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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
So, I've been ruminating on the latest tournaments and something occurred to me. Tournament players, in general, don't realise who their opponent is! The game of 40k, with the addition of maelstrom objectives is no longer you versus an opponent, it is now you and your opponent trying to beat the game itself. When you look at the game in that respect, you then begin to understand why adamantium lance and wave serpent spam have been losing ground in the competitive scene. Those lists(as well as most deathstars/ superheavies) are designed to defeat other armies. That isn't how the game plays anymore. With the best army lists involving synergy, and a breadth of units that add tactical adaptability to the army winning out over pure damage output.
So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?
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Post by: Peregrine
Sorry, did you just mention "maelstrom missions" and "tournaments" in the same sentence?
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Yes, although most only incorporate a maelstrom light approach. The fact of the matter is that lists that don't stand a chance of wiping out their opponent are winning tournaments by simply being flexible enough to win. I think this is going to change how people plan their armies as these list become more common.
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Post by: Verviedi
 Peregrine wrote:Sorry, did you just mention "maelstrom missions" and "tournaments" in the same sentence?
Most tourneys I've been to ran Maelstrom.
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Post by: Hollismason
Or Modified Maelstrom, it's a good mindset, you're not trying to wipe you're opponent out just maintain control of the mission.
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Post by: Thud
Playing for the mission has always been the mindset of good tournament players.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 Thud wrote:Playing for the mission has always been the mindset of good tournament players.
This is true, but a LARGE chunk of them don't build their list around it. The majority of the lists I see in the tactics threads are worried about how to destroy other "net lists". The playing to the mission portion of the discussion is normally " take X amount of Y unit to claim objectives"
Everything else is debated on how well they kill, or take hits from multiple wave serpents/ D weapons.
Glad to see this discussion gaining some legs 
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Post by: Thud
Well, you can't take objectives if you're dead, and you can take objectives a lot easier if your opponent's units are evaporating, so killing stuff is still important.
Tactics threads on forums are basically useless, but you still need ways to deal with Wave Serpents and other netlists, because there are reasons why they keep cropping up at tournaments, so knowing what to expect from them and how to deal with them is important, as, again, it's easier to take objectives when you're not tabled.
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Post by: Azreal13
A list optimised to kill WS is going to give almost anything a hard time.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Except centurianstar, adamantine lance, Necron flyerspam. If everyone was instead trying to win the game, based on varying their armies, none of those would be relevant due to being unable to do those things effectively.
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Post by: Peregrine
Then those tournaments suck, and I have no idea why you went there. Maelstrom missions are not even remotely suitable for serious games and any event that uses them immediately loses all credibility as a competitive tournament.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:
Then those tournaments suck, and I have no idea why you went there. Maelstrom missions are not even remotely suitable for serious games and any event that uses them immediately loses all credibility as a competitive tournament.
That was entirely unnecessary. Those tournaments are just as valid as any other, maelstrom missions create a reason to move upfield besides gaining line of sight. The lists that are successful in those environments are mobile armies that can handle melee and shooting. To deride an entire genre of missions based on personal preference as being "unsuitable for serious games" is wrong.
The reason I started this thread was a discussion I witnessed wherein a player had this mentality, and was loudly proclaiming that the game doesn't have any strategy. When asked for his tournament list, he told everyone it was adlance, trip dakkaflyrants, and three of the troop spores. The idea occurred to me that these missions are hard to win based on destroying your opponent, and therefore, some people don't think it is a legitimate way to play. Rant over, sorry for my apparent aggravation.
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Post by: Blacksails
Its not really wrong at all if you're playing Maelstrom 100% by the rules.
The cards you draw will have far greater impact than any attempt you make to play the mission. This is further compounded by objectives that have random VP rewards. Its literally a random mechanic with a random mechanic tacked on.
There's no real tactics or strategy. Its too luck dependent and entirely reactionary to the game and not your opponent. It is entirely fair to claim that a tournament running stock Maelstrom is not doing a good job at being a tournament, where ideally a winner is decided based on skill and the decisions they made, not on luck of the cards and rolling well for your VP.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 Blacksails wrote:Its not really wrong at all if you're playing Maelstrom 100% by the rules.
The cards you draw will have far greater impact than any attempt you make to play the mission. This is further compounded by objectives that have random VP rewards. Its literally a random mechanic with a random mechanic tacked on.
There's no real tactics or strategy. Its too luck dependent and entirely reactionary to the game and not your opponent. It is entirely fair to claim that a tournament running stock Maelstrom is not doing a good job at being a tournament, where ideally a winner is decided based on skill and the decisions they made, not on luck of the cards and rolling well for your VP.
Except there is a warlord table devoted to rectifying those exact situations. I agree that there are things that could change, but I think a tournament where if your opponent draws a card they could not score at the beginig of the game they get the victory point would really change the lists you see on the table. Allying in psyckers, guaranteed flyers and m.c.'s dedicated shooting and assault based units. It would be an interesting way to give comp, without adding comp.
What do you folks think about that?
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Post by: Blacksails
Are you seriously advocating another random element as a fix for a random element?
I agree that there are things that could change, but I think a tournament where if your opponent draws a card they could not score at the beginig of the game they get the victory point would really change the lists you see on the table. Allying in psyckers, guaranteed flyers and m.c.'s dedicated shooting and assault based units. It would be an interesting way to give comp, without adding comp.
No, it wouldn't. Change the mission, not force players to bring allies in forces they may not want to ally. A pure Tau or Necron force can't bring psykers, and players shouldn't be punished or forced to bring in allies for the sole reason of providing points.
What do you folks think about that?
I think Maelstrom needs to be fundamentally changed. At the very least, heavily modified; fixed VPs, remove all cards from your deck you can't accomplish (or auto-discard), and I'd be a bigger fan if you could just select the objectives you want. You know, include player decision making in the process.
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Post by: Azreal13
Typically, if one has to work this hard to make something work, one throws it in the bin...
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Post by: Blacksails
 Azreal13 wrote:Typically, if one has to work this hard to make something work, one throws it in the bin...
Well, yeah, there's that too.
I'm just offering some help within the confines of what's given lest I be called out for being overly negative/critical/hating/bitter or any number of other adjectives.
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Post by: Melevolence
To be perfectly honest, this game is too random to be competitive to begin with, and there is very little anyone can do to convince me otherwise.
First and foremost is the random opponent aspect. While one could argue any game suffers this mentality, none seem to have as dire consequence as 40k. A game can often be decided before models even hit the table. Mission or no mission. That is a terrible, terrible sign for this allegedly 'competitive' game. No match up should ever be truly decided before people even exchange their names and the opening hand shake. Not many other games out there have such concluding match ups as 40k.
Second is the sheer randomness of game prep. Warlord traits, psychic powers, mission set up, night fighting. Are you kidding me? Before the game even STARTS, you have a MINIMUM of 4 dice rolls to make just to decide what the feth is going on! MORE rolls if you get to reroll Warlord traits or if you have higher than Mastery Lvl 1.
Army building half the time is random. You can't even build proper army themes despite the 'forge the narrative' idea behind the game. Warlord and Psychic abilities are all totally random, as mentioned above. You will either get exactly what you wanted, or you wasted time. Usually, you waste time. The game could be more competitive and overall INTERESTING if these options were priced with points and had restrictions where needed (Such as only one Psyker being able to use Invisibility per army, so such a douche power cannot be spammed). You have no idea how many times I'd love to get the Infiltrate trait for my Orks in a fluffy list I built, or some other useful trait.
Battlefields in general, are random. What terrain (or lack there of) is on the board could totally screw you. If you're a Tau player fighting on a cityscape themed board, with plenty of blocking LOS, you will probably have a horrible time. Or if you're an Ork player and play on Planet Bowling Ball with nothing but a few hills that don't even provide cover, you're screwed.
Reserves are RANDOM, which means you cannot decide the optimal time for key units to come into play. I can't count the times I've wanted to flip a table because I CAN'T roll my reserves at all for whatever reason, and it costs me games. It's a load of horse doodie. Even in a non serious game.
Run and charge distance is random, as is moving through terrain, meaning most forms of movement are not reliable enough to make strongly weighed decisions. You have to hope to Mork you roll well if you've got to move through terrain or you're guys could barely take a step...which is horse doodie.
Malestrom is fun, but it IS random. Random objectives for random points. It does force people to actually do more than gunline a majority of the time, but random IS random.
Mysterious objectives are mysterious and random. They either have a huge benefit, or most often become a Skyfire Nexus and has no use. They should be decided before the start of the game, not halfway through when their effects are pointless by that time. "HEY! Skyfire Nexus! To bad your fliers are already on board and out of range, or already back in reserves on the last turn!"
I love 40k, I really do. But I find tournaments for it to be an incredible waste of time. I don't mind big conventions where people can play lots of games, but pitting money or prizes on the game...it's never something I'll understand. Nor will I partake in throwing my money away because I got beat automatically by the dude who brought the horridly cheesy list because it's the only way to ensure his victory, or because I had no say in the board I was fighting on, or because my Psyker forgot the good selection of powers he had last game and suddenly remembered new ones, or because my reinforcements are too busy playing Uno to come onto the board to fight.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
To be fair, the penalty only has a 1/36 chance of happening, but I digress.
I play where you discard impossible draws, so i know the flaws of the system. This discussion isn't about the tactical objectives in the corebook, its about what tournaments are doing with them, and how the players are dealing with the change in format. Do you think with the introduction of maelstrom style fluid objectives, making net lists a thing of the past.
Edit for autocorrect and to not sound like a jerk
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Post by: Azreal13
Blacksails wrote: Azreal13 wrote:Typically, if one has to work this hard to make something work, one throws it in the bin...
Well, yeah, there's that too.
I'm just offering some help within the confines of what's given lest I be called out for being overly negative/critical/hating/bitter or any number of other adjectives.
Look, that's not good enough. You've been issued your Apocalypse Donkey, now bloody well ride it.
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Post by: Peregrine
No, it's entirely necessary. Maelstrom missions are too random for competitive play (or even serious games of any kind). They minimize the importance of skill and reward good luck with the objective cards. A competitive game, on the other hand, should make skill more important than dice and allow the best player to win, not the luckiest player.
Those tournaments are just as valid as any other, maelstrom missions create a reason to move upfield besides gaining line of sight.
Normal missions already have that reason: objectives. If both players camp in their deployment zones then the game is probably going to be a draw (or decided by first blood, if the mission includes that) because each player has the same number of objectives in their half and nobody is willing to attack the objective(s) in the middle. To win you have to move out of your deployment zone and attack the middle of the table, and you may even have to attack your opponent's deployment zone. The only thing maelstrom missions do is replace the strategic decisions about which objectives you want to focus on with a random deck of cards that makes the decision for you.
Which just adds another layer of randomness to the mess. The solution to an excessively random mission system is to make new missions, not to roll even more dice to see which dice you roll to see which dice you roll.
I think a tournament where if your opponent draws a card they could not score at the beginig of the game they get the victory point would really change the lists you see on the table. Allying in psyckers, guaranteed flyers and m.c.'s dedicated shooting and assault based units. It would be an interesting way to give comp, without adding comp.
This is a terrible idea. Why should I have to take allied psykers in my Tau army just so that my opponent doesn't automatically score points from their "kill a psyker" rolls?
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Post by: Blacksails
It doesn't matter if it happens to you in a tournament game that throws out a potential win. When it comes to odds, single important rolls and events have a far greater impact and the chance is mostly irrelevant for the single game you're playing. Its like seize the iniative; its only a 1/6 chance, but damn if it doesn't really affect the current game if it does go off.
I play where you discard bad draws, but this discussion isn't about the tactical objectives in the codebook, its about what tournaments are doing with them, and how the players are dealing with the change in format.
The whole point is that its almost irrelevant what tournaments are doing to fix them. The point is that random mechanics that decide game outcomes are inherently bad and do not produce any meaningful way of determining who played better. You may as well play a combination of poker and yahtzee instead.
Do you think with the introduction of maelstrom style fluid objectives, are net lists a thing of the past.
It doesn't matter if net lists are a thing of the past. The focus should be on making tournaments driven by player decisions, being, you know, the skillful, tactical portion of playing. Maelstrom, short of changing it so that its hardly recognizable of what is was, does not do this, and therefore shouldn't be used in tournaments where the purpose is to declare one person as being a better player than the others and likely receiving an award or sexual favours from the crowd of on looking, attractive people that want to hear all about your converted Slaanesh army.
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Post by: Peregrine
No. Even if you manage to come up with a variant of maelstrom missions that doesn't suck it's still not going to do anything to remove netlists. The only thing it could possibly do is change which list is best, and then once people figure it out that list will become the new netlist.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I don't understand why there is so much directed negativity. This is a discussion where everyone has a viable opinion, so please try not to be too harsh with each other.
I take it you don't like superheavies in the core game? Why is that? I've enjoyed the few games my group has played with them on the field, so I don't really understand the dislike of them...
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Post by: Blacksails
Azreal13 wrote:
Look, that's not good enough. You've been issued your Apocalypse Donkey, now bloody well ride it.
It rides the donkey or it gets the hose again.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I don't understand why there is so much directed negativity. This is a discussion where everyone has a viable opinion, so please try not to be too harsh with each other.
I take it you don't like superheavies in the core game? Why is that? I've enjoyed the few games my group has played with them on the field, so I don't really understand the dislike of them...
Criticism =/= negativity.
You can have a discussion with people who's opinions you don't share. Nothing said so far has been particularly harsh.
*Edit* There was even humour in my post!
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Post by: Azreal13
Blacksails wrote: Azreal13 wrote:
Look, that's not good enough. You've been issued your Apocalypse Donkey, now bloody well ride it.
It rides the donkey or it gets the hose again.
I think that's even wrongerer than you intended.
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Post by: Blacksails
Or is it.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Post by: Peregrine
Because bad ideas deserve criticism.
I take it you don't like superheavies in the core game? Why is that? I've enjoyed the few games my group has played with them on the field, so I don't really understand the dislike of them...
There are two issues with superheavies:
1) Some of them are very poorly balanced. Warhound and Revenant titans with d-weapons are several hundred points too cheap, so they ruin games just like other overpowered units.
2) Even when they're reasonably balanced (or even relatively weak) they often reduce the game to "kill the superheavy". A 1000 point game with a Baneblade is not a clash of opposing armies, it's a single tank attempting to kill everything before it is destroyed. The rules just don't work very well when a single unit makes up such a large percentage of your army, whether it's superheavies or a traditional death star unit.
Of course if these issues had been fixed then superheavies would be fine. For example, the 30k rules limit LOW to 25% of your army, which keeps them in the bigger games where they belong. Impose a similar cap (maybe 33% for 40k, since the point limits are usually lower) and fix the few overpowered units and it would be much less of an issue.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I am typing via phone, sorry if I am responding WAY after you guys do!
This game is indeed a game of random chance, and each player has the chance to draw spectacularly well, or horribly bad. I had a lone wolf terminator take 465 point worth of shooting in one phase without failing a save, then next game he died to 4 storm bolters in one round. Neither of those outcomes had anything to do with my tactical ability, or even what my cards were. You cannot go into any dice based game and think that it is a competition of directed skill.
Also, the law of averages and big numbers states that the MORE random numbers that are being used, the better the odds of things being even. If I am on a rolling hot streak, but my opponent is drawing better cards, we actually have a more competitive game because of it. The more randomness in a system, the more your decisions actually mean in the long term. That's the math of it.
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Post by: Azreal13
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I am typing via phone, sorry if I am responding WAY after you guys do!
This game is indeed a game of random chance, and each player has the chance to draw spectacularly well, or horribly bad. I had a lone wolf terminator take 465 point worth of shooting in one phase without failing a save, then next game he died to 4 storm bolters in one round. Neither of those outcomes had anything to do with my tactical ability, or even what my cards were. You cannot go into any dice based game and think that it is a competition of directed skill.
Also, the law of averages and big numbers states that the MORE random numbers that are being used, the better the odds of things being even. If I am on a rolling hot streak, but my opponent is drawing better cards, we actually have a more competitive game because of it. The more randomness in a system, the more your decisions actually mean in the long term. That's the math of it.
No, it had everything to do with your opponent not shooting that Terminator with the right gun in the first instance and 4 Storm bolters (so 8 shots) only has to be slightly lucky to kill a Lone Wolf.
Also, more random doesn't mean things "even out" it means you produce closer to a pure average, but drawing cards and rolling dice are totally different things with different probabilities and governing outcomes that can vary in import significantly.
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Post by: Blacksails
I'd be loudly judging me if I were you.
However, in the spirit of the topic...
Peregrine wrote:
Of course if these issues had been fixed then superheavies would be fine. For example, the 30k rules limit LOW to 25% of your army, which keeps them in the bigger games where they belong. Impose a similar cap (maybe 33% for 40k, since the point limits are usually lower) and fix the few overpowered units and it would be much less of an issue.
I don't know why this wasn't originally implemented. Such a simple elegant fix. Well, besides the detailed balance of each individual super heavy, but a percentage would help sooo much.
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Post by: Peregrine
But you can, because good random dice mechanics form a bell curve of outcomes and you can make intelligent strategic decisions based on expected outcomes. It's the reason why good poker players consistently win money and bad players don't. The outcome of a single hand might involve a lot of luck, but over an entire night of playing the better player is going to end up with more money. Where 40k goes wrong is that it adds single random events that have a major effect on the game. For example, there's no strategy involved in the warlord table. You just roll the dice and see if you get something good that gives you a major advantage, or something useless that you forget before the first turn is over. Same thing with maelstrom objectives. You don't make a strategic decision to claim objective #1, knowing that you have a 70% chance of getting it each turn and that it's the best place to score VP, you draw a random card and then run over to claim whatever objective it told you to claim. That's replacing skill and player decisions with random dice.
Also, the law of averages and big numbers states that the MORE random numbers that are being used, the better the odds of things being even. If I am on a rolling hot streak, but my opponent is drawing better cards, we actually have a more competitive game because of it. The more randomness in a system, the more your decisions actually mean in the long term. That's the math of it.
This is only true when the random events from a bell curve distribution. For example, rolling 100 dice for shooting will tend to produce more consistent results than rolling 10 dice. But maelstrom missions don't really work that way since the random events are all independent and much harder to quantify. Instead of forming a nice predictable bell curve it turns the game into a sequence of independent random events where the random dice feel like the biggest factor. Even if the total number of VP is close to even in the end it isn't a fun experience.
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Post by: Zed
At most of the tournaments I've been to recently, the missions have been a merger of Eternal War and Maelstrom, and winning each component is worth tournament points. Usually the EW mission is the primary, but is only worth slightly more than the secondary. FB, LB and STW are usually worth a tournament point each too.
The logic here is that if at the end of turn one you're absolutely buggered for the primary, you can focus on the secondary and try and make some progress that way. Failing both of those, you can point every weapon in your army at their Warlord and hope for the best (playing for something at least). As a mission structure I love it, because it's a huge improvement on 5th ed (when I started), where you were often just playing out three turns because the game was a goner two turns in.
We mitigate the randomness of Maelstrom slightly by allowing players to get rid of cards drawn that are impossible to achieve. No enemy Psyker? Flag the card. No Buildings? Flag the card. Yes, you can still get shafted by getting "Claim objective X that enemy army is sitting on" 3 times, but that's just unlucky, much like your flyers not showing up until turn 4, your Land Raider parking on a rock, your deathstar whiffing its charge rolls... it's a game of dice, and people taking it all super-seriously has always amused me somewhat. But that's a personal axe I grind, and is beside the point.
Now onto the mindset change. What you need these days are multiple fast-moving, fairly resilient units that are able to zoom across the table and claim s**t (Slaanesh does this well). The gunline is in trouble if it can't blow you off the table ("Oh,do I have one Daemonette out of sight that's near an objective? Points for me!"), because they're often zoned off from most of the objectives on the board. Also, you can't slip into the Eternal War mindset of "I'll kill his killiest stuff for two/three turns or so, then push up to the mission objective for the last two when he's too munted to stop me."
You need to be a bit proactive too- things like leaving a unit within 3" of an irrelevant objective because it might be relevant in five minutes, and shooting their mooks off one just in case it matters. The local scene has been more receptive to Maelstrom than other places would be, I guess, because a lot of the lists commonly seen were Trukk Orks, several Drop Pod marine armies, my Slaaneshi CSM/Daemons, some Eldar and Dark Eldar, and quick Tyranids (to name a few). However, the mobility advantages already in these armies were definitely more emphasised on when 7th dropped.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I do find it a fun experience, and drawing cards is exactly like rolling dice if you aren't allowed to draw the same card twice( I know there are duplicates, but the cards are a time saver for the actual mechanic, which is rolling dice)
I am actually quite partial to using the city fighting mission cards. My group had a mix style game last month where you played the maelstrom mission where you start with 6 cards, and lose them over the course of the game, then at the end all objectives were worth 3 victory points.
That way you could play the mobile aggressive army, or the slow and steady meat grinder style army and still have a chance. What do you think of that as an option?
( I apologize for seeing aggression where it wasn't warranted, I was being overly sensitive for some reason. This morning was my first thread where I was expecting to defend my oppinion, and was waiting to defend myself)
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Post by: Peregrine
Yes, the actual object used to determine a random result is irrelevant, but the principle is different. When you're rolling dice to determine the outcome of an action you usually get a nice predictable bell curve, and over the full length of your time playing the game correctly making "in situation X do Y" decisions will give you good results. With the maelstrom missions, whether you pick the objectives with dice or cards, you don't get that bell curve at all and it's an entirely different kind of randomness. On turn 1 you randomly roll to see who is winning, then on turn 2 you roll again, etc. At no point can you predict the winner or make intelligent strategic decisions about what happens next, you just have to hope that in the end you've rolled well enough to win the game.
What do you think of that as an option?
It's still worse than the alternative where you don't use the maelstrom cards at all. Though it is amusing since it seems to be a concession from GW that the maelstrom missions in the core rulebook suck and the cards need to be less important. Now they just need to go all the way and remove them entirely. Automatically Appended Next Post:  Zed wrote:The logic here is that if at the end of turn one you're absolutely buggered for the primary, you can focus on the secondary and try and make some progress that way.
Alternatively, you can be screwed on the primary objective, get random objectives that favor your opponent, and make the final outcome even more one-sided. And then there's the question of why shouldn't the game be an inevitable win if one player manages to gain a decisive advantage on the primary objectives? Tournaments are supposed to be about figuring out which player is best, not ensuring that each player always has a good chance of winning no matter how badly they play.
Yes, you can still get shafted by getting "Claim objective X that enemy army is sitting on" 3 times, but that's just unlucky, much like your flyers not showing up until turn 4, your Land Raider parking on a rock, your deathstar whiffing its charge rolls...
Except there are three big differences here:
1) Most of those things involve a lot more dice. If you've got a flyer-heavy army it isn't just one bad roll keeping your whole army in reserve, it's several failed 3+ rolls per turn. So you can occasionally have the spectacularly bad games, but most of the time it will be a lot more consistent and you'll have the majority of your flyers in by turn 3. Maelstrom missions, on the other hand, involve very few rolls so it's much easier to get a one-sided outcome.
2) Most of those things have lower chances of failure. Flyers come in on a 3+, your LR only has a 1/6 chance of being immobilized, etc. Maelstrom missions have a higher chance of failure, even if you remove the impossible ones, which brings up the chance of getting an extended streak of failure. It isn't just a single unlikely "claim a hopeless objective" outcome, usually about half of the objectives will favor the other player. And if you're trying to catch up because you're behind on the primary objective those odds get even worse.
3) Most of those things have ways to mitigate the random failures. Flyers can benefit from reserve manipulation (a re-rollable 2+ to get them, if you really want your reserves asap), Land Raiders can choose to take the longer route around terrain instead of risking the 1/6 roll, etc. With maelstrom missions there just isn't much you can do about a bad draw. Usually all you can do is accept that you got screwed, discard the objective, and hope that the next one is better.
it's a game of dice, and people taking it all super-seriously has always amused me somewhat.
You do realize that we're talking about tournaments, right?
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:
Yes, the actual object used to determine a random result is irrelevant, but the principle is different. When you're rolling dice to determine the outcome of an action you usually get a nice predictable bell curve, and over the full length of your time playing the game correctly making "in situation X do Y" decisions will give you good results. With the maelstrom missions, whether you pick the objectives with dice or cards, you don't get that bell curve at all and it's an entirely different kind of randomness. On turn 1 you randomly roll to see who is winning, then on turn 2 you roll again, etc. At no point can you predict the winner or make intelligent strategic decisions about what happens next, you just have to hope that in the end you've rolled well enough to win the game.
I'm sorry, but you absolutely can. There is no rule against making an educated guess at what cards will be comming up for you and your opponent (unlike blackjack). Then you also have the pre planning of making sure that the warlord can be had if the cards turn up. You know your opponent drew 2 secure objective 1 cards last turn but wasn't able to claim it. Now you know where his attention is, but is it worth it to not claim you own objectives instead of denying him his? These are the essence of tactical decisions, made on the fly, that are entirely dependent on how you built your army and are managing your forces. The idea that the game makes these decisions for you, or that you are out of control of your own army is simply not true.
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Post by: Accolade
Blacksails wrote:Peregrine wrote:
Of course if these issues had been fixed then superheavies would be fine. For example, the 30k rules limit LOW to 25% of your army, which keeps them in the bigger games where they belong. Impose a similar cap (maybe 33% for 40k, since the point limits are usually lower) and fix the few overpowered units and it would be much less of an issue.
I don't know why this wasn't originally implemented. Such a simple elegant fix. Well, besides the detailed balance of each individual super heavy, but a percentage would help sooo much.
Because it goes right in the face of GW's main objective of selling you as much plastic/paper as possible at any and all instances.
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Post by: Peregrine
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:There is no rule against making an educated guess at what cards will be comming up for you and your opponent (unlike blackjack).
There's no rule against it, but that doesn't mean that it's practical to do so. Your predictive ability is much lower than, for example, knowing the average result of a whole tactical squad shooting bolters at BS 4. You can carefully keep track of which objectives have rolled already and can't be re-rolled, but that knowledge is overwhelmed by the sheer randomness of the rest of the table.
Also, the reason counting cards works in blackjack is that the house has such a tiny advantage in the un-counted game that even a small shift in favor of the card counter can make it a profitable game. And even then you don't win by predicting a single outcome, you win by playing for a really long time and accumulating small advantages to offset your inevitable losses. That's not how it works in 40k. Nor is it illegal in blackjack, the casino just won't let you keep playing blackjack unless you're losing money and giving them profit.
Now you know where his attention is, but is it worth it to not claim you own objectives instead of denying him his?
No, because scoring your own easy VP is more important than potentially denying your opponent's. If they didn't claim their objectives immediately last turn it's because they got a bad roll/draw, so you put up token resistance while securing your own VP. That's how you win malestrom missions, you use MSU jetbikes and similar fast scoring units to complete your own objectives and draw new ones as fast as possible.
And I'd like to point out that this decision exists in normal missions, and the only difference is that you don't have a random die roll separating the objectives into "his" and "yours". Objectives are just objectives, and it's entirely up to each player to decide which ones are most important. So maelstrom missions reduce the depth of strategy by replacing player decisions with random dice.
The idea that the game makes these decisions for you, or that you are out of control of your own army is simply not true.
Denying that something is true doesn't make it false. Consider the two scenarios:
Normal mission: there are five objectives, and the game doesn't tell you which ones are most important. All of them score equal VP for the player that controls them, and you just need a 1- VP advantage to win the game. So you have a whole range of strategies available: you can claim any combination of 1+ objectives as long as you deny at least that many to your opponent. There's no difference between claiming one, contesting one, and both players ignoring the other three vs. claiming two, allowing your opponent to claim one, contesting one, and ignoring the final objective. The only thing that makes one objective more important than another is your own desire to claim it and/or your guess that your opponent considers it important.
Maelstrom: there are five objectives, the game tells you which ones are the most important. You can still decide which of that subset to focus on, but the game tells you that you can only score VP by claiming #2 and your opponent can only score VP by claiming #5. You can both ignore the other three objectives because the cards don't allow either of you to benefit from them. You don't have to identify which objective you need to focus on claiming, and you don't have to guess what objective your opponent's plan depends on, the random dice decide those things for you. Until you draw new cards at least, at which point all of your carefully-crafted strategies disappear and you have to obey new priorities.
Maelstrom missions indisputably take away player choices and replace them with random dice.
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Post by: Talizvar
I am sorry but did I hear "strategy" and "40k player" in the same sentence?
The main strategy is to get the most bang for points in list building.
This is then supplemented with optimizing to have as little dice/random influence as possible.
Even then, the true randomness of results can make a mockery of many plans (you can only plan so many contingencies).
It is interesting to try to get away from just kill the other army scenarios.
The mechanics unfortunately seem more random for random sake.
It is sad in a game when strategic decisions are forced into random rolls.
This just seems the OP is to be trying to make it a game that it is not.
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Post by: Byte
LVO rolls random objectives each turn.
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Post by: MarsNZ
Maelstrom is part of the game. You can choose not to play with or against it, but don't pretend that your choice is anything but a house rule
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Post by: Zed
Peregrine wrote: Alternatively, you can be screwed on the primary objective, get random objectives that favor your opponent, and make the final outcome even more one-sided. And then there's the question of why shouldn't the game be an inevitable win if one player manages to gain a decisive advantage on the primary objectives? Tournaments are supposed to be about figuring out which player is best, not ensuring that each player always has a good chance of winning no matter how badly they play.
It is a win if you gain a decisive advantage over the primary objective. You get more points for it than you do for winning the Maelstrom (if you win both it's a stomp, and they happen a lot), so if you split the rewards you come out better off. So the best player usually comes through in the end. As to random objectives, it can happen, but in most games I've played the objectives are balanced enough to not warrant some kind of knee-jerk, coat-hanger abortion on the entire Maelstrom system. I consider the occasional unbalanced loss or win no different to watching your entire army evaporate improbably despite your best efforts, due to his 6's and your 1's.
1) Most of those things involve a lot more dice. If you've got a flyer-heavy army it isn't just one bad roll keeping your whole army in reserve, it's several failed 3+ rolls per turn. So you can occasionally have the spectacularly bad games, but most of the time it will be a lot more consistent and you'll have the majority of your flyers in by turn 3. Maelstrom missions, on the other hand, involve very few rolls so it's much easier to get a one-sided outcome.
2) Most of those things have lower chances of failure. Flyers come in on a 3+, your LR only has a 1/6 chance of being immobilized, etc. Maelstrom missions have a higher chance of failure, even if you remove the impossible ones, which brings up the chance of getting an extended streak of failure. It isn't just a single unlikely "claim a hopeless objective" outcome, usually about half of the objectives will favor the other player. And if you're trying to catch up because you're behind on the primary objective those odds get even worse.
3) Most of those things have ways to mitigate the random failures. Flyers can benefit from reserve manipulation (a re-rollable 2+ to get them, if you really want your reserves asap), Land Raiders can choose to take the longer route around terrain instead of risking the 1/6 roll, etc. With maelstrom missions there just isn't much you can do about a bad draw. Usually all you can do is accept that you got screwed, discard the objective, and hope that the next one is better.
Yes, you could get shafted. So we go back to the old 40k rule that making the appropriate list to maximise your chances (ie, have the option to tick as many cards as you feasibly can). No different to someone bringing a slow as balls army and watching someone head off with the Relic, or having your big ol' deathstar holding one objective while 5-man tac squads hold 3 while pointing and laughing.
In any case, struggling to catch up on a secondary because you've been hurt on a primary (assuming something important got killed or board control was yielded) would only support having the best player win, wouldn't it? Also, a good player would be able to think about Eternal and Maelstrom simultaneously, you'd think.
Maelstrom produces its own arms race, same as Eternal War. Putting them both together has produced a large variety of curious and interesting lists, depending on how you weighted the missions, and has improved the generalship of the players locally as it requires a lot more thinking.
You do realize that we're talking about tournaments, right?
As I stated, it's a personal axe I grind and I considered it beside the point. However, I've always viewed a wargaming tournament as an excuse to play some games, drink some beer, catch up with friends who have traveled in for them and have a good time. And frankly, if you're looking for a balanced, sensible system to make a serious, perfect tournament where someone gets to be the very best at playing with wardollies, 40k is the wrong game.
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Post by: Peregrine
MarsNZ wrote:Maelstrom is part of the game. You can choose not to play with or against it, but don't pretend that your choice is anything but a house rule
Maelstrom missions are only some of the missions, not a core rule. Automatically Appended Next Post: Zed wrote:As I stated, it's a personal axe I grind and I considered it beside the point. However, I've always viewed a wargaming tournament as an excuse to play some games, drink some beer, catch up with friends who have traveled in for them and have a good time. And frankly, if you're looking for a balanced, sensible system to make a serious, perfect tournament where someone gets to be the very best at playing with wardollies, 40k is the wrong game.
And this invalidates everything you have to say on the subject of competitive tournament mission design. You aren't looking for a competitive game, you just want to screw around for a few hours and have some guaranteed opponents for a weekend. Maelstrom might be fine for that (I think it sucks just as much in that context, but I guess that's a preference thing) but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea in competitive games.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:There is no rule against making an educated guess at what cards will be comming up for you and your opponent (unlike blackjack).
There's no rule against it, but that doesn't mean that it's practical to do so. Your predictive ability is much lower than, for example, knowing the average result of a whole tactical squad shooting bolters at BS 4. You can carefully keep track of which objectives have rolled already and can't be re-rolled, but that knowledge is overwhelmed by the sheer randomness of the rest of the table.
Also, the reason counting cards works in blackjack is that the house has such a tiny advantage in the un-counted game that even a small shift in favor of the card counter can make it a profitable game. And even then you don't win by predicting a single outcome, you win by playing for a really long time and accumulating small advantages to offset your inevitable losses. That's not how it works in 40k. Nor is it illegal in blackjack, the casino just won't let you keep playing blackjack unless you're losing money and giving them profit.
Now you know where his attention is, but is it worth it to not claim you own objectives instead of denying him his?
No, because scoring your own easy VP is more important than potentially denying your opponent's. If they didn't claim their objectives immediately last turn it's because they got a bad roll/draw, so you put up token resistance while securing your own VP. That's how you win malestrom missions, you use MSU jetbikes and similar fast scoring units to complete your own objectives and draw new ones as fast as possible.
And I'd like to point out that this decision exists in normal missions, and the only difference is that you don't have a random die roll separating the objectives into "his" and "yours". Objectives are just objectives, and it's entirely up to each player to decide which ones are most important. So maelstrom missions reduce the depth of strategy by replacing player decisions with random dice.
The idea that the game makes these decisions for you, or that you are out of control of your own army is simply not true.
Denying that something is true doesn't make it false. Consider the two scenarios:
Normal mission: there are five objectives, and the game doesn't tell you which ones are most important. All of them score equal VP for the player that controls them, and you just need a 1- VP advantage to win the game. So you have a whole range of strategies available: you can claim any combination of 1+ objectives as long as you deny at least that many to your opponent. There's no difference between claiming one, contesting one, and both players ignoring the other three vs. claiming two, allowing your opponent to claim one, contesting one, and ignoring the final objective. The only thing that makes one objective more important than another is your own desire to claim it and/or your guess that your opponent considers it important.
Maelstrom: there are five objectives, the game tells you which ones are the most important. You can still decide which of that subset to focus on, but the game tells you that you can only score VP by claiming #2 and your opponent can only score VP by claiming #5. You can both ignore the other three objectives because the cards don't allow either of you to benefit from them. You don't have to identify which objective you need to focus on claiming, and you don't have to guess what objective your opponent's plan depends on, the random dice decide those things for you. Until you draw new cards at least, at which point all of your carefully-crafted strategies disappear and you have to obey new priorities.
Maelstrom missions indisputably take away player choices and replace them with random dice.
Their are no guaranteed easy points, only ones where the reward is greater than the risk. In the maelstrom mission you described, ignoring the other three because you only drew #2 is out and out wrong. You will attempt to claim the others, they have just as much chance of appearing in the next round. You have to be able to focus on short term gains in addition to a long term strategy in order to play maelstrom effectively. Where the eternal war missions you are simply killing the opponent for a few rounds then claiming objectives. The age of jetbike zipping around claiming objectives is a thing of the past, if they die the round after, you cannot use their mobility to do it again. And how hard is it to kill a 3 man tactical squad. Eternal war missions were far to easy to win in the list building phase because you either alpha strike and coast on that victory, or held back and jumped onto objectives at the end.
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Post by: Peregrine
No you don't, unless they just happen to be conveniently available when you're already there to kill something or contest an objective. When you draw a new card you have a ~1/6 chance of it being the objective you just moved to claim, which means you have a 5/6 chance of spreading out your force unnecessarily and putting you out of position to claim the objective you actually got. The better strategy is to claim only the objectives you roll and keep a reserve in a central location to sprint out and grab whatever you roll next turn.
And, again, think about what you're saying: you attempt to claim the other objectives because they have a chance of being relevant. In normal missions you attempt to claim those objectives because they are relevant, you don't need to see what the dice say. Maelstrom missions replace player decisions and strategy with random dice.
The age of jetbike zipping around claiming objectives is a thing of the past, if they die the round after, you cannot use their mobility to do it again.
So? They already scored the VP and gave me a new card to score next turn. The best your expensive slow unit can do is finally crawl its way over to an objective and score the same VP, after a turn or three of having that objective card sitting unclaimed in your pile. You don't get any bonus for absolutely locking down an objective instead of just briefly touching it with a single model, so why pay extra points for something that doesn't score extra VP? The real reason MSU jetbikes disappeared is that you might as well spam Wave Serpents for your fast objective claimers and get a durable gun platform as a bonus. Take away that one broken unit and I suspect you'd see a lot more MSU jetbikes.
Eternal war missions were far to easy to win in the list building phase because you either alpha strike and coast on that victory, or held back and jumped onto objectives at the end.
And maelstrom missions aren't? A perfectly-designed maelstrom list is going to beat a less-optimized list in a maelstrom mission. List building doesn't become any less important, the random objectives just change what the dominant list is. And I don't see how trading one netlist for another is such a major improvement that it justifies adding a new mechanic that replaces player decisions and strategy with even more random tables to roll on.
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Post by: Zed
Peregrine wrote:
Zed wrote:As I stated, it's a personal axe I grind and I considered it beside the point. However, I've always viewed a wargaming tournament as an excuse to play some games, drink some beer, catch up with friends who have traveled in for them and have a good time. And frankly, if you're looking for a balanced, sensible system to make a serious, perfect tournament where someone gets to be the very best at playing with wardollies, 40k is the wrong game.
And this invalidates everything you have to say on the subject of competitive tournament mission design. You aren't looking for a competitive game, you just want to screw around for a few hours and have some guaranteed opponents for a weekend. Maelstrom might be fine for that (I think it sucks just as much in that context, but I guess that's a preference thing) but that doesn't mean that it's a good idea in competitive games.
No it doesn't . I've been to competitive tournaments that had well-written missions (like the blends I've mentioned), and I've been to "competitive" tournaments that had appallingly written and gimmicky missions that were wildly unbalanced one way or the other. And despite my ignorance and apparent naivete  , I was able to tell the difference. Both types featured my friends, beer, a good time and 40k play too, as well as me trying to place as highly as possible with what has proven to be a solid Chaos list. They also featured Maelstrom.
I'm struggling to see the difference between these "Spawn-of-the-Devil-What-Are-You-Even-Doing-Using-It-Maelstrom" Tournaments and "Normal" Tournaments, given that:
- Missions are put out for players to see before list writing.
- Players are therefore aware that Maelstrom is a part of it (not all of it, not even half of it, but a part of it), and can plan accordingly, being aware of how the game mode works. Just like they would if it was "Scouring-Relic-Big Guns-Emperor's Will" This means that they will bring board control lists if they have any sense.
- Players bring an army that they believe will allow them to handle the missions.
- Players compete with one another across a series of games, with the most points at the end winning overall (factoring in sports and painting).
- Players also drink beer, catch up with one another and have a good time (while playing their game competitively).
You can harp on about how wildly unbalanced you believe Maelstrom is. But I refuse to accept that someone is going to win a tournament structured solely in this manner due to a "brokenly random" mission type, especially when they can mitigate the potential damage in the list building phase and they're rolling dice to determine what happens anyway.
I feel for any miserable people who can't have a laugh while playing a competitive game. You see it in sport, in esport, in board games, in damn near everything.
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Post by: koooaei
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:So, I've been ruminating on the latest tournaments and something occurred to me. Tournament players, in general, don't realise who their opponent is! The game of 40k, with the addition of maelstrom objectives is no longer you versus an opponent, it is now you and your opponent trying to beat the game itself. When you look at the game in that respect, you then begin to understand why adamantium lance and wave serpent spam have been losing ground in the competitive scene. Those lists(as well as most deathstars/ superheavies) are designed to defeat other armies. That isn't how the game plays anymore. With the best army lists involving synergy, and a breadth of units that add tactical adaptability to the army winning out over pure damage output.
So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?
7- th with everything scoring and maelstorm missions is a completely different beast. For example, i've had games won with assaulty armies without even engaging in close combat. Board controle is very important now. This alone has made assault armies and tactical marines with obsec viable. I think it's a good thing.
I generally find people who are still locked in the old 'kill everything' mindset loose more often than win. And they hate maelstorm. Just my observation. They're playing a different game and thus have to fight an uphill battle cause raw firepower doesn't meen everything no more imo.
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Post by: Peregrine
Zed wrote:I'm struggling to see the difference between these "Spawn-of-the-Devil-What-Are-You-Even-Doing-Using-It-Maelstrom" Tournaments and "Normal" Tournaments, given that:
The difference is that maelstrom missions are much more random than normal missions. Knowing in advance that the missions will be badly designed and preparing an army that can exploit the flaws doesn't excuse bad design, nor does the fact that you can drink beer while playing the badly designed missions.
But I refuse to accept that someone is going to win a tournament structured solely in this manner due to a "brokenly random" mission type, especially when they can mitigate the potential damage in the list building phase and they're rolling dice to determine what happens anyway.
Solely? No, but it does make a difference. The overall winner of the tournament might have earned a place in the top game at the end, but if they win that final game over a superior player because the maelstrom dice favored them then the tournament missions didn't do their job properly.
I feel for any miserable people who can't have a laugh while playing a competitive game. You see it in sport, in esport, in board games, in damn near everything.
Since when does "these missions suck" mean "I can't have fun while playing competitively"?
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Post by: Runic
Peregrine wrote:Sorry, did you just mention "maelstrom missions" and "tournaments" in the same sentence?
I guess this guy hasn't been to too many tournaments lately or even followed them.
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Post by: KiloFiX
Regardless of preferences or "right vs wrong":
LVO already incorporated Secondary Maelstrom'ish Objectives and Adepticon has also has Modified Maelstrom'ish Objectives (removing the D3 ones).
So OP's statement about Tournaments having to be strategized and played slightly differently stands.
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Post by: Byte
 KiloFiX wrote:Regardless of preferences or "right vs wrong":
LVO already incorporated Secondary Maelstrom'ish Objectives and Adepticon has also has Modified Maelstrom'ish Objectives (removing the D3 ones).
So OP's statement about Tournaments having to be strategized and played slightly differently stands.
Agreed.
This has turned into a "my opinion is better than yours" thread. Heck my local FLGS puts on Maelstrom events. Guess they suck.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:
No you don't, unless they just happen to be conveniently available when you're already there to kill something or contest an objective. When you draw a new card you have a ~1/6 chance of it being the objective you just moved to claim, which means you have a 5/6 chance of spreading out your force unnecessarily and putting you out of position to claim the objective you actually got. The better strategy is to claim only the objectives you roll and keep a reserve in a central location to sprint out and grab whatever you roll next turn.
And, again, think about what you're saying: you attempt to claim the other objectives because they have a chance of being relevant. In normal missions you attempt to claim those objectives because they are relevant, you don't need to see what the dice say. Maelstrom missions replace player decisions and strategy with random dice.
The age of jetbike zipping around claiming objectives is a thing of the past, if they die the round after, you cannot use their mobility to do it again.
So? They already scored the VP and gave me a new card to score next turn. The best your expensive slow unit can do is finally crawl its way over to an objective and score the same VP, after a turn or three of having that objective card sitting unclaimed in your pile. You don't get any bonus for absolutely locking down an objective instead of just briefly touching it with a single model, so why pay extra points for something that doesn't score extra VP? The real reason MSU jetbikes disappeared is that you might as well spam Wave Serpents for your fast objective claimers and get a durable gun platform as a bonus. Take away that one broken unit and I suspect you'd see a lot more MSU jetbikes.
Eternal war missions were far to easy to win in the list building phase because you either alpha strike and coast on that victory, or held back and jumped onto objectives at the end.
And maelstrom missions aren't? A perfectly-designed maelstrom list is going to beat a less-optimized list in a maelstrom mission. List building doesn't become any less important, the random objectives just change what the dominant list is. And I don't see how trading one netlist for another is such a major improvement that it justifies adding a new mechanic that replaces player decisions and strategy with even more random tables to roll on.
Actually, yes you do. Don't forget that there are cards that award points for claiming multiple objectives, and your token defense will be crushed if he needs double your number held and gets #1 twice. If you aren't playing that way, your opponent will crush you on points do to a (wait for it) poor strategy on your part. You can, and should be playing a tactical battle with maelstrom missions. I don't understand how you can think you don't.
If those bikes or wave serpents need to move up and claim objectives in round two and three, your opponent actually has a chance to kick them inn the teeth. Armies relying on these crutch units are losing to armies with an actual strategy built into them. That has EVERYTHING to do with the maelstrom style missions.
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Post by: Talizvar
Maelstrom is just a mechanic that adds another level of uncertainty for objectives.
I am sure you can claim it is not predictable = not boring.
Typically you know, when playing a war-game it has some semblance of reflecting warfare: "So today the general cannot quite figure out what he wants, so scout around the field of battle and report if you find something interesting!"
Ah! the enemy has something, we do not know what it is but we want it!...
It does fit in well with leaders not knowing what they are skilled at until the day of battle or the fickle / random warp gifting something to the psychers...
It certainly IS never boring.
It makes strategy and planning so much more interesting with all these random elements.
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Post by: CalgarsPimpHand
Seems like while there's debate over opinions on Maelstrom missions (my input: they suck), everyone is in agreement on OP's thesis: Maelstrom or Maelstrom-ish missions at tournaments do necessitate a different strategic mindset. However it sounds like tournament players already know this, since the new missions didn't eliminate net lists, they just changed their composition.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 Talizvar wrote:Maelstrom is just a mechanic that adds another level of uncertainty for objectives.
I am sure you can claim it is not predictable = not boring.
Typically you know, when playing a war-game it has some semblance of reflecting warfare: "So today the general cannot quite figure out what he wants, so scout around the field of battle and report if you find something interesting!"
Ah! the enemy has something, we do not know what it is but we want it!...
It does fit in well with leaders not knowing what they are skilled at until the day of battle or the fickle / random warp gifting something to the psychers...
It certainly IS never boring.
It makes strategy and planning so much more interesting with all these random elements.
Warlord traits = the general deciding on the fly what the best tool for the job is, he can be wrong.
Psycker powers= what gifts the psycker has always manifested. The primaris power is there so you can have a semblance of knowledge about what they are doing. (Both of these are going to be permanent stats on the models after the first game in an upcoming campaign I have planned)
The random objectives do fit with how war is made in the real world, just the game takes place over a shorter period of time. My old supervisor was a Sargent in the army in Vietnam. He had to take and leave one specific hill on 3 separate occasions during the course of a few months, for no reason other than they wanted the war to be shifting on a regular basis. When we place objectives, we try to put them in places of strategic importance within the story of the game, not the mechanics of it. If there is an objective out in the open, it was obviously placed there as a lure to bring me out. Objectives that are on upper levels of ruins are good vantage points to determine what the enemy is doing. That is a dangerous mission, and the team getting there needs to either be able to hold it against all odds, or leave it as soon as possible when they have finished reporting g on what they can see.
Making the objectives more than just a marker on the table will give you the reason why you may need to get there and get out in a hurry.
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Post by: ImAGeek
While random elements may make sense from a background standpoint (I'm not sure I agree with that but just playing along) it doesn't make for a good game. Fluff doesn't always equate to gameplay, for good reasons. Random charts are not a good thing in a game. It's a cop out for lack of balance, most of the time.
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Post by: Lobokai
Lol, yeah, Adepticon, LVO, BAO, a good chunk of the ITC, what stupid major GTs and such those are
A few thoughts:
To the OP: I think we are all already there. I build my lists with playing the missions and the objectives in mind, I'm sure to keep at least 3 units near the back field. To everyone bashing Malestorm, why do you think so many of the big tournys are using Malestrom or modified versions of it?
I'm going to put it forward that players like it/want it/ask for it... otherwise it wouldn't be there. If impossible objectives are tossed when drawn (kill my pyskers, I have none) the TOs are fairly balanced and make a ton of fun. It makes the game matter as it goes, instead of late game, last turn, objective grabs (cause that was so more tactical than Malestrom... or wasn't).
As far as superheavies... not many tournaments just let them in carte blanche. ITC format (which many RTTs use) has a list. Only the Lynx might be undercosted there, and even then at the LVO only one made top 8.
I really see the anti-tactical objective, anti- FW, anti- SH crowd as a dying generation of gamers that either are dug in or simply unwilling to evolve their play-style to a new format. I feel like I have much more control over my game's outcome with Malestorm than everything waiting until the last turn and then only very few lists and codicies excel. For once I can accrue meaningful, game winning points, each and every turn... not just Warlord, Firstblood and then only the last turn (which is a random element too) matters.
Why is everything riding on a clock and a single dice roll to see which turn is last so more strategic, tactical, and balanced than controllable, incremental, scoring throughout the game that allows both killpoint and objective control lists to excel?
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Post by: Blacksails
 Lobukia wrote:To everyone bashing Malestorm, why do you think so many of the big tournys are using Malestrom or modified versions of it?
The key part is modified. When its modified sufficiently, it is functional, but still lacking in balance/player interaction. That, and as you mention, some players may like it.
If impossible objectives are tossed when drawn (kill my pyskers, I have none) the TOs are fairly balanced and make a ton of fun. It makes the game matter as it goes, instead of late game, last turn, objective grabs (cause that was so more tactical than Malestrom... or wasn't).
Don't forget making random VPs a set number. However, neither of those changes puts control in the player's hands. Its still a random objective of varying difficulty, with your opponent doing the same. It could very well mean a game is decided on the ease of completing the cards drawn.
I really see the anti-tactical objective, anti-FW, anti-SH crowd as a dying generation of gamers that either are dug in or simply unwilling to evolve their play-style to a new format.
They're a dying generation because they're moving on to better designed games.
I feel like I have much more control over my game's outcome with Malestorm than everything waiting until the last turn and then only very few lists and codicies excel. For once I can accrue meaningful, game winning points, each and every turn... not just Warlord, Firstblood and then only the last turn (which is a random element too) matters.
You objectively have less control in Maelstrom than any previous mission types. Yes, random game length is random and promotes last minute objectives, but you have far more control over the game's outcome when you're not drawing a random card to tell you what to complete. There is no possible way you can argue that a random mechanic telling you what you can or can't complete to get VPs somehow puts more control in the player's hands than letting them simply decide for themselves.
If players could simply select the objectives they'd like to go after, I'd buy that Maelstrom was better.
Why is everything riding on a clock and a single dice roll to see which turn is last so more strategic, tactical, and balanced than controllable, incremental, scoring throughout the game that allows both killpoint and objective control lists to excel?
Why is everything riding on a random card draw and random VP rolls to determine a winner seen as more strategic, tactical, and balanced than letting the players develop a plan to achieve victory in the last three turns.
Admittedly, neither of the mission formats are ideal and both could be improved dramatically.
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Post by: Byte
Lobukia wrote:
Lol, yeah, Adepticon, LVO, BAO, a good chunk of the ITC, what stupid major GTs and such those are
A few thoughts:
To the OP: I think we are all already there. I build my lists with playing the missions and the objectives in mind, I'm sure to keep at least 3 units near the back field. To everyone bashing Malestorm, why do you think so many of the big tournys are using Malestrom or modified versions of it?
I'm going to put it forward that players like it/want it/ask for it... otherwise it wouldn't be there. If impossible objectives are tossed when drawn (kill my pyskers, I have none) the TOs are fairly balanced and make a ton of fun. It makes the game matter as it goes, instead of late game, last turn, objective grabs (cause that was so more tactical than Malestrom... or wasn't).
As far as superheavies... not many tournaments just let them in carte blanche. ITC format (which many RTTs use) has a list. Only the Lynx might be undercosted there, and even then at the LVO only one made top 8.
I really see the anti-tactical objective, anti- FW, anti- SH crowd as a dying generation of gamers that either are dug in or simply unwilling to evolve their play-style to a new format. I feel like I have much more control over my game's outcome with Malestorm than everything waiting until the last turn and then only very few lists and codicies excel. For once I can accrue meaningful, game winning points, each and every turn... not just Warlord, Firstblood and then only the last turn (which is a random element too) matters.
Why is everything riding on a clock and a single dice roll to see which turn is last so more strategic, tactical, and balanced than controllable, incremental, scoring throughout the game that allows both killpoint and objective control lists to excel?
Exalted. You good Sir have a very sound and sensible approach. Bravo.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
^what that guy said. Those random cards and dice rolls have an exactly equal chance to happen to either player. Why is it hard to grasp that the better player is the one who, with forethought and planning, controls the flow of the game, and gaining advantage by holding enough objectives that the draw should land in their favor more often than not. No one is winning these major tournaments by just rushing out and claiming objectives on the fly, NO ONE. That is the nail in the coffin for that theory, it has been proven categorically wrong.
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Post by: Talizvar
<big edit... error...error...> Blacksails wrote: Lobukia wrote:To everyone bashing Malestorm, why do you think so many of the big tournys are using Malestrom or modified versions of it?
The key part is modified. When its modified sufficiently, it is functional, but still lacking in balance/player interaction. That, and as you mention, some players may like it.
If impossible objectives are tossed when drawn (kill my pyskers, I have none) the TOs are fairly balanced and make a ton of fun. It makes the game matter as it goes, instead of late game, last turn, objective grabs (cause that was so more tactical than Malestrom... or wasn't).
Don't forget making random VPs a set number. However, neither of those changes puts control in the player's hands. Its still a random objective of varying difficulty, with your opponent doing the same. It could very well mean a game is decided on the ease of completing the cards drawn. I really see the anti-tactical objective, anti-FW, anti-SH crowd as a dying generation of gamers that either are dug in or simply unwilling to evolve their play-style to a new format.
They're a dying generation because they're moving on to better designed games.
I feel like I have much more control over my game's outcome with Malestorm than everything waiting until the last turn and then only very few lists and codicies excel. For once I can accrue meaningful, game winning points, each and every turn... not just Warlord, Firstblood and then only the last turn (which is a random element too) matters.
You objectively have less control in Maelstrom than any previous mission types. Yes, random game length is random and promotes last minute objectives, but you have far more control over the game's outcome when you're not drawing a random card to tell you what to complete. There is no possible way you can argue that a random mechanic telling you what you can or can't complete to get VPs somehow puts more control in the player's hands than letting them simply decide for themselves.
If players could simply select the objectives they'd like to go after, I'd buy that Maelstrom was better.
Why is everything riding on a clock and a single dice roll to see which turn is last so more strategic, tactical, and balanced than controllable, incremental, scoring throughout the game that allows both killpoint and objective control lists to excel?
Why is everything riding on a random card draw and random VP rolls to determine a winner seen as more strategic, tactical, and balanced than letting the players develop a plan to achieve victory in the last three turns.
Admittedly, neither of the mission formats are ideal and both could be improved dramatically.
All points agreed.
Going to get my "Scum and Villainy" Wave 6 stuff for X-wing tonight.
Typically GW would have been getting this money, not so much lately.
I like to play, it just happens some games involve dice rolling, not being the main action and mechanic like 40k.
What is confused with fun or "control" is both players are equally in the dark of what will happen to them next = drama.
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Post by: Jancoran
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:So, I've been ruminating on the latest tournaments and something occurred to me. Tournament players, in general, don't realise who their opponent is! The game of 40k, with the addition of maelstrom objectives is no longer you versus an opponent, it is now you and your opponent trying to beat the game itself. When you look at the game in that respect, you then begin to understand why adamantium lance and wave serpent spam have been losing ground in the competitive scene. Those lists(as well as most deathstars/ superheavies) are designed to defeat other armies. That isn't how the game plays anymore. With the best army lists involving synergy, and a breadth of units that add tactical adaptability to the army winning out over pure damage output.
So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?
Well nothing is 100% ALL this or all that.
I think it's fair to say that when I play I am doing three things at the start of the game and fast:
1. Evaluate terrain right away. You need to see in your mind the approach pattern for your units. Nothing is more important than figuring this out and watching the bottlenecks (for or against you) for opportunities.
2. I'm evaluating the objectives and determining on WHICH turn I really need to worry about them. I'll give you a hint though: Rarely is my conclusion before turn three and it shows in my deployment style. Both number one and two have nothing to do with the enemy army per se.
3. I'm thinking about what I know of this general and/or his list. Clearly the answer can be "nothing". But Generals and/or their lists can pretty quickly reveal to you how THEY are viewing number 1 and 2 above and THAT is valuable information in the extreme.
During the game itself, you are adjusting to "good" and "bad" events, things that go as planned and those for whom the laughing Gods live. But it's got to be all about the objectives from the time the first dice roll. Eye on the prize. I think you are definitely onto something when you say that the mission is the enemy.
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Post by: Blacksails
Yes, but in the context of a single game, those odds don't average out, thus each player can still draw wildly different objectives of varying difficulties. The equal chance argument would only hold if you played sufficient matches with the same army and players so that everything averaged out.
Besides, do you not agree that removing the random aspect is universally better? Why accept mediocrity?
Why is it hard to grasp that the better player is the one who, with forethought and planning, controls the flow of the game, and gaining advantage by holding enough objectives that the draw should land in their favor more often than not. No one is winning these major tournaments by just rushing out and claiming objectives on the fly, NO ONE. That is the nail in the coffin for that theory, it has been proven categorically wrong.
The better player will win regardless of the game type. Maelstrom, however, adds an unnecessary layer of random that reduces player skill/decision making into the outcome of the game. In other words, Maelstrom is less useful of a metric for determining who the better player is than a mission type that isn't random.
As an example, imagine if you will a mission type where you earned VPs every turn if you controlled an objective. Each objective would have a different value, and off the top of my head, I'd assign higher points values to harder objectives. That would mean I'd make objectives in my deployment zone worth 1 VP/turn, objectives in the middle worth 3VP, and objectives in the enemy deployment zone worth 4VP. Now you have incentive to move and/or bring mobile elements, while also allowing for more static forces to move into the middle and hold that ground. It removes random nonsense and allows players to develop their own plan with regards to their opponent. That way they're playing with the mission against their opponent.
Obviously that was quick and could use tweaking, but the idea is there.
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Post by: Peregrine
Blacksails wrote:As an example, imagine if you will a mission type where you earned VPs every turn if you controlled an objective. Each objective would have a different value, and off the top of my head, I'd assign higher points values to harder objectives. That would mean I'd make objectives in my deployment zone worth 1 VP/turn, objectives in the middle worth 3VP, and objectives in the enemy deployment zone worth 4VP. Now you have incentive to move and/or bring mobile elements, while also allowing for more static forces to move into the middle and hold that ground. It removes random nonsense and allows players to develop their own plan with regards to their opponent. That way they're playing with the mission against their opponent.
Exactly. If you believe that normal missions are just "kill everything until the last turn and then think about the objectives" (you're wrong, but let's assume it for the sake of argument) then it's very easy to make a system that has scoring every turn without all the stupid randomness of maelstrom missions.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
That game would play out exactly like emporer's will, the majority of the game s would end in a draw because the only tactical option is stop him, and get where he is. Everything meets in the middle, and you start seeing people use lists that don't win based off of objectives, they become the leafblowers of old.
Maelstrom FORCES players to move around the table, or try to control most of it, in order to be effective. That requires a definitive plan, which is tactical thinking. Honestly, I am shocked to see how people actively try to deny that is the case.
I keep being told that maelstrom isn't strategic, and isn't balanced, and isn't a viable way to determine player skill. But all the tournaments that are implementing those style missions are being decided by VASTLY different armies. That means that balance has to be there, otherwise, all the top lists would look similar to each other due to everyone knowing what the missions look like and exploiting the same loopholes/ weaknesses. Maelstrom style additions/missions are good for competitive play.
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Post by: Peregrine
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:That game would play out exactly like emporer's will, the majority of the game s would end in a draw because the only tactical option is stop him, and get where he is.
Err, lol? Emperor's will is a draw because there are only two objectives, and it's easy for each player to camp their entire army on one objective and guarantee no worse than a draw unless they're tabled. That's not the case if you have objectives spread out all over the table. Camping excessively on a single objective leaves the rest of the table open to your opponent, and guarantees a loss.
Everything meets in the middle, and you start seeing people use lists that don't win based off of objectives, they become the leafblowers of old.
Only if you have stupid players with no imagination. In reality the mission would reward fast units, outflanking, etc, to get to those high- VP objectives in your opponent's deployment zone. And no, it wouldn't reward leafblowers because the leafblower archetype depends on being able to camp in its own deployment zone for most of the game and focus on killing stuff. That's suicide in a game where failing to move out and at least contest the center objectives means handing your opponent a major scoring advantage and making it almost impossible to come back even if you can kill most of their army.
Maelstrom FORCES players to move around the table, or try to control most of it, in order to be effective.
So does every other mission type with multiple objectives scattered around the table. The only difference is that non-maelstrom missions allow the players to evaluate which objectives are important, while maelstrom missions replace those decisions with random dice.
That means that balance has to be there, otherwise, all the top lists would look similar to each other due to everyone knowing what the missions look like and exploiting the same loopholes/ weaknesses.
Alternatively, it means that GW is publishing new stuff so quickly that players don't have time to figure out what the perfect list is before a new release changes the metagame and negates all of their planning. And given the poor state of balance in general in 40k I think it's a lot more likely that the list diversity is a sign of an underdeveloped metagame instead of maelstrom missions magically overcoming all of the major balance issues and creating a fair metagame for each army archetype.
Maelstrom style additions/missions are good for competitive play.
No, they're awful for competitive play and any tournament that uses them is a joke. Replacing player decisions and strategy with random dice is the opposite of good competitive mission design.
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Post by: Blacksails
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:That game would play out exactly like emporer's will, the majority of the game s would end in a draw because the only tactical option is stop him, and get where he is. Everything meets in the middle, and you start seeing people use lists that don't win based off of objectives, they become the leafblowers of old.
Which is no different than existing lists that rely on vastly superior firepower to eliminate the enemy. Further, my example would have roughly 5 or 6 objectives.
Maelstrom FORCES players to move around the table, or try to control most of it, in order to be effective.
No it doesn't, because its random. In other words, my opponent and I could draw cards for objectives in our own deployment zone and something simple that doesn't require moving, like shooting down a flyer. Further, trying to control most of the board to cover your bases would result in the exact same scenario as the one you decried not a sentence earlier about my theoretical mission.
That requires a definitive plan, which is tactical thinking. Honestly, I am shocked to see how people actively try to deny that is the case.
No, it requires a reaction. You literally can't go into the game with a plan because you dont' know what your objectives are until you draw your cards, which also happen to change dramatically as the game goes on. My example requires significantly more planning than simple card reactions.
I keep being told that maelstrom isn't strategic, and isn't balanced, and isn't a viable way to determine player skill. But all the tournaments that are implementing those style missions are being decided by VASTLY different armies. That means that balance has to be there, otherwise, all the top lists would look similar to each other due to everyone knowing what the missions look like and exploiting the same loopholes/ weaknesses. Maelstrom style additions/missions are good for competitive play.
You're also ignoring the fundamental balance issues with the armies themselves. Armies like Eldar Wave Serpent will be superior at any mission type assuming player skill is mostly equal. That's not a quality that's mission dependent; those units are just flat out better per point than mmost other options in other books at shooting, taking, and holding ground.
The simple fact is that a mission variant that does not depend on random mechanics is superior to one that does in determining player skill, as one independent of random mechanics is decided purely on player input.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Ok, I am going to stop trying to change peoples minds about normal maelstrom. So, let's work at an idea that adds more player decision to the mix.
Game ends turn 6max, ends on 4+ on turn 5
Every player gets 3 cards at the start of each turn, but cannot discard them.
Objectives are placed per deployment rules.
Now, here's the kicker. Each player, at the beginning of the game, selects 3 of the 6 categories in the deck( they can use faction specific decks as well) those are the only cards in their deck. Now, you have the reactionary approach to changing tactical situations, while still having the player input of overall strategy due to predetermining you overall goals. If a player wants the big risk/ big reward style, then he can choose to include that subset of cards, if you wanna crush your enemy, choose those objectives, wanna hold ground all game with hordes or may, pick the first three sets and hunker down.
All objectives are worth 2 points to whomever holds them at the end. First blood, etc are still in play
What do we think about that, as an option?
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Post by: Peregrine
It still involves random dice as a substitute for player decisions, and is therefore bad design. Why should anything about maelstrom missions be salvaged? Just accept that it's a stupid concept and throw it out entirely.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:
It still involves random dice as a substitute for player decisions, and is therefore bad design. Why should anything about maelstrom missions be salvaged? Just accept that it's a stupid concept and throw it out entirely.
I have no need to throw out anything, I am in the majority on this issue. Tournaments are adding more and more elements of this game design, because people want it. I have never once told you how to play, I have been defending my position on these missions for three pages and all you have done is tell me I am playing wrong. Do not think to tell me what I should do, and do not think you speak for all tournament players either. Your attitude and condescending nature have led me to believe you are simply being rude for the sake of it. If you cannot be an adult about a discussion on little toy soldiers, then please refrain from speaking to me.
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Post by: Jancoran
As a POTENTIAL option among options I think its fine. i wouldnt want it this way every game.
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Post by: Blacksails
You can not with any certainty make this claim. There's plenty of evidence suggesting a large portion of players think Maelstrom is a joke, and another that heavily modifies it, meaning it is not certain there's a majority that are fine with Maelstrom.
I have never once told you how to play, I have been defending my position on these missions for three pages and all you have done is tell me I am playing wrong. Do not think to tell me what I should do, and do not think you speak for all tournament players either. Your attitude and condescending nature have led me to believe you are simply being rude for the sake of it. If you cannot be an adult about a discussion on little toy soldiers, then please refrain from speaking to me.
No one has told you how to play either. You're confusing a discussion about the pros and cons of Maelstrom with people telling you you're a bad person who plays wrong. No one is telling you how to play or that you're playing wrong. You're taking this personal when the discussion is about the rules, which is something entirely different from discussing you and your behaviour. Don't get so defensive.
No is being rude, and everyone is behaving like an adult. If anything, this recent post of yours is the least cosntructive and least polite one in the discussion. Maybe you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what's been said.
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Post by: Jancoran
Maelstrom a joke? Eh... last time i checked, most major tournaments are now adopting some form of it.
I think you overstate yourself in the FACE of much proof.
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Post by: Blacksails
Its common usage in tournaments doesn't make it any less of a joke.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I was indeed told by peregrine to "accept it as a stupid design, and scrap it" that is what set me off, and I apologise. I didn't mean to be rude, but I felt he was insulting my opinion and intelligence, thereby raising my ire. Again, I am sorry for my outburst.
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Post by: Peregrine
 Jancoran wrote:Maelstrom a joke? Eh... last time i checked, most major tournaments are now adopting some form of it.
"Everyone else is doing it" isn't very convincing proof. If most major tournaments are including maelstrom missions then it just means that most major tournaments are not serious competitive events.
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Post by: Blacksails
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I was indeed told by peregrine to "accept it as a stupid design, and scrap it" that is what set me off, and I apologise. I didn't mean to be rude, but I felt he was insulting my opinion and intelligence, thereby raising my ire. Again, I am sorry for my outburst.
It is stupid design. You liking it or not is a seperate thing altogether, as you can still have plenty of fun with sub-par stuff, but Maelstrom is bad game design. I enjoy the Super Mario Bros movie a lot, but it is well and truly a horrible film.
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Post by: Blacksails
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Post by: Jancoran
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I was indeed told by peregrine to "accept it as a stupid design, and scrap it" that is what set me off, and I apologise. I didn't mean to be rude, but I felt he was insulting my opinion and intelligence, thereby raising my ire. Again, I am sorry for my outburst.
I have peregrine on ignore. It solves that problem. havent seen his posts in a couple years probably.
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Post by: jeffersonian000
I'm pretty sure the nay Sayers on this thread have never actually played on a state or national level, so have no real understanding on how an actual tournament mind set works. People that go to the big tournaments and rank well are playing at a very different level than people that only play at their local club events. Big Tourney players build their lists to specific events, built around the event's publish missions (if any), with a focus on reducing randomness via combo'ing abilities with redundant synergies so that the lose of specific units has minimal impact while good choices have great potential. Just look at the winning lists from any recent major tournament, are those lists you would see at your friendly local game store? Not so much.
The shift from cut throat lists based on point efficient codexes of yesterday to cut throat lists based on point efficient codexes of today is still there, as it always has been, because playing to the mission/table/your strength has never changed. What we are seeing now is a shift at the local level to a more national or international outlook of game play. As in, successful 40k players have to be prepared to win versus any opponent on a variable table with variable objectives; those that can master this are top table players, while those that can't, aren't.
Personally, I'm not a fan of Marlstrom. But the more I play it, the better I play it, the more successful I'll be versus an opponent that does not.
SJ
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Post by: Jancoran
 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Personally, I'm not a fan of Marlstrom. But the more I play it, the better I play it, the more successful I'll be versus an opponent get does not.
SJ
Indeed. Liking it is one thing but mastering the list building and such that's required to deal with it is still an essential skill if you wanna' be elite.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I concur, some people tell me otherwise. There is strategy and depth to maelstrom style missions, arguably more so than eternal war missions. As is evident by the conversation. If every player had then option to chose their entire object five every fight, then no one would have to adapt or change strategies. Then you are ENTIRELY reliant on the chosen armies ability to do one thing so well that their tactic cannot be stopped. Then it becomes a 3 army tournament all over again. I am done looking at a report where every list will face an almost exact mirror list at one point or another in national events. Weren't you?
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Post by: Peregrine
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:If every player had then option to chose their entire object five every fight, then no one would have to adapt or change strategies. Then you are ENTIRELY reliant on the chosen armies ability to do one thing so well that their tactic cannot be stopped.
This is just nonsense. If the game has five objectives and my starting plan is "claim #2 and #4, contest at least two of the other three" then I still have to adapt to new circumstances. If my opponent makes a decisive move to take #2 away from me and I lose my scoring units then I have to have a backup plan to get those points from a different objective, or at least be sure to keep my opponent from claiming any objectives so that I can win despite only claiming #4. Similarly, if my opponent leaves #3 unprotected then it's going to greatly improve my chances of winning if I'm flexible enough to adapt my plan and claim #3. The only difference between normal missions and maelstrom missions is that these decisions are all being made by the players instead of the dice. I don't really see how it's an improvement to replace "I see that #3 is vulnerable, maybe I should change my plan and go take it" with "I rolled 'claim #3', now I'll go claim it".
Then it becomes a 3 army tournament all over again. I am done looking at a report where every list will face an almost exact mirror list at one point or another in national events. Weren't you?
What does this have to do with maelstrom missions? Adding randomness doesn't remove netlisting, it just changes which specific list is copied over and over again because it's the best at winning maelstrom missions. If GW slows down the pace of new releases enough for people to finish playtesting and develop new lists before the next release changes everything you will probably see the exact same kind of netlisting in maelstrom events.
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Post by: Blacksails
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:If every player had then option to chose their entire object five every fight, then no one would have to adapt or change strategies.
This statement entirely ignores the other army on the table.
Picking your objectives would allow you to make a decision to win a fight you might otherwise not be able to if the opposing army was a rock to your scissors. It would allow you to either play to your own strengths, or against your opponent's weaknesses.
But really, the proof is in the pudding when many other popular games don't have this problem with missions or game balance, and thus have varied armies that win because player decisions and input win the day, and not luck of the draw or maximizing strong units.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
The game has changed. In tournament play, you now HAVE to worry about maelstrom style fluid objectives for most major events. These are facts. Armies now must rely on different units to achieve their goals, which allows for greater variance in lists. If the meta was simply waiting for people to find the new "netlist" then it would be newer codecies and old power lists at the top of the heap. They are not even close.
What you are seeing is people figuring out that a list that is DIFFERENT than what other people are bringing is what will win. That means that the meta shifts will swing wildly with every tournament. The new meta is tactically well rounded lists with different units performing different functions. Spamming the same unit will only give you so much flexibility. Using death stars and superheavies will not take you to the top table anymore. This change is good. Anyone who doesn't believe so is oblivious to the truth.
Whether you like or dislike maelstrom missions, they have introduced new and interesting challenges that good tabletop generals will work towards, while people reliant on spammy lists and death stars will grumble on about it being "uncompetitive"
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Post by: Peregrine
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:The game has changed. In tournament play, you now HAVE to worry about maelstrom style fluid objectives for most major events. These are facts. Armies now must rely on different units to achieve their goals, which allows for greater variance in lists.
So? Making stupid missions can change how you try to win the game, nobody is disputing this. The issue is that maelstrom missions are a joke in a supposedly "competitive" event.
If the meta was simply waiting for people to find the new "netlist" then it would be newer codecies and old power lists at the top of the heap.
Why? The fact that people are still trying to find the best list doesn't mean that the old lists developed under previous mission rules will be automatic candidates.
What you are seeing is people figuring out that a list that is DIFFERENT than what other people are bringing is what will win. That means that the meta shifts will swing wildly with every tournament.
Alternatively, GW is releasing new stuff so fast that the metagame keeps changing and nobody has time to settle on the perfect list before the rules change and they have to start over. You see this a lot in MTG, soon after a new release you have a really diverse metagame as people make their best attempt to guess at what the best option is as fast as possible. Then over time the metagame converges on a few winners as people test all the speculative list thoroughly and figure out which ones work best. It's just an inevitable consequence of the metagame taking time to develop and identify the best options.
The new meta is tactically well rounded lists with different units performing different functions. Spamming the same unit will only give you so much flexibility. Using death stars and superheavies will not take you to the top table anymore. This change is good. Anyone who doesn't believe so is oblivious to the truth.
What does this have to do with netlisting? A list with a diverse range of units and no spamming can still be a netlist if it's a close copy of similar lists. And I don't understand why a metagame where superheavies and death stars are weak is such a great idea. Shouldn't the ideal be one where those strategies are also viable?
Whether you like or dislike maelstrom missions, they have introduced new and interesting challenges that good tabletop generals will work towards, while people reliant on spammy lists and death stars will grumble on about it being "uncompetitive"
Nice straw man there. It's possible to be opposed to idiotic randomness without being your WAAC spammer stereotype.
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Post by: Zed
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:The game has changed. In tournament play, you now HAVE to worry about maelstrom style fluid objectives for most major events.
Agreed, Maelstrom is a part of 40k now, and long may it shine. It's a good time, unless your army was one of those that parked itself in it's deployment zone until turn 4 and went for a walk once everything was dead.
The problem we're now having is with the definition of "competitive" apparently being incredibly narrow- and in all honestly I think everyone involved here is now in "Bashing head against a brick wall" territory. It has been a spectacularly amusing read though, so I've derived some utility from it at least.
But to answer your initial question again, since it's clear your group enjoys Maelstrom and plays it a lot (much like mine):
Assuming you consider Maelstrom to be competitive (and go to tournaments involving it, even if it makes you some kind of lesser being ), you need fast, fairly resilient units that can cross the board quickly to be wherever is important at the time. Board control is key, and proactive thinking is required to both help you claim points and deny them to your opponent. Examples of armies that do this well are pretty much anything on bikes, Eldar or DE, Drop Pod Marines, Slaaneshi CSM/Daemons, Trukk Orks, some Mech Guard, and probably a lot else.
EDIT: Oh, and Objective Secured is vital, of course. Especially entertaining on Drop Pods.
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Post by: Peregrine
Zed wrote:It's a good time, unless your army was one of those that parked itself in it's deployment zone until turn 4 and went for a walk once everything was dead.
Or unless you like to play a game that emphasizes player decisions and strategy instead of random dice. The primary criticism of maelstrom missions in this thread has nothing to do with "my army isn't as good anymore" and is just as valid no matter what army you enjoy playing.
The problem we're now having is with the definition of "competitive" apparently being incredibly narrow
How exactly is it a narrow definition? Those of us who hate maelstrom missions have already proposed alternative mission types, so don't try to portray this as some kind of "competitive = gunline with turn 5 objective claiming" stereotype.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote: Zed wrote:It's a good time, unless your army was one of those that parked itself in it's deployment zone until turn 4 and went for a walk once everything was dead.
Or unless you like to play a game that emphasizes player decisions and strategy instead of random dice. The primary criticism of maelstrom missions in this thread has nothing to do with "my army isn't as good anymore" and is just as valid no matter what army you enjoy playing.
The problem we're now having is with the definition of "competitive" apparently being incredibly narrow
How exactly is it a narrow definition? Those of us who hate maelstrom missions have already proposed alternative mission types, so don't try to portray this as some kind of "competitive = gunline with turn 5 objective claiming" stereotype.
How you deal with the mission at hand IS a player decision, that is where your thinking has fallen off. You absolutely have to make decisions based on the draw and what units are available at the time in order to succeed. Are some easier than others, yes, but hat doesn't eliminate the fact that decisions and strategy play a very active role in the outcome of maelstrom style missions. Also, I put out a variant mission type for maelstrom, you derided the concept as stupid and told me I should forget the whole thing. Your alternative mission types have only been variants of eternal war missions, which cater to a slower moving, shooty play style, just like the lists that dominated 6th ed. Any game where a viable strategy can include totally ignoring 3/4 of the phases in the game, is going to be a bad one.
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Post by: Inkubas
The way I see it war is random. Maelstrom is random. Ergo Maelstrom fits the game type. This isn't like chess where people start up with the exact same force and it comes to player skill. Some armies are generally better (rule wise) and don't require a lot of skill. Personally, I don't feel that the way 40k is right now is very tournament friendly. Heck, when I see what people buy/bring and the lists that are made, I can't help but think of Darth Vader vs a bunch of Ewoks. Can they win? Sure! Will they? Nope.
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Post by: Peregrine
No, war isn't random. You don't attack random targets because the dice told you to, you attack carefully-planned targets that benefit your overall strategy for the war, or you defend against your enemy making similarly-rational attacks. And you certainly don't have a battle where neither side has any idea why they're here until the shooting starts, and the objectives for both sides change at random every few seconds. Automatically Appended Next Post:
Key point: based on the draw. Yes, you still make decisions in a maelstrom mission, but some of the decisions you get to make in a non-maelstrom mission are replaced by random dice in a maelstrom mission. I really don't see why you think this means that maelstrom missions involve more strategic depth.
Also, I put out a variant mission type for maelstrom, you derided the concept as stupid and told me I should forget the whole thing.
Exactly, because it was a bad idea. Any maelstrom variant that includes the core mechanic of replacing player decisions with random dice is a bad idea. It might be slightly less terrible than RAW maelstrom, but that doesn't mean that anyone should use it.
Your alternative mission types have only been variants of eternal war missions, which cater to a slower moving, shooty play style, just like the lists that dominated 6th ed.
No they don't, and I already explained how those proposed missions force you to move out aggressively and claim objectives as fast as possible. And the dominance of gunlines in 6th had very little to do with the mission types and a lot to do with specific shooting units being overpowered and limited terrain on the average tournament table.
Any game where a viable strategy can include totally ignoring 3/4 of the phases in the game, is going to be a bad one.
Fortunately there are ways to fix that problem that don't include random dice replacing player decisions. We've even explained some of those options for you.
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Post by: KiloFiX
Just something to consider:
What is the difference between your opponent drawing Maelstrom Objectives that are all locations he is already sitting on, and you rolling all 1s for the saving throws of your Unit that otherwise has a 2++?
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Post by: Peregrine
KiloFiX wrote:What is the difference between your opponent drawing Maelstrom Objectives that are all locations he is already sitting on, and you rolling all 1s for the saving throws of your Unit that otherwise has a 2++?
The fact that one is much less likely than the other, and the fact that one is rolling to replace a player decision while one is rolling to resolve the outcome of a player choice.
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Post by: Inkubas
Feels like you are splitting hairs. The game is random. War is random. You can make all sorts of plans only to have some 'act of fate' that just screws with you. Part of war is being dynamic. So, to me, having random objectives makes it feel like war. For example: You have tanks that need to get to a city to assist your troops. A random mudslide causes the roads to be impassible. Tanks can't advance. Now what? That's random. You adapt. Your ability to adapt makes you a good general. Are there scenarios where you can't win? Heck yea!
And if you're going to say that EVERYTHING is planned then I can say that people plan around maelstrom missions. How's that different?
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Post by: koooaei
The point of maelstorm is force you to adapt to changing conditions.
It's not like you must throw away your current battle plan and rush across the board to claim an objective. You just get a bonus point if you're capable of doing it. And it's up to you to decide if splitting force to achieve this additional VP is worth it or you're better off delaying till later or plain discarding an objective.
Don't forget, that concentrating force and killing your opponent will cripple his ability to controle the board => will allow you more freedom. But at the same time, if you get too carried away with killing, you won't accomplish many objectives. If all you needed before was MAX killing power and something to quickly capture a few objectives turn 5, you now have to ballance between killing power and board controle with all it's movement, threat range and area denial tricks. The games are more tactically complex now, imo.
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Post by: Peregrine
 Inkubas wrote:For example: You have tanks that need to get to a city to assist your troops. A random mudslide causes the roads to be impassible. Tanks can't advance. Now what? That's random. You adapt.
Except that's not what happens in maelstrom missions. Remember, a game of 40k represents a few minutes of "real" time at most. So your tanks are approaching the city, and the mudslide wipes out the road. Ok, time to find a different route. Except now 30 seconds later the mudslide disappears and you're ordered to go back down the original road. But wait, another minute has passed, the mudslide is back, and you've just received orders to stay where you are and shoot down enemy aircraft (which may or may not exist). Oops, you were too slow, now forget about the road and your tanks and cast a psychic power. Which one? Who cares, just cast one, the war depends on you! No, forget all of that, go back to the original road. And now the game is over, so I guess let's all go back home and pretend this never happened.
See the problem with this? Your objectives change randomly, without any connection to events that happened earlier in the game, what each side's units are doing, etc. That's not a coherent simulation of the unpredictability of war, it's an army run by a raving lunatic. Automatically Appended Next Post:  koooaei wrote:You just get a bonus point if you're capable of doing it.
It's not just a bonus point, it's the only way to win the game. You either score VP as fast as possible, or you lose the game. If you treat it as just a nice bonus then you'll lose every time against a player who aggressively scores VP and cycles through the cards as fast as possible.
If all you needed before is MAX killing power and something to quickly capture an objective turn 5, now you have to ballance between killing power and board controle with all it's movement, threat range and area denial tricks.
And, again, you don't need idiotic random tables to do this. All you need to do is have objectives scored every turn instead of once at the end of the game. There, now you've accomplished all of the good parts of maelstrom missions without all the  ing stupid parts.
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Post by: koooaei
Peregrine wrote:
koooaei wrote:You just get a bonus point if you're capable of doing it.
It's not just a bonus point, it's the only way to win the game. You either score VP as fast as possible, or you lose the game. If you treat it as just a nice bonus then you'll lose every time against a player who aggressively scores VP and cycles through the cards as fast as possible.
I treat it exactly this way and don't have problems with my footslogging orkses.
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Post by: Inkubas
What? Ok. You're not drawing cards every 5 seconds. Let's play this out. Most missions have first blood, line breaker, and slay the warlord. That's three points right there that I'll either try to obtain or deny.
Turn 1.
I draw the following: obtain objective 1, kill warlord, obtain 4, and destroy a building.
Cool. I see that objective 1 is easy. I'm there. Objective 4, however, is all the way near my opponents massive army and may be hard for me to obtain. So, I ignore it and destroy a building is impossible. I move my units to try to get first blood and score objective 1 for two points. I toss the destroy building objective.
Opponent Turn 1.
He/She/It draws the following: Obtain objective 3, obtain 3, obtain 4, and destroy a unit in assault.
Oh snap. They own four so that's one point already there. They position the units they have to get objective 3 for two more points. Now they have the lead.
Turn 2
I draw the following: Manifest psychic (can't - darn), Kill Warlord, take down flier and I still have the previous objective #4.
So here's where I start to go tactics mode. If I kill the warlord I get two points which gives me the lead. If the warlord is near objective four then I can get 3 points and secure a stronger lead. However, I may over expose myself and leave myself open to a counter attack. I know that I can't let the lead stay but I need to be aggressive. I can't play gun line and sit on the objectives for an easy win. I choose to risk my units and go for a warlord kill. I fail. However, I do gain Objective 4. Now it's tied.
This goes back and forth with the cards changing the entire play style so I'm not just shooting at units from a distance and waiting for turn 4-5 to jet pack to a last minute objective for the win. I need to be dynamic. Ergo (even though random) mission evens the game out a bit.
Now, let's use a real world example with tanks, planes, boats and good ol fashioned troopers.
I have a war to win. I notice that enemy has a high commanding officer in this city I'm trying to conquer. This asset is highly defended. Nearby is another city that has access to fuel that I need for my armor division. There is also a munitions factory nearby. I choose to take out the nearby city to obtain fuel for my armored vision to assault the highly defended enemy commander. During this attack the weather becomes horrid and supplies are cut. My troops are now stuck with no reinforcements in hostile land. The enemy sees this and has the following options: attack the troops stranded to weaken me further and repel the forces there, or attack my rear guard to cut out any lines of retreat. They choose the latter. Now the weather becomes awful and the troops they sent over become stranded. I now have the following options: take the city for fuel, attack the enemy (now surrounded), push for the enemy high command.
This is what I mean. Both scenarios changed on a drop of a hat. In both the advantage (through no fault) can change by chance. A good commander adapts. The only thing that maelstrom does which I don't see in the Eternal war missions is change the game play. Prior to that, I can bring an awesome guard/tau gun line and just sit back. If I had the objectives I wouldn't need to do anything. The opponent would need to come to me and certain armies would be at a very visible advantage.
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Post by: Crimson Devil
Maelstrom turns a mediocre wargame into an expensive game of Whac-a-mole.
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Post by: koooaei
Are you playing against mark of Slaanesh Spawns or something?
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Post by: Peregrine
Inkubas wrote:Now, let's use a real world example with tanks, planes, boats and good ol fashioned troopers.
Except, again:
1) A game of 40k is a few minutes of "real" time at most. There just isn't time for objectives to change 15+ times (three objectives a turn for 5 turns).
2) In your example there's still a chain of cause and effect. No such thing exists in maelstrom games, you get new objectives completely randomly, without any connection at all to previous events or what each side's units are doing.
Prior to that, I can bring an awesome guard/tau gun line and just sit back. If I had the objectives I wouldn't need to do anything.
And, again, this is easy to change without resorting to stupid ideas like maelstrom objectives. You don't need to replace player decisions with random dice to force people to move out of their own deployment zone, and I've already mentioned examples of how to do that.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
It is up to the players to decide the cause and effect, a 40k games isn't a battle being fought, it is a small part of a much larger battle. You need to shoot down a plane, enemy doesn't have one, they do, just not in this vicinity. Your high command would darn well tell you to shoot one down if you see the one that has been eradication your troops in another area. Cast a psiker power, the enemy is doing something to cause warp issues on the planet, draw energy away from that asap! (For the tau/necrons that would simply be a warning, unless they have new converts to the greater good/mind shackled slaves)
The only thing tying his examples to one another is the story behind it. That mudslide didn't disappear engineers got it. But by the time they did, that flyer started threatening the whole platoon, keep the tanks back while it is dealt with. Turns out it veered south, move up! Games workshop gave you a backdrop, then gave you a means to add more chaos and fluidity to the battle at hand. They SHOULD NOT have to give you the exact mission, story, and background for every fight (You have altar of war for that) if you need an objective one turn, and not the next, it was too heavy/dangerous to move, mark it with a beacon and get back until reinforcement can move up. You need it again? The transmitter is malfunctioning, get someone over there to set up a new one? Enemy on the objective you need? Push them out of the area to see what they are protecting.
Why do so many think that the game on table is the only thing happening on the planet. Believe it or not, you CAN forge the narative.
Edit for readability.
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Post by: Blacksails
Believe it or not, you CAN do all of that without the forced mechanic of random cards that change all the time so you have to constantly tweak your own narrative. Instead, let the players create their narrative without forcing them to come up with excuses and justifications.
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Post by: MWHistorian
Mealstrom like real war?
Hold on, I'm laughing.....
Still laughing.
Um...no. Just no. I've been to war. In a battle you're not running around like chickens with their heads cut off changing objectives every minute. It's usually a pretty clear goal you're working for. "Take that house." "Secure that intersection." Etc. The interesting stuff should happen in how you achieve that one goal.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 MWHistorian wrote:Mealstrom like real war?
Hold on, I'm laughing.....
Still laughing.
Um...no. Just no. I've been to war. In a battle you're not running around like chickens with their heads cut off changing objectives every minute. It's usually a pretty clear goal you're working for. "Take that house." "Secure that intersection." Etc. The interesting stuff should happen in how you achieve that one goal.
But, over the course of the war, that house or intersection become irrelevant, then are needed again later. As a game, months of time would take too long, this is a war simulation (sort of) that randomness is exaggerated to add drama and dynamicism to the game. The discussion has turned from "should the tournament crowd be changing strategies to deal with maelstrom style missions" to
"those missions are stupid"
"Nu-uh"
"Yeah huh!"
"NU-UH!"
the differences within the community are an example of how good the game is, we can all have a good time playing totally dissimilar game styles within the exact same core game. Despite the lack of headway the discussion has made, thank you all for taking the time to have it
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Post by: MWHistorian
Exactly, over the course of the war. A long time. Not a small part of a larger battle.
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Post by: Talys
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:Yes, although most only incorporate a maelstrom light approach. The fact of the matter is that lists that don't stand a chance of wiping out their opponent are winning tournaments by simply being flexible enough to win. I think this is going to change how people plan their armies as these list become more common.
The goal of the game is to score enough victory points to win, not to table your opponent. A good list will achieve victory, not kill everything else in 6 hours of dice rolling. Unless that's what you and your opponent define as the purpose of the game
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Post by: greyknight12
Peregrine wrote:Except that's not what happens in maelstrom missions. Remember, a game of 40k represents a few minutes of "real" time at most. So your tanks are approaching the city, and the mudslide wipes out the road. Ok, time to find a different route. Except now 30 seconds later the mudslide disappears and you're ordered to go back down the original road. But wait, another minute has passed, the mudslide is back, and you've just received orders to stay where you are and shoot down enemy aircraft (which may or may not exist). Oops, you were too slow, now forget about the road and your tanks and cast a psychic power. Which one? Who cares, just cast one, the war depends on you! No, forget all of that, go back to the original road. And now the game is over, so I guess let's all go back home and pretend this never happened.
This is awesome, by the way.
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Post by: Inkubas
So, in your eyes Eternal War missions are the only legitimate way for player skill to be a factor, Maelstrom is unrealistic, and skill exists in great enough metrics to make the tournament scene fair and balanced regardless army (as long as we are talking about EWM). Am I correct in this summary? Oh and Maelstrom is too random to be realistic as objectives do not change that fast in real life. Correct?
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Post by: Jancoran
ONLY is overstating this.
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Post by: Peregrine
Inkubas wrote:So, in your eyes Eternal War missions are the only legitimate way for player skill to be a factor
No. There are other potential mission ideas that would be good for competitive play, they just don't include maelstrom-style random objectives.
Oh and Maelstrom is too random to be realistic as objectives do not change that fast in real life.
Exactly. Maelstrom missions are incredibly unfluffy and directly contradict the "forge a narrative" approach to gaming. This would be fine if they were the best possible competitive missions and greatly enhanced competitive tournament games, but they aren't. So we have a mission concept that is poorly suited to competitive games and doesn't even have the redeeming factor of "it's a great story" to make up for it. This leaves us with no reason to use maelstrom missions besides " GW said we could".
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Wow, and here I thought I had given a definite story, revolving around maelstrom objectives, that wasn't farfetched or in any way stretching the imagination. Turns out it was ignored because it invalidated a couple preconceived notions about how to effectively forge a narrative that can change over the course of the game, as opposed to, "here is our goal, don't change tactics or strategies unless the enemy does something crazy" a narrative in any game should not be guaranteed as definitive at the start of every story.
And that seems to be what we are stuck with, ludicrous pre- conceived notions on what is competitive, and what isn't. You will notice that those of us who are proponents of maelstrom have NEVER told anyone else that their ideas of competitive gaming are stupid or invalid. We have been entirely on the receiving end of that. There are a great deal of players who believe the maelstrom style missions are legitimate (including actual tourney players who are also being told they are wrong on other threads) while several others point out that they are not and that they no longer play.
Why should your opinion be a valid one? Why listen to people who claim the game is broken garbage, and then try to claim the way I play is stupid. I wouldn't ask someone who has never had a long term relationship for advice on how to keep a girlfriend. Though, to be fair most people in their situation wouldn't in good taste tell me that my happy marriage was stupid because our relationship works differently than theirs did.
T.L.D.R. stop telling people they are wrong about maelstrom missions being competitive, we feel they are another legitimate source of competition, as is yours. All you are doing is trying to force us to play the way you do, and that is not acceptable.
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Post by: Peregrine
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:Wow, and here I thought I had given a definite story, revolving around maelstrom objectives, that wasn't farfetched or in any way stretching the imagination.
You gave one, but it had nothing to do with 40k. I've said it several times already, but I guess I'll say it again: a 40k game represents a few minutes of "real" time at most. That isn't enough time for the weather to change multiple times, troops to get diverted to different cities and back again, etc. Any story about the fluff of maelstrom objectives needs to account for the fact that the battle happens in less time than it takes to write a post about it.
And that seems to be what we are stuck with, ludicrous pre- conceived notions on what is competitive, and what isn't.
Yes, because competitive games have been around for decades and people have put a lot of work into developing them. The fact that one of GW's stupid ideas is immediately labeled "uncompetitive" doesn't mean that people are closed-minded, it just means that the idea is so obviously bad we can reject it without much debate.
You will notice that those of us who are proponents of maelstrom have NEVER told anyone else that their ideas of competitive gaming are stupid or invalid.
IOW, STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why should your opinion be a valid one? Why listen to people who claim the game is broken garbage, and then try to claim the way I play is stupid. I wouldn't ask someone who has never had a long term relationship for advice on how to keep a girlfriend. Though, to be fair most people in their situation wouldn't in good taste tell me that my happy marriage was stupid because our relationship works differently than theirs did.
IOW, ONLY POSITIVE OPINIONS THAT AGREE WITH ME ARE VALID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
T.L.D.R. stop telling people they are wrong about maelstrom missions being competitive
No. Maelstrom missions aren't competitive. I'm not going to lie to people just to satisfy your obsessive need to be surrounded by positive comments on your ideas.
we feel they are another legitimate source of competition
Too bad. Just like the people who believe that the earth is 6000 years old or that 1+1=5 you are wrong.
All you are doing is trying to force us to play the way you do, and that is not acceptable.
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that criticizing bad ideas was the same as holding a gun to your head and forcing you to stop playing maelstrom games.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
If we feel they are competitive, we are right. You have only stated and opinion, not even a provably the most prevalent one. Yes competitive gaming has been around for ever, but for a large chunk of that, the ONLY objective was to kill the opponents soldiers. You are akin to the players of yesteryear that thought the idea of there being a spot on the ground that is more important than killing the enemy is stupid. You will be brushed aside, just as they were, and be slowly rendered irrelevant. The maelstrom format, and 7th ed in general, are bringing people back to the game. I watch batreps in the morning while feeding my kids, and there is an influx of new blood out there, enjoying the game, against all your wishes.
As an aside, I don't care about you being negative, or disagreeing with my opinion. But you constantly trying to belittle my position due to the lack of factual backing for yours is grating on me. I have been told this is my first time being "Perigrined" and that I should block you as most others have due to being unable to compromise, or admit that others positions have merit. I will not. Discourse should always be had, even if you find your opposition to be unnecessarily antagonistic.
Feel free to keep being snarky, I will not be silenced.
Edited for autocorrect
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Post by: Peregrine
No you aren't. The fact that you label an uncompetitive game "competitive" doesn't mean that your label is automatically correct.
Yes competitive gaming has been around for ever, but for a large chunk of that, the ONLY objective was to kill the opponents soldiers.
You do realize that there are games besides 40k, right? Including games with various objectives and victory conditions? And that even 40k has had objective missions for decades?
You are akin to the players of yesteryear that thought the idea of there being a spot on the ground that is more important than killing the enemy is stupid.
I really fail to see how this is true when maelstrom missions use the same objectives as normal missions, just with a layer of random dice included. Maelstrom objectives aren't some kind of major revolution in how we think about winning battles, they're just another of GW's idiotic "roll more dice to forge a narrative" design.
The maelstrom format, and 7th ed in general, are bringing people back to the game.
Funny how one of the common "why I stopped playing in 7th" complaints is "maelstrom missions suck", along with "I hate all of the extra randomness". Perhaps you're just guilty of confirmation bias and playing with a group of people that share your opinions?
As an aside, I don't care about you being negative, or disagreeing with my opinion.
Then why do you keep complaining about how all the anti-maelstrom side does is criticize maelstrom missions?
But you constantly trying to belittle my position due to the lack of factual backing for yours is grating on me.
I've given you the factual backing: maelstrom missions indisputably take away player decisions and replace them with random dice.
Feel free to keep being snarky, I will not be silenced.
Nobody is trying to silence you, we're just pointing out that your ideas are bad. You're still free to keep posting those bad ideas until you get bored.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
They do not reduce a players decisions, they add an entirely different set of decisions that are needed to compete.
Also, anything where there is a winner and loser can be competitive, all you need to be doing is trying to be better at it than other people. The competitive nature of anything is purely held in the mind of those competing. So we are not wrong. I eat every day, I don't try to out eat my friends, that doesn't mean that people training to eat competitively are wrong in thinking that they are being competitive. You keep saying we are wrong, when in order for that to be the case, we would have to be lying about how we feel about the game.
Your criticism is grating only due to the fact that it is simply an opinion, yet you keep stating it as fact. You say "maelstrom missions reduce player decision, and replace it with a random die roll" that would only be the case if you lost the moment you didn't try to achieve the objective. The act of making that decision, is *gasp* a decision! Those die rolls generate and additional set of decisions that competent players utilize in their overarching battle plan, because they have adapted to the idea that a little random effect is not what loses every game.
Those who are saying why they left 7th ed are indeed saying that, those who are picking it up for the first time in a long time (or ever) are asking what their army is doing or what to buy next. While those of us who haven't left don't feel the need to come and explain why we're still playing, we don't need you to know. I cannot grow bored of a hottly debated topic, I enjoy debate as much as I enjoyed chess, go, MTG, and mageknight, and still enjoy DND, 13th age, and risk 2210. See, I do play other games 
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Post by: Peregrine
No they don't. All of the decisions in maelstrom missions exist in non-maelstrom missions. The difference is that non-maelstrom missions have more player decisions, while maelstrom missions use random dice as a substitute.
Also, anything where there is a winner and loser can be competitive, all you need to be doing is trying to be better at it than other people.
Sigh. Are you seriously going to make this argument?
You keep saying we are wrong, when in order for that to be the case, we would have to be lying about how we feel about the game.
Do you understand the difference between "I play this mission competitively" and "this mission is well designed for competitive play"? The fact that you approach maelstrom missions with a competitive attitude does not in any way contradict the fact that they're poorly designed for competitive games. You can be a serious hardcore competitor about "flip a coin", but that doesn't mean that anyone else should take your competition seriously.
You say "maelstrom missions reduce player decision, and replace it with a random die roll" that would only be the case if you lost the moment you didn't try to achieve the objective.
Err, lol? Do you understand the difference between "replace player decisions with a die roll" and "replace ALL player decisions with a die roll"?
Those die rolls generate and additional set of decisions that competent players utilize in their overarching battle plan, because they have adapted to the idea that a little random effect is not what loses every game.
Except they don't generate additional decisions because all of those "which objective should I go after" decisions exist in non-maelstrom missions. The only difference is that in non-maelstrom missions each player is in full control of the decisions about which objectives they want to attack, while in maelstrom missions that decision is heavily influenced by a random die roll assigning different values to each objective.
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Post by: Talizvar
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:They do not reduce a players decisions, they add an entirely different set of decisions that are needed to compete.Also, anything where there is a winner and loser can be competitive, all you need to be doing is trying to be better at it than other people. The competitive nature of anything is purely held in the mind of those competing. So we are not wrong. I eat every day, I don't try to out eat my friends, that doesn't mean that people training to eat competitively are wrong in thinking that they are being competitive. You keep saying we are wrong, when in order for that to be the case, we would have to be lying about how we feel about the game.
The trick is typically someone experienced and has a plan would beat someone else fairly consistently when it's is more decision based than some chance mechanic.
Games add a chance element to allow for some uncertainty.
Could you determine when things left to chance have gone too far and meaningful choices have been taken from the player?
A simple flow chart of logical objective outcomes could create a much more cohesive narrative and still have unknown elements.
I am under no obligation to make GW games better on my spare time by working on it or writing the story for competitive play.
I will fire up my X-wing, Battletech, Bridge Commander or freaking Risk before I would consider the slot machine called Maelstrom will scratch the tactical itch. Your criticism is grating only due to the fact that it is simply an opinion, yet you keep stating it as fact. You say "maelstrom missions reduce player decision, and replace it with a random die roll" that would only be the case if you lost the moment you didn't try to achieve the objective. The act of making that decision, is *gasp* a decision! Those die rolls generate and additional set of decisions that competent players utilize in their overarching battle plan, because they have adapted to the idea that a little random effect is not what loses every game.
Yeah, I go into a shell game pretty confidently too.
Is it just me or when playing that scenario I feel like I am in some evil GW scavenger hunt?
You are busy, got things to do, but was there a plan? Those who are saying why they left 7th ed are indeed saying that, those who are picking it up for the first time in a long time (or ever) are asking what their army is doing or what to buy next. While those of us who haven't left don't feel the need to come and explain why we're still playing, we don't need you to know. I cannot grow bored of a hottly debated topic, I enjoy debate as much as I enjoyed chess, go, MTG, and mageknight, and still enjoy DND, 13th age, and risk 2210. See, I do play other games
So there is the "still playing in-crowd"?
Here, I will explain my only reason for playing:
Design a scenario, make a series of pass/fail objective tree logic.
Lay out the whole reason for the scrap, I make a freaking PowerPoint with graphics and sounds... how I roll.
Play with friends who go into it pedal to the metal.
Much carnage ensues, it is glorious.
I respectfully state the randomized, eclectic, gumball machine of Maelstrom I have little use for.
Rock-paper-scissors can be very competitive but why bother? Really?
What is politely not being said is 40k is already hard to consider a competitive game system rather than a random outcome generator.
Adding another randomizing element just makes what few concrete choices that have impact, mean all the less.
I must state you are quite determined to find it fun and not see the error of your ways.
Hehe... good for you! 
It is gaming after all, just also allow that others look for different challenges and I genuinely give this a pass... different strokes for different folks.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
I have been of that mindset front the get-go, but any time I point to the possibility of competitive minded players using maelstrom style missions(not even the core rulebook version, but any iteration of them) I am told that I am wrong. Different strokes for different folks, yes, but my opinion is valid. The fact that the majority of the major tournaments in the country(you know, the ones where competitive players practice and hone their lists over the course of a year, travel cross country, and pay money to attend. Those guys) are utilizing these style of mission objectives. I said that those guys should be adapting their lists to better compensate for a competitive edge in that environment. Then I was told that these events that include those style of missions are "not really competitive" a "joke" and more recently compared to a coin toss that shouldn't be taken seriously. I don't know his entire history, but I don't think my primary detractor has been the host or sponsor of these "Grand Tournament" events, doesn't seem to compete in them, may not even play the game in general anymore( which is sad if true, because it appears to mean a lot to him) and seems to be of the belief that his opinion on the subject is more valid than the hundreds and hundreds of people who attend.
This conversation keeps plodding on because I refuse to allow the thread to end with him telling me that I am wrong he is right and I then quietly wonder off and leave him feeling superior. :/
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Post by: Peregrine
Why? Why should anyone consider your opinion valid? Since you're apparently such a fan of tournament credentials perhaps you could post a list of which major tournaments you have organized and/or won? Or is your last remaining argument that nobody can force you to stop posting your opinion?
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Post by: Bi'ios
Peregrine wrote:
Why? Why should anyone consider your opinion valid? Since you're apparently such a fan of tournament credentials perhaps you could post a list of which major tournaments you have organized and/or won? Or is your last remaining argument that nobody can force you to stop posting your opinion?
While reserving my own opinion on the subject, it seems an awful lot like you're doing exactly what you're accusing him of, and in an incredibly hostile manner, to boot. If I were you, perhaps I'd worry less about padding my post count, and instead spend that time on a little personal reflection. Why should anyone consider anything you say valid in the least, as it seems you're only interested in crapping on what others think, and inflating your own sense of self-superority
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Peregrine wrote:
Why? Why should anyone consider your opinion valid? Since you're apparently such a fan of tournament credentials perhaps you could post a list of which major tournaments you have organized and/or won? Or is your last remaining argument that nobody can force you to stop posting your opinion?
I already stated a lack of playing at tournaments, I simply follow them. I also pointedly noticed that EVERY RECENT MAJOR TOURNAMENT IN THE COUNTRY SEEMS TO BE FOLLOWING A PATERN! I only have to keep repeating myself about it because you keep telling me I'm wrong, and when I tried to meet you on a middle pointt by suggesting ways to adjust the system, you brushed me off like I was apetulant child. If my belief that the maelstrom style missions are being used, and should be planned for is wrong, then why are they repeatedly being used at the top cometitive level, and the winners of these tournaments are the ones who are taking it into account in the list building phase?
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Post by: Peregrine
Sure, and that just means that every single major tournament is wrong. Kind of like how every major tournament used to ban FW rules, which was a stupid policy. Or how every major tournament used to have comp scoring and other "soft" scores as a major component of the overall winner, which was a stupid way to do things. The fact that maelstrom missions are popular doesn't in any way negate criticism of them.
I only have to keep repeating myself about it because you keep telling me I'm wrong, and when I tried to meet you on a middle pointt by suggesting ways to adjust the system, you brushed me off like I was apetulant child.
Yes, I dismissed your idea because it was a terrible idea. I have no obligation to meet you in the middle just because your new idea was slightly less terrible than the original idea. It still contained the broken game mechanic of random objectives, so why shouldn't I criticize it?
If my belief that the maelstrom style missions are being used, and should be planned for is wrong, then why are they repeatedly being used at the top cometitive level, and the winners of these tournaments are the ones who are taking it into account in the list building phase?
Because that's a blatant straw man. Nobody is claiming that you shouldn't prepare for maelstrom missions if you're masochistic enough to attend a tournament with them, our point is that maelstrom missions are terrible for competitive play and shouldn't be used.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
It cannot be a straw man if it is in the Friggin thread title that I created! This discussion wasn't supposed to be about peregrine and L.B. don't like all the same game play styles in 40k, it was supposed to be a discussion on the changing meta being driven by the maelstrom style missions used by various tournaments and what those changes entailed. Do you wanna talk about that now, so we stop headbutting each other over something that doesn't really matter. Also, you live in America, if you happen to be in northeast Ohio, would you like a game? I'm totally cool if you wanna do eternal war
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Post by: Inkubas
Meh, I've lost interest in this argument anyhow. It comes down to opinion and because of that you can play house rules all you want. I'll play either Eternal War Missions or Maelstrom just fine.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Inkubas wrote:Meh, I've lost interest in this argument anyhow. It comes
down to opinion and because of that you can play house rules all you want. I'll play either Eternal War Missions or Maelstrom just fine.
My group switches it up a lot, we have an escalation league going now, gonna end with team Apocalypse xenos vs imperium
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Post by: Inkubas
Our groups about coming up with ongoing campaign with background fluff and everything.
I've completed 5th Company of Dark Angels and am working on 1st and 2nd as well as an Imperial guard Regiment. A close friend has a massive chaos warband.
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Post by: Lobokai
@peregine, I'm so sick of your internet bullying putting the onus for your weak arguments on the wrong party. Just because you wear down someone on a forum by apparently having more time to throw walls of contary text that attack others opinions does not mean you're making better arguments. It just mean we roll our eyes, wait a couple pages to see if you're still ranting, and see if actual discussion gets to take root in the debris left from your antagonist entrenchment.
Let us hear it please. What tournaments have you been to that sucked (as you say) because of maelstrom? What sequence of bad draws/rolls undid a solid tactical plan of yours. When did you, the better general lose due to objective draws, or as the inferior player how'd a great draw get you the win?
You're the one on attack here. You put forward your dislike. Yet all of your arguments sound like everyone other gamer I know that didn't want to play maelstrom... Before they actually got a half dozen games of it under their belt. I seriously am doubting your credentials on knowing this method isn't a good experience, because right now it sounds like you lack the experience to make that assertion.
You know what happens to most who have tried it? They liked it once they wrapped their head around the ebb and flow it creates. They started saying so to local TOs, local RTTs started using it more and more and then GTs adapted it because of all the positive experiences. That is what happened. After thousands of games played, veteran players who do the tourney thing, found it a superior mode of gameplay.
So let us hear how you can back your position with actual gameplay and test games... or are you just reading something in a book and then blowharding about something others have done as an armchair quarterback?
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Post by: Peregrine
Too bad.
Let us hear it please. What tournaments have you been to that sucked (as you say) because of maelstrom? What sequence of bad draws/rolls undid a solid tactical plan of yours. When did you, the better general lose due to objective draws, or as the inferior player how'd a great draw get you the win?
I've played enough games with maelstrom missions to understand how they work. When I first saw them in the 7th edition rulebook I suspected they'd suck, and when I played games with them they had exactly the flaws I expected. Beyond that we're not going to turn this into a "my is bigger than yours" contest about who has won enough tournaments.
Yet all of your arguments sound like everyone other gamer I know that didn't want to play maelstrom... Before they actually got a half dozen games of it under their belt.
Oh hey, coincidentally those arguments also sound exactly like the people that tried maelstrom missions and hated it. Perhaps there are valid reasons to dislike them besides "you haven't tried it enough"?
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Post by: Vaktathi
Our last event dropped maelstrom missions entirely after too many wonky games and the record keeping taking too much time.
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Post by: Lobokai
Peregrine wrote:
I' LL PROVE YOUR POINT WITH ALL CAPS
The basis of my argument is I don't want to like this and I some how think all tourneys suck even though others like them, cause reasons
So not even anecdotal experiences? You just demanded another's posters credentials and tourney resume and then decide not to change this into a discussion about actual games played within a few posts of each other. Please don't be a lawyer, ever.
It's not that your too negative, it's that all you have is negativity. You're not making actual points that even have enough substance to be argued against. How can you explain the growth and expansion of ITC/ BAO format (which you've played before, right?) if objectives generated each turn are so stupid, why are top level players and veteran players flocking to this new style if it's so bad? Why are tournaments like the LVO having record growth? Why are club events and RTTs being asked to switch? I'm not saying barebones maelstrom is perfect, but I've yet to see anyone besides Adepticon running it that way (for good reason).
Maybe people aren't looking to recreate Fallujah and just want dynamic gameplay
Maybe the extremely rare awful draws are just extremely rare
Maybe the OPs point about maelstrom in tournaments shouldn't be straw-manned away with arguments about unmodified TOs, which isn't what we're talking about here
Maybe in game, instead of just on paper, many have found TOs to actually be pretty predictable and controllable and your hyperboles are just that
Maybe other solutions like asymmetrical missions just haven't stacked up to modified maelstrom (which does have some asymmetrical elements to it)?
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Post by: Makumba
Maybe the extremely rare awful draws are just extremely rare
only they aren't. Unless you play a msu fast moving army that is build to burn through as many mission objectives per turn.
What tournaments have you been to that sucked (as you say) because of maelstrom?
Well am not peregrin, but top of my had. Last tournament in 7th, lost my first game doing more objectives then my opponent, but rolling 1-2VPs per turn even on d6 ones , while my opponent got max. Lost the second game, because my opening hand had destroy through melee, get my opponent base objective and kill the warlord, while playing IG vs WS+ IH ally. Won my third game, because the same happened to my opponent.
Mealstorm is good for armies that have fast moving MSU, if they are very resilient or very cheap it works even better. Eldar love mealstorm missions. I don't count how many games I lost, because I got slay the warlord+other bad mission, while my opponent rocks take objectiv. I had games where after my opponents turn one, he was 11+ VP pts ahead of me. Such system is much worse then the mission one. Ah and I am playing house ruled mealstorm, with discard after drawing. I doubt anyone can call unchanged mealstorm rules good.
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Post by: Peregrine
Lobukia wrote:You just demanded another's posters credentials and tourney resume and then decide not to change this into a discussion about actual games played within a few posts of each other.
Sigh. I demanded credentials as a response to their "how many major tournaments have you won" demand. I don't think credentials have any place here, but if someone is going to demand mine as an excuse to dismiss my argument then they'd better post some pretty amazing ones to justify their own.
It's not that your too negative, it's that all you have is negativity.
Well yes, maelstrom missions suck. What do you want, an empty list of all the good things about them just so we can satisfy some arbitrary need for "balance"?
You're not making actual points that even have enough substance to be argued against. How can you explain the growth and expansion of ITC/BAO format (which you've played before, right?) if objectives generated each turn are so stupid, why are top level players and veteran players flocking to this new style if it's so bad? Why are tournaments like the LVO having record growth? Why are club events and RTTs being asked to switch?
I don't know, maybe people have decided that 40k is not a very competitive game so screw having a serious event let's just drink some beer and roll some dice? But the popularity of maelstrom missions is not proof that they're good. If there's anything good about them then you should be able to discuss it without having to resort to "but people like them!" as your only argument in their defense.
Maybe people aren't looking to recreate Fallujah and just want dynamic gameplay
Sure, if "dynamic" is a synonym for "random" in your opinion. Good mission design encourages dynamic gameplay. Bad mission design enforces it by having random stuff happen every turn just for the sake of having mandatory new events.
Maybe the OPs point about maelstrom in tournaments shouldn't be straw-manned away with arguments about unmodified TOs, which isn't what we're talking about here
I'm not straw manning it into an argument about unmodified maelstrom missions. RAW maelstrom missions suck more than modified ones, but the modified ones still have the same flaw of replacing player decisions with random dice. And that's the core of my argument, I'm not relying on criticism of idiocy like rolling "kill a psyker" when your opponent's army has no psykers. I'm aware that most tournaments fix the worst of these problems, but the missions still suck.
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Post by: Talys
Yeesh. Peregrine obviously doesn't like Maelstrom because it introduces too much randomness. I think that's a fine point of view. I think it's an equally valid point of view for some folks to enjoy Maelstrom games, whether in just-for-fun play, or competitive play.
I mean, 40k does have randomness, but random doesn't mean that it's a coin toss. As an example, poker and blackjack are highly random games, yet skill clearly separates successful and unsuccessful players. Just because a game has randomness doesn't mean that there's a lot to do, and ways to win, it just changes the dynamic, skills, and strategies.
If that's not your cup of tea (or if it is), fine, but no need to bash on people with the opposite point of view. Just elect to play or not play those games 
It's worth pointing out that 40k, and most tabletop wargames, do involve a pretty high degree of randomness -- because there's dice. If you want a game where a significantly superior player will win 100% of the games, pick a game that isn't subject to luck.
Even with Maelstrom, over 10 games, a much better player with a much better list will still win almost all of them; a much better player with an equal list, will still win most of them. The troubles come when the skill level is closer, and the lists are closer, making it such that a mediocre player has more of a chance against a more experienced player, when both of the players have reasonable armies.
*shrug* -- I don't even think that's a bad thing. It doesn't bother me, because life works this way -- in professional sports, "anything can happen" and the better team can lose (though if they were to play a series, instead of a single game, the odds are much better that the superior team comes out on top). On the other hand, I know players that just don't like to lose to elements out of their control.
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Post by: AllSeeingSkink
I don't like Maelstrom not only because it adds randomness but also because, to me, I feel it takes away from the actual tactical aspect of the game. It just becomes a mad dash for the objectives. Having a few properly defined objectives outlined is more conducive to a tactical game than just randomly assigning objectives as they come.
Since Talys brought up professional sports, I think maelstrom is like a ball game where the goal posts just randomly pop up somewhere on the boundary then 5 minutes later they pop up somewhere else. Rather than the strategy of moving the ball around the ground against your opponent's defence (or vice versa) you just have to get lucky and hope the goal pops up next to you while you have the ball.
There's good randomness and then there's bad randomness. The people complaining about random are mostly people who have been playing wargames long before maelstrom came around and are familiar with random aspects of wargaming... but it shouldn't be surprising things like random warlord traits, excessively random charge distances and continually changing random objectives get more flak than other types of randomness.
I tend to think in the context of a tournament, maelstrom is bad. I think it'd be best to invent half a dozen missions that you think are reasonably balanced and roll with it and just throw out GW's system. But there's obviously a balance, you don't want to have to invent an entirely new rule system that varies too much from the core sustem to have your tournament otherwise it becomes a barrier to entry.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Peregrine raises an excellent point
People too often equate Maelstrom's random nature with somehow being "dynamic". Well, in the strict literal sense of the word "dynamic" that's true, but the result isn't anything structured or balanced, it's just anarchic dice rolling with a fair amount of disconnect between tabletop performance and actual outcome.
While I haven't played in a very large well known event the size of something like the LVO in a while, I do play in local events, having won best overall in three of my last four and coming in 2nd the other, so if people are demanding anecdotal credentials, there's mine. The Maelstrom missions very often result in exceedingly wonky games, and people often muck up record keeping making the issue even worse. And while an argument may be made that the randomness should balance itself out, that's only looking at an ultra-macro scale, with humongous variation in any single game being possible, and that results in wonky game outcomes.
Even aside from all these things, there's so much about Maelstrom missions that just feel incredibly forced. There's a huge number than can be "auto-fails" (oh man cast a psychic power...that's hard to do with no psykers...) or "auto-gets" (oh man, cast a psychic power, sweet my army has 6 Psykers!). Why on earth am I getting orders to hold random points on the battlefield just for a single turn (or potentially 3 orders to do so)? Why are my Imperial Guard/Tau/other-non-shooting-army being ordered to kill something specifically in close combat? Why does the method of killing an enemy unit matter?
If it's "dynamic", it's about the most hamfisted and forced method of creating "dynamic" gameplay I've ever seen.
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Post by: Peregrine
 Talys wrote:It's worth pointing out that 40k, and most tabletop wargames, do involve a pretty high degree of randomness -- because there's dice.
This is true, but it doesn't really get at the core of the problem. There are two kinds of randomness in a game like 40k:
Good randomness acts as a neutral arbiter of player actions. I shoot a bolter: I want it to hit, you want it to miss. So we roll a die and see who gets their preferred outcome.
Bad randomness acts as a replacement for player choices. My HQ has a variety of possible bonuses. Instead of picking one (based on fluff and/or strategy) from a balanced list where all of them are good in their own ways I roll a die to see if I get an awesome bonus or a weak bonus.
The problem with maelstrom missions isn't just that they're random, it's that they're random in a way that replaces player decisions about which objectives have the most value with rolling a die and letting the random table tell you which ones are important. It takes away an element of strategy vs. counter-strategy and replaces it with passively watching to see what narrative the dice will forge for you. And that's unfortunately how GW seems to want the game to be in 7th.
*shrug* -- I don't even think that's a bad thing. It doesn't bother me, because life works this way -- in professional sports, "anything can happen" and the better team can lose (though if they were to play a series, instead of a single game, the odds are much better that the superior team comes out on top).
Sure, but in those situations there's still a chain of cause and effect. You can look at the game in hindsight and point to where event A went in the "weaker" team's favor, which led to event B and then C and then the "weaker" team winning the game. No such thing exists in maelstrom missions. Why did I just draw "capture objective #3"? Is it because going there puts me in a good position to attack from? Did I just capture the objective next to it, making it a natural second step? Is it the objective on the important road my army needs to hold to secure a path for other units? Is it my best chance to salvage a victory from a defensive position despite being backed into a corner and taking heavy losses? Nope, it's purely random. I could just as easily have drawn "capture objective #4" or "kill a psyker". There's no chain of cause and effect, you just run around the table doing random things until the game finally ends.
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Post by: Lobokai
https://www.frontlinegaming.org/las-vegas-open-hotel-booking/las-vegas-open-2015-warhammer-40k-championships/
About halfway down the page you'll find the missions. Seriously, the vast majority of the complaints here don't exist in tournament maelstrom that has any thought put into it. I'll remind you the OP was about tournament maelstrom not BRB maelstrom.
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Post by: Vaktathi
Yes, those are better than the rulebook ones, but not every event by any means uses something like this, like many/most of the LVO's house rules/restrictions.
The problem of feeling "forced" and unnecessarily random still exists. Mitigated, but still there nonetheless (e.g. why does it matter if I kill a unit this turn, as opposed to having done it the turn before or the turn after?)
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Post by: Peregrine
Lobukia wrote:Seriously, the vast majority of the complaints here don't exist in tournament maelstrom that has any thought put into it.
I just looked at those missions, and most of my criticism still applies. They've removed the really stupid stuff like auto-fail objectives, but they still have the core mechanic of replacing player decisions with random dice.
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Post by: Zed
Oh man, this just keeps on deteriorating. Outstanding.
Noone will change anyone's mind here, folks- as is common when Peregrine gets all nice and salty in a Dakka thread. Fortunately, the game mode both great fun casually, and is in the tournament scene (including the best-known events worldwide) competitively, so those who are willing to utilise it get to have their fun.
As for the rest? Their names will live on in internet forums, and not tournament medals. I'm good with that.
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Post by: Makumba
Good randomness acts as a neutral arbiter of player actions. I shoot a bolter: I want it to hit, you want it to miss. So we roll a die and see who gets their preferred outcome.
Yes and both players can influence it. I can put more units in range to wipe out yours or spams weapons that favor me. My opponent can put his dudes in cover or a transport etc. That is good random. How can I influence the missions drawn? My army can't melee, someone else army may not be able to kill stuff with shoting, although I do find that much more rare. If we drew lets say from 2 decks , some from the take objectives deck and some from do other stuff then the problem of not being able to catch up to ones opponent would be much smaller. But it aint the case. If my opponent does 2-3 missions turn one and I do 1 or non, then he better get 2-3 undoable missions else the game is done. Not even in high days of 5th or D destroying games of 6th did I see so many games end turn 2. It also gives huge adventage to people starting, they are drawing first and discarding first , the person going second can't leave a mission to be done on later turn, because he risks that if his opponents clears all 3 in a single turn he will be 3-4 missions behind.
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Post by: Plumbumbarum
It's a bad mechanic if you're into anything resembling even competition. I disagree with people here claiming that it's not tactical at all, it can provide kind of tactical minigames and specific challenges but surely doesnt add to the balance. It's up there with random psychic powers and warlord traits when it comes to exchanging strategy for luck. GW supposedly tries to lessen the impact of list building on the game but does it in a bad way, why not just make more choices viable instead of dicefest 11. The only sensible reason to add excessive randomness is to artificialy even the field between more and less skilled players, you could probably build a strong case in favour of that in light of GWs hobby casual collection blabber but only if they made similar effort to even the 'buy or die' field.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Msu isn't the only thing that can win maelstrom objectives, swarm lists and area denial are definite competitors.
All randomness is is equal, while your objectives at the start of the game cannot be guessed at with absolute certainty, every round after that becomes more and more predictable. That allows for pre-planning and an over all strategy.
peregrine, I didn't ask for your credentials as a means of proving my point as some sort of fact, I mentioned it because you were treating your half of the discussion as being the only truth in regards to the viability of these style of games in a competitive atmosphere. So you would have to have something besides your personal opinion to feel that you can be
unambiguously right, and I be wrong.
Mokumba, you have the (admittedly random) ability to manipulate the possible outcome with the tactical warlord traits.
The goalposts are stable, they are simply not all activated at the same time. The key to winning is to gain control of more of them, while denying them to your opponent, for the entire duration of the game. You can do that by
Msu objective secured
Board coverage with swarms
Dangerous volume of fire shooting on mobile platforms
Fast hard hitting melee units
And fast moving sacrifice units to deny the opponent their points.
Any game where taking the minimum amount of troops (guys that are supposed to be the mainstay of the army) is generally agreed to be the best possible way to play has some serious issues. These missions have actually changed that, and in my opinion, for the better
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Post by: MWHistorian
I really like the movie "Pathfinder." It's a terrible movie but I like it anyway.
Mealstrom is like that. It's terrible but many find it fun.
But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a terrible mess of randomness and lacks any strategy.
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Post by: Tamwulf
This thread has been a good read. Arguments are starting to just be restated with people "shouting at" each other. It's pretty obvious that both sides might as well be shouting at a brick wall.
I fall into the Peregrine camp that Mealstrom is a very, very poor game mechanic, and that Warlords table makes me want to kick a kitten or fly like Superman. Most of the time, it's "Meh. Whatever. That won't come into play at all during this game".
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 Tamwulf wrote:This thread has been a good read. Arguments are starting to just be restated with people "shouting at" each other. It's pretty obvious that both sides might as well be shouting at a brick wall.
I fall into the Peregrine camp that Mealstrom is a very, very poor game mechanic, and that Warlords table makes me want to kick a kitten or fly like Superman. Most of the time, it's "Meh. Whatever. That won't come into play at all during this game".
I haven't had that be the case, but kicking kittens and flying like Superman is a pretty awesome way to describe mixed feelings. I am going to use that in conversation, probably for the rest of my life Automatically Appended Next Post: MWHistorian wrote:I really like the movie "Pathfinder." It's a terrible movie but I like it anyway.
Mealstrom is like that. It's terrible but many find it fun.
But that doesn't change the fact that it's still a terrible mess of randomness and lacks any strategy.
But, the way you describe doesn't make it fact. People have stated several strategic ways to play them, there are tournament players who, despite this "fact" and having lists that are "terrible" and "weak" are repeatedly winning serious competitive events. That would mean that A),they are the luckiest person alive, or B) there is a significant amount of strategy that is important to winning events with these type of missions
And sure, the other options that will be offered is they are going to win in spite of or despite the mission style, so that doesn't mean the mission is competitive, if that is the case, then these missions would have to be creating exactly the same level of competition as any other, because otherwise those players wouldn't be winning.
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Post by: Talys
AllSeeingSkink wrote:Since Talys brought up professional sports, I think maelstrom is like a ball game where the goal posts just randomly pop up somewhere on the boundary then 5 minutes later they pop up somewhere else. Rather than the strategy of moving the ball around the ground against your opponent's defence (or vice versa) you just have to get lucky and hope the goal pops up next to you while you have the ball.
Peregrine wrote:Bad randomness acts as a replacement for player choices. My HQ has a variety of possible bonuses. Instead of picking one (based on fluff and/or strategy) from a balanced list where all of them are good in their own ways I roll a die to see if I get an awesome bonus or a weak bonus.
The problem with maelstrom missions isn't just that they're random, it's that they're random in a way that replaces player decisions about which objectives have the most value with rolling a die and letting the random table tell you which ones are important. It takes away an element of strategy vs. counter-strategy and replaces it with passively watching to see what narrative the dice will forge for you. And that's unfortunately how GW seems to want the game to be in 7th.
Yeah, Maelstrom is pretty much that. It is simply a different game, requiring a different list for optimal results, and certainly doesn't make sense from the perspective of forging a narrative.
I too prefer a more traditional "kill thy enemy", "capture the flag", or "hold these positions" type scenario (because it makes for a better story) -- but I have a couple of friends who enjoy the Maelstrom thing, and I'm happy to to entertain them when they're in the mood. Usually, we decide whether Maelstrom missions are on the table or not, for the night, though.
Regarding Warlord traits: we do a thing in our (friendly) group where if your warlord survives the game, he can keep his warlord traits for the next game if the player chooses. It reduces the randomness, and gives us an incentive to keep our warlords alive and have people dive in front for those look out sir rolls Obviously, this would not translate into any sort of tournament or pickup setting. But, in a group of friends, it's pretty cool.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
OK, now that we've gotten over the dispute about maelstrom in general, I find it interesting the the top lists include infiltrators in significant numbers. I had seen that a large chunk of battle reports where people used the LVO format were trying to get the infiltrate warlord trait, do you think utilizing actual infiltrators may have given them an edge?
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Post by: Accolade
 Vaktathi wrote:Peregrine raises an excellent point
People too often equate Maelstrom's random nature with somehow being "dynamic". Well, in the strict literal sense of the word "dynamic" that's true, but the result isn't anything structured or balanced, it's just anarchic dice rolling with a fair amount of disconnect between tabletop performance and actual outcome.
While I haven't played in a very large well known event the size of something like the LVO in a while, I do play in local events, having won best overall in three of my last four and coming in 2nd the other, so if people are demanding anecdotal credentials, there's mine. The Maelstrom missions very often result in exceedingly wonky games, and people often muck up record keeping making the issue even worse. And while an argument may be made that the randomness should balance itself out, that's only looking at an ultra-macro scale, with humongous variation in any single game being possible, and that results in wonky game outcomes.
Even aside from all these things, there's so much about Maelstrom missions that just feel incredibly forced. There's a huge number than can be "auto-fails" (oh man cast a psychic power...that's hard to do with no psykers...) or "auto-gets" (oh man, cast a psychic power, sweet my army has 6 Psykers!). Why on earth am I getting orders to hold random points on the battlefield just for a single turn (or potentially 3 orders to do so)? Why are my Imperial Guard/Tau/other-non-shooting-army being ordered to kill something specifically in close combat? Why does the method of killing an enemy unit matter?
If it's "dynamic", it's about the most hamfisted and forced method of creating "dynamic" gameplay I've ever seen.
I tend to find myself searching for and typically agreeing with Vaktathi's points in these threads. His background seems more than sufficient to stymie any "but you haven't played enough" comments and more of the points are well-reasoned and explained.
Like most things with 40k these last couple of editions, the game seems to be moving back to its roots as a DnD style, "roll a D20" style game. That would be fine and all except for the exorbitant costs of playing the game, with rules at an all-time high and armies bigger than ever. Heck, at least 1st and 2nd knew what they were and the game played at a reasonable size for what is what. Playing an increasingly random game with models running over the $100 price point is making a lot of people balk, and we've seen a lot of confusion over what role the tournament organizers need to take to move the game back in the direction it was in previous editions (aka with a semblance of balance and player decision-making).
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Post by: Talizvar
Lobukia wrote:https://www.frontlinegaming.org/las-vegas-open-hotel-booking/las-vegas-open-2015-warhammer- 40k-championships/
About halfway down the page you'll find the missions. Seriously, the vast majority of the complaints here don't exist in tournament maelstrom that has any thought put into it. I'll remind you the OP was about tournament maelstrom not BRB maelstrom.
What is listed here they "cherry-pick" what is reasonable.
Not much different than making your own scenario would you not say?
For goodness sake, in RPG's they had random encounter tables.
The big generic list is garbage because it is divorced from the type of scenario.
Maelstrom mission options for specific types of scenarios could create more intelligent applicable objectives.
It is like when we argue over rules, we go by RAW or everything else is custom which is a different game than our of the BRB.
Why Peregrine is so rabid about saying the whole thing is wrong is rather than US work hard to make it work, GW could have made it very nice with only a little work... but didn't.
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Post by: Crablezworth
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/595167.page
That's still probably the most read thing I've ever posted and that analysis was before the cards even landed.
At this point I'm in 100% agreement with peregrine's stated criticism and the point still stands even when you modify and objectively improve maelstrom, it's still flawed.
We hear the word tactical bandied around all the time in context of maelstrom, I just have that feeling "I don't think it means what you think it means"
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end."
Careful planning involves foresight and intelligence on the objective being specific is inherently context sensitive and in no way general like, say: "kill something, anything" or "challenge someone, anyone".
The story or fluff element in the game generally involves explaining the context leading up to the battle and possibly what either side in the conflict intends to do. It may even explain what the objective counters on the board represent IE this one represents x army holding the refinery, this objective counter represents x army holding the bridge, and so on and so on. Generally speaking, this can improve the enjoyment of a game for one or both parties but it's not information that's particularly relevant when it comes to the score of the game. It can be made to matter in the context of a campaign but as most games are one off and played in a narrative vacuum the amount of enjoyment added is pretty subjective.
You could take the approach I've just described which is "fluffy" and in the spirit of the game and all that and add in maelstrom and I personally think it's an objectively worse experience in the context of not justs competitive play but in an accurate depiction of how armies fight battles and achieve objectives (narrative forging). Instead of either party potentially formulating a rough or basic strategy or battle plan that may or may not change over the course of the game IE one player thinks to themselves "I'll camp on the refinery and try and flank the bridge" ; in the context of maelstrom, they're being sent all over the damn place while tangentially being micromanaged to do random tasks like slapping the enemy with white gloves or showing off how rad their space magic skills are and even if you remove the really arbitrary ways of scoring victory points as some have, you improve things but your force is still being commanded by a schizophrenic whose incredibly indecisive. In fairness it's not like being decisive is an incredibly valuable character trait for those in leadership positions, most of all combat where situation have a tendency to be far more acute than say business or politics. That's not to say every plan survives contact with the enemy, but in the case of maelstrom, command IS THE ENEMY.
As for the tournament argument, a lot of larger events that aren't adepticon or located in vegas aren't exactly growing. From my perspective I'm only interested in attending or running far more restrictive events. Maelstrom isn't even on the radar for me, it's bad mission design. For the sharp tongue peregrine possess, there's an awful lot of sniping and nastiness going right back at him. The whole "your opinion hurts my feelings thus you're being negative" thing is pretty dated. One thing that never gets old is the "don't let the door hit you on the way out of 7th" thing, which would be funny if the game wasn't less enjoyable than past iterations and as such a lot of players are leaving.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
This thread wasn't supposed to be whether or not anyone thought maelstrom was competitive.
And I do, in fact, have a predetermined strategic goal, score victory points. Just because the system changes what you need to do turn by turn doesn't mean I don't go into the game with a strategy and plan to enable me to win.
I wish I had never needed to defend the concept of this system, the thread won't let it go, and no one is actually talking about what is in the title.
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Post by: Crablezworth
So your carefully laid strategy or battle plan is to have more vp's than your opponent? Let me guess, your tactic of choice is doing what you're told in a timely manner.
ladies and gentleman, I think we just lost cabin pressure.
"So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?"
You asked, when you didn't like what you heard you got defensive and now it's basically an accusation of being off topic because apparently the topic of the thread requires the same level of obedience as the maelstrom cards.
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Post by: Plumbumbarum
But if I get 'kill something, anything' and I choose what I want to kill, I have a specific objective and use tactics to achieve it. I also use tactics to prepare for the unknown next turn, using as much information as possible. You can say maelstrom tactics are simplistic, or limited, or gamey but you cant say that tactics are not involved. The worst problem with maelstrom is how badly it impacts balance.
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Post by: Talizvar
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I wish I had never needed to defend the concept of this system, the thread won't let it go, and no one is actually talking about what is in the title.
We are talking about it, you appear to need to remedy the title.
"A discussion on strategies to win Maelstrom in tournaments."
There, done, not so hard now?
I would suggest avoiding words like "needed", "mindset" and "competitive": they are all fighting words.
Carefully look at list that is allowed in the tournament, try to cover all bases with your army list (ie horde) and hope you are lucky.
I would suggest learning "natural" rolling to help your odds.
At first blush, Elder look best to succeed.
Done.
Now I can move along and take a cold shower.
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Post by: Plumbumbarum
This
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
 Crablezworth wrote:So your carefully laid strategy or battle plan is to have more vp's than your opponent? Let me guess, your tactic of choice is doing what you're told in a timely manner.
ladies and gentleman, I think we just lost cabin pressure.
"So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?"
You asked, when you didn't like what you heard you got defensive and now it's basically an accusation of being off topic because apparently the topic of the thread requires the same level of obedience as the maelstrom cards.
I did ask that, the answer that made me defensive was that these missions are stupid, you can't play them competitively, and that any tourney that uses them is a joke. Not one of those things answered the question that was posed.
I then stated the opposite opinion, which is what those things were, and was told I was wrong. Both of the sides then proceeded to spend 4 pages being told they are wrong(my side) or trying to defend the mission style as a viable play style that requires thought. Those of us who do think maelstrom missions are acceptable for competitive play never once said other types of mission are invalid. Also note that I have tried to steer the conversation back on topic a few times, only for someone else to drop in and say that these missions are random nonsense that are making the game unplayable. If that was the conversation I wanted, it would have been what was asked. It's like everyone who dislikes those missions are waiting around for someone to mention them so they can show up and tell anyone that enjoys them they are should stop using them, because it is ruining the game for people they don't play against.
Edited for autocorrect.
/rant
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Post by: Talizvar
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I did ask that, the answer that made me defensive was that these missions are stupid, you can't play them competitively, and that any tourney that uses them is a joke. Not one of those things answered the question that was posed. <snip> If that was the conversation I wanted, it would have been what was asked. It's like everyone who dislikes those missions are waiting around for someone to mention them so they can show up and feel anyone that enjoys them they are should stop using them, because it is ruining the game for people they don't play against./rant
Hoo-boy.
Lets look at the title again shall we:
"A discussion on the needed strategical mindset change for the competitive 40k player."
Many feel or identify themselves as competitive players.
Some are refuting that any mindset change on their part are needed.
Some go a step further and feel Maelstrom is a bad mission since strategy is more limited and the degree of competitive edge there is debatable.
Some go further than that to say 40k is a farce as a strategic game all together.
It is now getting into a debate of you being "competitive" enough for the label since you enjoy the random objective generator system.
You may be labeled as "fluff-bunny" by this court (I already have you figured for one...).
Can you at least not see the minefield you walked into of your own making?
You used a lot of loaded words in the title: you literally asked for it.
Fun stuff, let me know when you post on politics or religion please, it would be a similar train-wreck I would suspect.
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Talizvar wrote:Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:I did ask that, the answer that made me defensive was that these missions are stupid, you can't play them competitively, and that any tourney that uses them is a joke. Not one of those things answered the question that was posed. <snip> If that was the conversation I wanted, it would have been what was asked. It's like everyone who dislikes those missions are waiting around for someone to mention them so they can show up and feel anyone that enjoys them they are should stop using them, because it is ruining the game for people they don't play against./rant
Hoo-boy.
Lets look at the title again shall we:
"A discussion on the needed strategical mindset change for the competitive 40k player."
Many feel or identify themselves as competitive players.
Some are refuting that any mindset change on their part are needed.
Some go a step further and feel Maelstrom is a bad mission since strategy is more limited and the degree of competitive edge there is debatable.
Some go further than that to say 40k is a farce as a strategic game all together.
It is now getting into a debate of you being "competitive" enough for the label since you enjoy the random objective generator system.
You may be labeled as "fluff-bunny" by this court (I already have you figured for one...).
Can you at least not see the minefield you walked into of your own making?
You used a lot of loaded words in the title: you literally asked for it.
Fun stuff, let me know when you post on politics or religion please, it would be a similar train-wreck I would suspect.
Dude, fair enough. You're right. I'm still new to forums period, I realise what I had said in the title was as enflamitory as it is until now. My bad everybody. Maybe a later thread in tactics later to discus what I thought I was going to discuss in here 
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Post by: Talizvar
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:Dude, fair enough. You're right. I'm still new to forums period, I realise what I had said in the title was as enflamitory as it is until now. My bad everybody. Maybe a later thread in tactics later to discus what I thought I was going to discuss in here
I was unsure if you knew the title or not.
Good to know you did not = misunderstanding so all is ok.
Makes me a little sheepish getting on my high-horse.
This was not the discussion you were looking for, move along... nothing to see here....
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Post by: Lythrandire Biehrellian
Yeah, when I was trying to title the thing, I hit a barrier to how many letters I could use, so I stupidly dropped the "coping with maelstrom" specific part of the strategy change.
Sorry again folks!
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Post by: Crablezworth
Plumbumbarum wrote:But if I get 'kill something, anything' and I choose what I want to kill, I have a specific objective and use tactics to achieve it.
Something, anything would be the opposite of specific, it would be quite general in fact. I'm not sure how you can carefully plan for a mission you haven't been given yet.
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Post by: Plumbumbarum
Crablezworth wrote:Plumbumbarum wrote:But if I get 'kill something, anything' and I choose what I want to kill, I have a specific objective and use tactics to achieve it.
Something, anything would be the opposite of specific, it would be quite general in fact. I'm not sure how you can carefully plan for a mission you haven't been given yet.
It becomes specific right after I chose my target. I give myself a mission, to kill a particular unit and then proceed to plan the required moves, shooting or sth, then execute. Tactics, ussualy not the most elaborate in the world though heh.
Just manevuering your units to gain advantage is tactics.
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Post by: Crimson Devil
Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote: Crablezworth wrote:So your carefully laid strategy or battle plan is to have more vp's than your opponent? Let me guess, your tactic of choice is doing what you're told in a timely manner.
ladies and gentleman, I think we just lost cabin pressure.
"So, what do you think, am I wrong in this, or should people start seriously thinking about how to beat the mission instead of the guy across the table from him?"
You asked, when you didn't like what you heard you got defensive and now it's basically an accusation of being off topic because apparently the topic of the thread requires the same level of obedience as the maelstrom cards.
I did ask that, the answer that made me defensive was that these missions are stupid, you can't play them competitively, and that any tourney that uses them is a joke. Not one of those things answered the question that was posed.
I then stated the opposite opinion, which is what those things were, and was told I was wrong. Both of the sides then proceeded to spend 4 pages being told they are wrong(my side) or trying to defend the mission style as a viable play style that requires thought. Those of us who do think maelstrom missions are acceptable for competitive play never once said other types of mission are invalid. Also note that I have tried to steer the conversation back on topic a few times, only for someone else to drop in and say that these missions are random nonsense that are making the game unplayable. If that was the conversation I wanted, it would have been what was asked. It's like everyone who dislikes those missions are waiting around for someone to mention them so they can show up and tell anyone that enjoys them they are should stop using them, because it is ruining the game for people they don't play against.
Edited for autocorrect.
/rant
Your experience with this thread is a mirror of my experiences playing maelstrom missions. I go into the game with a plan and expectations of the outcome I want, but instead I come out the other side frustrated, annoyed, and wondering my I bothered.
I think the concept of asymmetrical missions is worth developing further, but this version is inadequate.
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Post by: CREEEEEEEEED
Maelstrom isn't non-tactical, it just presents a game where you aren't rewarded for trying to kill 90% of your opponents stuff, instead you have to adapt to the cards that will always be really annoying and present a challenge, here you have to use your skill to make a plan for doing the harder missions.
(I swear, the amount of times I've got perform a physic power while playing Tau though)
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Post by: Jancoran
Our House rule is simple. If it was not actually POSIBLE to do the Maelstrom card at turn one of the game, you discard and re-draw. So fo example if you had to kill a Flyer or FMC, but the enemy has none in its list at turn one, then that card is invalid. Now if he took several but lost them the card is still valid.
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Post by: Runic
Maelstrom requires strategy in both list building and gameplay, and a different kind of strategy at that, compared to say, Eternal War. There is nothing to disagree about, because it's simply the truth.
Aside from that, in its default form it's pretty dumb design ( in my opinion. ) The toned down and improved/pseudo versions you see in tournaments on the other hand are at times even better than the classic Eternal War -missions ( of which a few are really dumb aswell. )
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Post by: dominuschao
Hope I dont derail this argument too much with a response but I liked this topic.. back around page 1-2.
There is definitely a trend and even a cohesive effort within the larger U.S. tourneys to blend both mission types and I think it's been met with success. We've been shifting over to the ITC missions and now use them almost exclusively. I feel they are a good compromise to the randomness of brb maelstrom and the tired old last turn grabs of 6th. The blended missions keep the game dynamic even if it's not a perfect system, but what about this game is?.. I would hope this approach will continue and evolve over time. I also feel the blended missions support a broader range of list design than anything I've seen over the last 4 editions.
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Post by: Talys
 RunicFIN wrote:Maelstrom requires strategy in both list building and gameplay, and a different kind of strategy at that, compared to say, Eternal War. There is nothing to disagree about, because it's simply the truth.
Aside from that, in its default form it's pretty dumb design ( in my opinion. ) The toned down and improved/pseudo versions you see in tournaments on the other hand are at times even better than the classic Eternal War -missions ( of which a few are really dumb aswell. )
I agree. Anyways, when we play, we usually just pick the mission instead of roll for it -- usually, we'll each just pick one mission, and play the two for the night. The one bright spot for the Tactical Objectives rule is that it makes it more possible for a crappy, oddball, noobish, or incomplete list to actually have a bit more fun (ie a snowball's hope in hell).
All the people I have ever played with discard impossible objectives.
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