I have been giving this a lot of thought. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but I think that I have decided firmly that mission cards and 6 objectives on the table have ruined the essence of the game.

40k is a lot less talent based than it was.

A lot.

Instead of a "proper" tactical exchange with units working together rushikg flanks and there has been a shift towards random reserves simply there for scoring(drop pods anyone?) And 6 or 7 mini fights sort of strung across the board. Almost no real sense of progression really exists and lists are more important than talent.

Yes, Maelstrom Missions are mostly about luck and list building. Tactics and player agency has been reduced to the bare minimum.

As usual, good idea, badly implemented.

I actually like Tactical Objectives, their problem is they're totally random. You pick some cards out of a deck, and anything may come out. A run of good or bad luck can either make you win or make you lose a game no matter how good you are at using your units coherently or whatever.

Maelstrom can f you hardcore. Played in a tourney against demons, I got good kills and board control, but The objectives I drew were either on the opposite side of the table or getting blood and guts turn 1. or destroy emplacement in a game with none, or harness the warp and not have a psyker, or whatever.

I believe they started with the mission cards (3rd ed I think) in order to help players build a story background for their battles, but it seems that they've just went completely overboard with it. After all, what good general would ever go into battle with so many objectives to try and worry about? you can't possibly put together a winning strategy with your attention being pulled in so many different directions and so many goals all at once.

A war is comprised of many smaller battles, each battle having it's own objective or 2. Not each battle trying to win the entire war.

The problem isn't really with the mission cards themselves, but more with the way objectives are set up. First, there are simply too many objectives. The number should be dependent on the points value of each army, say maybe 1 objective for every full 500 points. That way a typical 1500 point game would have 3 objectives.

The other problem is that players are allowed to set up objectives in deployment zones. This should be a definite No-No unless the mission is some sort of hold the line style mission. In most cases, all objectives should be set up in the neutral zone between the deployments. That way there isn't a problem with getting lucky and just sitting in your deployment to collect points every turn.

IMO, the cards force players to react to changing situations, and that, to me anyway, makes the game MORE tactical, not less. Some of the cards are rather situational though, and GW should add some errata to remove those cards that don't apply so its no longer considered a house rule.

 Crimson Devil wrote:
Yes, Maelstrom Missions are mostly about luck and list building. Tactics and player agency has been reduced to the bare minimum.

This, 200% this.

Maelstrom missions are absolutely absurdly luck based. A lot of the objectives are also either trivially easy (cast a psychic power...sweet I have 4 psykers in my army) or often completely impossible (I have no psykers and no access to psykers...) or functionally impossible (no, my Tau aren't going to kill anything in the assault phase against this Khornate daemon army...). A lot of these also really have no purpose in being objectives (what's the point of simply casting a power just to cast?).

The more classic missions have some wonkiness too, things like scoring drop pods and the like certainly make it absurdly easy to hold/contest objectives just about anywhere you want/need to.

I prefer battles to the death.

People say the game isn't balanced for that but it sure helps with list building.

Besides it's more who you play with than how you play tbh.

You can't react to (most) mission cards. Your opponent will select the missions he can do and throw away the rest. What can I do as an opposing player when he draws "Manifest a psychic power"? What can I do when he draws "control objective 2" and objective 2 is right next to one of his troops choices? Certainly I can modify my opponents outlook on the success of a certain mission "Kill the opposing General in close combat" when my general is a Greater Deamon of Khorne, he might hesitate to accomplish that objective. Instead, he might just go for the "one unit in the enemy's deployment zone" and just scoot a Landspeeder into my deployment zone at the end of the game.

Tactics are how you carryout your strategic plan. With objective cards, you have no strategic plan and simply react to the mission cards while your opponent watches helplessly until it's his turn.

Good idea, poor implementation.

Too many cards are "hold objective X"

I can't forge the narrative enough to make 40k into musical chairs...

Most house rules make Maelstrom missions better. My personal favorite is to draw the cards at the top of the turn, both players are working on the same cards, and score them at the bottom of the game turn. Going second is better than going first by a long shot and you have no excuse to not have the elements in your army to capture stuff. You can also state you only cash in up to two cars and either player can discard the unused cards not wanted.

To the point of 'Tau can't assault' your at a disadvantage which is compensated by a best in class shooting phase. You can whittle the daemonkin bike unit to one model and charge in, wiping it out. The cards represent little narrative moments and do more than 'lol jump on objectives turn 5'. Maybe the brave sacrifice of a squad leader holding off a bloodthirster gives a big morale boost.

With all that said as it stands their current implementation is unfair but the best missions in standard 40k up till now.

Random objectives is the only way they could balance the game short of revamping army strengths.

 lazarian wrote:


To the point of 'Tau can't assault' your at a disadvantage which is compensated by a best in class shooting phase.

That only matters however if you draw cards based around shooting. This sort of balance justification only balances over many games, but in any one game can lead to absurdly one-sided results that leave little in the hands of the actual players choices and decisions, which is a really poor way to balance things and incentivizes otherwise unnecessary and unfluffy actions for its own sake.

The talent needed to successfully dominate in Maelstrom missions comes from list building and on the fly decision making. You need to build a list with units fast enough to get to the other side of the board, along with support units that will protect them from getting smeared across that side of the table, while finding the best units to hold and protect the objectives on your side of the board without ending up as expensive campers left out of range unable to affect the game. It's a very different sort of list building that operates on very different rules than standard 40k. The units that dominate in EW missions aren't necessarily the same that do so in Maelstrom.

The problem with Maelstrom is that too many players see the game about objective winning and not enough about objective denial. The key to winning consistently in maelstrom is making sure your opponent can't score the points they need to win. Pinning weapons are golden in Mael, as are ObSec units. Reacting to your opponents movements and trying to figure out what his objectives are is the great challenge of Maelstrom. If you think it's not tactical, it is because you're playing it like standard 40k.

That said, anyone who doesn't like randomness interjected into their game will no doubt hate Maelstrom. Two equal players with mirror armies are going to find the luck of the draw affecting the overall outcome. And with that in mind, I don't feel Maelstrom belongs anywhere near a tournament. But for non-tournament games, this playstyle offers wonderful tactical challenges to generals looking for more than mere mathhammer and netlisting.

Can someone clarify if, for example, you draw twice Capture Objective 3 does that count as 2 victory points? Cause people almost always count this as 2 VP

 Massawyrm wrote:
The talent needed to successfully dominate in Maelstrom missions comes from list building and on the fly decision making. You need to build a list with units fast enough to get to the other side of the board, along with support units that will protect them from getting smeared across that side of the table, while finding the best units to hold and protect the objectives on your side of the board without ending up as expensive campers left out of range unable to affect the game. It's a very different sort of list building that operates on very different rules than standard 40k. The units that dominate in EW missions aren't necessarily the same that do so in Maelstrom.

The problem with Maelstrom is that too many players see the game about objective winning and not enough about objective denial. The key to winning consistently in maelstrom is making sure your opponent can't score the points they need to win. Pinning weapons are golden in Mael, as are ObSec units. Reacting to your opponents movements and trying to figure out what his objectives are is the great challenge of Maelstrom. If you think it's not tactical, it is because you're playing it like standard 40k.

That said, anyone who doesn't like randomness interjected into their game will no doubt hate Maelstrom. Two equal players with mirror armies are going to find the luck of the draw affecting the overall outcome. And with that in mind, I don't feel Maelstrom belongs anywhere near a tournament. But for non-tournament games, this playstyle offers wonderful tactical challenges to generals looking for more than mere mathhammer and netlisting.

The problem here is that mobility and speed is not something every army has access to, particularly consistently useful speed (resilient and/or ObSec). Likewise, pinning is increasingly rare (no longer applies to sniper or barrage weapons for example) and tons of armies simple ignore it (can't pin a Fearless unit or a tank) or are very hard to pin anyway (e.g. Ld10 Necrons).

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem here is that mobility and speed is not something every army has access to, particularly consistently useful speed (resilient and/or ObSec). Likewise, pinning is increasingly rare (no longer applies to sniper or barrage weapons for example) and tons of armies simple ignore it (can't pin a Fearless unit or a tank) or are very hard to pin anyway (e.g. Ld10 Necrons).

Sure, but the same can, and *is*, said about standard 40k. Not all codexes are created equal. In the current environment, DE, CSM, BA, DA, and MT are at the bottom of the food chain, unable to compete at any serious level. And yet, they have a host of advantages that make them amazing in Maelstrom. IK, Blob IG, and small count deathstar lists on the other hand can choke on it in this environment. They have no place in it.

I've never felt this game was all that "talent based" to begin with, however maelstorm shenanigans have really taken it up to 11 with regards to the game being decided on a random dice roll.

Also, how could you ever consider something that used "D3 victory points" was something that required skill to win at?

Yeah, I've been telling people this for a long time now. Maelstrom isn't balanced. I won't play it. I'm not interested in the randomness or imbalance it brings.

At least in Eternal War missions, you know what you need to accomplish to win. How you go about that ends up being up to you, and is what creates opportunities for good strategy and tactics. Smoke and mirrors. Knowing you'll likely win if you can hold 3 of the 5 objectives, selecting which objectives you'll be going for while diverting your opponent's attention away from 1 of them, letting him think it's safe, right up till you deliver the coup de grace at the bottom of turn 5 is an example of one of the exhilerating moments you experience when playing such missions.

That's much more enjoyable, in my opinion, than drawing a card and being like, "Oh yeah! I drew objective 6 again! Haha I win!"

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea. I never bothered playing it. I knew what the deal was with it when I read the rules. Even though the 2 armies I play are very well suited to Maelstrom(DE and CWE), I still refuse to play it because it's not a fair game style.

 DalinCriid wrote:


Can someone clarify if, for example, you draw twice Capture Objective 3 does that count as 2 victory points? Cause people almost always count this as 2 VP

I haven't seen it any other way

Is there a way completely random objectives can be tactical?

If you narrowed down the objectives and got rid of the d3 points abilities I think you could come up with a clever gamestyle. If they actually play tested it they could have had an interesting game type of shifting battlefield priorities.

I think they strongly favor more mobile armies. Eternal War missions strongly favor more durable, static armies however, so I think it all shakes out in the wash.

It's way more tactical than: "hug cover for 4 turns than turbo-boost on objectives".

The maelstrom missions are good in theory but GW really needed to make a better set of rules for them. I think most people house rule them in one way or another to make it more playable.

Personally I always allow any impossible objectives to be tossed (stuff like Tau harnessing the warp, killing a flyer when there aren't any flyers, destroy a building when *gasp* nobody uses buildings, etc). Also I found through a bit of play testing that the standard maelstrom mission works a bit better with some house rules like using 4 cards, discarding 2 at the end of a turn, and/or allowing a discard when drawing your objectives (kinda ruins the tactical warlord traits but who even rolls on that tree?). I kinda like actually having to care about scoring objectives in the first few turns instead of working on killing the enemy and then working on scoring on turn 4-5 (if one side isn't already dead).

Also im not sure if its the proper procedure for maelstrom setup but I think its best to place the objectives down before deployment zones and sides are rolled for. It helps discourage stacking objectives in deployment zones.

 Blacksails wrote:
Is there a way completely random objectives can be tactical?

Well, just brainstorming here, but here's a couple:

First: remove "cast a psychic power, kingslayer, (that's already a point automatically dumb GW!) declare a challenge," and a few others. Remove all d3 and d3+3 extra options except for domination, which just gets made to 3 points. Always discard a card that is impossible and immediately redraw.

Game type 1: a single deck is used, and cards are drawn at the top of the turn. Players score cards at the bottom of the turn. If they can both claim the same card, no one gets it this turn, unless one person can claim it "more," as in like you killed 3 units and he killed 1 for a kill a unit card. After checking the scoring, the player on the top of the turn can decide which cards to discard before drawing new ones.

Game type 2: you and your opponent use separate decks. Remove all cards that are not "secure objective x" or other board position related cards such as ascendancy, domination, linebreaker, hold the line etc. Every turn, reveal 2 objectives and add them to your pool. Objectives are not scored until the end of the game. (At the end of turn 5, you should have 10 cards, 12 on turn 6 etc.)

Game type 3: stack up to 10 cards the way you want in your deck before placing objectives. Shuffle the rest, and place 6 random cards on top of the 10 stacked, with the rest underneath.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

The 3e narrative style core rulebook missions were awesome. I wish they would've kept to that style instead of random gen objectives.

I think if there was 3 objective markers in the middle of the board

and if you had like 18 cards that gave 2VP each and you dealt one per turn and they went face up on the table and won by either side then it could really work well.

Could be literally be turn one - one card turn two two cards and so on

I used to like tactical objectives but I realized how fethed up they were last time I played. It was a 2500 IG vs Eldar game and I killed everything and anything in his list. My attrition rate was 51%, he had 3 or 4 space elves on the TT at the end of the 7th turn.

I lost 18-13 because he had jetbikes and good objectives. We're still trying to explain such a "defeat" in our campaign fluff.

 RazgrizOne wrote:
I used to like tactical objectives but I realized how fethed up they were last time I played. It was a 2500 IG vs Eldar game and I killed everything and anything in his list. My attrition rate was 51%, he had 3 or 4 space elves on the TT at the end of the 7th turn.

I lost 18-13 because he had jetbikes and good objectives. We're still trying to explain such a "defeat" in our campaign fluff.

The fight was about getting a black box from a downed imperial cruiser that contained very important information about imperial movement in the sector.
While it was a Pyrrhic victory and a devastating blow to the Eldar on that planet, one of the bikers managed to flee the field with the prize while the rest of the army held the Imperial Guard back for long enough to let him get away safely.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE HARDER, YOUNG RAZ!

In Soviet 40k, narrative forges you!

While it was a Pyrrhic victory and a devastating blow to the Eldar on that planet, one of the bikers managed to flee the field with the prize while the rest of the army held the Imperial Guard back for long enough to let him get away safely.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE HARDER, YOUNG RAZ!

Ahah yes I will ! We were thinking about a massive imperial assault on a very important eldar tomb which the Inquisition was interested in. Eldar threw all their forces in the battle to withstand the overwhelming numbers of the IG, had horrible losses but in the end, save the artefacts and gave a big middle finger to the mean Inquisitor-Lord!!

While the OP has a point, our group enjoy playing them. Which is all that matters for us.

One idea we are toying with is drawing X cards secretly at the beginning of the game. You then win when you've cashed them all in. Any duplicates or impossible cards drawn are shown, discarded and replacements secretly drawn.

This way you know what you need to do but your opponent doesn't.

Normal game length and most cards achieved (not VP) wins at the end.

What we don't know is the X amount to be drawn. We'll need to test that.

My group is looking at experimenting with grouping the objectives and then letting you pick.

Say you have groups of 4 objectives in each pile and you get to see what's in the piles and pick a new pile each round. After the round is done you have to discard anything you couldn't do and pick a new pile. It might mean you will discard cards you could have done next round though. We don't play often enough to have managed to playtest this yet though.

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

That would create a situation where you sit bunkered down on your own objectives and try to blow the enemy off of his.

Makes me think of Domination Mode in League of Legends.

For friendly games i dont even use the cards. If i want to pick up a play of random cards and hope to get something good in my hand ill play MTG.

I need to learn the rules for this latest edition, but I was thinking of seeing what I could do to combine multiple versions.

I remember in 2nd ed, there were no objectives, it was simply score VP for killing the enemy (1 VP/100 pts or something like that) which made for very strategic maneuvering.

But I also like the idea of objective counters, just not 6 of them on the table, maybe 1 per side for extra VP.

And finally, I liked the narrative missions from 3rd ed as that gave story and reasoning for the battle as well as some odd deployment zones for interesting play but I can't remember what all the missions were off hand.

Maelstrom is huge in my local meta. Everyone wants to play missions that are based around the cards. I would have to say that the tactics are still there. Yes it more luck based now, but it force you to choose to you play just for points or does unit b leave the objective to deal with the opponent. 40k has always been what can I do to force my opponent's hand. I think the tactical objective cards make the game more interesting.

 Purifier wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

That would create a situation where you sit bunkered down on your own objectives and try to blow the enemy off of his.

Makes me think of Domination Mode in League of Legends.

Or contest his, thus denying him the points. But yes, that is how the game would play. It would be constant action. You'd have a REASON to be trying to blast those marines out of cover. Much like Maelstrom does now, except you'd know before your turn what objectives you'd need to capture to score: All of them. You'd want to bunker down and hold any objectives you have, sieze any that aren't held, and contest any that are held by the enemy. If each player scores points at the end of their own turn, it encourages fighting, not hiding. Hiding and turbo boosting from cover in turn 5 to score is what people complained about in EW. This mission style takes the best parts of both EW and Maelstrom, while abandoning ther terrible parts that were designed to make us buy more products we don't need, in the form of Maelstrom mission decks. These decks are a huge profit center for GW. Imagine, selling paper and cardboard that can fit in the palm of your hand for 8 USD each. With the cost of production and shipping being cents, they're basically pure profit.

I don't know if I agree. It wouldn't be any worse than what is there now, for sure. But it's much easier to sit tight than it is to move onto someone else's objective.

If you have the superior fire power you will have a better than average chance to win a shoot-out, so you never have to move. Just keep your own objectives and put your money on managing to at least one round manage to keep the enemy off one of his objectives. As long as you then sit tight on yours, he can't catch up.

And since you can focus all your fire every round, if he is a more melee heavy army, he has to keep some units back to hold his objectives just to keep up, so he's trying to breach your heavily defended objectives with a slimmed down version of his army.

It would be a very good way to play for shooting heavy armies.

And two shooting armies wouldn't move at all. Just sit there and try to blast the other army off of an objective for one round.

 Purifier wrote:
I don't know if I agree. It wouldn't be any worse than what is there now, for sure. But it's much easier to sit tight than it is to move onto someone else's objective.

If you have the superior fire power you will have a better than average chance to win a shoot-out, so you never have to move. Just keep your own objectives and put your money on managing to at least one round manage to keep the enemy off one of his objectives. As long as you then sit tight on yours, he can't catch up.

And since you can focus all your fire every round, if he is a more melee heavy army, he has to keep some units back to hold his objectives just to keep up, so he's trying to breach your heavily defended objectives with a slimmed down version of his army.

It would be a very good way to play for shooting heavy armies.

And two shooting armies wouldn't move at all. Just sit there and try to blast the other army off of an objective for one round.

Perhaps you change VP values or randomize which objectives are scored at the end of a round. Say, objectives in no man's land are worth 2 points. Maybe you place 6 objectives and roll 4d6 at the end of game turns, scoring 1 VP for every die you take. It doesn't completely solve lolrandom scoring but at least it forces people to put effort towards capping all objectives instead of just shooting across field all game.

the tac objectives are good but require some house rules to avoid getting boned on luck.

re: tactics.. you all need to research what the word means.

almost wiping an opponent out and losing because they scored more objectives literally means your tactics were poor. if you use objectives the tactical focus is objectives not tabling. Just house rule removal of certain unattainable ones or silly ones. We also only place one objective in each deployment zone to avoid the easy camping points.

tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

 tenebre wrote:
tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

You've completely misunderstood the complaint. The complaint about these objectives is that if you have a lucky streak when drawing and your opponent has an unlucky streak, you can win without really doing anything.
And that's compounded when you feel like you did everything right. You took out all of his units, you flanked and you moved up the board and all perfectly, but you drew the exact wrong objectives every turn, while he had one unit that you couldn't get to that randomly sat there chugging points on an objective far behind enemy lines that you couldn't get to.

Yeah, it's a nice theory that it keeps changing and you adapt to it. But sometimes that's not how it works out. Sometimes the objectives means whoever happens to get the right objectives wins, while the other guy can do anything he want because he didn't get the right objectives, so he never could have won.

I still like the objectives better than the alternative, because most times it does allow for some more fluid and tactical play. But sometimes it does the opposite.

 Purifier wrote:

You've completely misunderstood the complaint. The complaint about these objectives is that if you have a lucky streak when drawing and your opponent has an unlucky streak, you can win without really doing anything.
And that's compounded when you feel like you did everything right. You took out all of his units, you flanked and you moved up the board and all perfectly, but you drew the exact wrong objectives every turn, while he had one unit that you couldn't get to that randomly sat there chugging points on an objective far behind enemy lines that you couldn't get to.

Yeah, it's a nice theory that it keeps changing and you adapt to it. But sometimes that's not how it works out. Sometimes the objectives means whoever happens to get the right objectives wins, while the other guy can do anything he want because he didn't get the right objectives, so he never could have won.

I still like the objectives better than the alternative, because most times it does allow for some more fluid and tactical play. But sometimes it does the opposite.

sure.. but the first portion addresses that with house ruling the cards.I freely admit some cards need to be removed and others discarded based on the game being played. We also dont allow duplicate cards (so you cant have 2 objective 5s or what not) Or have a GM rule on cards

but also if the objective is to secure a servitor with important battle plans for the large assault coming up next month and a the general decides he wants to flank the enemy and wipe him out but ignore the data... whose fault is that? killing the enemy isnt always the best way to win a battle.

so for the cards here are my suggestions:
1. no duplicate cards in hand at the same time
2. only 1 objective marker each in deployment zones
3. remove the control all objectives card since if you do you already wont eh game anyway
4. discard and replace any objectives that are impossible to attain (impossible not difficult)
5. as per the rules any card may be discarded once per turn and replaced.
6. mulligan on first turn allowed (discard all objectives and redraw)

This has worked very well for us. most games are withing 1-3 points of each other and both players feel challenged.

The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

 Blacksails wrote:
The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

I enjoy the random aspect myself. For not random i play ASL. different type of game but no randomness.

 Blacksails wrote:
The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

I actually agree. I think the random element is silly. Would be better if you chose your loadout. I still think the entire Maelstrom idea should be scrapped in favor of Eternal War missions that each player can simply score on objectives at the end of their own turn.

Killing many of the enemy troops as possible has always been an objective in an open battle (not counting things like covert ops as those aren't really battles anyway) because what you are doing is
1. reducing the likelihood of a counter attack
and 2. weakening the enemy in it's entirety (not just the division you are currently fighting).
The weaker an enemy is, the easier it will be to obtain future objectives and ultimately win the war.

So even while trying to cut off supply lines, gain possession of a weapons stash, or whatever, you're still going to want to take out as much of the enemy as possible.

And you really can't come up with any kind of strategy when your goal is consistently changing during the same battle.
When this does happen, troops are pulled out and mission aborted while generals and such figure out what's most important. They don't keep their troops running randomly around the battlefield while they consistently change their mind on what they want done.

What good is holding a position if you can't drive the enemy off (almost always due to loss of numbers) so you can rest and fortify said position so you don't just simply lose it the next day to a counter-attack?

It's almost as if GW was trying to condense the happenings of an entire war into a single battle, like reenacting the entire Gulf War in a single 1800 pt warhammer game.

*edit*
I should have stated this is just simply my opinion and if you have fun with missions the way they are, great! If you have house rules for missions that work for you, awesome! That's what really matters, for people to find a way that makes the game fun for them and their group

I see alot of games forfeited end of turn 4 when one player has a tremendous lead on another, and to me that takes away the fun of the game.

Personally, I think some of the D3 VPs should be rolled after the game, not during (more randumb!)

And count Secondary Objectives as D3

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I see alot of games forfeited end of turn 4 when one player has a tremendous lead on another, and to me that takes away the fun of the game.

Personally, I think some of the D3 VPs should be rolled after the game, not during (more randumb!)

And count Secondary Objectives as D3

I've started playing a house rule where D3 VP = 2 VP and D6 = 3. I like that secondary objectives are just tie breakers but that puts quite a bit of weight on FB (although probably less than it has now).

 koooaei wrote:
It's way more tactical than: "hug cover for 4 turns than turbo-boost on objectives".

Yay, 5th edition Eldar!

I have a blast every time I play the Maelstrom missions.

I agree.. I played a game against orks and all my slower units did was spend the game trying to get into the action... all my faster ones wore themselves out prematurely feeding the orks easy assaults.. just seems robbed of any real fun :/ or brains.. I do think tho that if you table someone it should cancel all their VP's inmediately

ConanMan wrote:
I agree.. I played a game against orks and all my slower units did was spend the game trying to get into the action... all my faster ones wore themselves out prematurely feeding the orks easy assaults.. just seems robbed of any real fun :/ or brains.. I do think tho that if you table someone it should cancel all their VP's inmediately

We hardly need more incentive for people to play with killing as their only objective. There are other modes for that.

I actually enjoy maelstrom objectives. Random, yes, more fair than KPs, yes, as fun as 40k foot ball (relic) definitely not

 dragoonmaster101 wrote:
I actually enjoy maelstrom objectives. Random, yes, more fair than KPs, yes, as fun as 40k foot ball (relic) definitely not

You'd probably enjoy Betray's Maelstra-Crusade then too. And it'd be balanced instead of vastly favoring jetbike/skimmer armies.

It's funny. All these non-Eldar, Non DE armies arguing in favor of Maelstrom, while myself being a DE/Eldar player, argue against it. Maybe I should shut my trap, go out an stomp people into the dirt in Maelstrom, and convince them 1 at a time that it's not a fair mode.

Seriously it'd be a waste of time though, people would just be like ...Eldar so OP. - Don't hate the player. Hate the game!

The game mode is unbalanced. Not the armies you're playing against!

The best fun I've had recently is using missions out of the 3rd ed rulebook.

Maelstrom, I'm not even sure why I bought the cards! The game turns into go fish with dollies.

This game hasn't been about tactics forever.

its all about the strategy.

 tenebre wrote:
the tac objectives are good but require some house rules to avoid getting boned on luck.

re: tactics.. you all need to research what the word means.

almost wiping an opponent out and losing because they scored more objectives literally means your tactics were poor. if you use objectives the tactical focus is objectives not tabling. Just house rule removal of certain unattainable ones or silly ones. We also only place one objective in each deployment zone to avoid the easy camping points.

tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.

 Desubot wrote:
This game hasn't been about tactics forever.

its all about the strategy.

Yeah, business strategy.

The Maelstrom missions are helluva more fun than Eternal War ones. We've stopped playing Eternal War altogether.
Just killing stuff up to turns 5-7 and then reaching objectives is BORING.

 Vector Strike wrote:
The Maelstrom missions are helluva more fun than Eternal War ones. We've stopped playing Eternal War altogether.
Just killing stuff up to turns 5-7 and then reaching objectives is BORING.

And randomly bopping around the board like a schizophrenic to cover totally random objectives is even further from a wargame than 40k has ever been.

It kills me that GW has, in the past, made several brilliant mission systems. You have the 40k 3rd edition "narrative" style missions, which were relatively inventive and even asymmetric sometimes - missions like that would be miles ahead of Eternal War.

Then you have the standard Epic: Armageddon mission (my favorite), where there are always 6 physical objectives (one on each player's table edge, two on each player's table half outside the deployment zones) and several ways of scoring points (holding different combinations of objective markers, killing their most expensive unit, keeping them out of your table half). At the end of each turn after the 2nd, you start checking the score - if a player has scored 2+ points, and more points than the other player, he/she wins. Points aren't cumulative either, so you won't just rack up points every turn for sitting on an objective.

It's perfectly symmetric, both players have perfect information, there are a variety of ways you could win that reward different strategies, and you have to start moving on objectives early to keep your opponent from flat-out winning at the end of turn 3 (and without rewarding gunlines either - the way the objective combinations are structured, sitting in your own deployment zone is almost an auto-lose, so you're going to end up fighting to hold mid-board objective markers).

That's how you set up a good, fluid, dynamic mission system. In contrast, Eternal War is definitely boring, and Maelstrom is a misguided attempt at shaking up gunlines by artificially injecting movement into the game (you never know where you'll have to go next! it's not a battle, it's Simon Says). In both Eternal War and Maelstrom, a roll of the dice or a draw of a card often plays a larger role in determining victory than the actual players. With Eternal War you do know exactly what to do once the game starts, but some armies or specific army lists are boned at certain missions - so it's a serious uphill battle after the first roll to determine deployment and mission.

With the E:A missions, you can come up with a strategy ahead of time (like in Eternal War) and you're forced to respond tactically to your opponent's movements early on (like Maelstrom wishes it could do).

Honestly. The only way there should be a draw card system, would be before the game started. Like. Draw 6 cards, choose 3 and discard the rest. Those 3 objectives on your card are now your objective of your mission. Not stupid things like "manifest a power" but things like holding a specified amount of objectives for X amount of rounds or something truly tactical that you can react to and deploy for, while your opponent counter deploys you and does his best to prevent you from achieving his mission, while achieving his own.
Not this kindda' crap, were you randomly draw bs objectives that requires zero thought process and has zero skill involved.
IMO "Deadlock" is the worst offender and the most obnoxious mission in the game. 9/10 times you or your opponent gets a lucky draw and then proceeds to score a stupendous amount of VP, meanwhile if you're unlucky you can only discard 1 card, which mean that you can't ever draw a new card the next round, due to the limit decreasing for every round, so if you're behind from the first round, you usually always loose the game, as it's impossible to catch up. The game is literally decided on turn 1 by luck of the draw. By the Emperor, I despise that mission so much!

 Vector Strike wrote:
The Maelstrom missions are helluva more fun than Eternal War ones. We've stopped playing Eternal War altogether.
Just killing stuff up to turns 5-7 and then reaching objectives is BORING.

+ 1, and also it's really noob friendly. It breaks my heart when I see new players being destroyed 5,6 games in a row. Malestorm really gives you a chance if you are new and you can always make it a draw with a lucky card - Capture Objective # 2 and then you just move your unit with a cruising speed Bam Draw game. Well not always, but it's really nice sometimes.

Or even worse with a bad draw. How does anyone get better at the game when little of what they do really matter in the game's outcome?

It's random nonsense.
Such schizophrenic back and forth of random objectives kicks me out of my head narrative.
It also takes away player skill and hands it over to randomness.
Yeah, noobies might do better with it, because it's random. Just roll a bucket of dice, count it up and see who rolled higher. Fun!

My local league uses its own list of maelstrom missions. They're the same as in the rule book, but a lot of the impossible or odd ones taken out. For tournaments the rule is if it's impossible to earn that objective (IE must destroy an enemy fortification or building but the opponent has none), then you get to reroll for them.

Another house rule for the area on tourney's is no objectives in the deployment area. Prevents that 'I camp on you' process

 OrkaMorka wrote:
My local league uses its own list of maelstrom missions. They're the same as in the rule book, but a lot of the impossible or odd ones taken out. For tournaments the rule is if it's impossible to earn that objective (IE must destroy an enemy fortification or building but the opponent has none), then you get to reroll for them.

Another house rule for the area on tourney's is no objectives in the deployment area. Prevents that 'I camp on you' process

Yeah I've found that limiting the objectives in deployments to one each makes a more interesting game.

Obviously this doesn't apply to anyone on here as i don't any of you, but in my local group, it seems the only people who dislike the maelstrom missions are the players that like to know they've won before the game even starts.
For those of us that enjoy playing, win or lose, it adds a lot to the game.

It's definitely not designed for tournament games. I've played tournaments using objective cards and it was gak. Plain and simple. But then i dont find tournaments to as fun as pick up or narrative games

darkcloak wrote:
Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

Y'all need to read up on your military history if you think that has never happened.

Thermopylae and The Alamo. In both cases, the defenders were annihilated, but their defiance meant the attacking force was subsequently defeated.

What really bugs me the most about tactical objectives is all the HOLD X objectives are the same.

Why is there no diversity?

Attack Objective X, Reward 2 Points (while at the same time the defender gains 2 Point for succesfully defending it if the attacker fails)
Reclaim a random Objective, 3 Points
Purge an Objective from enemy presence, 1 Point (without capturing)

Some rounds we´ve played we just sat on our objectives with our units farming points looking angry at the other units sitting on their objective. Because next round we could draw to hold the objective we are currently sitting on. If i go out and charge i lose my objective and the potential to score. Gimme a reason to go out and charge the feth out of an occupied objective and gimme an appropriate reward.

SicSemperTyrannis wrote:
Gimme a reason to go out and charge the feth out of an occupied objective and gimme an appropriate reward.

This is like saying there's no need for defense in basketball, because letting them score only means you get the ball. The reason to charge the guy on the objective is to deny him the chance to score from it. Maelstrom is as much about defense as it is offense. Making sure your opponent can't score from objectives puts you that much closer to victory. You only need to win by one point, so sometimes it's worth sacrificing a unit if it means putting your opponent behind.

darkcloak wrote:
Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

 Massawyrm wrote:

SicSemperTyrannis wrote:
Gimme a reason to go out and charge the feth out of an occupied objective and gimme an appropriate reward.

This is like saying there's no need for defense in basketball, because letting them score only means you get the ball. The reason to charge the guy on the objective is to deny him the chance to score from it. Maelstrom is as much about defense as it is offense. Making sure your opponent can't score from objectives puts you that much closer to victory. You only need to win by one point, so sometimes it's worth sacrificing a unit if it means putting your opponent behind.

No it isn't if you have more and faster msu units, then you have a higher chance to complet mission then someone with a slower force. Anyway how do you stop a mass drop pods or jetbikes from being on the objective they want anyway?

darkcloak wrote:

 tenebre wrote:
the tac objectives are good but require some house rules to avoid getting boned on luck.

re: tactics.. you all need to research what the word means.

almost wiping an opponent out and losing because they scored more objectives literally means your tactics were poor. if you use objectives the tactical focus is objectives not tabling. Just house rule removal of certain unattainable ones or silly ones. We also only place one objective in each deployment zone to avoid the easy camping points.

tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.

MOST!!!!!! you arent playing your entire army! thats for Epic this is a small force fighting one battle. They are tasked with one goal (obtain objective) while the primary force is engaged in a larger battle.

if we were to play with entire armies then logistics and command would need to factor into the rules as well as many other things which are not practical at this scale.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Sure, but the same can, and *is*, said about standard 40k. Not all codexes are created equal. In the current environment, DE, CSM, BA, DA, and MT are at the bottom of the food chain, unable to compete at any serious level. And yet, they have a host of advantages that make them amazing in Maelstrom. IK, Blob IG, and small count deathstar lists on the other hand can choke on it in this environment. They have no place in it.

Can't speak for the rest, but CSM are amazing at what?

Mobility, msu, only having CAD(and therefore obsec) available to them, some durability, some good killy bits.

CSM suck in a "try and table your opponent" match, but are pretty great at a tactical objectives game.

Most if my armies are set up for defense and a few objective grabbers, i don't play to kill as much of the opponent as i can unless I am playing my Orks(then feth the objective tabling is an auto-win).

I look at tactical objectives like this: when the card says take objective x; that objective has some small momentary tactical viability and thetefore my army needs to go search it(mysterious objectives help this out immensely), the rest are dependant on the tides of battle but can make sense in the narrative.

Tactical objectives have made the game more tactical; before it was a 4-6 turn game of just killing dudes with that final turn rush to grab or contest as many objectives as possible. There is very little strategy involved in that, especially in games with only 3 or so objectives 1 of which you have gad a unit camping on since deployment, 1 you have been trying to shift your opponents campers off of, and the last one being fought over in the middle with dead units adding vps to their opponents(why i never liked msu's).

CSM have great mobility? Uhh...

Many of you are confusing a war with a battle.

A battle is a single instance or confrontation in a war (which contains many battles)

Losing all your troops has never won the battle and sure doesn't win a war (that is by the efforts of other battles that were won)

In every instance listed as examples, while the war was won, that battle was lost.

I agree that if an army is tabled, then they lose regardless of VP. However, I also believe that there should be some balancing objectives that could do just the opposite (such as hold x objective for y turns or kill specified commander... oh wait that was kinda what 3rd did)

nothing too inherently wrong with the card system, it sure makes for a random encounter. If you want something more for a competitive system, do what a poster said earlier.

1. Remove VPs for First Blood, Linebreaker and Kill the Warlord (if your warlord trait gives a VP for it then keep that).
2. Remove some of the worst cards in the deck...Recon, Hungry for Glory, Harness the Warp, Witch Hunter, Scour the skies, demolitions).
3. Shuffle remaining deck and deal x amount cards to yourself (opponent does same with his deck). The number should be determined by size of game. 0-999pts (6 cards), 1000-1999pts (9 cards), 2k+ (12 cards)
4. Pick up to 3 cards from hand and discard...re-draw same number of cards.

These are your objectives for the game.

Yeah see if you dealt x cards out randomly and used them all game, or selected them pre-game from a predetermined pool?

Then you'd remove the whole silly card scrambling fricassee entirely! But that's self evident. The idea is really to take the random nature of warfare and implement it in a logical way. No reasonable high command would be going into battle without knowing what the plan was, even if the plan was just the standard Holy-Crap-We-Done-Got-Ambushed-Plan.

Now if two people sat down and said well, what's the battle about, and then went through the cards and picked out the ones might be relevant to the :coughcough: narrative, then maybe the cards could be... amazing?

darkcloak wrote:
Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.

There is a difference between winning the battle and winning the war. 40k doesn't represent a war, much less an entire battle.

There are countless occurrences in our history of units the size of your average 40k army being wiped out completely while still contributing to the overall success of their army in any given battle or war. Victory is built from little successes and many of those involve sacrifices.

I love the Maelstrom missions. Admittedly they work better with a few house rules, we use three.

1. Auto discard for any unachievable objectives. If you could achieve it at the beginning of the game then you have to discard it normally. (its not your opponent's fault he killed your only psyker and then you drew your cast a psychic power objective afterwards.

2. Any objectives that are d3 are worth only 1 point, those d3+3 objectives are worth 3. (we find it easier to just count cards than remember who rolled what)

3 You can only score one "control objective X" once per turn for each objective. (you don't get to draw three "control objective 2" cards in one turn and get three quick points for squatting there for a turn. If you want the points, stay there long enough to get them all, at least you know what you'll be doing for a while.

Players in my Meta have evolved into the tendency (wouldn't call it a house rule by any means) of allowing only one objective to be placed within each players deployment zone. (the point is to make players move about the table IMO, camping all three leads to the same boring eternal war missions we all know, and have known for how long now?)

The only other rule that we are considering is allowing players to draw their first turn objectives BEFORE deployment. Possibly a portion or random amount of them. You probably had some kind of plan when you got up this morning, right?

To me the random objectives are a fair representation of an ever changing battlefield. Control objective 3 is easily seen as the order to ensure a house is clear of enemy snipers or a unit readying an ambush. The unit clears it, finds no threat or reduces it, then moves on to the next task or sits still to deny its use by the enemy at a later time.

Well being that most people will argue that a "proppa" game of 40k requires around 2500 points, I'd wager that comparatively in-universe that would be equivalent to a battle. A small one perhaps, but still an engagement nonetheless.

I can think of a few real world instances where lets say for example a kamikaze wing might be totally destroyed and still gain a meaningful objective, but for our purposes (which is playing with our dollies) we don't count these examples. If you want a game to simulate that sort of realism then maybe GW is the wrong choice?

We are dealing with sci-fi combat on a battlefield level, there needs to be some sort of semblance of implied realism or the whole mechanic breaks down!

Can you imagine the debriefing on a maelstrom mission in fluffspout?

Chapta Masta! We hahv won de battul!

Excellent! What the hell were we doing down there anyways? It could have been 5-15 different things from over 50 or so options, what was it?

Chapta Masta, dah Librahreen cast deh powas sir. An duh Stehl Rane wiffout duh Mahreens captoored all deh obej... Ojebe... Obenebe...

Objectives?

Yassa Chapta Masta! We cappatah deh obej... Ojebe...


Yes. Indrick Boreal had a cousin, and he plays maelstrom...

darkcloak wrote:
Well being that most people will argue that a "proppa" game of 40k requires around 2500 points, I'd wager that comparatively in-universe that would be equivalent to a battle. A small one perhaps, but still an engagement nonetheless.

In-universe examples usually comprise forces numbering in the millions. I wouldn't consider 2500 points anything but a large game, and even then it would be a far cry from a battle.

I don't need to do your homework for you, but let's take the 3rd Guard Chasseurs "last stand" at Waterloo. By most accounts they died to the man, or at least the survivors melted away and fled the battlefield as best they could. At any rate, the unit ceased to exist. All of the commanders on both sides of the battlefield acknowledge the value of the units sacrifice in holding up the Allied advance so as to allow the escape an increased portion of the retreating French army. So while the unit was destroyed, it served a useful military purpose and was successful in its mission, intended or otherwise.

To be clear, I can draw from my own real world experience to make a chaotic and confused battlefield with often painfully idiotic commands given in the heat of the moment realistic. But I certainly don't need too, the Maelstrom missions do a fine job of breaking up the static gun line, late game jump for objectives mechanic that has dominated 40k for such a long time. In the context that 40k is a game played with toys based on fictional characters and races existing in a fictional universe ruled by fictional realities, I'm fine with a lack "true realism".

Um... Pointing at Waterloo as an example of pyrrhic victory?

At any rate your example of real world experience probably meshes with my idea of real but not too real just fine.

I agree with the OP. Maelstrom is immersion breaking and pointless. Don't let GW try and tell you how to use the cards. They can't even get their favourite codex right so...

Let me tell you how to use them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But seriously, Waterloo?

Beef Wellington dude!

I like using maelstroms as a secondary objective...Choose an
Eternal War objective, it's worth 3 VPs, then choose your maelstrom objective, the person with the most gets 2VPs.
Keep first blood, Warlord and Linebreaker for one point each and you get a decent balanced game....
Getting dominated on the Maelstrom, not to worry, concentrate on the Primary and vice versa.
Tune the VPs to personal preference ymmv.

Not at all, as they are not obligatory. Maelstrom was supposed to be for fun games to add a new dimension for long time players. There are other mission types other than maelstrom that don't have the unpredictable and random nature that allow more tactical games.

darkcloak wrote:
Um... Pointing at Waterloo as an example of pyrrhic victory?

I did no such thing. A pyrrhic victory is where the cost of winning outweighs the value of the victory itself, that's not what I'm talking about at all. If a unit is destroyed achieving an objective that has a greater value than the continued presence of the unit, is that not a win? After all, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

You asked for an instance where a unit was entirely wiped out and could still be said to have won the engagement. The 3rd Chasseurs were destroyed at Waterloo, on the losing side, but certainly fulfilled the military purpose of a rearguard. Unit wiped out, yes, objective (whether it was intended or not) achieved, yes. History is full of such instances, your point that a 40k game should never end where one side is crushed by the other but still manages to win by achieving its objectives, is just wrong.

Table your opponent fine. Fail to do so while failing to carry the scenario objectives and you lose. YMMV, but I enjoy it far more than the eternal war missions that have been kicking around for forever.

Nah I asked for an example of any army... The 3rd Chasseurs hardly comprises an entire army now does it?


Regardless, I think we can both agree that real life examples have little to no bearing on a SciFi wargame, especially one so profoundly broken. My real life question was whether or not an army can be destroyed and still "win" the battle. Don't split that into hairs because that's just not worth it. Suddenly we have vets talking about actual warfare and well, that just is no fun.

I'd love to chat more about this but my phone hates me so... Hard to type, no fun correcting myself every 5 words.

 Desubot wrote:
This game hasn't been about tactics forever.

its all about the strategy.

How can you have any kind of strategy when you don't even know what the objectives are at the beginning of the game, and they change from turn to turn?

Unless your strategy is based on the #1 rule: To have fun. In which case, your strategy has nothing to do with the army you take or the mission being played and everything to do with your friends, the amount of beer available, and the snacks brought to the table. That's really the only strategy you can plan for in a 40K game.

It's not strategy at this level, it's just tactics.

To continue where I left off.

Hegehebbajah.

There, maybe now my phone will stop trying to translate into Mongolian?

Probably not though.

I'm sure there are plenty of fun ways to use the cards. However, the way GW would have you do it is nonsensical and after a run through of all sx missions the novelty wears off instantly.

Its best to sort the cards out and implement them in some fashion that less resembles 52 card pick-up.