All, since the OP, the TOs have been hard at work crafting some test missions. Those will be updated here for your use.

Background

MVB posted an interesting article over on his blog: http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2013/12/better-mission-design-more-proactive.html

The gist is a proposal is to create a "Standard" mission and an "Alternate" mission that players can choose at the start of the game. Each mission type caters to different styles of armies, and applies only to the player who chooses it. I think it is a potentially elegant way to help even the playing field by giving players a goal they can fight for without at the same time nerfing the other army.

UPDATE: The TOs developed a draft mission (reproduced below): http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2013/12/asymmetrical-mission-design-for-better.html

Asymmetrical Tournament Test Mission #1
Note: This mission is currently designed toward fixed objective location and symmetrical terrain. In the future and comprehensively we anticipate not every mission will look like this - the variety needs to allow TOs to tailor their selections from the Catalog to the specific parameters and constraints of their particular tournament environment.

For purposes of playtesting, we recommend you note down Standard/Alternate and Secondary Escalations prior to rolling any dice. Suggestions for alternate times to reveal and why are welcome! We recommend playing this particular mission in either Vanguard or Dawn of War deployments. On a separate piece of paper (for playtest), privately note whether you will be playing the Standard Primary or Alternate Primary; also note which Secondary you will be Escalating (see below for more information).
Immediately after rolling to determine deployment zones / place objective markers, both players must reveal their Primary and Secondary choices as noted above.

Primary - Whoever scores the most points from OBJECTIVES wins the Primary
Secondary- Whoever scores the most points from SECONDARIES wins the Secondary

OBJECTIVES
HOW YOU SCORE POINTS:
Standard Primary Objectives - Each Objective is worth 3 points if controlled at the end of the game
Alternate Primary Objectives - You score 1 point for each Objective you control at the start of YOUR OWN player turn 2, 3, 4, and 5. (i.e. No score on turns 1, 6, 7). Make this calculation BEFORE anything else (before reserves, psychic powers, etc.).

You may not score more than 9 points for either the Standard or Alternate version of this mission.

HOW YOU PLACE OBJECTIVES:
After rolling to determine deployment zones, place 6 objectives in the following fashion:
Place 1 objective in the center of each Table Quarter (12" from the nearest long table edge, 18" from the nearest short table edge)
Starting with the player who won the roll to select deployment zones, each player places one objective in a location of their choosing, no closer than 12" from any other Objective, and no closer than 6" from any table edge

Example: Player A selects to play Alternate Primary Objectives; he controls 3 Objectives at the start of his 2nd Player Turn (3 Points), 2 at the start of his 3rd Player Turn (2 Points), 1 at the start of his 4th Player Turn (1 Point) and none for the remainder of the game. Player B selects to play Standard Primary Objectives and controls 2 Objectives at the end of the game (6 Points). Both players score 6 Points toward the Primary, yielding a tie on Primary.

SECONDARIES
HOW YOU SCORE POINTS:
Each SECONDARY is worth 2 points; ESCALATED SECONDARIES are worth a maximum of 4 points. You must choose to convert one Secondary into its ESCALATED version.

You may score a maximum of 8 points for accomplishing SECONDARIES.

First Blood - 2 Points for being the first player to destroy an enemy unit
Slay the Warlord - 2 Points for destroying the enemy Warlord
Linebreaker - 2 Points for ending the game with a scoring/denial unit in the enemy deployment zone

HOW YOU ESCALATE SECONDARIES:
Each player secretly chooses one of the secondary objectives to escalate. They then score the escalated secondar INSTEAD of the basic secondary.

ESCALATED First Blood - Up to 4 Points for destroying more units than your opponent destroys; subtract the # of units your opponent destroyed from the # of units you destroyed; the sum is the # of points you earn for this Escalated Secondary (minimum of 0, maximum of 4); you no longer score any points for achieving Standard First Blood
ESCALATED Slay the Warlord - 1 Point for each enemy Character destroyed, to a maximum of 4 points; you no longer score any additional points for destroying the enemy’s Warlord.
ESCALATED Linebreaker - 1 Point for each non-Independent Character scoring or denial unit WHOLLY within the enemy's deployment zone at the end of the game, to a maximum of 4 points; you no longer score any additional points for standard Linebreaker.

EXAMPLE: Player A chooses to Escalate First Blood. During the course of the game, he completes Linebreaker (2 Points), Slay the Warlord (2 Points), First Blood (now worth 0 Points) and he destroys 4 more enemy units than his opponent destroys of his (4 Points). He has scored the maximum of 8 Points toward winning Secondary.

Feedback
We want your feedback! For playtest, please be as comprehensive as you can - please include things like images of the deployment zone and objective locations, obviously the armies involved and any other variables you can think of.

Submit your feedback here in the thread, over on Whiskey & 40k, to mvbrandt@gmail.com, or to your favorite TO.

It is an interesting set up. Worth looking into and playing around with imo.

That's not a bad idea. It would make drop pod-style armies playable again.

Also forces your opponent to shoot at troops on objectives earlier than they might otherwise- instead of allowing them to just wipe out your kill-y units and grab an objective last turn.

I'd be interested in playtesting this format a bit.

EDIT:

Just read the article and absolutely LOVE the concept. Posting it to our local group page now.

This is a really good idea. Might knock it around a bit with some mates.

This could be a step in the right direction.

I was recently looking through an old 3rd Ed rulebook and feeling wistful about the nearly 20 missions, alternate FOC setups and non-symmetrical objectives that were on display.

I long for a time when these are more common again.

I think this would be really neat, right now it is like kill kill kill, until about turn 3 or 4 then you have to figure out how many objectives you can grab up, with this it would be a battle to see who could hold the objectives the longest, with troops being sacrificing their firepower in order to hold the objective the longest.

We had progressive objectives like this in the AdeptiCon Gladiator for the last few years, except we used them as standard objectives. They are quite awesome, but require a bit a bookkeeping on the part of the players.

I think so long as you can build a mission that the power builds can't adjust to and still overpower everyone, then it is a great idea.

Grazie. This has a lot of work and player/TO contribution to go. I think there's a good core team of diverse personalities coming together for it, however, with an eye toward benefiting the community without attribution to just one tourney or designer.

Yeah, this isn't an ego driven solution (I hope not, anyway) as that will ultimately just turn people off and divide groups. If it is inclusive, more folks will feel a sense of ownership in it.

We're down to post video bat reps of ideas and gather feedback, too. I would love to see at least some of us all get on the same page (or close to the same page) so that we cna get some type of conformity.

 Reecius wrote:
Yeah, this isn't an ego driven solution (I hope not, anyway) as that will ultimately just turn people off and divide groups. If it is inclusive, more folks will feel a sense of ownership in it.

We're down to post video bat reps of ideas and gather feedback, too. I would love to see at least some of us all get on the same page (or close to the same page) so that we cna get some type of conformity.

I think the key is to get enough missions using similar design principles and with the commitment of a large and diverse group of TOs into a Catalog. At that point, any given event that wants to use them and the general allowances/restrictions applied to the Catalog as a whole (i.e., no comp/bans, yes to all codices/supplements/dataslates, or w/e is decided upon) can do so. Also, local RTTs and other things can build their rounds by selecting whichever missions from the Catalog they want (almost like a player-driven RTT packet like the ones of old).

The biggest key is there will be some TOs and players who don't want to participate simply for the sake of retaining pure individualism or out of dislike for people/formats who partake (i.e., there are always going to be people who simply "don't like" NOVA or AdeptiCon or Feast or any of the big name events or personalities). As long as there's a large enough mass of participation, you give those who can't afford to tweak to the differing bans and restrictions at every next event a series of attendable GTs where their army of at least the year works alright. And again, one of the hopes and drivers here is it's wrong fundamentally to say to someone "We don't think your army is fair, so you can't use it anymore" when they've invested their money into it.

For better or worse, GW's design philosophy has SPECIFICALLY done that to many players who own armies like Dark Angels, outdated armies, etc. They've released rules that tell those players "sorry, you can't use your models, buy these new ones that aren't at all appealing to you thematically or competitively, or just sit around waiting for yours to get updated." They exacerbated this with things like Escalation, where by far every army is not created equally in terms of the Superheavies/etc. they have access to.

Long story short, if we can use proactive and positive approaches to making missions that permit a wider variety of army tropes to succeed (instead of the base book missions which encourage "big nasty hard to kill or able to avoid being shot at all while snagging at least one objective late in a game where 4/6 base book missions are objectives and another is close to it, plus is hard to win KP against so is good at the last of the book missions) WITHOUT punishing those tropes that are dominant right now.

It's actually possible to be innovative enough to where Jetstar isn't nerfed, but instead armies that currently can't compete are buffed ... all without meddling in composition, force organization charts, rules changes, or ban lists. This also avoids trying to meddle with tournament FORMAT or how people prefer to score them. You really don't want to look at the global community of TOs and say "to participate you have to be a W/L event, or to participate you have to be a Battle Points event, or to participate you have to pair based upon XYZ criteria, or you can't or have to bracket, etc." These components are often the fundamental core of what makes a tournament its own unique experience (often but not always moreso than missions).

Neil Gilstrap of 11th Co, who is an integral part of it, summarizes perhaps best by simplifying it down to - are you being constructive or destructive? Banning and comping and changing rules and rendering peoples' investments illegal or inoperable is destructive. Adding to tournament design in a way that broadens what's competitive w/out nerfing what currently competes is constructive.

I have been playing casual games similar to this for a while. Though I just came up with the idea of scoring a point a turn over time, not having a choice.

The problem that occurred was first turn giving a huge edge rather then second now in objective games, especially with the opportunity for FB.

If you say that a game turn of capture is needed then going second sucks. If you say player turn, then gong first still has the greatest edge.

So my take on this idea was you gain a point for an uncontested objective controlled at the end of the opposing players turn. This way, going first gives you the obvious edge of shooting first BUT if you don't blow them off their home objectives (assuming they have one) then they are gaining points from the start rather then shots and FB. It also eliminates the abuse of last player turn grabs as they would need to capture an objective a turn sooner BUT again would give them last word in contesting that end game point the enemy could be gaining.

The trouble I see with giving a choice, is it allows power builds to continue as usual, ignore objectives until the end of game. It also is hard to keep track of points gained if done secretly, or at least lays the framework for some nasty disagreements on whether or not a unit was 3" vicinity 4 turns earlier or not.

This is why I think a flat change to how missions are scored is a better solution.

Good to see this talk.

People wanting to do there own thing is always going to be a problem.

But your bigger problem IMO is that tournament formats vary too much and you will have a hard getting battle point tournaments to adopt a W-L format or vice cersa and the missions for those formats are different (namely in that the W-L format can't allow for a tie). You almost need to develop two mission books, one for battle points and one for straight win/loss

steinerp wrote:
People wanting to do there own thing is always going to be a problem.

But your bigger problem IMO is that tournament formats vary too much and you will have a hard getting battle point tournaments to adopt a W-L format or vice cersa and the missions for those formats are different (namely in that the W-L format can't allow for a tie). You almost need to develop two mission books, one for battle points and one for straight win/loss

Not as much as you'd think. In most of the W-L formats, there's a Tiebreaker component that doesn't need to be leveraged. In the mission format we're talking about here, there's also a scoring component that leverages points differential for determining whether a player wins or loses (Which translates very easily/elegantly to margin of victory from a BP perspective). AT least for my own contributions, I'll be working to make these work for both, as the NOVA implemented a parallel Battle Points track last year, and we'll be refining the granularity and distribution of that for 2014 either way.

I like the idea of Asymetrical Missions, but I think there should be more than two choices, with some of the choices encouraging people to take assault armies if they wanted to and still be able to score without camping an objective. Such as, you should be able to opt for KP, or maybe gain points by winning challenges, or for each unit you break in combat, etc.

 Samurai_Eduh wrote:
I like the idea of Asymetrical Missions, but I think there should be more than two choices, with some of the choices encouraging people to take assault armies if they wanted to and still be able to score without camping an objective. Such as, you should be able to opt for KP, or maybe gain points by winning challenges, or for each unit you break in combat, etc.

These are good thoughts, and we're working on them as well.

An evolution already is the concept of capping points accrual from primary (i.e., in the objectives example from the article, you would not be able to get more than 9 points from it; so, someone could not just field a "dumb" Tyranid army with a million models and despite getting badly battered, camp 3 objectives for most of the game and assume an insurmountable lead ... similarly, someone could take the tactical gamble of risking most of his army to accrue his 9 points ... and not suffer for a battered opponent just zipping 5 surviving troops models onto 5 barren objectives at the end for a 15-9 win if they chose the standard, etc. etc.).

The counter here is then working on secondaries that are selectable and worth a certain # of capped poitns themselves, and that let armies to the point you make find creative ways to add competitive slants to the mission to suit their strengths (which of course their opponents will also be doing). Again you push the game more toward always being able to be turned into Rock vs. Rock by players once they've reached the table, instead of the idea of Rock Paper Scissors being determined before you ever showed up to the tournament based upon which list you brought.

One of the key things here is we don't want to subjectively decide "Well the community doesn't like Screamerstar or OVesa STar or whatever and so we're going to nerf it." We'd rather proactively create play opportunities that enable others to compete with whatever they want, INCLUDING screamers, ovesa, whatever. It's important both to enable other options of play, but protect those that exist, and thus avoid the act of destroying what people own in order to try and enable others ... earning a net-zero improvement and simply a shifting of the bar of who is and isn't happy.

Shortform - Done right, you should feel you won or lost based upon what you did once you reached the table, and not based upon what (within REASON) army you brought or whether you got unlucky with the combined timing of match-up and mission. You could force this with comp or bans and make the field more vanilla ... or you could find a way to add tactical depth AND add army variety options, thus creating a more diverse and interesting tournament experience w/out negatively impacting (off a community vote of subjectivity) anyone.

Again - constructive vs. destructive.

Watching this develop with great interest as a T.O here in the UK

MVBrandt wrote:
The counter here is then working on secondaries that are selectable and worth a certain # of capped poitns themselves, and that let armies to the point you make find creative ways to add competitive slants to the mission to suit their strengths (which of course their opponents will also be doing). Again you push the game more toward always being able to be turned into Rock vs. Rock by players once they've reached the table, instead of the idea of Rock Paper Scissors being determined before you ever showed up to the tournament based upon which list you brought.

Hmmm... that sounds a bit like the way Malifaux is scored

The trick will be hitting the right balance of complexity vs. flexibility. I think most players could handle choices of secondaries as long as they were simple enough and were consistent across the whole tournament. or at least drawn from a consistent pool of secondary objectives.

MVBrandt wrote:
Neil Gilstrap of 11th Co, who is an integral part of it, summarizes perhaps best by simplifying it down to - are you being constructive or destructive? Banning and comping and changing rules and rendering peoples' investments illegal or inoperable is destructive. Adding to tournament design in a way that broadens what's competitive w/out nerfing what currently competes is constructive.

While I tend to agree with this sentiment in spirit, we also have to be really careful about using loaded language like that as it is so polarizing, you know? Some super popular events use bans and restrictions and that is what their player base wants and I hardly see it as destructive, it is just a choice. Da Boyz GT, for example, is one of the most highly regarded and longest running events in the country and they have traditionally used comp/bans. Also, unless you allows everything in the game, Super Heavies, Data Slates, Stronghold, etc. you are banning some things. If you have a different tournament missions format, or an FAQ, you are changing rules. As I keep saying over and over: we all change the rules to a certain degree, it is just how far we go that separates us. We create in our minds this false difference that some rules can be changed and that is OK, but others cannot. In truth, it is a purely subjective point of view. Unless you play exactly out of the book (which in a lot of cases, is not even possible to do) you are banning/changing/comping/etc.

That said, giving players choice is the right call, IMO. I agree that giving choice and incentives is preferable to taking it away. However, I think all of us agree that unlimited 40K as it exists now, is not really a good choice for a main event format. The Throne of Skulls for example, I will put money on the table right now, is a one way ticket to bizzaro land. The results from that event are going to be bad comedy, IMO. The lists coming out of that will just depress most of us, I am willing to guarantee that.

While that format with no limits can be fun for some people all of the time and most of us some of the time, everything most of us here think of as competitive 40K is blown right out of the window by that type of format. I think some type of restrictions are a necessity. Do we really want an army that is Coteaz+3 Tau Formations? Or a Revenant+Support Units?

If your answer to that is no, then we are talking about banning some stuff. I think all of us are on the same page in that regard, even if only toning down D weapons, altering missions (as here), etc., and therefore, taking a black and white stance that ANY changes is destructive applies to all of us and is obviously, going to piss people off even if unintentionally.

That said,

Yes, some folks will always walk their own road with their format and that is never going to change and is also great! Good on em. However, there is a strong argument to be made for unified format and if we can get even close to that for a number of the bigger events, I am stoked as it means everyone benefits. If it is easy to go to any big event as the format is largely the same, we get more traveling players! The rising tide lifts all ships.

The trick though, is not just talking about a format that benefits the weaker armies while not also inadvertently benefiting the strong armies. Gamers always game the system and will look for ways to maximize advantage within any given system. Also, unintended consequences pop up more in this type of fix than any other and as such you have to be really careful (as I am sure everyone here knows). It will take a lot of time, feedback and testing to get it right.

We are down to help with this project, as stated.

Perhaps we start a list of ideas first and then once we do that, we can start debating pros and cons?

And this is just a list of ideas, not even those I may agree with but those I have heard mentioned lately.

1.) Asymmetrical Missions.
2.) Player mission maker.
3.) Sidebars.
4.) Exterior incentives such as player's choice awards, etc.
5.) Sliding missions.

Any other ideas?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, as for the topic at hand (sorry if it was derailed a bit by introducing more ideas) how would you guys counter the Seercouncil from altering their list to maximize efficacy in the alternative format? For example, if they were to seize all of the objectives in the early game, camp them for a few turns and then focus on stopping you from doing the same, they could conceivably perform better in the alternate format.

A wonderful post by you Reecius.

What you said MVBrandt was all great but I think Reecius here very well pointed out the underlying problem -- Almost everyone playing tournament 40K is already playing a house ruled game whether they realise it or not. Even right now in many of the threads on various Dakka forums there are people arguing vehemently against all composition restrictions while in the same sentence demanding bans on dataslates, superheavies etc.

In short it's not an issue of one side wanting a house ruled game and the other side wanting to play unlimited, it's only a question of how much we want to house rule.

And let's be frank here, 40K isn't a very complicated rules system. I'd say if there's enough people out there who love the game and think that they can balance it better than GW does, now is a good time to unleash your inner games designers and write it all down.

 Reecius wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:
Neil Gilstrap of 11th Co, who is an integral part of it, summarizes perhaps best by simplifying it down to - are you being constructive or destructive? Banning and comping and changing rules and rendering peoples' investments illegal or inoperable is destructive. Adding to tournament design in a way that broadens what's competitive w/out nerfing what currently competes is constructive.

While I tend to agree with this sentiment in spirit, we also have to be really careful about using loaded language like that as it is so polarizing, you know? Some super popular events use bans and restrictions and that is what their player base wants and I hardly see it as destructive, it is just a choice. Da Boyz GT, for example, is one of the most highly regarded and longest running events in the country and they have traditionally used comp/bans. Also, unless you allows everything in the game, Super Heavies, Data Slates, Stronghold, etc. you are banning some things. If you have a different tournament missions format, or an FAQ, you are changing rules. As I keep saying over and over: we all change the rules to a certain degree, it is just how far we go that separates us. We create in our minds this false difference that some rules can be changed and that is OK, but others cannot. In truth, it is a purely subjective point of view. Unless you play exactly out of the book (which in a lot of cases, is not even possible to do) you are banning/changing/comping/etc.

That said, giving players choice is the right call, IMO. I agree that giving choice and incentives is preferable to taking it away. However, I think all of us agree that unlimited 40K as it exists now, is not really a good choice for a main event format. The Throne of Skulls for example, I will put money on the table right now, is a one way ticket to bizzaro land. The results from that event are going to be bad comedy, IMO. The lists coming out of that will just depress most of us, I am willing to guarantee that.

While that format with no limits can be fun for some people all of the time and most of us some of the time, everything most of us here think of as competitive 40K is blown right out of the window by that type of format. I think some type of restrictions are a necessity. Do we really want an army that is Coteaz+3 Tau Formations? Or a Revenant+Support Units?

If your answer to that is no, then we are talking about banning some stuff. I think all of us are on the same page in that regard, even if only toning down D weapons, altering missions (as here), etc., and therefore, taking a black and white stance that ANY changes is destructive applies to all of us and is obviously, going to piss people off even if unintentionally.

That said,

Yes, some folks will always walk their own road with their format and that is never going to change and is also great! Good on em. However, there is a strong argument to be made for unified format and if we can get even close to that for a number of the bigger events, I am stoked as it means everyone benefits. If it is easy to go to any big event as the format is largely the same, we get more traveling players! The rising tide lifts all ships.

The trick though, is not just talking about a format that benefits the weaker armies while not also inadvertently benefiting the strong armies. Gamers always game the system and will look for ways to maximize advantage within any given system. Also, unintended consequences pop up more in this type of fix than any other and as such you have to be really careful (as I am sure everyone here knows). It will take a lot of time, feedback and testing to get it right.

We are down to help with this project, as stated.

Perhaps we start a list of ideas first and then once we do that, we can start debating pros and cons?

And this is just a list of ideas, not even those I may agree with but those I have heard mentioned lately.

1.) Asymmetrical Missions.
2.) Player mission maker.
3.) Sidebars.
4.) Exterior incentives such as player's choice awards, etc.
5.) Sliding missions.

Any other ideas?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, as for the topic at hand (sorry if it was derailed a bit by introducing more ideas) how would you guys counter the Seercouncil from altering their list to maximize efficacy in the alternative format? For example, if they were to seize all of the objectives in the early game, camp them for a few turns and then focus on stopping you from doing the same, they could conceivably perform better in the alternate format.

I think there are some good points here. In general, however, there's a difference between a broad-based application of unit bans and comp restrictions from event to event, all of them being different, than there is with individual events creating unique experiences with composition and the like. DaBoyz isn't putting out there "the game is broken we need to fix it," instead they're saying "we want to create an event where the common netlists are not so common and people can experience different variety from what they're used to seeing all year." What I'd like to make sure we as a community avoid is creating a situation where EVERY event has a completely different bar for what's legal and not.

IT's VERY important not to polarize, and I agree with that general premise; this opportunity to discuss and clarify better, then, is a really good one to have brought up!

In terms of your question - I think the very nature of lists like Crisis singles / kroot with Ovestar, jetbike speed units with Jetcouncil, etc., are the type that suffer in a well-designed mission when trying to rush all the objectives; against an army as currently-seen-as-bad as DA Tac spam, 3-model jetbike units or 5-man avenger units disembarked from their serpents are going to get mauled attempting to score points via the alternate early, while simultaneously will be unable to keep larger tactical squad model counts from actually isolating objectives from contests and earning points of their own early on.

A key point here is of course objective placement - if every single objective is player-placed in this setting, the jetstar type army can "hide" objectives and ensure this potential; if all are fixed, however, you can game it too easily. These are all careful things you need to think about. This is also why it's important for this type of mission tweak to retain the "Standard" 40k objective style ... or else you end up ruining currently viable lists. This is also why some of the evolutions people are suggesting (Neil on this one) are caps on points accrual for Primaries ... giving armies the opportunity to battle for the cap and then not suddenly lose after getting eventually overwhelmed on the raw power front, yada yada. There's much to work through, and the more people contribute the better.

None of this so far is me inventing it all ... it's really been the contribution of a lot of people, including Reece - his comments and suggestions in this very thread are already having a positive impact along with the comments and inputs of a very diverse group. Any final mission pack is not going to be led by or attributed to any one person or one tourney; and the more playtest and feedback and use it gets from the community, the more all those involved can discuss and revise it to hopefully present as many useable (or not!) missions as possible.

Therion -

Very good points as well. Right now I'm not trying to address any issues of what's legal or not ( i.e., dataslates/etc). Instead the only thing folks like Reece, Neil and I are talking about (I think) is what can we do on a mission front to enable a wider variety of armies to compete without explicitly nerfing or banning the armies already perceived as and played as "good?" Can we do it without completely changing on a radical level how all of the missions in the game work? What would these missions look like? Let's playtest 'em!

PS/Edit - Part of my comment there Therion is I don't want this to become another thread where people are arguing about whether Escalation is even a true part of the standard game or an official supplement to the standard game or a smelly duckfaced platypus or what. Those are serious questions (Reece to you as well), about what actually should be chucked into the basic game, but I think it's probably not very constructive to blur the lines and have this become yet another "are D weapons standard or not???" thread.

Instead the only thing folks like Reece, Neil and I are talking about (I think) is what can we do on a mission front to enable a wider variety of armies to compete without explicitly nerfing or banning the armies already perceived as and played as "good?" Can we do it without completely changing on a radical level how all of the missions in the game work? What would these missions look like? Let's playtest 'em!

The approach that everything is legal but the outrageous stuff is toned down is easily the most accepted one all around the world. People don't want to buy models and find that they're not allowed in games.

That said, superheavies and GW fortifications are models too, and yet people are so quick to show them the middle finger. A lot of people paid a lot of money to own some of that stuff, and I'm sure you won't find any resistance from those people if you say sure man bring your Warhound but the stats for those turbo-lasers and how they work are printed on this tournament leaflet.

My point is that once you decide that you're going to keep an open mind and not ban Screamerstars (or anything else) and are willing to go at it from a missions and terrain perspective, you should hold on to that same principle and imagine the Reaver Titan in those same missions. If that's where you draw the line you didn't really follow your own advice at all.

 Therion wrote:

Instead the only thing folks like Reece, Neil and I are talking about (I think) is what can we do on a mission front to enable a wider variety of armies to compete without explicitly nerfing or banning the armies already perceived as and played as "good?" Can we do it without completely changing on a radical level how all of the missions in the game work? What would these missions look like? Let's playtest 'em!

The approach that everything is legal but the outrageous stuff is toned down is easily the most accepted one all around the world. People don't want to buy models and find that they're not allowed in games.

That said, superheavies and GW fortifications are models too, and yet people are so quick to show them the middle finger. A lot of people paid a lot of money to own some of that stuff, and I'm sure you won't find any resistance from those people if you say sure man bring your Warhound but the stats for those turbo-lasers and how they work are printed on this tournament leaflet.

My point is that once you decide that you're going to keep an open mind and not ban Screamerstars (or anything else) and are willing to go at it from a missions perspective, you should hold on to that same principle and imagine the Reaver Titan in those same missions. If that's where you draw the line you didn't really follow your own advice at all.

This was my edit above, you ninja'ed me haha
Part of my comment there Therion is I don't want this to become another thread where people are arguing about whether Escalation is even a true part of the standard game or an official supplement to the standard game or a smelly duckfaced platypus or what. Those are serious questions (Reece to you as well), about what actually should be chucked into the basic game, but I think it's probably not very constructive to blur the lines and have this become yet another "are D weapons standard or not???" thread.

I understand that and that's why I didn't debate that subject. I just said that if you're willing to take on an ambitious project and try to make re-rollable 2++ invulnerable saves and whatnot balanced by radically changing the missions landscape, you should try to make absolutely everything playable. If you succeed in the former I'm sure a Reaver Titan will be a breeze. That's a project worth fighting for

I'm all for trying to permit as much as possible, but at some point, there's going to be a limit. Its possible to reach a point where the only solution for balance is to ridiculously increase the points level, which is impractical for a whole variety of reasons.

This is what we ran into at the AdeptiCon Gladiator, after the year that Reaver Titans dominated. Every fix we tried to impose didn't work, and so we ended up having to ban Reavers (well, effectively ban them by limiting the number of structure points allowed).

Yeah, that's where my logic kept bringing me as well. I could not think of anything that limited the 2+ reroll death stars that didn't at least equally limit everything else, thereby being futile at best, more imbalancing at worst.

I am not, at all, saying it can't be done. It's just that some things in the game are so OP right now that it seems that they are going to be better than anything else irregardless of the format. D Weapons and 2+ Deathstars come to mind for me. The rest at least to me personally, is palatable.

If you have a Shotgun and I have a Slingshot, no matter how we structure a shooting match, you still have the advantage, you know?

So, again, not trying to be a downer but given the time restraints faced with for the LVO, we were glad our community simply said no to both the outliers. I think it brings us closer to the middle where the majority of people are happier.

The future though, is open and we are open to it.

@Therion

Thanks for the support and, yeah, that is the funny thing, isn't it? The cognitive dissonance in our community is funny. "You can change rules as long as they're rules I don't like. If you change rules I like, you're doing something wrong."

@Bill

Yeah, I remember that. And to me, that is what the D is now, or the 2+ save is now. They simply are garbage rules mechanics that shouldn't even be in the game, truth be told.

@Mike

So, let's assume we all accept that we are willing to say no to at least D weapons and that is a given for now.

What about lists? Are we discussing unrestricted list building? I very strongly feel that is a mistake. The more rules sources players can draw from the more lists will start to look alike as players Cherry Pick the best units from each source. Ironically the increased options will diminish variety.

I think some type of restriction on list building is going to be necessary, even if just: no Super Heavies, no Formations and/or a limitation on the number of sources you can draw on.

From there, mission format.

One thing we have been discussing a lot is really in-line with the idea on the table. A Mission Builder.

Each player can "bid" on conditions such as deployment, night fight, primary and secondary missions. This means the skilled player can build a mission to combat their current opponent. Since you dice off to decide who chooses first, you can't just pick the same factors each time. This, in theory, means you can partially shape the mission to help you.

Again though, a good player with a Jetseer Council for example, can conceivably gain an even larger advantage in this format when it is designed to actually increase the power of their opponent, relatively.

I just keep coming back to that: how do you make missions that actually impede the power lists while benefiting the weaker lists? The issue I keep having is if no matter how you design the race track, the Ferrari is still going to smoke the Prius more often than not.

I think we would have to really change the way things are done to accomplish the goal using missions, like in a fairly dramatic way.

 Therion wrote:
That said, superheavies and GW fortifications are models too, and yet people are so quick to show them the middle finger. A lot of people paid a lot of money to own some of that stuff, and I'm sure you won't find any resistance from those people if you say sure man bring your Warhound but the stats for those turbo-lasers and how they work are printed on this tournament leaflet.

My point is that once you decide that you're going to keep an open mind and not ban Screamerstars (or anything else) and are willing to go at it from a missions and terrain perspective, you should hold on to that same principle and imagine the Reaver Titan in those same missions. If that's where you draw the line you didn't really follow your own advice at all.

You know I'll accept the "but I paid to have all this expertly painted now I can't play it" argument but it only goes so far, you can't tell me players were anticipating the fall of the berlin wall between 40k and apoc and somehow had the prescience to get their super heavies and mega fortresses painted just in case out of nowhere a few months down the line all of that stuff would be a-ok in tournaments.



I agree that working on improving game balance via mission and table setup is a good idea, but if no one can agree on what game we're attempting to balance (escaltion, apoc, 40k, the fortification book thing) it's not a good jumping off point.


I personally think you'd wanna lock down variables of how each table is setup before moving on to missions. Back in the day, it was real simple, the staff sets up the boards and the attendees play on them, 6th ed has muddied those waters and mostly its to be inclusive to fortifications (landing pad and fortress aren't exactly small models). My perspective, if you can't lock down those variables you're going to have a hard time making variable or choose your own missions work well. I like the idea, but you have to lock down some variables first or you're just spinning wheels.

As mike pointed out, you probably shouldn't start messing with how objectives are placed but at the same time allowing players to place them makes a "fair" terrain setup incredibly important. I respect Reece a lot for putting a couple big los blockers on each table for the upcoming LVO but different events vary drastically in the amount, type and placement methodology of terrain.

We all know it’s in no way possible to follow the brb’s terrain density, especially seeing as it generalizes terrain down to roughly 12x12 inches and its possible to generate between 6 and 18 pieces of terrain, the logistics alone are insane.

Add to that stuff you will likely see on the table if you do an “everything in” tournament like the void shield crap, having no model is going to be rife for abuse and you're going to see a big variable in design and size.

If you don’t control your variables, testing doesn’t do much.

Oh and yeah, as for the objective placement idea, that is really important, well said. If you can hide the Objectives, Jetbikes (or similar units) can be on them all from turn one and just ratchet up the points while the other player can do nothing to stop them and the game is over before it starts. Bummer.

But like you said, fixed objectives may not work. You could force them to be in a certain place in the open, for example, with set terrain. However, that may inadvertently hurt other armies that were already struggling. It is a sticky issue. In the end, any decisions we make will have some negative consequences either in mad players or unintended consequences, hahaha, I think the trick is just screwing up the least! ;p

So if I was facing a tourny with this format, I would just take armies with lots of reliable troops, say massed eldar jetbikes (maxed squads with as many as possible). I would select the alternative and boost onto objectives and claim as many as possible per turn. Of course when it comes to objective placement and viewing my opponents army I would place objectives where I could easily reach them.

Say 1850 list

Autarch with possible mantle for boosting and contesting with silly cover save, hit and run on the autarch

6 warlocks with jetbikes, always going for conceal

9 man squad eldar jetbikes x6

3 night spinners to remove their troops off objectives

and few pts left over.


Or how about the DA.

Sammy

6 units of scouting bikes with a few dark shrouds in there for good jink saves

few other units to remove their troops.

So both lists has lots of troops with good saves (eldar being massed 2+ covers).


It will only change how lists are built to cater for that particular tournament IMO. (then I read the post above and see the above sort of already being discussed.)

@Crabelzworth

You said it, it is difficult to even begin to discuss this topic as we are all working from a different baseline! haha

 Reecius wrote:
@Crabelzworth

You said it, it is difficult to even begin to discuss this topic as we are all working from a different baseline! haha

It's the scientist in me lol

MarkyMark wrote:
So if I was facing a tourny with this format, I would just take armies with lots of reliable troops, say massed eldar jetbikes (maxed squads with as many as possible). I would select the alternative and boost onto objectives and claim as many as possible per turn. Of course when it comes to objective placement and viewing my opponents army I would place objectives where I could easily reach them.

Say 1850 list

Autarch with possible mantle for boosting and contesting with silly cover save, hit and run on the autarch

6 warlocks with jetbikes, always going for conceal

9 man squad eldar jetbikes x6

3 night spinners to remove their troops off objectives

and few pts left over.


Or how about the DA.

Sammy

6 units of scouting bikes with a few dark shrouds in there for good jink saves

few other units to remove their troops.

So both lists has lots of troops with good saves (eldar being massed 2+ covers).


It will only change how lists are built to cater for that particular tournament IMO. (then I read the post above and see the above sort of already being discussed.)

Gamers being gamers and gaming the system

The funny thing is how FAST they break the system! It blows my mind sometimes. We find crappy OP combos within a day or two of having a new codex because we look for them.

Sigh. If only GW would do external play-testing like, you know, every other game company, all of this would be so easily avoidable.

 Reecius wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:
So if I was facing a tourny with this format, I would just take armies with lots of reliable troops, say massed eldar jetbikes (maxed squads with as many as possible). I would select the alternative and boost onto objectives and claim as many as possible per turn. Of course when it comes to objective placement and viewing my opponents army I would place objectives where I could easily reach them.

Say 1850 list

Autarch with possible mantle for boosting and contesting with silly cover save, hit and run on the autarch

6 warlocks with jetbikes, always going for conceal

9 man squad eldar jetbikes x6

3 night spinners to remove their troops off objectives

and few pts left over.


Or how about the DA.

Sammy

6 units of scouting bikes with a few dark shrouds in there for good jink saves

few other units to remove their troops.

So both lists has lots of troops with good saves (eldar being massed 2+ covers).


It will only change how lists are built to cater for that particular tournament IMO. (then I read the post above and see the above sort of already being discussed.)

Gamers being gamers and gaming the system

The funny thing is how FAST they break the system! It blows my mind sometimes. We find crappy OP combos within a day or two of having a new codex because we look for them.

Sigh. If only GW would do external play-testing like, you know, every other game company, all of this would be so easily avoidable.

Gamers will find solutions. Fortunately the ones presented here are neither isolated solutions nor ideal ones for a situation where your mission variety isn't "accumulated points only every round." Additionally, with the fragility and exposure to torrent of both of those concepts, and a points for primary cap, there'd have to be a better solution list wise than just "snag all early." But this is rather key.

The design concepts here are specifically for the playtesters. It'll be a fun road from the initial primers to the final concept.

Also Reece, the thing of it is, you can actually make the prius compete with the Ferrari. What if it's a gas mileage endurance race? Think outside the box. What if it's two races, one gas mileage and one raw speed. Then what if the net winner is the one with the best bet combined and normalized performance between the fuel efficiency test and the speed trial? Change the conditions of the race. I'll take a shot with the prius, thanks, and we haven't ruled the Ferrari out either.

Think at the problem from a new direction.

PS - I think what you're doing for Vegas is great! You surveyed attendees and made firm and pretty fair rulings on a tight timetable!

Also Reece, the thing of it is, you can actually make the prius compete with the Ferrari. What if it's a gas mileage endurance race? Think outside the box. What if it's two races, one gas mileage and one raw speed. Then what if the net winner is the one with the best bet combined and normalized performance between the fuel efficiency test and the speed trial? Change the conditions of the race. I'll take a shot with the prius, thanks, and we haven't ruled the Ferrari out either.

That's a pretty good way to put it and funnily enough quite close to real world skirmish situations. For example, one side has to rescue some prisoners, and the other side is trying to make it as costly as possible for the intruders.

@Mike

Thanks! Yeah, it is always a bit scary to make changes to format when money is on the line but I believe we did the right thing. Templecon is using similar guidelines it seems.

At any rate, to the topic at hand.

I am going to assume we are all discussing at this point a format with the following:

1.) No Escalation
2.) No Stronghold assault
3.) No Formations.

I am not saying that is the right or wrong way to approach this but that is a good baseline from which to work for a 'general purpose' format and what most of the folks I have talked to are learning towards at this point.

How do we make a mission that benefits one faction but not another?

The objective farming idea is good but needs play-testing as we poke holes in the idea with potential issues but really, we need to try it in the context of 6th (I last tried it in 5th). Then, I had a Drop Pod army and won these missions with such ease, it wasn't even a game. I dropped onto objectives and then bum rushed my opponent with a distraction force and even if he killed my distraction units and most of my troops, it was too late to get back into the game.

What stunk was the feeling the other player had of watching him/herself lose and realize they couldn't stop it by turn 3.

So, again, not being negative at all, I think the idea (and ideas like it) have merit and I want to make this work. We will just need to work through the problems.

In a layered mission this is offset by the second win condition, so perhaps I am making a bigger deal of it than it needs to be.

The upside is that it does encourage armies to engage one another and to maneuver. I do like that a lot.

So, say, you had a primary win condition that was variable, either you could pick to farm objectives or you could play traditional objectives.

You could then set a secondary win condition of Kill Points with another variable, such as troops being worth more points, or HQ, or Transport vehicles or Monstrous Creatures, or whatever based on your opponent's list (for example they have 6 HQ's or some nonsense like that, Coteaz+Inquisitor+4 Rune Priests, 5 riptides or what have you).

That means you can alter your strategy to benefit from their large number of HQs, Serpents, Drakes, MCs or whatever, but the other player can still take them if they want to knowing that they run a risk by maxing out a certain type of unit. They then have to think twice about it or play to just overpower them with pure power. It is reverse comp in a sense, but it still allows freedom of choice.

So, now you have a mission that allows a player to alter their win conditions based upon their opponent's army.

How do those ideas strike you guys?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But then, how does that mitigate the 2+ reroll units? Those are a real problem in the game, in my eyes.

I think people need to stop looking at the question how is it going to mitigate x army...in my mind that is missing the point (which if I understand it is to allow armies to compete in a meaningful way not nerf certain armies.). The way to think about it is can other armies use their strengths to fight those armies..in a way that makes the game meaningful and fun.

 Reecius wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But then, how does that mitigate the 2+ reroll units? Those are a real problem in the game, in my eyes.

The same way it always does. Having objectives scored every turn means a Screamerstar army must present its vulnerable troops. Without banning anything, the best way to beat screamerstar is by killing troops. All this format would do is force the army to either invest in tougher scoring or potentially lose long term. The screamer unit can only contest one objective a turn. (I love the article and suggested format, for the record)

@Breng77

At the risk of sounding rude, I look forward to your article on how to beat the Jetseer Council with any "normal" army. If you can solve that riddle then we can stop this conversation now, I suppose. We have all established that these armies are beatable but that they have such an overwhelming advantage that they make the game not fun to play. And now, the best players are picking them up and playing with them. So you get the double whammy of a crazy lame army piloted by a pro.

@Jifel

That's the point though, what happens when an army like the one you described simply adapts? Instead of cheapy little units, maybe 2 big units of Horrors or Plague Bearers that jump onto objectives and then go to ground, etc.

What about Jetbikes? Or any fast scoring/denial units, etc.?

How does it impact all the other armies, etc.?

I am not saying it won't work at all, what I am saying is that throeyhammer is great but not conclusive. We need to try stuff out. We can't just say, "it sounds great," and run with it, as then you end up with unintended consequences that can be worse than what they are trying to cure.

So excited there is excitement here! My last few days have been so much brighter thinking about 40K than the last couple of weeks! Actually excited about the game at the moment.

@Reece

Totally following you on the baseline thing.

You know, not going to lie here, I'll be freakin' crazy happy if we can come up with missions that allow more competitive builds outside of 2+ Stars, Tau, Eldar, and Demons, LET ALONE even start addressing what to do with TItans. So, in terms of baseline, agree with that 100%.

I truly think if we can make 40K "work right" again in this kind of manner, it'll be much more palpable and easier to get in that extra stuff that people want from all the December releases IF in a few months people even really still want it.

I think that if we can accomplish some semblance of that as a community, people will be a lot less worried about the Escalation stuff. But, like you know, right now, we're already reeling from Jetstars and Ovesastars and the blowback towards the MOAR new stuff is just a product of that.

So, I'm supporting that notion 100%. We got some business to take care of to put this house in order that GW has left in shambles. Then, I think we can address the Escalation, Stronghold, Formations, etc.

Hell, we got to prove we can even get this kind if idea off the ground and limping along first.


-----------------------------------

@ Convo about 2+ Stars and Missions etc.

Keeping in mind the idea of an objective mission in this format was a kickstarter not fully fledged.

That being said, a Jetstar simply CAN'T turbo around on turn 1 and take fixed objectives because in doing so he's exposing the gimpy little 3 man jetbike squads to enemy fire.

Like all D-Stars, you spread out enough, legimitately, he can only kill 1 unit a turn, maybe a couple if he gets a lucky multi- off.

But if he still wants to win the game on Objectives, normal style, he's gotta conserve those very vulnerable wimpy troop squads. But also, the Jetstar can't be everywhere at once, either! So, likewise, if the DAngels player starts accumulating points, the Jetstar can't contest everything, and if he wants to try and contest, he'd once again, have to expose the wimpy parts of his army to enemy fire.

That's the theory behind that concept. So, the DAngel player has a REAL strategic shot, in theory, of making a primary happen even against a match-up he would lose in a normal game to almost guaranteed.

Meanwhile, the Jetstar player can still fight the DAngel player and do what he always does, capture objectives late game and get his primary, in theory.

And THEN, we move on to secondaries, etc.


@ Reece and Secondaries Ideas ala KP and alterations etc.

See! Great minds think alike. LOL. This is exactly the thought direction we were going today with secondaries in conversation. Take existing 40K concepts, spruce 'em up a little so that they are varied, viable, and competitive for a variety of army types. Just like that.

Haven't thought of any yet myself but like idea that is going with KPs.

First off just getting many of these armies to take large durable troops is a victory. Right now it seems the way to win in 6th is to hide your scoring units as long as possible. Jetstars have min Jetbike squads or dire avengers hidden in Serpents. Tau take outflanking Kroot, Necrons hide min warrior squads in Nightscythes. Keep your scoring units as small and as safe as possible and let the rest of your army go out and kill the enemy scoring units. Just by making these lists spend more on troops and less on uber stuff is a small victory.

You can't release the mission packs until the day of the event for this to work properly of course, which is an awesome way to spring it on those that show up.

The potential for this to comp without comping is... quite interesting to say the least.

 Matt1785 wrote:
You can't release the mission packs until the day of the event for this to work properly of course, which is an awesome way to spring it on those that show up.

The potential for this to comp without comping is... quite interesting to say the least.

I think that runs counter to the whole thing, I think the entire point is that even knowing about the variable missions doesn't tell you which one your opponent will choose.




Kudos on the baseline, I think that's a damn good start.




Here are my suggestions to spice things, I'm really just spitballing so I'm sure these all have pitfalls::

Consider varying what can score mission to mission from heavy to fast to elite, troops still always remaining scoring units in each. (not sure how you'd add choice into this)

Something along the lines of vital objective (worth more vp's) but you lose one of your objectives to make another vital or something along those lines.

Certain objectives cannot be contested, you must wipeout the unit holding it or can only be contested by other troops, units that could normally contest cannot. Something along those lines.

@Darth

Good point on encouraging people to actually put troops on the table! haha, that by itself is actually a victory. However, in this proposed format they wouldn't have to as they could opt for the "normal" win condition and then just play to blast you off of the objective.

However, it does give the other player a chance AND if forces the other player to focus on killing the troops.

@Neil

Yeah, it is a good idea and I believe we can work something out with all our heads put together.

We will have to try the KP secondary, too. I think that can be an inverse way to deal with spam units. You can still take them, but you run the risk of playing through a disadvantage if you do so. So, instead of it being the no brainer choice, it becomes a risk/reward scenario.

@Breng77

Sorry if I sounded short in my last post. You are of course right, it is just that we have come to a point where it feels like the writing is on the wall with some of these units.

Learning how to beat them is the obvious choice, no doubt. It just baffles us as to how to do that and perhaps using mission design helps people to accomplish this task.

@Crabelzworth

You were right, we need to start somewhere. That may not be it, but with D weapons I really don't see unlimited Super Heavies in anything outside of an Apoc event or a for fun game.Same for Stronghold. I could easily see 90%+ of armies taking Void Shields and how dumb that could get.

But, a lot of the stuff is really cool in both of those books and there might be room for some of it?

However, we need a starting point.

@Thread

Ok,

So we'll try this scenario out below, anyone else that wants to is free to help out and provide feedback.

Random book deployment.

Win Condition 1: player choice of normal objectives (let's say crusade style, D3+2) scored 3pts per at game's end, or, scored per game turn held at the end of the turn, 1pt per. (Probably need to restrict objective placement as this can get ultra lopsided using book objective placement).

Player with the most objective points at game's end achieves this win condition for 4 battle points.

Win Condition 2: Kill Points scored normally with the following modifier: each player picks one of the following to be worth double KP: HQ, Troops, Elites, HS, FA or dedicated Transports.

Player with the most Kill Points at game's end achieves this win condition for 3 battle points.

Book bonus points worth 1 battle point each.

10 total battle points available in the mission.

For anyone thinking about the accumulation objective idea, I know that Warmahordes' Steamroller format, which uses the accumulation to threshold mechanic for scenarios, keeps the objectives inactive until the second player's second turn. This allows for less mobile armies to have a chance against more mobile armies that would just do what Eldar Jetbike units would do in the accumulation format: quickly move onto objectives and get enough points before they're shot off that they have a great advantage early on. Of course, the objective placement is determined by the scenario, rather than by the player, but it's still a thought to keep in mind.

Couple of things I would add that came up today in discussion about trying to refine that mission concept (in addition to others)

As the Primary, you probably want to cap the points you can possibly accure. Say like 9 or 12 or something like that. You don't want a Scenario where the guy accrues so many points he can no longer lose the game. (not clear on what that looks like)

So, if you set the points to max at like 9, that means the opposing player to TIE that objective would need to control 3 objectives at game end in the traditional manner. (Which is super cool BTW because it's no longer about "I control 1 and I win!")

Or, the opposing side would actually need to block the opponent from accruing points to reduce the number of objectives he needs to control on the last turn.

Or they can both opt for the same mission, etc.


Think fixed objectives is probably a must in this scenario as has been pointed out. Not sure on number there or placement. Haven't really thought that through myself. 5 or 6, nods to Crusade or Scouring, etc. Something like that.


Not sure on optimal deployment either but probably relative to objective placement.


The KP thing I think is actually is elegantly complex too. Because of the nature of the objectives placement, carefulyl selecting the right units based on your oppponents expectations for the primary means you could strategically select your options.

For example, playing Screamerstar:

Screamerstar WORKS by putting most of its squishy units in reserve while ramming Screamerstar + Whatever down your throat. TO continue that strategy, he will have to choose to want to control objectives late game.

Naturally, you will choose to points accrue thinking he can't be everywhere at once.

He's got a problem now because he can't contest you so well with just one unit or maybe he can... to be decided...

But you know you will be spending the whole game shooting at either DPs, or Grinders, or something of that Nature... certainly not the Screamerstar... so you opt for Heavy for extra KPs which really puts him in a tactical bind now... etc.

Same goes for Jetstar. He's got to make some very key choices around his utilization of those 3 man jetbike squads... and more importantly, if he wants to get aggressive with them somehow... you nominate them as bonus KPs, etc.

What if instead of capping the amounting points total for the game, you cap them for the turn? So instead of using 9 or 12 max points for round to round obj grabbing, cap how.many you get a turn.

Say we max it out at 3 points max a turn for holding objectives. This.would prevent armies like pods or bikers who throw their whole army on all 5 or 6 objectives in the first and second turns and accrue 12 points by the start of turn 3. By capping the amount of points at say 3, it does.not allow those kind.of armies to stock up on points and then pretty much auto-win the mission.

The cap at 3 points allows them to earn a number of points for.the mission but still.allows the other player to.be in the game competitively. Obviously this would scale depending on objectives and possible.secondary mission parameters. You couldn't have 3 be the cap with only 3 objectives on the table. But you could have it be 2 or a half point earned per objective instead of a full point.

I do think secondaries are needed this.type of.format. Without them people can accrue enough points, whether it is capped or not, and then do nothing for the rest of the game and win. We can't have that as it would not be fun for either party. Throwing in kill points or table quarters to count for secondaries is viable and can solve some of the issues that can creep up.

I like where this is going. It allows people to play whatever army they want and enables them to.pick a situation more conducive to.their style.of play or army. It requires generalship and tactics, something I think this game could use more of.

Question, for the missions, would each player know.what parameter their opponent chooses before the game or would be kept secret until after game? Meaning, if I'm playing Reece and he chooses to earn objective points every round, will I know he is going that route or do I need to guess what he is going to choose? I think not knowing adds a very nice element to the game, but enforcing it and preventing people from changing their choice may be hard to relegate.

@ Reece - no offense taken...I'm with you on the idea that I don't know if this will work or not. I just think we are better off approaching if from a standpoint of does this make the game against 2+ re-rollable deathstars not only winnable but more enjoyable...than we are approaching it from "how does this mission directly nerf those deathstars." I also feel this attitude needs to apply to things like Ovesastar, Tau gunline, serpent spam. None of which are unbeatable, but all of which can dominate in some of the current missions.

I like the KP secondary idea put forth. As for the capping points thing...because a player will inherently be risking assets to control objectives I'm not sure that capping it (unless you also do so at game end) works all that great. The idea of capping it per turn might be better, in conjunction it a higher game cap.

You would def cap both if you went with a cap. Not just one.

So, if 9 was max points you could accumulate, 9 would be max points for holding objectives too.

The game plan for the accumulator then becomes this:

Step 1) Hold as many Objectives as I can for as long as I can to accrue points

Step 2) Kill enemy troops to prevent them from being able to hold the number of objectives they need in late game to contest my accumulated score. and/or contest enough objectives.


And if you tie it at 9 each, then it's a tied objective. Or whatever gets used for the scenario.

But in this manner, this dramatically improves the game vs. a 2+ re-roll opponent who relies on super fragile late game contest/control strategies. Because killing his troops now means a LOT more than it did before.

The way it is now, he really only needs one troop to win the game. He can just turbo-contest any other objectives the enemy might still be holding, etc.

But in this scenario, he needs more than one troop left to win game. He's gotta figure that angle out making the mission strategically interesting for him but also harder, which is good so that he isn't just playing LOLSteamROLl1 fest and having a fun, tactical game too.

If i missed this reading through the thread, sorry. However, reading your proposal on missions, I am not sure it effects the Meta much. For example Seer Council. Many of the players who design these lists have been trained their whole lives to "fix" or better things (example: engineers). In this light and being one of these type persons, I would look at my list and see if I could just table my opponent. If it could, I have no need to change my list.

VP earned towards an objective mean little if I have been tabled. Tabling your opponent, at many events means you get all the Battle points. How would your missions address this?

In the case where it won't table most oppoents, then I simply put 1 troop on my safest objective and deny all your objectives each round with my seer council. Why would a mission designer assume that a troop heavy list won't be denied objectives by the invincible units?

Well designed missions have the potential to change the Meta but I think that designing them properly is an extrememly difficult task. If designed poorly, they will only hurt the non-maximised lists.

 The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
If i missed this reading through the thread, sorry. However, reading your proposal on missions, I am not sure it effects the Meta much. For example Seer Council. Many of the players who design these lists have been trained their whole lives to "fix" or better things (example: engineers). In this light and being one of these type persons, I would look at my list and see if I could just table my opponent. If it could, I have no need to change my list.

VP earned towards an objective mean little if I have been tabled. Tabling your opponent, at many events means you get all the Battle points. How would your missions address this?

In the case where it won't table most oppoents, then I simply put 1 troop on my safest objective and deny all your objectives each round with my seer council. Why would a mission designer assume that a troop heavy list won't be denied objectives by the invincible units?

Well designed missions have the potential to change the Meta but I think that designing them properly is an extrememly difficult task. If designed poorly, they will only hurt the non-maximised lists.

Nothing says a tabling must equal a win, nor does seer council excel at tabling. Further, the council will not be able to contest every objective every turn unless you yourself have brought such small units you can't wrap / make inviolate the objectives. Unless you make objective placement *entirely* player driven and/or use too few objectives, this scenario is unlikely to occur.

MVBrandt wrote:

 The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
If i missed this reading through the thread, sorry. However, reading your proposal on missions, I am not sure it effects the Meta much. For example Seer Council. Many of the players who design these lists have been trained their whole lives to "fix" or better things (example: engineers). In this light and being one of these type persons, I would look at my list and see if I could just table my opponent. If it could, I have no need to change my list.

VP earned towards an objective mean little if I have been tabled. Tabling your opponent, at many events means you get all the Battle points. How would your missions address this?

In the case where it won't table most oppoents, then I simply put 1 troop on my safest objective and deny all your objectives each round with my seer council. Why would a mission designer assume that a troop heavy list won't be denied objectives by the invincible units?

Well designed missions have the potential to change the Meta but I think that designing them properly is an extrememly difficult task. If designed poorly, they will only hurt the non-maximised lists.

Nothing says a tabling must equal a win, nor does seer council excel at tabling. Further, the council will not be able to contest every objective every turn unless you yourself have brought such small units you can't wrap / make inviolate the objectives. Unless you make objective placement *entirely* player driven and/or use too few objectives, this scenario is unlikely to occur.

On your second point, I beg to differ. The seer council can spread out to cover great amount of ground. I would instead suggest one unit can only contest one objective. wrapping objectives does depend on placement. MIke, I am not sure how it happens at your events, but hte ones I go to usually have player based objectives and can be manipulated.

To the larger point, I don't see these missions as encouraging players to break from the current net lists.

 The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:

MVBrandt wrote:

 The_Rogue_Engineer wrote:
If i missed this reading through the thread, sorry. However, reading your proposal on missions, I am not sure it effects the Meta much. For example Seer Council. Many of the players who design these lists have been trained their whole lives to "fix" or better things (example: engineers). In this light and being one of these type persons, I would look at my list and see if I could just table my opponent. If it could, I have no need to change my list.

VP earned towards an objective mean little if I have been tabled. Tabling your opponent, at many events means you get all the Battle points. How would your missions address this?

In the case where it won't table most oppoents, then I simply put 1 troop on my safest objective and deny all your objectives each round with my seer council. Why would a mission designer assume that a troop heavy list won't be denied objectives by the invincible units?

Well designed missions have the potential to change the Meta but I think that designing them properly is an extrememly difficult task. If designed poorly, they will only hurt the non-maximised lists.

Nothing says a tabling must equal a win, nor does seer council excel at tabling. Further, the council will not be able to contest every objective every turn unless you yourself have brought such small units you can't wrap / make inviolate the objectives. Unless you make objective placement *entirely* player driven and/or use too few objectives, this scenario is unlikely to occur.

On your second point, I beg to differ. The seer council can spread out to cover great amount of ground. I would instead suggest one unit can only contest one objective. wrapping objectives does depend on placement. MIke, I am not sure how it happens at your events, but hte ones I go to usually have player based objectives and can be manipulated.

To the larger point, I don't see these missions as encouraging players to break from the current net lists.

At NOVA traditionally, most objectives are fixed. That said, we're not designing the missions for just NOVA, so at least some objectives will be player-placed. Regardless of what any of us see, however, we'll have at least one test mission polished off soon to actually get real bat reps and feedback

Also, for anyone doing playtesting, let us assume the following restrictions that I hope are non-controversial:

1. No Apoc super-heavy units
2. No D weapons
3. No fortifications from the new book

No other restrictions at this point because I don't think there is enough of a consensus on supplements and actual rules changes.

Can we get an update in the OP of what the ALPHA test rule set is?

We'll have an updated alpha test mission today.

As to the objective mission, more discussion this morning, and here's what we are thinking:

6 Objectives
-- 4 x Fixed in corner, 2 player placed following normal rules

For Cumulative:
-- 1 point/turn held MAX: 9 Points in game.

For Regular Objectives:
- 3 points/objective. MAX: 9 Points.

Tie objective if you both get 9.



Still debating secondary mission stuff! There's a lot of format differences on secondaries like secondary objectives, or tie breakers, etc.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Reece

Thinking about a KP modification now that might help.

Trying to identify armies that need help in KPs too.

Biggest KP offenders I'm thinking are either invinco-units, which are obvious, but also just "Star" lists in general. An Ovessa Star comes to mind or a list with 5 x Riptides in it, etc.

First thoughts there are nominating a set of units is cool because I can nominate something that isn't ridiculously invincible!

Reservations though that come up for me is then invinco-star nominates something of mine too, and I really have no way to stop invinco-star for doing what it wants, by virtue of being invincible.


We'd through too about an Alternate to do Points instead of KPs, and that is better against say 5 riptide spam, but Invinco-star is still invincible and worth 1/2 someeone's army.



Brainstorming to find some critical piece for inclusion...

The first alpha test mission is being reviewed presently by as many TOs and players as we can track down to vet the initial presentation. We'll work on more missions as the alpha is out getting concrete playtest started.

Present reviewers this moment include NOVA, LVO/BAO, FOB, 11th, BFS, Indy, Bugeater, ETC and more.


The intent here is to develop an Independent GT Mission Catalog, with playtested and vetted missions toward the net conceptual goal of this idea. These missions may reflect the net community, or to varying degrees by mission individual TO preferences. The hope is by having everyone involved, any # of TOs in any # of events *can* choose to use some of the missions in their final GT packets and rightly state not "We're using these couple missions that we copied from NOVA/FOB/LVO/etc.," but "We're using a select # of our missions chosen from the IGTMC, and we directly participated in their design and playtest."

This looks pretty promising. I'm running a tournament on 19 January and after talking it over on our local forum, we're willing to help playtest this system there. Our tournament is at 1950 and will follow normal force organization. We are not allowing Lords of War but are using Stronghold Assault minus any fortifications with a strength "D" weapon. No formations. We do use player placed objectives, but we have a modified order of operations where terrain and objectives are placed before sides are chosen. Players with fortifications can then remove terrain in their half if needed to place a fortification instead.

Here is my spin on the standard/alternate scoring techniques:

Standard Scoring: Per the mission objectives listed in the BRB, except the Relic is worth 5 VPs if held at the end of the game.

Alternate Scoring:
Objectives: You score 1 point for each objective you hold at the end of any game turn, to a maximum of 3 per objective for the mission (i.e. in a 5 objective crusade mission, you could score 15 points using this technique). Mission specific bonus points for Heavy Metal and Fast Recon do not count towards the cap.

Kill Points: Instead of normal kill points, total up the points values of all units destroyed instead. You only score points for units that are fully destroyed. You win the mission if you have destroyed more points of your opponents army than he has of yours. If one player selects standard scoring and one player selects alternate scoring and both players win using their respective technique, the kill point mission is considered a draw.

Relic: At the end of any game turn in which you hold the Relic, you score 1 point. You may not score more than 5 points in this manner.

Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

Due to the nature of the ETC I doubt they would go down this route nor would it pass a captains vote but is interesting none the less.

Honestly I do think it will be a case of list building to take advantage of rules like this. In the case of 6 objectives 4 in corners and 2 player placed the Eldar list I posted above would score 3 objectives easy enough and put 3 night spinner barrage shots into their objectives. For the relic asault moving 2+cover jetbike squads on the relic from turn 1.....

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

MarkyMark wrote:
Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

Due to the nature of the ETC I doubt they would go down this route nor would it pass a captains vote but is interesting none the less.

Honestly I do think it will be a case of list building to take advantage of rules like this. In the case of 6 objectives 4 in corners and 2 player placed the Eldar list I posted above would score 3 objectives easy enough and put 3 night spinner barrage shots into their objectives. For the relic asault moving 2+cover jetbike squads on the relic from turn 1.....

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

Tom Adriany at the least is looking at it on a train somewhere right now (he asked to be included). IT's not about whether the ETC uses the missions, but about their participation in designing and playtesting them. Nobody's going to be held to some requirement to use some catalog's missions or bust, but they aren't being designed and tested by "some GT," instead by a broad community of TOs and gamers.

MVBrandt this is a really neat idea. I think i'm gonna try and see if this can be the format with the next RT tourney in my area

While variations on KP/VP are being considered, here's something I've had rattling around in my head for a while: what if we could add some tactical consideration to the assignment of KP? Objective placement is a huge tactical matter, so maybe we could build something similar around KP.

For instance, one player could nominate one of his units as expendable and make assign it 1 KP, then his opponent could nominate another (or the same) unit for another 1 KP. Then they'd do the same for the opponent's army. The process could continue for some set number of KP (probably on the order of 1/unit).

A system like this could let players weight KP tactically on a per-game and per-opponent basis, hopefully allowing them to better play to their strengths and exploit their opponent's weaknesses.

So the 4 objectives being locked into specific locations, I understand that working at nova because of the way you guys do terrain, will that jive with how other events do terrain setup?

I've encountered this locally, mission tells you to put 1 or more objectives in specific spots, only problem is each board differs greatly from one to the other and in some it's not possible to place it where the mission is telling you to.

Something important here is that when we release Alpha 1, it's going to probably have some fixed objectives, and points accruals / etc. tuned to that.

This CANNOT be the case for every mission; the Catalog has to be a genuine Catalog, where variety of presentation and subtle variations allow events to tune their selection to their specific parameters (i.e., player placed terrain vs. fixed terrain, player placed objectives vs. fixed objectives, etc.). That way it's not a mandate of narrow mission-sets that only work for one setting.

As this progresses, and expands, the baseline mission alphas are going to be in theory coming from divergent sources, each of them operating within their own constraints along the lines above, and that'll influence design. It'll subsequently be up to TOs to choose which [if any] missions best suit their own specific set of constraints.

I believe Reece has considered sideboards, has anyone else? That combined with better missions could go a long way towards balancing. Proliferation of options has made balanced lists rarer, sideboard would possibly help mitigate that.

also maybe points accrual for objectives happens at end of player turn? Need to diminish advantage of going second.

MarkyMark wrote:
Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

I posted on page 1 this very concern but was pretty much ignored by the big wigs. If you make scoring a point occur at the end of the opposing layers turn I think it makes the game more engaging and less op sided at the start/end. Of course with a system like 40k were I go with everything then you go, there is always going to be some issues with start/finish.

 Red Corsair wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:
Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

I posted on page 1 this very concern but was pretty much ignored by the big wigs. If you make scoring a point occur at the end of the opposing layers turn I think it makes the game more engaging and less op sided at the start/end. Of course with a system like 40k were I go with everything then you go, there is always going to be some issues with start/finish.

We could also theoretically fix this by counting objectives you hold at the start of your player turn. That gives your opponent a chance to contest every move and gives a bit of an incentive to go first.

 Crablezworth wrote:
So the 4 objectives being locked into specific locations, I understand that working at nova because of the way you guys do terrain, will that jive with how other events do terrain setup?

I've encountered this locally, mission tells you to put 1 or more objectives in specific spots, only problem is each board differes greatly and in some it's not possible to place it where the mission is telling you to.

Maybe they should also include in the catalog a choice of ways to place objectives and do terrain/fortifications etc. etc I don't think its smart to design missions without considering these points as well as they impact the missions so greatly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PanzerLeader wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:
Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

I posted on page 1 this very concern but was pretty much ignored by the big wigs. If you make scoring a point occur at the end of the opposing layers turn I think it makes the game more engaging and less op sided at the start/end. Of course with a system like 40k were I go with everything then you go, there is always going to be some issues with start/finish.

We could also theoretically fix this by counting objectives you hold at the start of your player turn. That gives your opponent a chance to contest every move and gives a bit of an incentive to go first.

Well, end of opposing players turn/start of your turn is the same thing pretty much, except now you need to address that it happens BEFORE reserves. Also saying that it happens at the end of your opponents turn takes away some of the advantages of going first and second.

Great discussion guys. Been 4 years since I did any 40K tournamenting, but if you guys get something like this going and it catches on, it would definitely reignite my interest!

How about half a point for being on a objective (uncontested of course) per player turn EXCEPT for the first turn where you cant score any objective points?. This would still favor jetbike armies and drop pod armies to a extent but that should be migated by the objectives in each corner

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
So the 4 objectives being locked into specific locations, I understand that working at nova because of the way you guys do terrain, will that jive with how other events do terrain setup?

I've encountered this locally, mission tells you to put 1 or more objectives in specific spots, only problem is each board differes greatly and in some it's not possible to place it where the mission is telling you to.

Maybe they should also include in the catalog a choice of ways to place objectives and do terrain/fortifications etc. etc I don't think its smart to design missions without considering these points as well as they impact the missions so greatly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

PanzerLeader wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:
Who from ETC is reviewing it? the ETC board or one of the member countries that will be hosting the ETC?.

It will also make players want to go second?. As objectives are scored end of game turn they can easily be scored by the 2nd player as nothing can then stop him scoring those objectives bar contesting.

I posted on page 1 this very concern but was pretty much ignored by the big wigs. If you make scoring a point occur at the end of the opposing layers turn I think it makes the game more engaging and less op sided at the start/end. Of course with a system like 40k were I go with everything then you go, there is always going to be some issues with start/finish.

We could also theoretically fix this by counting objectives you hold at the start of your player turn. That gives your opponent a chance to contest every move and gives a bit of an incentive to go first.

Well, end of opposing players turn/start of your turn is the same thing pretty much, except now you need to address that it happens BEFORE reserves. Also saying that it happens at the end of your opponents turn takes away some of the advantages of going first and second.

Agree it needs to be clearly stated it happens before reserves/psychic powers. The nice part of saying start of your player turn is that it gives each opponent equal turns in which to score but still gives you a chance to counter your opponents play except for the top of 1. It also gives an incentive to going first because you can then score first on top of one before your opponent moves (or just say scoring starts at the top of 2 similiar to warmachine/hordes). This way, you have a chance to counter your opponents plays before he scores and don't run into awkward situations like "I move on to an objective on turn 5 using alternate scoring, the game ends at the end of 5, I can't score that point because my opponent never had a turn six. So I don't get to score of my turn five moves, but my opponent gets to score off his turn five moves because I have to end my turn 5 eventually."

Honestly I miss the old Mission Cards from 2nd edition; it was a neat idea that your army might want to reach the enemy deployment zone, while they want to hold the ruin in the middle. It gave you different victory conditions, and meant that you played differently depending on the mission. Some of them were a bit lame (Tyranid Assault springs to mind - if you have anything left alive you win, otherwise the Tyranid wins) but the different objectives made each battle something different.

I wonder why they got rid of those.

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I miss the old Mission Cards from 2nd edition; it was a neat idea that your army might want to reach the enemy deployment zone, while they want to hold the ruin in the middle. It gave you different victory conditions, and meant that you played differently depending on the mission. Some of them were a bit lame (Tyranid Assault springs to mind - if you have anything left alive you win, otherwise the Tyranid wins) but the different objectives made each battle something different.

I wonder why they got rid of those.

A million reasons. IT's important to note they do have some impression of their game as being targeted at a younger and/or less complex audience.

The scoring-at-start-of-2nd-player-turn-and-on suggestion is a good one that I think is going to make it into an updated test mission before we even release it. Good conversations guys.

I like the idea of starting with the position that there will be no escalation, stronghold assault etc. But shouldn't we hold out hope that a system could be devised that would possibly build towards including them? It isn't necessarily that players hate the models themselves. Just that they unbalance things. If the idea begins with balancing DA drop pod lists against screamerstars, could it not at the far end balance that same DA drop list against a Revenant? Shouldn't the focus of balance be on how well the player plays the army they bring rather than who's list comes from an army that has been updated more recently?

I think that a new set of "match-up" objectives determined by the army a player brings to the table would help a great deal to even out the different styles of play. Assault based armies suffer in 6ed, but would they if an assault based army got 3 points for each enemy unit destroyed in the assault phase? While the shooty army across the table only received one point for each enemy unit destroyed? Decide which army style suits your list best and choose that "alternate" form of scoring based on your opponents list and what you brought to the table.

If you were looking to include Escalation, Stronghold Assault and the like. Could a replacement or addition to the list of secondary objectives help to balance them out? At game start, you look and see your opponent has brought a Revenant and select the option that replaces the standard secondary objectives with one that awards the same number of points just for killing the Rev? It would remove the requirement to fulfill First Blood, the worry of facing a Rev AND chasing down your opponents warlord, likewise the requirement to survive long enough to achieve linebreaker. You chose to make it your secondary objective to kill the super heavy and you'll be judged on whether or not you succeeded.

Could a DA drop pod list that chose objectives on turns held, grabbed them early, and made it his objective to bring his opponents Revenant down at all costs win the game? If he brough the Revenant down, held the majority of the objectives well past mid game, would it matter if in the end he was tabled by his opponent? Didn't the DA player achieve all their objectives?

 dracpanzer wrote:
I like the idea of starting with the position that there will be no escalation, stronghold assault etc. But shouldn't we hold out hope that a system could be devised that would possibly build towards including them? It isn't necessarily that players hate the models themselves. Just that they unbalance things. If the idea begins with balancing DA drop pod lists against screamerstars, could it not at the far end balance that same DA drop list against a Revenant? Shouldn't the focus of balance be on how well the player plays the army they bring rather than who's list comes from an army that has been updated more recently?

You have to start with a baseline and work your way up in variables, starting the other way around there's just too many variables to lock anything down. Better to test it as is and get it to a point where most to's see it working and then move on to "ok, factor in escalation, what changes? How do we address that?". There are plenty of codex's and supplements to consider before adding to that.

Also, it's pretty much a non starter if you include giant player placed fortresses or void shield generators that vary in size from something on a 40mm or 60mm base al lthe way up to a huge building with battlements and the like. A lot of that stuff I just think isn't workable in an organized event like a tournament. And even for gladiator style no holds tournaments, a to at some point is still going to have to set dimensions for the fortifications that as of yet don't have any gw models. Assuming you're using a scenario that involves fixed positions for some or all objectives, having a player remove a bunch of terrain and plop down their own really screws that up.

 Crablezworth wrote:
You have to start with a baseline and work your way up in variables

I agree completely, though I would prefer to see the intent to work towards including whatever could be "balanced" into a game scenario format. Stating from the start that some things just will not be included is not the same as saying we want to start "here" and work towards including what we can.

Panzer I am you. I think objectives should be counted starting turn 2 and you score them before psychic powers and reserves at the beginning of your turn instead of the end. This stops people from starting on objectives and allows each player equal turns to get points.

Regarding caps, I think if there are less than 4 objectives you cap overall, and 4 or more objectives you cap the points per turn. Adds missions variety and allows people to honestly think about what they really want.

Shared the revised and TO-reviewed first playtest mission with the OP here. It should go up in the OP soon.

For those who don't like going back, I'll post it here. Commentary from numerous TOs who've already joined in on participation via a collaborative google drive process, as well as commentary even here in this Dakka thread, helped shape it into more of a Beta than an Alpha, but it's testing time.

Feedback in the form of detailed bat reps is MOST welcome of all feedback (though thoughts in general are fine, theorycraft only goes so far, as has been indicated by numerous posts in here that are a little behind the curve on tweaks already being made, etc.), especially if you include detailed info on when points were scored, what the armies were of course, and also photos of the terrain and objective locations prior to beginning deployment.

Feedback can go here, be sent to mvbrandt@gmail.com, be submitted to your local TO (along w/ encouragement to get himself involved and participating by seeking invite to the google docs group), posted on your blog and crosslinked to us, posted on other blogs that talk about the missions as they're being developed, etc.

Participant organizers/players/etc., are welcome to submit their own draft missions toward the same concept and intent for inclusion in the catalog for purposes of revision, commentary, etc.

http://whiskey40k.blogspot.com/2013/12/asymmetrical-mission-design-for-better.html

First post updated with the playtest mission! Reproduced here for your viewing pleasure:

Asymmetrical Tournament Test Mission #1
Note: This mission is currently designed toward fixed objective location and symmetrical terrain. In the future and comprehensively we anticipate not every mission will look like this - the variety needs to allow TOs to tailor their selections from the Catalog to the specific parameters and constraints of their particular tournament environment.

For purposes of playtesting, we recommend you note down Standard/Alternate and Secondary Escalations prior to rolling any dice. Suggestions for alternate times to reveal and why are welcome! We recommend playing this particular mission in either Vanguard or Dawn of War deployments. On a separate piece of paper (for playtest), privately note whether you will be playing the Standard Primary or Alternate Primary; also note which Secondary you will be Escalating (see below for more information).
Immediately after rolling to determine deployment zones / place objective markers, both players must reveal their Primary and Secondary choices as noted above.

Primary - Whoever scores the most points from OBJECTIVES wins the Primary
Secondary- Whoever scores the most points from SECONDARIES wins the Secondary

OBJECTIVES
HOW YOU SCORE POINTS:
Standard Primary Objectives - Each Objective is worth 3 points if controlled at the end of the game
Alternate Primary Objectives - You score 1 point for each Objective you control at the start of YOUR OWN player turn 2, 3, 4, and 5. (i.e. No score on turns 1, 6, 7). Make this calculation BEFORE anything else (before reserves, psychic powers, etc.).

You may not score more than 9 points for either the Standard or Alternate version of this mission.

HOW YOU PLACE OBJECTIVES:
After rolling to determine deployment zones, place 6 objectives in the following fashion:
Place 1 objective in the center of each Table Quarter (12" from the nearest long table edge, 18" from the nearest short table edge)
Starting with the player who won the roll to select deployment zones, each player places one objective in a location of their choosing, no closer than 12" from any other Objective, and no closer than 6" from any table edge

Example: Player A selects to play Alternate Primary Objectives; he controls 3 Objectives at the start of his 2nd Player Turn (3 Points), 2 at the start of his 3rd Player Turn (2 Points), 1 at the start of his 4th Player Turn (1 Point) and none for the remainder of the game. Player B selects to play Standard Primary Objectives and controls 2 Objectives at the end of the game (6 Points). Both players score 6 Points toward the Primary, yielding a tie on Primary.

SECONDARIES
HOW YOU SCORE POINTS:
Each SECONDARY is worth 2 points; ESCALATED SECONDARIES are worth a maximum of 4 points. You must choose to convert one Secondary into its ESCALATED version.

You may score a maximum of 8 points for accomplishing SECONDARIES.

First Blood - 2 Points for being the first player to destroy an enemy unit
Slay the Warlord - 2 Points for destroying the enemy Warlord
Linebreaker - 2 Points for ending the game with a scoring/denial unit in the enemy deployment zone

HOW YOU ESCALATE SECONDARIES:
Each player secretly chooses one of the secondary objectives to escalate. They then score the escalated secondar INSTEAD of the basic secondary.

ESCALATED First Blood - Up to 4 Points for destroying more units than your opponent destroys; subtract the # of units your opponent destroyed from the # of units you destroyed; the sum is the # of points you earn for this Escalated Secondary (minimum of 0, maximum of 4); you no longer score any points for achieving Standard First Blood
ESCALATED Slay the Warlord - 1 Point for each enemy Character destroyed, to a maximum of 4 points; you no longer score any additional points for destroying the enemy’s Warlord.
ESCALATED Linebreaker - 1 Point for each non-Independent Character scoring or denial unit WHOLLY within the enemy's deployment zone at the end of the game, to a maximum of 4 points; you no longer score any additional points for standard Linebreaker.

EXAMPLE: Player A chooses to Escalate First Blood. During the course of the game, he completes Linebreaker (2 Points), Slay the Warlord (2 Points), First Blood (now worth 0 Points) and he destroys 4 more enemy units than his opponent destroys of his (4 Points). He has scored the maximum of 8 Points toward winning Secondary.

When it comes to secretly selecting an esclated secondary, how do you guys envision that process in terms of a tournament?

Also, for the tabulation of vp's from objective holding, witll this involve both players recording the amount accumulated on the same score sheet?

I might give this scenario a try this weekend, obviously in a friendly game there shouldn't be any issues keeping track of the vp's, just curious.

Hey guys, sorry I dropped out of the convo, glad to see it going strong! The Mgea Mat project is taking up most of our time.

I like the turn 2 option, too. It helps mitigate really fast armies. But, it also helps armies that have deep striking troops, too such as Daemons. Or, from another perspective, it makes it fair for them by giving them a chance to come out of reserves before the other player jumps ahead in points.

Frankie had voiced his opinion that after reading the draft so far, he still felt that the power armies will win the missions more often than not through raw power and that the missions may become overly complex. That was my initial fear, too, but I think at this point we need to just try it out and start play testing. Simplicity is important though, as a lot of folks are going to come to the table with these missions cold, reading them for the first time. The secondary objectives particularly, get pretty convoluted.

What is the logic behind capping the objective points? I think that will result in more tie games. Taking the cap off gives more definitive results. Are we worried the alternative mission can run away with victory too early?

Also with the line-breaker secondary, can you get that and an objective? If so, I can see lists with fast scoring units double dipping quite easily on that one, particularly if they go second.

Last critique, and not at all a big deal, I love keeping things simple personally and round numbers. As it stands each mission yields up to 17 points? Seems a bit arbitrary? Maybe I am just anal!? haha

What about attributing a set amount of points to each win condition and then taking the cap off of the actual objectives. For example, say you score as many points in objectives as you score, full stop, and make that a binary win condition worth a total of say, 3 battle points. That way it doesn't hold players back in what may be perceived as an unfair advantage or disadvantage. For example, if someone caps at 9pts with the alternative objective primary, and their opponent gets 9 also at end game in the normal objective scoring, but the first player gets creamed in secondaries (playing against a Death Star army, for example) the mission didn't really benefit them much.

You then set secondary objectives to also have an uncapped point limit (kill points + bonus points, or whatever) and set that win condition at 2 battle points as an example.

That way each game yields 5 points total? That is just an example of the concept, perhaps not the best one, but hopefully that was some good feedback.

 Reecius wrote:
Hey guys, sorry I dropped out of the convo, glad to see it going strong! The Mgea Mat project is taking up most of our time.

I like the turn 2 option, too. It helps mitigate really fast armies. But, it also helps armies that have deep striking troops, too such as Daemons. Or, from another perspective, it makes it fair for them by giving them a chance to come out of reserves before the other player jumps ahead in points.

Frankie had voiced his opinion that after reading the draft so far, he still felt that the power armies will win the missions more often than not through raw power and that the missions may become overly complex. That was my initial fear, too, but I think at this point we need to just try it out and start play testing. Simplicity is important though, as a lot of folks are going to come to the table with these missions cold, reading them for the first time. The secondary objectives particularly, get pretty convoluted.

What is the logic behind capping the objective points? I think that will result in more tie games. Taking the cap off gives more definitive results. Are we worried the alternative mission can run away with victory too early?

Also with the line-breaker secondary, can you get that and an objective? If so, I can see lists with fast scoring units double dipping quite easily on that one, particularly if they go second.

Last critique, and not at all a big deal, I love keeping things simple personally and round numbers. As it stands each mission yields up to 17 points? Seems a bit arbitrary? Maybe I am just anal!? haha

What about attributing a set amount of points to each win condition and then taking the cap off of the actual objectives. For example, say you score as many points in objectives as you score, full stop, and make that a binary win condition worth a total of say, 3 battle points. That way it doesn't hold players back in what may be perceived as an unfair advantage or disadvantage. For example, if someone caps at 9pts on secondaries, and their opponent gets 9 also, but they get creamed in secondaries (playing against a Death Star army, for example) the mission didn't really benefit them much.

You then set secondary objectives to also have an uncapped point limit (kill points + bonus points, or whatever) and set that win condition at 2 battle points.

That way each game yields 5 points total? That is just an example of the concept, perhaps not the best one, but hopefully that was some good feedback.

Reece; many of these are good comments; please insert them into the google docs too, so the ever-increasing group of collaborators can all see them in a centralized spot in terms of revision consideration. Mostly I just want those members of the collaboration team who don't use Dakka to see the thoughts and points you have, that way they don't go missed by anyone.

We've been playtesting these already; the other night I beat a tooled jetstar run by a local multi-GT-winner (names withheld to protect the innocentish!) fielding 60 DA tactical marines and 20 black knights (rwcs / rwbk squads) by playing better to the mission. I think better players will still win, but the power gap has definitely been curtailed dramatically, b/c you're - again - able to pursue what your army is good at, instead of going after a forlorn hope of a basic mission while also getting beaten in the face by a power army. If the mission had been "simple" objectives, I'd have lost 1-0 at the end due to mass jetbike movement and location; by sacrificing models hard early (that were going to die anyway due to the matchup) and collecting my 9-cap as quickly as possible, I was able to then maneuver heavily to keep my army alive and swinging and contest as many of his objectives / kill as many of his troops as possible (as opposed to the standard way of playing this, where the jetstar alone would have largely laughed at my army or any variant build of it). IT totally changed the dynamic of what I could do, without at all nerfing what Jetstar could do ... it just had to actually beat me up and outplay me, instead of barely surviving and grabbing 1 objective while contesting the rest.

The objective points are capped for the reason that you want to generally prevent "runaway" games in all cases. This can apply to someone accumulating points. It can also apply to giving players at least the feel that they have a very real opportunity to compete and at least push it to secondaries. We've already got feedback from Aaron Aleong of the Indy Open that he (a vetted GT-winning player) fielded a tooled Necron/CSM list up against a fluffy all-Slaanesh Daemons player. The game ended 9 points to 8 on Primary in favor of Aaron despite the Slaaneshi player being fairly light on remaining models. In a "traditional" objective game it would have simply been "well I won on objectives, and your army is nearly tabled, and I hold 3 objectives too lol." In this game, the player actually reflected that he felt completely OK with the loss - he felt Aaron was the better player, yet also felt he was in the game until the very end; even his few remaining models had at least a shot at trying to contest one of those 3 objectives Aaron grabbed, and doing so would have netted him a win for the loss and troubles he put in getting up to 8 points early.

That said, you don't want to overbalance by not having a points cap; by having the cap, you prevent someone "gaming" the accrual by just fielding millions of troop models and strangle-holding the objectives early no matter the long-term cost, putting himself at an uncontestable advantage and guaranteeing a win. We want to minimize power gamers going "well I can just game for one instead of the other," and the cap actually accomplishes that fairly elegantly. Let's take the above example with Aaron; if he'd been up against a better player able to get just 2 more points in the current point allocation, Aaron would have been in a position of having to take FOUR distinct objectives at game-end ... possibly creating an insurmountable lead (the very problem with points accrual systems and gaming them, and also a problem you initially pointed out). You want to allow tweaking your army toward points accrual to put pressure on your opponent at the cost of having as many high powered hitters in your list (aka, you're taking more troop models to strangle objectives for as long as possible, but you might not be fielding quite as mean a deathstar), but you don't want to allow someone to tweak to a point where his opponent is forced to play the same mission variation if he wants to keep up at all. Again, you don't want to nerf X-star; you want to buff everything else.

I think making it so the linebreaker escalated can't be accomplished by units controlling objectives is a really good tweak. Good one!

The numbers are built around our best guess at proper numeric distribution; this was helped out by some of our more mathematically-inclined commenters so far. HOW those objectives accrue you points in a BP format or if you're scoring points for tournament scoring is totally up to you (said another way, it's not unusual or unprecedented - you already have a common situation where you score integers of 1 for each objective you control in a mission ... if you have more than your opponent, you win Objectives and net some # of Battle Points toward your accomplishments; i.e., if I score 3 Objectives and my opponent Scores 2, the Scoresheet says I won Primary and get 10 Battle Points ... random numbers equaling numbers ... presentation and clarity is really the key).

Also note that the 9-cap tie only forces the game to a Secondary determination. If Secondary is ALSO tied, any TO can add further tiebreaking mechanisms (i.e., total points destroyed), or can simply allow a tie at that point.

What's important is ... if you try too hard to make how much the different point values are "simple" or operating on base-10 type numbers, you may get into a situation where they're not at all balanced, even if they "look" simple. Right now, 40k is IMBALANCED if you just play straight missions ... in that only certain army types really have a chance to win the win conditions (and these are the very same armies that are best at being durable // killing lots of opposing models). The first intent then is to come up with mission variations that allow the other armies to also compete. Playtest needs to identify where the strengths and weaknesses are, where the numbers and values need a little tweaking, etc., and while the simpler we can make it the better (totally!), it also still has to actually be right ... or else the application of "simple" #'s is yielding a fundamental flaw to an otherwise excellent concept.

40K isn't a simple game, and people get #'s and rules wrong all the time in tournaments in all formats as it is; we DO have to make it as simple as possible, but I don't think that can be the guiding light of playtest. Said another way, if we can find the sweet spot in terms of values and numbers, we can always try to normalize them thereafter in a way that makes them easier to rapidly comprehend. Make it right, then try to make it clear ... rather than "make it simple, even if it's less right." If that makes any sense.

Keep up the feedback, folks! It's good stuff!

Really interested in this top to bottom. Have time off for the holidays coming up, will be playtesting it as much as possible.

As an aside...base 10 is unwieldy for a variety of reasons mainly having to do with the lack of divisors compared to say a base 12 system.

MVBrandt wrote:

40K isn't a simple game, and people get #'s and rules wrong all the time in tournaments in all formats as it is; we DO have to make it as simple as possible, but I don't think that can be the guiding light of playtest. Said another way, if we can find the sweet spot in terms of values and numbers, we can always try to normalize them thereafter in a way that makes them easier to rapidly comprehend. Make it right, then try to make it clear ... rather than "make it simple, even if it's less right." If that makes any sense.

While I love that you guys are trying to fix some of the imbalances, I am concerned about the implications of any fix being mission based. I absolutely agree, and see how it helps the top-of-the-top players get the competitive game they want, but as someone who easily finished in the bottom third at this year's NOVA, how does it make me want to come back and play tournament 40k? If anything, the way I understand them, it makes my situation worse:

(1) Any player who netlists a deathstar and does not know how to pilot it is going to lose in their first couple of asymmetrical mission games. So, instead of letting them bubble to the middle-top so I can play games more "my speed," I have a chance to play them each and every game? At NOVA I suffered through the second 2-3 games after accidentally winning my first, then got to enjoy a reasonably well balanced bracket and had a great time. However I definitely see this as greatly increasing the chance for any game to be against the 2+ stars I loathe.

(2) Neil and the folks over at 11th company made the point a few podcasts ago that they were confident the majority of their players scored their missions wrong. Frankly, won't this this only make it worse? Now I need to keep track of TWO missions and all their nuances each and every game so I can validate my opponent's score? Hey opponent, what secondary did you chose to escalate? Oh, you can't remember? Swell. This feels like a LOT of additional book-keeping. A lot...

(3) And this is the least of my concerns, but how many other asymmetrical missions have been developed? When I first read the title I actually thought about scoring objectives once vs cumulative scoring (thanks to Templecon) but I am having trouble coming up with any other really balanced alternatives, especially for things like KP and the Relic. Now, I fully understand generating these missions is why you guys get accused of making the big bucks (because we all know how lucrative TOing is ) but how truly extensible is the idea?

I really do no want to rain on the parade (and frankly doubt I will be able to ) as I firmly believe any action is better than no action. But as the mostly casual gamer whose only chance to win a GT is if 128 people all get food poisoning and miss day 2, a ban/restriction list is easy for me to wrap my head around and plan for (whether or not I agree with everything on it). This… this is not, and I am immensely scared of (1) becoming the norm. I think whomever made the point earlier that this will not affect the way many (most) people build their lists is right. People will still run the star-of-the-week because they can, and if these new missions enable the best-of-the-best players list flexibility at the expense of pushing the net list players down into my bracket… that is going to suck, hard. I am curious your thoughts on that, as I really do not want to have to risk my money to find out…

That's all, I just wanted to share what seems to be a different perspective! I want to go back to NOVA, I want to try the 11th Co. GT, and I want to finally make it to Connecticon and experience all the other local GTs, but I do not want to pay for a guaranteed face-punching. This mission change has given me much, much more pause than Feast's ban list did. Help!

Not to be overlooked here but if this kind of mission makes it at least feasible that people can bring an army to a tournament that isn't Jetstar, Tau gun-lines, etc., that opens doors for more diversity.

What is what you are asking for. More diversity in that not everyone is playing the same army, which I'm guessing by your post you are presuming you can't beat.

So, for example, suppose we ban or nerf Jetstar. Then, you will be facing Serpent SPam and Tau Gunlines. Nothing has changed. It will still be an army that, guessing based on commentary, you will still find unbeatable and punching you in the face.



Mission complexity is something everyone is aware of going into this. Try to make it as simple as can be and still try to accomplish goal of making a good mission. Being honest with ourselves, we don't even have good examples to go off of because the missions GW has given us aren't actually complex enough to be fair, which be definition means not fun. :(

Something has to give, however. There will be side effects to any given selection.

We ran a play test of the mission yesterday. At 2000 points, single FoC, Vanguard deployment. We wanted to see if the mission type would work with some of the Escalation rules. So the game included Necrons using a Transcendent C’Tan as a Lord of War choice. The SM army not exactly optimized although a bit heavy on troops and sternguard. We tried to run our Necron force as one of the standard power builds that we see locally, though the Necrons were short a lot of units trying to sneak in a C’Tan.

2K SM’s – Ultramarines Chapter Traits
Tigurius
Command Squad (apoth, std br, champ, two meltaguns) Drop Pod
4 x Tac Squads (10) w/ MG, LC. Two with Drop Pods, two without.
2 x Stern Squads (10) w/ 2 HF, several combi’s, Drop Pods.
Storm Raven

2K Necrons
Transcendent C’Tan, transdimensional slide, wave of withering, seismic assault
Imotekh
Lord w/warscythe, res orb, phase shifter, MSS, semptirnal (sp?) weave
2 units Immortals (10)
Unit of Wraiths (5)
Unit of Wraiths (4)

Space Marine player took the Alternate Objectives (scoring 1pt, turns 2-5) Escalated Line Breaker for Secondary Objectives.
Necron player to Prmary Objectives (scoring 3pts, at game end) Escalated First Blood.

Deployment: Marines won to go first, deployed the two foot tactical squads by combat squad, camped two w/ lascannons on objectives within their deployment zones, two w/sgt+meltaguns against the center deployment edge aiming to push for one objective at the center of the table. Necron player put his Immortals in Ruins on his objectives with the Imotekh in one, the Lord in the other. Both units of wraiths were deployed against edge of the deployment zone on the left flank to run up on the objectives within the SM deployment zone. With the SM player having five drop pods and a load of Sternguard, the C’Tan was held in reserve. Imotekh made sure we had Night Fight rules for turn one.

Turn One-
SM Turn- Kept the Sternguard in reserve, dropped two tacticals and command squad aggressively so as to contest one Necron home field objective and focus fire the Immortals (w/Necron Lord) on the other. Two foot mobile combat squads ran onto the no mans land objective. Entire army was able to bring down the one squad of immortals, the Lord went down as well, but stood back up.

Both drop pod tacticals were close enough to contest the objective held by the Necron Lord due to the placement of the objective close to the corner of the ruin. The Necron player opted to stay within cover rather than bubble wrap the objective.

Necron Turn- Imothekh called lightning for no effect, Necron Lord lined up to charge one Tactical combat squad. Necron wraiths ran across midfield to get in position to contest SM backfield objectives in turn two. Imothekh and Immortals tried to shoot the command squad off of his objective. Killed the Champion and Apothecary, but couldn’t move the squad. Lord charged tactical squad, died to a lucky meltagun overwatch. Stood back up.

Turn Two-
Night Fighting lifted
SM Turn- SM used Tigurius to try and keep his Sternguard in reserve to deal with the C’Tan. Worked for one squad, Storm Raven came on as well. Sternguard dropped between unit of Wraiths and the SM backfield objectives. Storm Raven lined up Wraiths for a strafing run. Foot mobile Tac combat squads set up small bubble wraps around their three objectives. One drop pod combat squad moved into the ruins on the Necron objective while the other sent one combat squad to claim an objective near where the Wraiths orignally deployed. Command squad and remaining combat squads prepared to focus fire Necron Lord.

Sternguard and Storm Raven destroyed the smaller Wraith unit, four combat squads and command squad were able to kill the Necron Lord. Who stood back up. Combat squad charged the Lord, lost two to the warscythe, stood their ground.

Necron Turn- C’Tan came in from reserve. Deployed and used slide to attack combat squad and command squad. Killed all but two in the combat squad and everyone in the command squad but Tigurius. C’Tan then took out Tigurius with his shooting, while Imotekh and his Immortals removed the weakened command squad. Wraiths were just outside of charge range of the combat squad claiming the objective, who had fallen back an inch to make sure, so the Wraiths charged the Sternguard. Sternguard did nothing in defensive fire, lost four in the assault while killing nothing. Wraiths were tied up though. Necron Lord killed the sgt with scarabs, but died to the two tactical marines before getting to use his warscythe. Did not get back up.

End of Turn Two- SM player held four objectives, so claimed four VP’s. Necron player had just the one remaining Troop choice, but had elected to score at the end of the game. Technically at this point the SM player was guaranteed a Primary victory.

We kept playing, just to see what havoc the C’Tan would cause. Second Sternguard came in and rapid fired Imotekh and his squad, two heavy flamers helped dig most of them out of cover. Imotekh and his Immortals would be taken out by turn four. While the drop pod squads and sternguard were able to keep the C’Tan busy long enough in the Necron deployment zone to keep him from ever getting into the SM deployment zone and dig the marines there off of their objectives. The Sternguard in the center held the Wraiths up until the end of turn four.

The Wraiths were able to charge the combat squad holding the objective, but didn’t destroy them in turn five, though they contested it in turn four after consolidating.

With the C’Tan clearing objectives in his own deployment zone, and wracking up secondary objective kills. The SM’s were able to score three Primary objective points in turn three, two more in turn four. With both of his troop choices destroyed. The Necron player couldn’t claim an objective at games end. We later realized that the scenario write up let you claim objectives at the beginning of your turn, not the end of the game turn. From recollection this would have given the SM player one less VP on turn two, but two extras in three and four where the Necrons cleared objectives the SM’s held at turn start.

The SM player got one point from escalated Line Breaker, two for Slay the Warlord and two for First Blood.

Necron player got four points for escalated First blood, two for Slay the Warlord.

SM player won 9-5 vs 0-6.

AAR: Although more destructive, the Necron army lacked the ability to score. Even though Imotekh took a long time for the SM’s to kill, his objective was contested from the very first SM DPA until they were destroyed. So even claiming secondary objectives, the typical low troop count, high power count army build would have lost out to the eight scoring unit SM build. It would have been even worse with Pedro Kantor swapping out his command squad for a five man sternguard squad for a total of 13 scoring units. Not that the Necron list with the transcendent C’Tan was typical. It couldn’t split the C’Tan to contest as many objectives as a Screamerstar or similar Deathstar build.

Though a list that forced those builds to split up from the beginning of the game to combat a 13 scoring unit build would have really taken the punch out of them from the onset.

Enjoyed the game, will be trying to get a playtest against a Screamerstar 2k list in the near future.

ngilstrap wrote:
Not to be overlooked here but if this kind of mission makes it at least feasible that people can bring an army to a tournament that isn't Jetstar, Tau gun-lines, etc., that opens doors for more diversity.

I think all I am trying to point out is that this is a faulty assumption for the majority of players. I have no idea - but I would be curious how many people really poured over the NOVA mission packet and tailored their lists to those missions. (Sorry, sticking with NOVA as an example because it is what I am most familiar with).

I will concede it is probably better to have the option and not take it, that to be stuck in the mud like things currently are - but I guess I am not as optimistic that people will analyze these complex missions and bring an interesting scalpel when the hammer they have played with for the past N months is still equally viable. Does that make sense? And after talking it through with my gaming group I am now more concerned that my little bubble of casual-"competitive" (i.e., the lower brackets) will become more like what you noted.

I did NOT play screamerstar, or any of those broken lists at NOVA, as once I started losing (and those lists kept winning because they are silly) I had nothing to fear going into my bracket. I ended up playing an awesome ork-necron list, a beautifully painted 3 riptide tau army (which I beat ) and an honest-to-goodness farsight bomb. Things are already plenty diverse from my point of view.

My point is, the middle and lower tiers already have diversity, that is where the "fun" lists already end when they lose to the broken ones. The upper tiers are what seem to be suffering from a lack of diversity. Right now I have little-to-no concern about playing one of those broken lists I presume I cannot have a fun game against (which is different than beating) but with these new missions a solitaire list could be around any corner. Just because the missions are designed to give me a chance to win does not suddenly make the game fun. Does that make sense? (not a sarcastic question at all, I just want to make sure my concern is clear because your reply did not really touch on it)

I respect you want diversity at the top tables because you are sick of seeing the same thing over and over, but please do not solve the problem by pushing half of those players down into my tier I am concerned these missions are simply going to spread the "unfun" out rather than keeping it localized at the top, which means a broader swathe of people will experience it, which means more people will consider quitting/not returning/waiting the storm out rather than playing. I am assuming that the people who already bring those 2+ rerollable lists are going to continue to do so (which seems a fair assumption because they are neither penalized nor impeded in any way and the lists still remain quite good). I am also assuming that people who already bring less competitive lists will continue to do so (Sisters 4 Lyfe). I am predicting all these missions will accomplish is enable more list flexibility for the people who will already show up to events at the cost of those who are more on the fence.

Sure I would love a chance to win, but certainly not at the expense of having to play Jetstar or Screamerstar more than once in an event. The mechanics of the lists are not fun, more-so than the fact that they are challenging to beat. Gunlines and Serpent Spam are not different than leafblower guard and GK lists of old - I definitely may lose but at least it can be a fun game.



Editing for summation and clairty:
Serpent Spam, Gunlines, FMC, and anything else I am leaving out, are challenging lists that can be fun to play against - I am not concerned about a resurgence of these lists at all. 2+ rerollable save lists are almost certainly never fun to play against. Asymmetric missions neither solve the problem that 2+ rerollable saves are not fun to play against, nor I do not see how they will reduce the presence of those lists.

I like the alternate format for primary. Sure it will favor some builds but that's the case with any mission. And sure the competitive players will study the missions ahead of time... So should anyone that wants to win some games. I am a huge advocate of seeing the missions ahead of time - if you don't like them then don't bother

quiestdeus wrote:

ngilstrap wrote:
Not to be overlooked here but if this kind of mission makes it at least feasible that people can bring an army to a tournament that isn't Jetstar, Tau gun-lines, etc., that opens doors for more diversity.

I think all I am trying to point out is that this is a faulty assumption for the majority of players. I have no idea - but I would be curious how many people really poured over the NOVA mission packet and tailored their lists to those missions. (Sorry, sticking with NOVA as an example because it is what I am most familiar with).

I will concede it is probably better to have the option and not take it, that to be stuck in the mud like things currently are - but I guess I am not as optimistic that people will analyze these complex missions and bring an interesting scalpel when the hammer they have played with for the past N months is still equally viable. Does that make sense? And after talking it through with my gaming group I am now more concerned that my little bubble of casual-"competitive" (i.e., the lower brackets) will become more like what you noted.

I did NOT play screamerstar, or any of those broken lists at NOVA, as once I started losing (and those lists kept winning because they are silly) I had nothing to fear going into my bracket. I ended up playing an awesome ork-necron list, a beautifully painted 3 riptide tau army (which I beat ) and an honest-to-goodness farsight bomb. Things are already plenty diverse from my point of view.

My point is, the middle and lower tiers already have diversity, that is where the "fun" lists already end when they lose to the broken ones. The upper tiers are what seem to be suffering from a lack of diversity. Right now I have little-to-no concern about playing one of those broken lists I presume I cannot have a fun game against (which is different than beating) but with these new missions a solitaire list could be around any corner. Just because the missions are designed to give me a chance to win does not suddenly make the game fun. Does that make sense? (not a sarcastic question at all, I just want to make sure my concern is clear because your reply did not really touch on it)

I respect you want diversity at the top tables because you are sick of seeing the same thing over and over, but please do not solve the problem by pushing half of those players down into my tier I am concerned these missions are simply going to spread the "unfun" out rather than keeping it localized at the top, which means a broader swathe of people will experience it, which means more people will consider quitting/not returning/waiting the storm out rather than playing. I am assuming that the people who already bring those 2+ rerollable lists are going to continue to do so (which seems a fair assumption because they are neither penalized nor impeded in any way and the lists still remain quite good). I am also assuming that people who already bring less competitive lists will continue to do so (Sisters 4 Lyfe). I am predicting all these missions will accomplish is enable more list flexibility for the people who will already show up to events at the cost of those who are more on the fence.

Sure I would love a chance to win, but certainly not at the expense of having to play Jetstar or Screamerstar more than once in an event. The mechanics of the lists are not fun, more-so than the fact that they are challenging to beat. Gunlines and Serpent Spam are not different than leafblower guard and GK lists of old - I definitely may lose but at least it can be a fun game.



Editing for summation and clairty:
Serpent Spam, Gunlines, FMC, and anything else I am leaving out, are challenging lists that can be fun to play against - I am not concerned about a resurgence of these lists at all. 2+ rerollable save lists are almost certainly never fun to play against. Asymmetric missions neither solve the problem that 2+ rerollable saves are not fun to play against, nor I do not see how they will reduce the presence of those lists.

I think you're sharing a lot of valid concerns, but I'm not sure they'll match the actual "in-process" results.

Let me just use Jetstar and this mission as an example.
First, while you or even I may not find it fun to play against (and I want you to have fun at any event you go to), it is in my opinion fundamentally wrong for a TO to outlaw someone's investments based upon a feeling of "that's not fun." The question should only be ... is that FAIR? If it's fair, it steps into a dangerous realm to directly and intentionally harm the fun of people by saying "you can't bring that because some of your opponents may not find it fun to play you." We the internet have a bad habit of ignoring the fun of the "targets" while bemoaning our own good times. I think it's important for ANYONE to make sure they're understanding that in an open-attendance environment there are all kinds of factors that could infringe upon your enjoyment if you base "fun" upon the actions and choices of others. Personal responsibility and all that.

It similarly can be argued that a bunch of super fast 2+ re-rolling units are not "Fair," and thus you have us coming up with a way that levels the playing field without directly targeting those using the powerful units. We're seeing some accomplishment of this already.

That said, I understand that you're personally sharing a concern about even attending (which of course as a TO makes me a little sad-faced and certainly garners my attention) b/c you don't believe it's possible to have fun playing against a Jetstar no matter how you approach the game mentally/emotionally, and no matter how your opponent behaves while playing it. Understood.

So let's look at the mission and the realities of a tournament environment. First off, we're seeing already in playtest and feedback that jet/screamerstar is not plowing people over in this mission; in fact, they're losing to fairly typical take all comers and in some cases fluffy builds more often than not, b/c they are not yet adjusted at all for an environment where they have to have a lot more valuable troops and not so much gribbly deathstar if they want to try and "guarantee wins." More importantly, they're finding they can't simply guarantee wins, no matter how they build ... they have to play better.

Intent-wise and so-far accomplishment-wise, the mission framework changes fighting jet/screamerstar from "this isn't going to be fun, I can't win without having a super powered army of my own" to "this will be fine, they have a super unit but there are multiple ways I can win this game and feel in it no matter what my army looks like by the END of the game." I would encourage your own playtesting to help verify that it shifts the bar for in-game determinants of "Fun" and also chance to win.

As players get into this, some don't adjust at all but some do. That all said, good players will perform well regardless, and less good players will perform ... less well regardless. BUT you may find what constitutes a fun game shifts. This is sort of the heart and soul of the point here. Playing against jet/screamerstar is demoralizing b/c no matter what many armies try to do to them, they're eventually going to get broken apart by the power-units and thus lose the game by 5+ no matter what they do. By shifting to these more asymmetrical and durin-game approaches, that bar shifts.

I would simply encourage giving it more of a shot, playtesting some, etc.; I think you're halfway there on the logic - it's true that someone who is only average at the game and is just blindly walking into the tournament environment with a copy-pasted net list of screamers or jetbikes might find himself losing more than he expected, but those players were even at NOVA2013 and did not do all that well, yielding their presence throughout the field (especially screamer stars). At that point, you might think (and are thinking, by your commentary) "well now even more of them will be down where I think I'll be!" I think that's possibly true. Where the argument you're putting forth comes into more question for me as someone who has to evaluate it toward attendee happiness ... is what happens then? I think so far in playtest from a variety of sources including many more "average" or "take all comers" or "I don't want to have to think ahead that much just to have fun at a tournament" players we're seeing the games actually are more fun after all. They're more fun because players are going from a game that was "spend all game being able to do nothing meaningful, can't score any points, can't advance the cause to winning, and can't make it to turn 5 to even try to win with enough left alive" and thus felt utterly pointless and non-participatory for one player ... to games that are "spend all game doing things and advancing the cause of a win while understanding that my opponent has a scary unit that's going to try to stop me." It by nature changes super deathstar builds from ones that put the OPPONENT on the back foot to ones that by nature put themselves on the back foot. Now instead of being the hammer by which the game is auto-win against all but a small # of counters, they are becoming a tool to try and prevent losses. It's a fundamental change to the nature of how the games play, and IMO a good one.

As far as mission variety, I wouldn't worry there. I think any one person (you and me both in this case) will struggle to think through all the possible nuances and approaches to mission variety required for a venture of this sort. That's why we have an ever-increasing # of really smart people on the google docs group coming up with missions and then vetting their concepts through intense commentary. I think I received several new mission draft submissions just over the weekend (That I now have to clean up and get posted).

I REALLY appreciate your feedback, and I don't want to sound argumentative. I understand *I think* where it's coming from. It's a matter of taking that feedback and analyzing it, and that's what I'm trying to do. I don't have any intent at least personally to use missions that are going to yield a net negative for the field at large, and it's the AVERAGE attendee I care most about. Intensely committed players will do well regardless through preparation, but I want the type of list that does well to be a much broader range of list, instead of getting into a situation where only a few narrow-slit list types do so much better than the rest that we have to consider comp, bans and rules changes to re-insert variety to the field. Judging by the # of TOs and gamers joining the participant playtest and mission design group, I gather that's a hope reflected by a fairly large % of those interested in the subject to begin with.


PS - A note on mission complexity; at least in the case of the first mission, it's actually measurably less complex than most of 2013's NOVA Open missions, and many of the other GT and TT/etc. missions I saw while attending AdeptiCon and others. I think the CLARITY with which a mission is described in the packet (something I think I personally dropped the ball with on a few NOVA missions this year) is more important than the complexity, but in the case of the first fully-published test mission here, you see a Primary that goes one of two ways, and a Secondary that keeps pretty close to the book secondaries, and that's it. There's no Tertiary, and the Primary/Secondaries are pretty familiar - objectives, book secondaries, fin. Give it a shot!

I'm sending out the mission to players in my region, as I have an interest in using these missions for my Tournament next summer, so I should hopefully have some play test feedback over the Christmas period.

Mike, thanks for taking the time and responding. I knew your stance about not banning/limiting things for the sake of fairness equality ahead of time, but I see what you are saying about the fundamental tempo shift that can result from these sorts of missions (specifically making the game more fun by reducing the nihilistic feelings I associate with seeing a 2+star across the board).

Your focus on the "average attendee" is why I bothered to speak up in the first place, and again, my thanks for addressing (and putting up with) my soapbox issues

I do still have some concerns about the number of viable asymmetric missions the community can generate, but I definitely see their value, so my fingers are crossed on that. This first mission is almost the perfect counter to the current state of the game, so it certainly exemplifies the intended purpose. I am curious if missions 2 through 6 (8? 12?) will be able to as well. However, I will put on my optimistic hat and try to provide some actual mission feedback or brainstorming, assuming I can tear my FLGS away from its current Fantasy kick I am particularly curious how seers vs daemons fare under this setup, so I will need to dust off baron and my jetbikes and try to convince someone that actually asking them to play screamerstar is not in any way a trap.

Thanks again, I look forward to seeing where all this ends up.

Question regarding First Blood vs. Escalated First Blood:

Player A chooses Escalated First Blood.

Player B chooses something else, say Escalated Line-breaker.

If Player A destroys the first enemy unit of the game, does that prevent Player B from ever getting "normal" First Blood even though Play A also wouldn't score "normal" First Blood?

The way that I read it, what your opponent chooses for secondaries has no effect on your scoring. Player B would get 0-4 points for their escalated Line-Breaker, and have a chance to gain 2 points if they fill the normal criteria for First Blood and Slay the Warlord. If Player A gets the first kill, even though they chose escalated First Blood, Player B would not qualify for those 2 points.

The secondaries don't directly affect each other, just as in the rulebook. First Blood is still First Blood in that it can be scored by someone vying for it even if their opponent escalated First Blood. They'd still need to procure the first kill, however.

I recently played this mission with standard PRI and SEC scoring criteria. Both my opponent and I had a great game and thought it made for more dynamic game play. Fixed objectives with one being placed by each player is brilliant, also simply making slay/line/warlord 2 points made a world of difference in game play. Bravo.

quiestdeus wrote:

I am curious if missions 2 through 6 (8? 12?) will be able to as well.

You don't actually need that many asymmetric missions. The rulebook basically only has 4 missions.

Crusade, Big Guns, and the Scouring are just variations of one another. The same sort of variations on the test mission (with different numbers of objectives, different placement, scoring heavy/fast) will provide as much or more variation than those 3 book missions do.

For the other three missions, you just have to figure out why the deathstar/top meta builds are so good and make mission conditions that reward something else. Here are a few examples I thought of with very little effort.

Relic – The top meta builds are so good because they can board control or blast the enemy away from the only spot on the table that matters then sneak in late with squishy super-fast troops. So the inverse of this mission needs something that brings play to other areas of the board and motivates people to bring troops out in the early/mid game. I think something like a king of the hill/first to claim set up would pair nicely. For instance place two more objective markers on the centerline halfway between the relic and each short board edge. The first player to control both the outer objective markers at the start of their turn wins the alt objective. Make the alt X points and holding the relic X pts. They have similar feels but reward different things, and present the super violent/weak squishy troop armies with problems that the book missions simply do not.

Kill Points – Top meta armies win because they have minimal points invested in squishy units that hide and rely on overpowered underpriced super violent Frankenstein concoctions to rack up kill points on the opponent. So the inverse would be something that motivates a player to bring out their squishy units/and or play more conservatively with their deathstar units. A couple ideas: 1) Marked for death – you pick an enemy unit and achieve the alt objective if you destroy it. 2) You add an objective farming component to stress the heavy meta army's tendency to hide the weak squishy troop units just like the test mission. 3) Do modified/halved kill points – you achieve the objective if you destroy half the army's starting number of kill points. 4) Bring back old school table quarters, possibly with an early/mid game farming component.

Emperors Will – The heavy meta armies have an unassailable castle of shooting which will blow you off your objective, or an un-killable Frankenstein deathstar that they ram down your throat that you can’t stop or get past, and as always it all comes with a fair share of late game super fast and squishy contesters. So we need to bring play to the early/mid game and to more parts of the board. Normal objectives pairs nicely. Objective farming pairs nicely. Marker for death pairs nicely. Anything to get out of the super linear point A attacks point B dynamic that the heavy meta armies are so good at. I also think a plant the flag style objective might be good for this. Set up two additional markers that have to be away from the EW objectives, if the opponent ever has a scoring unit on the enemies PtF objective at the start of their turn they achieve the alt object. It forces someone to defend two castles, still has an emperors will type feel, yet rewards troop aggression in the early game. So winning emperors will would be X points, planting the flag would be X points.

So in less than an hour I wrote up ideas that would give a TO a full suite of alternate objectives to pair with the book missions. To be sure they need refinement, but this is definitely something that can be done.

So what you are saying Artfcllyflvrd is that the top builds all rely on minimum sized squishy troops to win the game at the end.

That has been a favorite tactic for many editions now, but two things have changed in 6th.

1. Some of these min sized squishy scoring units can cover a much larger area in one turn on the move and reach objectives from unheard of distances.

2. The shooting power of some armies has hit an all time high. A level which other armies can not compete with.

There will probably never be one mission that equally favors more armies than not... However this type of new mission format gives more options and I think it will probably keep evolving. More options seems to be the right direction towards leveling the playing field.

DarthDiggler wrote:
So what you are saying Artfcllyflvrd is that the top builds all rely on minimum sized squishy troops to win the game at the end.

That has been a favorite tactic for many editions now, but two things have changed in 6th.

1. Some of these min sized squishy scoring units can cover a much larger area in one turn on the move and reach objectives from unheard of distances.

2. The shooting power of some armies has hit an all time high. A level which other armies can not compete with.

No one is disagreeing with that. In fact, I agree with it 100%. But that IS the problem. The heavy meta armies have now become so good at the maximum violence/minimum scoring dynamic that other armies can't compete in book missions (which pretty much all reward the maximum violence late game objective grap). If you want to give other armies options, you need to bring win conditions to the early/mid part of the game. These objectives (largely taken from other game systems) do that.

Objective Farming
Marker for Death/Single Unit Elimination
First to Claim/Hold

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:
So what you are saying Artfcllyflvrd is that the top builds all rely on minimum sized squishy troops to win the game at the end.

That has been a favorite tactic for many editions now, but two things have changed in 6th.

1. Some of these min sized squishy scoring units can cover a much larger area in one turn on the move and reach objectives from unheard of distances.

2. The shooting power of some armies has hit an all time high. A level which other armies can not compete with.

No one is disagreeing with that. In fact, I agree with it 100%. But that IS the problem. The heavy meta armies have now become so good at the maximum violence/minimum scoring dynamic that other armies can't compete in book missions (which pretty much all reward the maximum violence late game objective grap). If you want to give other armies options, you need to bring win conditions to the early/mid part of the game. These objectives (largely taken from other game systems) do that.

Objective Farming
Marker for Death/Single Unit Elimination
First to Claim/Hold

I agree with this and would add another factor. The maximum violence/minimum scoring dynamic is enhanced by tourney scenarios which try to limit the randomness factor of the main rules by modifying the core rulebook. Random elements such as mysterious terrain and mysterious objectives, among others, throw a monkey wrench into the plans of extremely refined army lists. If their is no fat to burn, then a random event can throw those lists for a loop. In some ways they might not be as able to recover as a list with more 'fat'.

Of course the cries have been heard and most TO's have eliminated or severely cutback on the random factor of the core rulebook. Streamlined lists of minimum scoring do not have to fear a random event hurting their weakened troops. Like an objective blowing up.

The Warpstorm table represents the ultimate random events in a game. It might be a reason Daemons are such a wildcard and can beat any list at any time.

Whats wrong with Stronghold Assault, and especially Void Shields which I've seen hated on a bit ITT?

From my experience, they help assault lists, give interesting tactical options for static shooty or fast lists, they help mitigate first turn gunline alpha strike stuff, and turn first blood into an actual contest rather than just "who went first?"

Just curious as to why they, and the rest of stronghold assault, are seen as negative. It just seems to me like this excellent supplement has just been swept up in the tide of hatred towards Escalation and not given a fair chance.

 Dakkamite wrote:
Whats wrong with Stronghold Assault, and especially Void Shields which I've seen hated on a bit ITT?

From my experience, they help assault lists, give interesting tactical options for static shooty or fast lists, they help mitigate first turn gunline alpha strike stuff, and turn first blood into an actual contest rather than just "who went first?"

Just curious as to why they, and the rest of stronghold assault, are seen as negative. It just seems to me like this excellent supplement has just been swept up in the tide of hatred towards Escalation and not given a fair chance.

So it's a little off topic, but Stronghold Assault is "bad" for 5 major reasons.

1. The rules for the void shield generator (which everyone and their brother will be taking) are woefully incomplete. There is no way to play that model without extensive house ruling.
2. A number of entries have no models or dimensions. So restricting the size of a number of fortifications to reasonable limits would require extensive house ruling.
3. Fortification networks are logistically hard for tournaments that have preset terrain. The tournament would either need to go to player placed terrain (which is very hard in a tournament setting) or house rule the fortification placement rules.
4. The idea of an AV 15 building freaks people out.
5. S D weapons are bananas, and unfun for attendees at all levels of competition.

On top of that, the whole "void shields weaken the alpha strike" and "void shields help assault armies" are red herrings. That's not really how it works in reality. 300pts for what amounts to 3 chimeras is not a sound strategy to counter act the alpha strike. Similarly, assault armies are now down 300pts that they can't use to overload assault threats in turns 2 & 3. And in those turns when you need to overload assault threats you're way past your own shields. And the most violent shooting for Eldar and Tau occurs within 20" or so, once you're well past your shields.

The supplement as a whole does nothing to balance the game (if anything, it makes things worse) but does present a giant number of problems for TOs.

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

 Dakkamite wrote:
Whats wrong with Stronghold Assault, and especially Void Shields which I've seen hated on a bit ITT?

From my experience, they help assault lists, give interesting tactical options for static shooty or fast lists, they help mitigate first turn gunline alpha strike stuff, and turn first blood into an actual contest rather than just "who went first?"

Just curious as to why they, and the rest of stronghold assault, are seen as negative. It just seems to me like this excellent supplement has just been swept up in the tide of hatred towards Escalation and not given a fair chance.

The supplement as a whole does nothing to balance the game (if anything, it makes things worse) but does present a giant number of problems for TOs.

My GK Henchmen think x2 Vengeance Weapon Batteries balance a Hell Turkey just fine thank you.

DarthDiggler wrote:

 ArtfcllyFlvrd wrote:

DarthDiggler wrote:
So what you are saying Artfcllyflvrd is that the top builds all rely on minimum sized squishy troops to win the game at the end.

That has been a favorite tactic for many editions now, but two things have changed in 6th.

1. Some of these min sized squishy scoring units can cover a much larger area in one turn on the move and reach objectives from unheard of distances.

2. The shooting power of some armies has hit an all time high. A level which other armies can not compete with.

No one is disagreeing with that. In fact, I agree with it 100%. But that IS the problem. The heavy meta armies have now become so good at the maximum violence/minimum scoring dynamic that other armies can't compete in book missions (which pretty much all reward the maximum violence late game objective grap). If you want to give other armies options, you need to bring win conditions to the early/mid part of the game. These objectives (largely taken from other game systems) do that.

Objective Farming
Marker for Death/Single Unit Elimination
First to Claim/Hold

I agree with this and would add another factor. The maximum violence/minimum scoring dynamic is enhanced by tourney scenarios which try to limit the randomness factor of the main rules by modifying the core rulebook. Random elements such as mysterious terrain and mysterious objectives, among others, throw a monkey wrench into the plans of extremely refined army lists. If their is no fat to burn, then a random event can throw those lists for a loop. In some ways they might not be as able to recover as a list with more 'fat'.

Of course the cries have been heard and most TO's have eliminated or severely cutback on the random factor of the core rulebook. Streamlined lists of minimum scoring do not have to fear a random event hurting their weakened troops. Like an objective blowing up.

The Warpstorm table represents the ultimate random events in a game. It might be a reason Daemons are such a wildcard and can beat any list at any time.

FWIW it's entirely possible to control and/or contest an objective that's Sabotaged w/out ever being vulnerable to the explosion, since the template is 2.5" radius and the control/contest area's radius is 3" in a pre-measuring game. Regardless, I thought most events were using Mysterious Objectives these days? I know NOVA does, and at least think AdeptiCon does (or am I misremembering from last year? That whole GT day is hazy haha).