's no fun to go into a game and lose on Turn 1 because your opponent can immediately score all of his tactical objectives and you can't score any. Moreover, getting rid of tactical objectives can seem to happen too fast when you're achieving them (providing little narrative cohesion) or too slow when you need to discard ones you can't achieve (severely disadvantaging the player).
I happened to see someone in the 7th Rumors thread suggest a "Texas Hold'em" style rotation of tactical objectives, with some communal objectives and a couple secret objective unique to each player. That got me thinking about how I might go about implementing such a practice, so I came up with the following house rules. These mostly combine the basic idea of the new tactical objectives with some of the existing BAO/LVO formats popular in the tournament circuit.
Tactical Hold'em
Mission Setup: The game is scored based on Primary, Tactical, and Strategic missions. The Primary is worth 4 points, Tactical is worth 3 points, and each Strategic is worth 1 point. This is the same as BAO/LVO.
Primary Missions: Roll a D3 and play the one of the following Eternal War missions.
D3 | Mission
-1- | Crusade - Instead of placing separate objectives, use the same 6 objective markers as the Tactical Objectives.
-2- | Purge the Alien - No change.
-3- | Emperor's Will - No change.
Tactical Missions: Place the 6 Tactical Objective markers as normal.
At the start of each turn, both players generate two Tactical Objectives in secret. The player who goes first may then decide whether to keep their objectives or "fold". If they do not fold, the second player then has the opportunity to fold. If neither player folds, play continues normally until the end of the game turn. At that point, both players must reveal their Tactical Objectives, scoring points for any that they have achieved (objectives achieved in both player turns only count once). After scoring, both players discard all their Tactical Objectives, achieved or not.
However, if either player folds at the start of the turn, both players immediately discard their Tactical Objectives, and cannot score any Tactical Objectives until the next game turn. The rest of the game turn is then played normally. The player that did not fold gains 1 VP automatically.
Furthermore, at the start of Turn 2, generate 3 Tactical Objectives visible to both players (this is "The Flop"). These are never discarded and may be achieved by both players (if possible) in each game turn, at the end of the turn. At the start of Turn 3, generate one more Tactical Objective visible to both players (this is "The Turn"). This follows the same rules as the Flop. At the start of Turn 4, generate one final Tactical Objective ("The River") in the same way as the Flop and the Turn.
Strategic Missions:
First Blood, Linebreaker, and Slay the Warlord are each scored separately at the end of the game rather than for VPs. This is the same as BAO/LVO.
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Anyway, that's all I can come up with so far. Ideally, this should allow players to do some interesting bluffing with their Tactical Objectives or just get rid of some bad ones without massively punishing their chances of winning. Also, it should hopefully keep some variety in the tactical objectives without some of the "objective ADHD" that the current system can sometimes create. Let me know what you think.
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