As usual, CA19 contains a new set of missions, or actually a "new" one since it is a collection of 6 missions taken from revised CA17 and CA18 with one new.
The result is as usual a big step in the right direction with eternal war missions, and i'm not going into the detail of them. I will just point out the biggest highlights:
- Acceptable casualties is still there in all missions (you don't lose on getting tabled) - All objectives are scored at the start of your next turn - Deployment rules have been updated again. You now roll off to decide who is attackerand who is defender. The defender can SELECT THE DEPLOYMENT TYPE and select the deployment zone. The attacker then deploys the full army and the defender counter deploys. The attacker goes first and can be seized, or can decide to go second but cannot seize. Since there are no longer missions where you score at the end of the round, going second will not give you an advantage on scoring. These deployment rules were implemented to give an overwhelming positioning advantage to the player going second. Sounds fair, but i will have to try it. - The often maligned missions that gave advantages to some play styles, like no invul saves, only troops can score or fly models have ultra objective secured, have been removed. The only one left is four pillars, where characters have ultra objective secured.
The biggest change this year though, was to the maelstrom missions, that are trying to make the jump from semi-serious matched play missions not even used in the official GW events, to actual competitive missions. GW probably took a page from the ITC concept of selecting secondaries.
We have as usual 6 different missions with different quirks to them, but all use the same new core concept of tactical objectives.
The new rules are as follows:
- Same deployment rules as eternal war. - Before the start of the game, after seeing the table and the opponent roster, you select 18 cards from your mission deck. That will be your deck for this match. All cards must have unique names. - Before the start of the game you draw 5 cards and can call mulligan to 4 (i.e. discard all and draw 4 for non MtG players) - At the start of your turn you take 3 cards from your hand, and position them on the table. One can be placed face down, hidden from your opponent. Those are your objectives for the round, you cannot score the ones left in your hand. Your opponent will know 2 of your objectives and 1 will be hidden. You then draw again to 5 cards. - At the end of the morale phase you can discard any objective card played. - At the end of the turn you check the objectives scored. You cannot refuse to score an objective. The scored objectives are discarded. - At no point of the game you can have more than 3 objectives in play or more than one objective face down. - There are new stratagems : 2CP Discard one or 2 cards from your hand and draw that many - 1 CP Look at the top cards of your deck. You can put them on the top or the bottom of your deck in any order (Scry 3 for MtG fans) - 2CP Take 3 objective cards from your discarded pile and shuffle them in your deck.
What this all means is that by selecting 18 cards from 36, all possible cases of "impossible objectives" or "too difficult objectives" are gone. Note that you still don't know where the objectives are or what the deploy zone you will have. On the other hand when positioning objectives you will know which ones are in your deck.
You then have a second filtering of which cards from your hand you want to play. After that you have even more chances to refine them.
With these rules, maelstrom of war games are no longer random. You have sufficient control over the objectives selected, that you are bordering the ITC secondary selection concept. It is now planning, not luck.
IMHO, with these new rules, the maelstrom is now officially part of the competitive package.
They represent the joining point of the CA18 eternal war package concept of forcing the player to adapt to multiple possibile conditions, while at the same time taking the ITC concept of selecting your own secondaries, so that in any condition of match up you can still forge a way to victory.
I liked Maelstrom the way it was, but the changes sound interesting, too. Seeing how it took ages to choose the few cards you don't want to have, deciding for the 18(!) you want to have might take a while Or just some practicing. I always liked Maelstrom more than eternal war, this
might make them interesting for our tournaments where we usually concentrated on eternal war to keep it simple.
Those maelstrom changes... actually seem fun. Your choosing objectives that are tailored to your army style but are also required to have some stake in board control.
Looking at the default maelstrom objectives, there are 12 secure objectives, 6 defend, 6 board control (BEL, Supremacy etc.,), 8 Kill objectives, and 4 misc objectives.
So even if your army wanted to go full out kill, they'd have to choose 10 other objectives. I want to see where this goes.
Still not a fan of random VP for certain cards though, make them worth a set number.
Well in non tournament games you can tailor at home. And events could just put up a roll that you pick a deck at the start of game 1 and have to use it till the end of the event.
I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.
I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.
True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.
I would expect tournaments to make you pick the 18 maelstrom cards before the tournament purely because there is no time to do it every game.
Other then that I'm eager to try it out.
The maelstrom card picking idea is from a White Dwarf earlier this year. Doesn't have to add time to the game, just pre-select before you play stuff that will almost always be applicable for your army. Maelstrom cards don't depend as much on your opponent as ITC secondaries as you have options for generic kill anything objectives. Goonhammer did a good article on picking your cards back when the WD came out.
Karol wrote: Well in non tournament games you can tailor at home. And events could just put up a roll that you pick a deck at the start of game 1 and have to use it till the end of the event.
I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.
Not having seen the missions but i think you're confusing the eternal war & maelstrom halves - eternal war objectives are scored at the start of the turn, maelstrom objectives are the end of the player turn. So unless the mission has both sets of objectives I imagine the 2 are mutually exclusive.
Snugiraffe 783005 10648631 wrote:
True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.
I don't disagree, I think it does add a lot of booking though, and favours armies with flexible new missions, with a lot of mobility. A RG or IH army could be on top of 3-4 objectives turn 1. If it gets to score first, it creates a huge edge vs any other army good or bad. At the same time if your opponent just kills you turn 2, you then have to wait for him to do the last 4 turns playing more or less solitaire. And it is not that it is bad, it is just boring, when opponent try to get max points.
Well am sure people will invent some ways to smooth it out. Plus it sucks for those that don't have the deck of cards, and rolled them objectives out of their book.
Ordana wrote: I would expect tournaments to make you pick the 18 maelstrom cards before the tournament purely because there is no time to do it every game.
Other then that I'm eager to try it out.
I don't think it would take significantly longer than choosing secondaries in ITC.
You want them to be game-specific, so I call pull out my "Cast/Deny" objective from my deck when playing Tau, but put it back in when playing Thousand Sons.
I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.
True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.
faction specific objective cards are usually not allowed at tournaments, only the basic set so that's not really a consideration.
I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11
tneva82 wrote: My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever
How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?
tneva82 wrote: My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever
How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?
Karol wrote: I don't disagree, I think it does add a lot of booking though, and favours armies with flexible new missions, with a lot of mobility. A RG or IH army could be on top of 3-4 objectives turn 1. If it gets to score first, it creates a huge edge vs any other army good or bad. At the same time if your opponent just kills you turn 2, you then have to wait for him to do the last 4 turns playing more or less solitaire. And it is not that it is bad, it is just boring, when opponent try to get max points.
Well am sure people will invent some ways to smooth it out. Plus it sucks for those that don't have the deck of cards, and rolled them objectives out of their book.
Note that the rules in the OP say that you can only have 3 active objectives, so you can't score more than 3. You also need to draw those 3 cards, even if you put all 13 secure objective cards in there, you could be drawing the ones which are held by the enemy's castle or their troop blobs. There is also an option to fight this through d3 VP objectives. For example, casting 3 psychic powers is no problem for an army like GK.
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fraser1191 wrote: I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11
Anyway, this is a welcome change
Last year's maelstrom missions allowed you to remove 6 cards from the deck before the game, this made this a little better. Many games were still lost or won by pure luck though.
This sounds like a great change to me. I don't think it'll take too long to pick either. I suspect at least half of your objectives will likely be the same every game with only a few tailored to your opponent. Off the top of my head, No Prisoners, Overwhelming Firepower, Supremacy, Master the Warp, Hold the Line/Advance, Slay the Warlord will probably be in almost all decks (assuming you have Psykers). Then things like Big Game Hunter and Scour the Skies can easily go in against certain enemies and most factions have 1-2 of their faction-specific ones that are pretty good too. I reckon no more than 5 minutes extra absolute maximum once players get used to the system.
fraser1191 wrote: I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11
Anyway, this is a welcome change
Last year's maelstrom missions allowed you to remove 6 cards from the deck before the game, this made this a little better. Many games were still lost or won by pure luck though.
The capacity to tailor an objective set based on the mission and your opponent, as well as ways mid-game to jettison bad cards is going to take a lot of the randomness out the game mode IMO. We play mostly maelstrom at my LGS, and this seems like its gonna be a very popular set of changes.
fraser1191 wrote: I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11
Anyway, this is a welcome change
I think a lot of players made the house rule that if you can't score an objective you have just drawn, then you ditch it and redraw. This fixes that small problem.
I always felt that the objective deck should have been a pick rather than random, sort of a nod to the old 2nd edition Mission Cards where each person could have a different objective to achieve. It sounds like these do that, and if so that's great.
tneva82 wrote: My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever
How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?
Number of turns != time spent playing. Duh. If you play less turns but each turn takes longer(and top of that pre-game stuff) then it obviously takes more time.
Earth calling for simple logic, earth calling for simple logic!
I never thought about it from that point of view. But I think you are right. If psychic powers were random generated, any game against some armies would go for 5 min longer.
tneva82 wrote: My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever
How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?
because it takes 2.5 hours to get to turn 3?
That's almost never the case when chess clocks are running.
Thinking about the Maelstrom deck-building mechanic consider Warhammer Underworlds for a moment; "score objective (X)" cards are considered the worst things in the game and never taken because the objectives are randomly distributed and if the one you've got the number assignment for is in your opponent's board it's effectively unscorable.
So asking you to cut from 36 down to 18 #11-36 from the generic deck are already just gone, which means you have 24 cards if you're playing a one-faction army (more if you're souping) to cut down to 18, at least 6 of which will probably be unscorable; so there isn't any deck-building, really, you're just being handed a smaller deck that's going to be the same for every player.
tneva82 wrote: My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever
How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?
because it takes 2.5 hours to get to turn 3?
That's almost never the case when chess clocks are running.
Why would you need chess clocks to make turns go faster when one side's always tabled by turn 3 anyway?
AnomanderRake wrote: Why would you need chess clocks to make turns go faster when one side's always tabled by turn 3 anyway?
Agreed. The only thing that chess clock prevents is the psychological & physiological warfare employed by horde army players intentionally slow playing their turn to wear their opponents out mentally and physically, rather than actually playing the game.
It's extremely painful and hard to maintain focus when your opponent takes 45~60 min turns premeasuring, measuring & re-measuring and then rolling hundreds of dice.
Why would you need chess clocks to make turns go faster when one side's always tabled by turn 3 anyway?
Because I have seen a person do a 40min turn, knowing their opponent have to leave in 1:20, knowing that moving slow will get them droping out of the game and the orc player getting store even points practicaly for free?
Games ending turn 3 is a problem of its own, but when my turn maybe takes 15 min, someone with 200 models or more can make us pay for 2 hours of playing, just by trying to space out his models.
Why would you need chess clocks to make turns go faster when one side's always tabled by turn 3 anyway?
If people are getting tabled by turn 3 then the game reached a conclusion and there's not really an "issue".
But that isn't the case. I checked on all the NOVA streams and those games went to turn 5 by a strong majority with none of the games ending on turn 3 or earlier, so chess clocks keep people moving.
yeah well there is the small thing of being full tabled on turn 3, and being left with a no longer working army on turn 3, and opponents dragging the game on to get max points. So there is that too.
Plus tabling in tournaments is going to happen less often, because people are not bringing armies that can be easily tabled to events that have paid entry.
Now if only I could play a game of 40k where any mission at all might matter because some side is not tabled or nearly tabled by turn 5.
Like, all this is great, but at this point I feel like I could be playing on a 1500$ terrain table completely packed to the brim and still have most stuff just gonzo turn 2. you could play "Everything is in cover the whole game, everything out of 18" is out of line of sight, all charge rolls are -2" and you'd probably still go to tabling turn 5 if you used the new marine stuff.
If you aren't playing with the unique faction objectives you are playing with house rules which is automatically less balanced because all unique faction objectives were created to perfectly balance the faction for competitive play reeeeee. ITC is still better for competitive and now Maelstrom is poor-mans ITC instead of roulette, I'll continue playing ITC and CA18 Maelstrom.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: I love the new system for the tactical objective cards, sets them up as a much more viable tournament format.
Are tournament people really going to concede randomness in their mission when they've already got ITC?
America is probably a lost cause, for the rest of the world that actually plays 40k these missions are nice.
The ITC is an ecosystem now and they certainly derive revenue from it. It behooves them to improve alongside CA (something which they have influence over) - as they have previously. I have no doubt that many of the ideas presented will make it into ITC.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: I love the new system for the tactical objective cards, sets them up as a much more viable tournament format.
Are tournament people really going to concede randomness in their mission when they've already got ITC?
They probably should, but they won't. Tailoring secondaries and scoring the way they do in ITC serves to further remove decision making from the actual game by making it all happen before the game. You just have to remember what secondaries your netlist needs against the other netlist, all established before the game even begins, all discussed and critiqued in forum threads.
One question for the masses, when playing Malestrom, do you guys place objectives in order (1 through 6) or do you just randomly grab one to place? I don't think the rules specify. If the latter (which is how I usually play it), it will be tough to "plan" for objectives since you really have no control over the one you place.
Eihnlazer wrote: If there is a relic (center of the table) objective, I always make it number 1.
The numbers themselves don't matter until you draw a card requiring it though so you can just toss them randomly or do them in order if you so please.
If you can chose what cards are in your deck it starts to matter tho.
If objectives are placed as
123
456
You could remove 1 and 4 from your deck to not have to worry about the left side of the table.
With a full deck your right, it doesn't really matter.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: I love the new system for the tactical objective cards, sets them up as a much more viable tournament format.
Are tournament people really going to concede randomness in their mission when they've already got ITC?
ITC!=world. Outside US it's not even most common format.
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Eihnlazer wrote: If there is a relic (center of the table) objective, I always make it number 1.
The numbers themselves don't matter until you draw a card requiring it though so you can just toss them randomly or do them in order if you so please.
There's some edge cases where it does matter but not big ones. Necrons have card that tells them to capture odd/even ones so if you set all even ones you can use that one to your advantage for example.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: I love the new system for the tactical objective cards, sets them up as a much more viable tournament format.
Are tournament people really going to concede randomness in their mission when they've already got ITC?
Hopefully yes. Not everyone plays ITC in the first place and for many people (including me) the lack of randomness in ITC missions makes them boring and far too much of a "solved" problem. Maelstrom's biggest strength and weakness was always its randomness and I'm happy to see GW steering Maelstrom towards something slightly less random with more player agency. Additionally, it looks like there are new terrain rules in CA which deal with enclosed buildings so maybe the ITC guys will see sense and get rid of the stupid magic boxes rules.
TheAvengingKnee wrote: I love the new system for the tactical objective cards, sets them up as a much more viable tournament format.
Are tournament people really going to concede randomness in their mission when they've already got ITC?
Hopefully yes. Not everyone plays ITC in the first place and for many people (including me) the lack of randomness in ITC missions makes them boring and far too much of a "solved" problem. Maelstrom's biggest strength and weakness was always its randomness and I'm happy to see GW steering Maelstrom towards something slightly less random with more player agency. Additionally, it looks like there are new terrain rules in CA which deal with enclosed buildings so maybe the ITC guys will see sense and get rid of the stupid magic boxes rules.
IMO if maelstrom manages to make objectives random while removing the "you lose because cards hate you" factor, it would be the best way to play. The main reason why I stopped playing maelstrom was because I felt too many games were decided by who drew more easy objectives. Before the last CA, I often was forced to table my opponent because he or she scored 4+ VP per turn, with that option gone, we often had games where the one player conceded turn three because the other player had already hit 20 VP while the other player had 3-5, despite dominating the game.
One thing the OP didn't mention is that each card in your deck must be unique. Not a problem with the faction specific decks where each card already is unique but the generic tactical objectives deck as two examples of each Secure Objective X card, so you can't have two Secure Objective 1 cards in your deck.
I've played the Schemes of War mission from White Dwarf several times and I find it to be really good, it cuts down on the randumness massively without becoming completely automatic. Sorting 18 cards out is pretty quick and easy if you have even a basic understanding of your army, as a Drukhari player the Secure X cards and Kill Something cards are pretty much guaranteed to be in my deck every time with the likes of Advance, Area Denial and Behind Enemy Lines finding their way in as well. Frankly I've found it to be quicker and easier to sort out than ITC secondaries.
It'll be interesting to see how the Eternal War changes shake out. By the sound of things your now going to be figjhting to get your opponent off objectives rather than fighting to get onto them as you need to hold an objective through your opponents turn to score.
Eihnlazer wrote: If there is a relic (center of the table) objective, I always make it number 1.
The numbers themselves don't matter until you draw a card requiring it though so you can just toss them randomly or do them in order if you so please.
If you can chose what cards are in your deck it starts to matter tho.
If objectives are placed as
123
456
You could remove 1 and 4 from your deck to not have to worry about the left side of the table.
With a full deck your right, it doesn't really matter.
I would say that you should always pick your cards before determining deployment, otherwise both players are effectively just going to be picking easy to score objectives that they know they'll be holding at the start of the game. I've had that happen once and it didn't make for a good game.
Imateria wrote: One thing the OP didn't mention is that each card in your deck must be unique. Not a problem with the faction specific decks where each card already is unique but the generic tactical objectives deck as two examples of each Secure Objective X card, so you can't have two Secure Objective 1 cards in your deck.
I've played the Schemes of War mission from White Dwarf several times and I find it to be really good, it cuts down on the randumness massively without becoming completely automatic. Sorting 18 cards out is pretty quick and easy if you have even a basic understanding of your army, as a Drukhari player the Secure X cards and Kill Something cards are pretty much guaranteed to be in my deck every time with the likes of Advance, Area Denial and Behind Enemy Lines finding their way in as well. Frankly I've found it to be quicker and easier to sort out than ITC secondaries.
It'll be interesting to see how the Eternal War changes shake out. By the sound of things your now going to be figjhting to get your opponent off objectives rather than fighting to get onto them as you need to hold an objective through your opponents turn to score.
Eihnlazer wrote: If there is a relic (center of the table) objective, I always make it number 1.
The numbers themselves don't matter until you draw a card requiring it though so you can just toss them randomly or do them in order if you so please.
If you can chose what cards are in your deck it starts to matter tho.
If objectives are placed as
123
456
You could remove 1 and 4 from your deck to not have to worry about the left side of the table.
With a full deck your right, it doesn't really matter.
I would say that you should always pick your cards before determining deployment, otherwise both players are effectively just going to be picking easy to score objectives that they know they'll be holding at the start of the game. I've had that happen once and it didn't make for a good game.
This cannot happen.
The order goes:
1) Create the deck
2) Position objectives
3) Roll to see who decides the deployment type and the side.
You don't know which objectives will be available to you when creating the deck.
Imateria wrote: One thing the OP didn't mention is that each card in your deck must be unique. Not a problem with the faction specific decks where each card already is unique but the generic tactical objectives deck as two examples of each Secure Objective X card, so you can't have two Secure Objective 1 cards in your deck.
That's not true. The first column is called "Capture and Control" and the second is "Take and Hold". So the cards are still unique, despite doing the same thing.
Imateria wrote: One thing the OP didn't mention is that each card in your deck must be unique. Not a problem with the faction specific decks where each card already is unique but the generic tactical objectives deck as two examples of each Secure Objective X card, so you can't have two Secure Objective 1 cards in your deck.
That's not true. The first column is called "Capture and Control" and the second is "Take and Hold". So the cards are still unique, despite doing the same thing.
It says each unique NAMED objective. The role is there to cover this specific example.
"No more than one copy of each uniquely named tactical objective can be included in your deck."
Also, would like to point out that the raven guard assault centurion alpha is almost impossible with these rules. Almost all alpha strikes are actually really hard to pull off.
I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I was really looking forward to the new Missions. They updated the old ones but they have ruined it by including the worst mechanic from last year.
'Acceptable Losses' is a terrible mechanic. I dont know where the idea even came from, but it really makes the game unplayable when opponents never have to play like they're going to get tabled. It also removes the option to still win a game even when you're behind on points. It really makes it difficult for those armies/matchups where scoring objectives is difficult. The only good thing that came out of it was that it forced players to provide feedback on mission objectives and allow GW to balance them. Sudden Death needs to be put back in.
The other change that is really stupid is the further nerfing of Maelstrom decks down to 18 objectives. Players dont have to build an army that has to be able to accomplish a variety of objectives, and can now cater their deck to fit the army. It's a tragedy that units are now going to get overlooked because they dont fit into the ITC/Tournament mentality.
Even with Maelstrom now being a joke, there are another 1w missions that the ITC/Tournament scene is going to continue to ignore, and will add more useless feedback and ruin the Missions even more when CA 2020 comes out. If the 'Competetive 40k' community is going to continue to drive the game further away from actual 40k, then GW needs to make that known, before our collections become impossible to sell.
Akar wrote: I was really looking forward to the new Missions. They updated the old ones but they have ruined it by including the worst mechanic from last year.
'Acceptable Losses' is a terrible mechanic. I dont know where the idea even came from, but it really makes the game unplayable when opponents never have to play like they're going to get tabled. It also removes the option to still win a game even when you're behind on points. It really makes it difficult for those armies/matchups where scoring objectives is difficult. The only good thing that came out of it was that it forced players to provide feedback on mission objectives and allow GW to balance them. Sudden Death needs to be put back in.
The other change that is really stupid is the further nerfing of Maelstrom decks down to 18 objectives. Players dont have to build an army that has to be able to accomplish a variety of objectives, and can now cater their deck to fit the army. It's a tragedy that units are now going to get overlooked because they dont fit into the ITC/Tournament mentality.
Even with Maelstrom now being a joke, there are another 1w missions that the ITC/Tournament scene is going to continue to ignore, and will add more useless feedback and ruin the Missions even more when CA 2020 comes out. If the 'Competetive 40k' community is going to continue to drive the game further away from actual 40k, then GW needs to make that known, before our collections become impossible to sell.
I wholeheartedly disagree that tabling should be an auto win. Table your opponent turn 3, keep on playing and capping objectives for 2+ turns and see if you out point them. If you can't then your opponent played better, since aiming to wreck the other army is very one dimensional thinking.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
Completely agree, ITC limits the units you can even take b.c of the secondaries, in GW missions even rhinos can have a place b.c you are not worried when they die you give up points, look at Tau Piranhas for example, they count as 2 units, that could be a secondary and a kill more just right there.
Akar wrote: I was really looking forward to the new Missions. They updated the old ones but they have ruined it by including the worst mechanic from last year.
'Acceptable Losses' is a terrible mechanic. I dont know where the idea even came from, but it really makes the game unplayable when opponents never have to play like they're going to get tabled. It also removes the option to still win a game even when you're behind on points. It really makes it difficult for those armies/matchups where scoring objectives is difficult. The only good thing that came out of it was that it forced players to provide feedback on mission objectives and allow GW to balance them. Sudden Death needs to be put back in.
The other change that is really stupid is the further nerfing of Maelstrom decks down to 18 objectives. Players dont have to build an army that has to be able to accomplish a variety of objectives, and can now cater their deck to fit the army. It's a tragedy that units are now going to get overlooked because they dont fit into the ITC/Tournament mentality.
Even with Maelstrom now being a joke, there are another 1w missions that the ITC/Tournament scene is going to continue to ignore, and will add more useless feedback and ruin the Missions even more when CA 2020 comes out. If the 'Competetive 40k' community is going to continue to drive the game further away from actual 40k, then GW needs to make that known, before our collections become impossible to sell.
I wholeheartedly disagree that tabling should be an auto win. Table your opponent turn 3, keep on playing and capping objectives for 2+ turns and see if you out point them. If you can't then your opponent played better, since aiming to wreck the other army is very one dimensional thinking.
Agree, if my opponent only cares about killing and takes turn 1 and 2 to do nothing but try to table me, but i spent turns 1-3 gaining points, i could make it so he cant win at all even if on his turn 3 he tables me, especially if i body blocked him away from an objective or 2 so it takes 2 turns to get to it after i die. I've won games in the past with 1 unit left on table compare to my opponents 1/2 an army.
Akar wrote: 'Acceptable Losses' is a terrible mechanic. I dont know where the idea even came from, but it really makes the game unplayable when opponents never have to play like they're going to get tabled. It also removes the option to still win a game even when you're behind on points. It really makes it difficult for those armies/matchups where scoring objectives is difficult. The only good thing that came out of it was that it forced players to provide feedback on mission objectives and allow GW to balance them. Sudden Death needs to be put back in.
It prevents games from boiling down to killing everything too often.
The other change that is really stupid is the further nerfing of Maelstrom decks down to 18 objectives. Players dont have to build an army that has to be able to accomplish a variety of objectives, and can now cater their deck to fit the army. It's a tragedy that units are now going to get overlooked because they dont fit into the ITC/Tournament mentality.
Ridiculous, every army can complete every objective, if you actually cared about winning you'd build your list around winning objectives just like people do when they build lists for ITC. Any list can win in any format, but by taking a variety of units you are punished in Maelstrom because of the missions that reward killing a unit with Fly, Titanic unit whatever. ITC can be tackled in three ways, you can try and deny your opponent secondaries entirely by making a very mal-aligned force, you can say screw it and just take a few different unit types and be easy to counter with secondaries or you can be hyperfocussed and be easy to get a few secondaries against but make the other ones impossible.
With Maelstrom it's pretty much the same, take one unit with Fly and it might get shot down before your opponent draws the right objective, take all Fly units and no Vehicles and you can deny another objective.
Even with Maelstrom now being a joke, there are another 1w missions that the ITC/Tournament scene is going to continue to ignore, and will add more useless feedback and ruin the Missions even more when CA 2020 comes out. If the 'Competetive 40k' community is going to continue to drive the game further away from actual 40k, then GW needs to make that known, before our collections become impossible to sell.
No feedback is more useless than what is gotten by a couple of people smashing random forces together, casual games do not create good feedback for balance. Even if the format is slightly different having an actual competitive format being played by competitive players is far more valuable than people drawing lots to define the competitive balance of the future with missions that may determine the winner on its own, it's another factor that GW has to account for when balancing, with ITC you at least know more or less what is going on. One game isn't going to be determined by all the objectives drifting in the direction of the Necron lines so that while they get shot down they still win despite killing nothing and having less overall board control.
One thing to note with the new CA Maelstrom missions - always take the kingslayer objective - where you get D3 points if you have killed the warlord in a previous turn.
one point to note is that once an objective is scored you place it in the discard pile. for 2CP you can gain back some of your "discarded" cards and keep doing this each turn. so if you manage to kill the warlord effectivly you can gain multiple lots of D3 victory points...
The Forgemaster wrote: One thing to note with the new CA Maelstrom missions - always take the kingslayer objective - where you get D3 points if you have killed the warlord in a previous turn.
one point to note is that once an objective is scored you place it in the discard pile. for 2CP you can gain back some of your "discarded" cards and keep doing this each turn. so if you manage to kill the warlord effectivly you can gain multiple lots of D3 victory points...
Sounds like a fun and tactical game.
If GW is determined to go down this route they need to seriously start giving more resources to Narrative game options.
Nah, Kingslayer can only be scored once. The only advantage to grabbing it a second time is if you only rolled a 1 on the VP d3 and wanna reroll it.
EDIT: and before you ask why can it be only scored once...…….. Your only allowed to take each card once first, and once you killed the warlord, there are no other warlords to kill. Yes the strat lets you replay the card, but it only ever awards D3 victory points. You wanna reroll your D3 go ahead and pay 2 CP and waste the chance for a new card.
Eihnlazer wrote: Nah, Kingslayer can only be scored once. The only advantage to grabbing it a second time is if you only rolled a 1 on the VP d3 and wanna reroll it.
EDIT: and before you ask why can it be only scored once...…….. Your only allowed to take each card once first, and once you killed the warlord, there are no other warlords to kill. Yes the strat lets you replay the card, but it only ever awards D3 victory points. You wanna reroll your D3 go ahead and pay 2 CP and waste the chance for a new card.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
Imagine thinking the game won't be based around list building still due to poor external balance.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
That's strange I don't remember 6th and 7th being balanced, must be my faulty memory failing me again.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.
Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.
The Forgemaster wrote: One thing to note with the new CA Maelstrom missions - always take the kingslayer objective - where you get D3 points if you have killed the warlord in a previous turn.
one point to note is that once an objective is scored you place it in the discard pile. for 2CP you can gain back some of your "discarded" cards and keep doing this each turn. so if you manage to kill the warlord effectivly you can gain multiple lots of D3 victory points...
The stratagem for 2CP puts the cards from the discard pile INTO THE DECK, not in your hand.
You need to draw it again.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.
Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.
I though the same until CA18.
With this new maelstrom format, the randomness is dialed down to a level which makes it controllable and fair for all.
We surely need to get some games under our belts before we talk, but for now i like it a lot and can see high level tournaments using them.
Martel732 wrote: I have to react on the fly in Starcraft, and it has no randomness at all.
starcraft is a video game, not a turn based game. If you begin to move your assault squad close to my devestator marines I can't immediatly move them away, I have to wait until my turn.
Randomness makes things exciting, it adds a bit of RISK/Reward to the element. sure charging that custodes with the guardsman likely won't work out very well, but maybe it will. a little bit of randomness means there is an element of the game where taking chances can pay off.
I find that more intreasting then button spamming and zerg rushing.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.
Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.
I agree...up until CA19. The new Maelstrom missions combine an element of randomness with sufficient player agency to mitigate that randomness, as well as a couple of interesting mechanics in the missions themselves to further manipulate the cards. There's no excuse now for having unachievable objectives in your deck and you get to decide when you want to try to achieve each one to a certain extent. The new Maelstrom missions are, IMO, vastly better than ITC in virtually every way.
Martel732 wrote: I have to react on the fly in Starcraft, and it has no randomness at all.
That's like saying there is no randomness on rock paper scissors because you don't use any dice. Sure, that's an exaggeration, but with fog of war, you can use some "coin flip" strategy where you just try a strat and depending on what the other player decided to do, you are either in a very strong or very weak position.
Chess has even less randomness because it has no hidden information, and it's turned-based too!
(And boring imho but to each their own, some people love it)
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.
Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.
I agree...up until CA19. The new Maelstrom missions combine an element of randomness with sufficient player agency to mitigate that randomness, as well as a couple of interesting mechanics in the missions themselves to further manipulate the cards. There's no excuse now for having unachievable objectives in your deck and you get to decide when you want to try to achieve each one to a certain extent. The new Maelstrom missions are, IMO, vastly better than ITC in virtually every way.
I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.
Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.
Those new missions look like a little more time for a little less randomness- i like it!
Also might try to max out CP to get all the objectives i want.
Gotta let the opponent table me while scoing max. objectives turn by turn. Also getting back some of the cards from discard pile sounds cool. 2 CP for getting that defend objective for a second time? Hell yeah!
Xenomancers wrote: I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.
Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.
Lol, did you read the first post? You are literally asking for what is being done.
- Deployment rules have been updated again. You now roll off to decide who is attackerand who is defender. The defender can SELECT THE DEPLOYMENT TYPE and select the deployment zone. The attacker then deploys the full army and the defender counter deploys. The attacker goes first and can be seized, or can decide to go second but cannot seize. Since there are no longer missions where you score at the end of the round, going second will not give you an advantage on scoring. These deployment rules were implemented to give an overwhelming positioning advantage to the player going second. Sounds fair, but i will have to try it.
The player going second has a massive advantage.
Selects the deployment type, the deployment zone, fully counter deploys, has prepared positions AND can seize.
Please note that selecting deployment type and zone can protect you from many alpha strikes, like for example the raven guard assault centurions, or can give you more objectives on your side of the table.
If you go first, you have the chance at alpha striking the opponent, but you are fighting an uphill battle from round 1.
I think that with these rules i would always elect to go second.
The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.
Drager wrote: The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.
Are you sure? Can you type out what the rules say? Because the reviewer said specifically that the defender selects the deployment type.
players roll off and the winner decides
who will be the Attacker and who will be
the Defender. The Defender determines
which of the standard deployment maps
is used in the battle (see the Warhammer
40,000 rulebook) and selects one of the
deployment zones for their army. The
Attacker uses the other deployment zone.
Drager wrote: The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.
You select it as you like it.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Wayniac wrote: I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.
Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.
It's better than Eternal Snore. It's nice that most missions have some sort of progressive scoring mechanic now, but they're all ultimately won by whoever kills the other person harder in the first two turns, with relatively evenly matched games going to either the faster opponent, or more likely whoever went first.
With Maelstrom, there's a chance that you'll have to do something that actively prevents you from killing your opponent in order to score. This is a VERY important mechanic to have in 40k missions, in my opinion. By having something you actually have to forgo damage in order to achieve you reduce the overall deadliness of armies and increase the value of strategic choice.
Every Eternal War mission's entire tactica boils down to 'kill them while moving forward', with Maelstrom at least you have to think occasionally.
Xenomancers wrote: I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.
Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.
Making Prepared Positions 1CP (or controversially, free)
It's a detriment as it is going second.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Martel732 wrote: Killing is no less effective in maelstrom. You are fooling yourself.
Indeed. Enemy can't score cards if they have no units left.
Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.
Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.
NurglesR0T wrote: Indeed. Enemy can't score cards if they have no units left.
But sometimes you ain't scoring if you go for the kill
Maybe for an assault list. Shooting doesn't care.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jidmah wrote: Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.
Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.
Killing is still usually the right decision, because it removes enemy scoring in future turns. Enemy can't score cards with no units.
Wayniac wrote:I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.
But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.
I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.
Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.
Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.
But to each his own.
Martel732 wrote:I have to react on the fly in Starcraft, and it has no randomness at all.
pretty confident there is some randomness, you just dont see it on screen, but in the 1's & 0's of the program it's happening. An entire game of 40k represents like a minute of an actual battle at real speed. Slow down starcraft to a crawl and make you watch the 1's & 0's, you might think differently.
Xenomancers wrote:I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.
Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.
Something needs to be done but I think they're getting there(albeit slowly).
Xenomancers wrote: I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.
Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.
Removing the seize would help alpha striking so not sure how that would help...
And as it is if you go 2nd you get to dictate deployment already. Not sure what more can be done.
Of course add in terrain and it helps. Last tournament game 2 I gave up first turn on the account that a) I could see literally nothing b) if I go first I can't even reach with most of the stuff I have even if they can manage to angle I could see something. Also game 3 only thing I could see were the 3 eliminators but at least slagged them with doomsday ark. Literally only casualties salamanders took 1st turn as everything else was hiding behind terrain.
Well guess if you play on planet bowling ball...But then that's your choice. If gun power would be nerfed a lot here the shooting then would become way underpowered as the terrain currently keeps the gunlines in check nicely.
Jidmah wrote: Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.
Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.
Killing is still usually the right decision, because it removes enemy scoring in future turns. Enemy can't score cards with no units.
I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.
Jidmah wrote: I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.
Not my last tournament but day before. Lost 2 games despite vaporizing enemy armies pretty well(especially first game). How? Opponent boxed me in and prevented me from scoring any objectives. By the end of first game there was not much left of blood angel/knight/ig/assasin tag team. Necrons had basically lost just dda, 3 destroyers and command barge.
He deployed better and used his mobility to essentially box me into my initial corner. By the time I cleared his army it was too late to score anything.
Jidmah: well, it pretty much is unless CoD rules are in effect. Whole midfield is open, there are long range firelanes everywhere and not much area terrain to take cover in. It's mostly a shooty dream unless mission dictates otherwise, besides some LoS blocks on the flanks for sneaky shenanigans.
All those containers and trees provide cover within 3" unless you are standing on them (basically sealed fronteris structure rules), and there are barricades everywhere (barrels, fences, sand bags) as well as craters. I don't think I shot at a single necron without cover in that game. I remember getting sight on anything was a PITA for both sides. That blue predator moved to where the tray with dice are in the picture and was completely hidden from the DDA in the back, despite it sitting on top of a rather tall building.
Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).
I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha
Sherrypie wrote: Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).
I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha
Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.
Sherrypie wrote: Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).
I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha
Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.
Of course that adds up time. 8th ed turns takes so much time that you need less effective turns or your games take lot longer than before. Bloody GW and their fixation on just adding up more and more models and even more and more and more dice rolls.
Some people have time limits. I have ~2.5h including unpacking and packing. Can get bit dicey if opponent is thinking long types.
The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.
Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.
Sherrypie wrote: Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).
I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha
Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.
Of course that adds up time. 8th ed turns takes so much time that you need less effective turns or your games take lot longer than before. Bloody GW and their fixation on just adding up more and more models and even more and more and more dice rolls.
Some people have time limits. I have ~2.5h including unpacking and packing. Can get bit dicey if opponent is thinking long types.
Too many rerolls and too many units with insane amounts of dakka/attacks. Rolling 40 dice at a time is supposed to be for orks not everyone.
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Jidmah wrote: The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.
Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.
That's why it's better to have better rules for the cover/terrain you do have and not just more terrain. True los shooting is the problem.
Jidmah wrote: I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.
Not my last tournament but day before. Lost 2 games despite vaporizing enemy armies pretty well(especially first game). How? Opponent boxed me in and prevented me from scoring any objectives. By the end of first game there was not much left of blood angel/knight/ig/assasin tag team. Necrons had basically lost just dda, 3 destroyers and command barge.
He deployed better and used his mobility to essentially box me into my initial corner. By the time I cleared his army it was too late to score anything.
Kill faster. They're just BA.
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Jidmah wrote: The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.
Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.
That board had plenty of terrain. People need to get over this obsession with LoS blocking terrain. The game needs to work even when you are not on your preferred board layout. Also, you are right that LOS blockers are a double edged sword.
It's better than Eternal Snore. It's nice that most missions have some sort of progressive scoring mechanic now, but they're all ultimately won by whoever kills the other person harder in the first two turns, with relatively evenly matched games going to either the faster opponent, or more likely whoever went first.
With Maelstrom, there's a chance that you'll have to do something that actively prevents you from killing your opponent in order to score. This is a VERY important mechanic to have in 40k missions, in my opinion. By having something you actually have to forgo damage in order to achieve you reduce the overall deadliness of armies and increase the value of strategic choice.
Every Eternal War mission's entire tactica boils down to 'kill them while moving forward', with Maelstrom at least you have to think occasionally.
Eh, most of the time you still have to kill stuff anyway (either because its on an objective or the maelstrom objective is to kill something), and "kill something with an axe" instead of just killing it however you normally would, or "kill X number of things" isn't any better, while stuff like "manifest a psychic power" is just absurd, and the narrative oddity of being assigned random new orders every turn really takes a lot out of the game.
Ive never personally found Maelsteom to really be any deeper tactically, zipping a jetbike unit across the field to sit on a random point because you drew a card that says "now hop over there!" instead of having it shoot something doesn't require any more thinking than just shooting.
The extra record keeping doesn't help, its just much messier in general. The newer progressive scoring missions I like a lot, and they make way more coherent battlefield sense, but random Maelstrom has always been really silly to me.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. Here's a screenshot.
Spoletta wrote: Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
Martel732 wrote: Except there is a lot of stuff, just not where you want it. Not every battle is going to have walls in the middle of the battlefield.
People are forgetting about this. You can't just use the very tired "use more terrain" when most tables in most hobby shops are already put together and look nice. It's a lazy argument to try and defend IGOUGO as well.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
I had a csm player friend throw a giant hissy fit because I set the board up more like you proposed and it ended up bottle necking his whole army because he went way to mech heavy. You put on to little some will bitch put on a lot and they bitch as well.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. Here's a screenshot.
Spoletta wrote: Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
Again, this isn't accurate. See below.
On the second point you are right, i didn't see that mission.
On the first point though why am i mistaken? The text says exactly what i said, word per word.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
I had a csm player friend throw a giant hissy fit because I set the board up more like you proposed and it ended up bottle necking his whole army because he went way to mech heavy. You put on to little some will bitch put on a lot and they bitch as well.
Says more about the person than an issue with the terrain though.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
I had a csm player friend throw a giant hissy fit because I set the board up more like you proposed and it ended up bottle necking his whole army because he went way to mech heavy. You put on to little some will bitch put on a lot and they bitch as well.
Says more about the person than an issue with the terrain though.
Nothing wrong with bitching about too much terrain for your army to manouvre, especially if the terrain is largely useless, like putting down a barricade such that vehicles have no option but going up and down instead of around can hurt a lot, while units with FLY can ignore it and Infantry can move around more easily, you can definitely create some unfair terrain set-ups using too much terrain. It's even easier to make things unfair when Titanic units get involved, the Necron Seraptek Construct is pretty good IMO, most people's opinion is that it's meh at best, it's definitely pretty bad when terrain gets heavy and you have to spend half your movement moving up and down things, IMO some Titanic units should ignore terrain like that, although the Seraptek has an obscene Movement characteristic so I'd be fine with adjusting it down and giving it an ability to ignore terrain somehow.
Drager wrote: The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.
You select it as you like it.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
You are completely misquothing ca18 because it suits you, the wording is exactly the same as in ca19 of determines wich of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. Here's a screenshot.
Spoletta wrote: Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
Again, this isn't accurate. See below.
On the second point you are right, i didn't see that mission.
On the first point though why am i mistaken? The text says exactly what i said, word per word.
Here's the 2018 version. It's the same wording. They both reference the rulebook.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
Both the bastion and the generator are LOS blocking, as are all the containers - the devastators on tall flight stands could not be seen when behind a container unless you were in an elevated position. The trees are LOS blocking despite not seeming like that from the picture, the doomsday ark could not see the chapel building on my side at all.
You're basically saying that unless there is a 24" wide and 12" tall LOS blocker in the middle of the board, it's planet bowling ball. Which means exactly one thing, and that is that shooting is broken OP unless you go to extreme measures to invalidate long range weapons.
Martel732 wrote: There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage
Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:
IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"
I had a csm player friend throw a giant hissy fit because I set the board up more like you proposed and it ended up bottle necking his whole army because he went way to mech heavy. You put on to little some will bitch put on a lot and they bitch as well.
Says more about the person than an issue with the terrain though.
Nothing wrong with bitching about too much terrain for your army to manouvre, especially if the terrain is largely useless, like putting down a barricade such that vehicles have no option but going up and down instead of around can hurt a lot, while units with FLY can ignore it and Infantry can move around more easily, you can definitely create some unfair terrain set-ups using too much terrain. It's even easier to make things unfair when Titanic units get involved, the Necron Seraptek Construct is pretty good IMO, most people's opinion is that it's meh at best, it's definitely pretty bad when terrain gets heavy and you have to spend half your movement moving up and down things, IMO some Titanic units should ignore terrain like that, although the Seraptek has an obscene Movement characteristic so I'd be fine with adjusting it down and giving it an ability to ignore terrain somehow.
Having to maneuver around terrain is one of the drawbacks of fielding super heavy units. Personally if I have to maneuver my fellblade around terrain in order to reach my opponent's units and said terrain prevents them from unloading their entire army into it turn one I find it makes for a better more tactical game.
That said the players should agree on terrain and the terrain/cover rules being used beforehand if possible.
Gadzilla666 wrote: Having to maneuver around terrain is one of the drawbacks of fielding super heavy units. Personally if I have to maneuver my fellblade around terrain in order to reach my opponent's units and said terrain prevents them from unloading their entire army into it turn one I find it makes for a better more tactical game.
Ork buggies use the same base as knights.
Having to maneuver around terrain is a major drawback for all melee and short-ranged units that can't fly. So in the end, everyone needs to move around the terrain, but the super-heavy is more powerful because those points are not blocking each other.
That said the players should agree on terrain and the terrain/cover rules being used beforehand if possible.
Or, in other words: "Terrain rules are terrible and must be house-ruled".
Gadzilla666 wrote: Having to maneuver around terrain is one of the drawbacks of fielding super heavy units. Personally if I have to maneuver my fellblade around terrain in order to reach my opponent's units and said terrain prevents them from unloading their entire army into it turn one I find it makes for a better more tactical game.
Ork buggies use the same base as knights.
Having to maneuver around terrain is a major drawback for all melee and short-ranged units that can't fly. So in the end, everyone needs to move around the terrain, but the super-heavy is more powerful because those points are not blocking each other.
That said the players should agree on terrain and the terrain/cover rules being used beforehand if possible.
Or, in other words: "Terrain rules are terrible and must be house-ruled".
Didn't realize that about the buggies as few players in my area currently field them.
I wouldn't say "house rule " as gw does have some good terrain rules that few people use. (Hello cod)?
Martel732 wrote: 3rd ed terrain was the best. True los is cancer.
Yeah, pretty much. True LOS itself isn't THAT bad but the fact there are no exceptions that you need to see X% of the model to shoot at it is. That's what causes most terrain (GW terrain in particular) to be mostly useless; almost all of them have small gaps/holes/etc. which let you shoot as though they weren't even there. They provide pretty decoration, and that's about it.
This is something I don't get. Buildings and terrain work in a true line of sight setting. But models do, when shoting do not. Tanks without turrets do back flips shoting behind them or do a 280 to shot with every gun they have at something in front of them. If line of sight is drawn in a non true line of sight manner from the shoter, why can't the target also be not true line of sight. Would remove all the punishing for having a taller model, or having a banner not dragged in the mud. Just make infantry, monsters, terrain and vehicles have a size. models same size obscure other models same size, and if they are bigger they block the line of sight.
So an infantry guy could be size 1, a rhino size 3, while a DP could be size 3 too. A rhino could have infantry hide behind it, but a DP would only get cover. A knight on the other hand would be size 5, and would get nothing for standing behind a rhino.
Karol wrote: This is something I don't get. Buildings and terrain work in a true line of sight setting. But models do, when shoting do not. Tanks without turrets do back flips shoting behind them or do a 280 to shot with every gun they have at something in front of them. If line of sight is drawn in a non true line of sight manner from the shoter, why can't the target also be not true line of sight. Would remove all the punishing for having a taller model, or having a banner not dragged in the mud. Just make infantry, monsters, terrain and vehicles have a size. models same size obscure other models same size, and if they are bigger they block the line of sight.
So an infantry guy could be size 1, a rhino size 3, while a DP could be size 3 too. A rhino could have infantry hide behind it, but a DP would only get cover. A knight on the other hand would be size 5, and would get nothing for standing behind a rhino.
I disagree on a model giving another one cover unless failed hits could hit that one but i wouldn’t be against the rest of the system, i feel the need to ask though you defined it vertically, what about horizontally? Would we use the base? And if so what about models with no base?
I think all models, including tanks should come with bases. If a line of sight can't be drawn to a model without cuting through another model or terrain, something should happen. And not the way it is right now where you can stand behind a 4" of forest and it does not even give +1 cover.
Am not sure about the rules specifics, am not smart enough to invent those, but what I am sure is that, stuff should be effecting line of sight without everything being required to be a slap of plastic the hights of a knight with no doors or windows. Banner shoting should not be a thing, neither should be the fact that someone has a model, that GW decided to give a dynamic pose, a gretching shouldn't be giving cover to a stompa, but a warwagon probably should etc. Now how this should look in actual rules, would be for more expirianced and smarter people to implement.
Every model and terrain having a pre set size that blocks LoS seem to me to be a quickes, but I won't claim the best, way to play. This way everyone knows what blocks LoS to what without those hours spend on model adjustments. Would speed up playing too. No 30 min turns of set up, just to be sure no LoS can be drawn from any position. your behind a thick forest, so you are safe.
Glad to see GW continues to improve their missions. As much as I support what ITC does for the game, I do think we're hitting the point where there really needs to be some major tournaments running these missions to give GW a real field test to allow them to really leverage the ability to drive the game from more than a points standing. Having them retake the reigns on errata has been a huge improvement; they need to do the same for mission structure.
The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.
Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.
I'm afraid you're mistaken. Here's a screenshot.
Spoletta wrote: Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.
Again, this isn't accurate. See below.
On the second point you are right, i didn't see that mission.
On the first point though why am i mistaken? The text says exactly what i said, word per word.
Here's the 2018 version. It's the same wording. They both reference the rulebook.
Or just some practicing. I always liked Maelstrom more than eternal war, this
