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Wow... maybe I'll skip this one this year. All I have is Mech IG or Jump Pack BA, so either way I'm screwed in the 3rd mission. I don't like the idea of going into a tournament and being at a severe disadvantage to the ork players (of which there are many in my area).

Missions 1 and 2 make it real hard to get the massacre, which is how it should be I think.

Spellbound wrote:Missions 1 and 2 make it real hard to get the massacre, which is how it should be I think.

yup in my list I loose a single troop choice, I can't get it.

Don't forget the congo line. A single Scoring Unit can hold all five objectives if it's big enough to stretch out and come with-in 3" of all of them.

Aduro wrote:Don't forget the congo line. A single Scoring Unit can hold all five objectives if it's big enough to stretch out and come with-in 3" of all of them.

I saw a unit of 20 plague bearers hold on to 3 objectives in a tournament once.

Well in all three missions, I plan on essentially sacrificing this large unit of terminators I have. They can't do much as far as mission objectives go in any of the missions, so their job is to take out as much as possible and not survive till the end.

Only 1 mission really needs scoring units.. The 2nd mission is only for bonus points.. Strange to have 2 kill missions as it just benefits all assault or all gunlines even more ..

I didn't realize that until now that you mentioned it. You only need a good number of scoring units the first mission.

G

Okay so I now have played the missions. Chose my Eldar to take over Salamanders based on the composition I saw over the weekend at stores.

Quick note on mission 3, RAW applies here too, the unit must be able to move over 6" in any single phase of the game. Deepstrike units that have an armor value, while counting at moving specifically at cruising speed do not in fact actually move unless you count scatter.

In playing mission 3 against a leaf blower variant, run by a player expected to do quite well at the FLGS the extra points didn't matter much. Without the extra points I beat him 11 to 2 in kill points. I ran it more as VP denial and focused on the exact same targets for any KP mission. Either way would have been a win. I will face a Space Puppy and Emo Twilight marine lists this week too. Expect to do exactly the same.

Went with Eldar for the S6 weapon spam and put the old shake lock on Valk squads. Being Eldar taught me that lesson many times.

Good players will win with the lists they are used to, everyone else will lose and blame missions.

Honestly these missions were very boring to play, mission 1 was my favorite for some reason.

Emo twilight marine lists? I didn't know that the Dark Angels would be making an appearance...

What kind of eldar did you use? Mechdar or footslog?

Lol, I guess you can cover two lists with one title. I'll just go with twilight, I expect they secretly make love to wolves.

Anyway, its a mixed list, that day I ran two wave serpents filled with fire dragons and a falcon and a jetbike squad.

Actually list I will have 2-3 wave serpents, jetbike squad, and footies.

Also haven't played with pathfinders in a while, I had two squads, 3 Dire avenger squads, and the jetbikes in mission 1 and will take the same, those +2 to cover saves gave me 3 easy objectives.

**

Thanks anyways.

**

Mission 3 is ok if you have multiple strong armies and can metagame the tournament. The reason Mission 3 is total bs is it penalizes new and casual players who either don't know about the missions till day of or only have one army with barely 2500 points as it is. Also people buy models to get ready for these events, it is wrong to create a mission that penalizes them for their recent purchase.

New and casual players should come to Ard Boyz and enjoy their games, but shouldn't expect to win the event, regardless of mission 3. I do have multiple armies but I'm on an ork batlewagon kick right now and I'm not changing up for advantage, even though mission 3 will be tougher for my orks than say foot marines, foot guard, foot eldar, or nids.

Most players at the local level have one or maybe two armies, and a couple of folks have multiple armies, but everyone should play what they are comfortable with. Odds are pretty good that your third round opponent's KP's will be close to or higher than yours anyway. Play skill and experience is still the biggest deciding factor.

I don't really care if the missions are fair to new/casual players. I am not their champion. I am just stating that it is a mistake to write a wild mission like this that will create terriblly skewed match ups and really piss these players off.

It would be nice if the missions had some sort of uniform templating. These missions are written very poorly. I hope they are rewritten this week.

Here are some problems.

The victory condition in mission 2 is ambiguous, it says the victor is determined by VPs and Table quarters. Does that mean you need both to win? Does controlling Table Quarters count for VPs? Or are they just pointlessly referring to the bonus points?

Only mission one adequately describes how you determine who goes first and who gets what table edge. We can assume things are business as usual but they are bringing VPs and Table Quarters back.

The third mission is ambiguous also. What a horrible objective. Now people are questioning whether Drop Pods give up 3 KPs. There will be lots of arguments about this on saturday.

People will be kicking about 25 to 40 KPs and you only need 7 more for a massacre. Doesn't sound like a massacre to me. My cat could write better missions. And he is stoooopid. He doesn't understand that when I repeatedly spray him with water that means get off the counter. I will offer his services to GW in about 11 months.

You know, when it is framed like that Shinkaze, it does seem kind or ridiculous that me losing 3 out of my 17 vehicles that I have been 'massacred'.

Sadly, even with these 'skewed' missions, the Ard Boyz is a very popular US tourney. And there have seemingly been numerous 'skewed' missions nearly every year.

Last year had solid missions each round.

G

Shinkaze wrote:

The victory condition in mission 2 is ambiguous, it says the victor is determined by VPs and Table quarters. Does that mean you need both to win? Does controlling Table Quarters count for VPs? Or are they just pointlessly referring to the bonus points?

How is this unclear...? The 'Victory Conditions' just tells you the general jist of the mission. The Calculate Results and Bonus points tell you how to actually win.

Ard Boyz wrote:
CALCULATE RESULTS
Massacre
1126 to 2500 victory points more than your opponent
Major Victory
751 to 1125 victory points more than your opponent
Minor Victory
376 to 750 victory points more than your opponent
Draw
Your total is within 375 victory points of your opponent.

Shinkaze wrote:
Only mission one adequately describes how you determine who goes first and who gets what table edge. We can assume things are business as usual but they are bringing VPs and Table Quarters back.

Mission 1 tells you how to deploy and determine 1st turn. Mission 2 and 3 clearly refer to the BRB to tell you exactly how to deploy and get first turn.

Shinkaze wrote:
The third mission is ambiguous also. What a horrible objective. Now people are questioning whether Drop Pods give up 3 KPs. There will be lots of arguments about this on saturday.

Agreed. This should be clarified sadly.

Deepstriking is not moving over 6 inches, although vehicles count as moving cruising speed.

Wait.....

It says that they "Count as moving at cruising speed" Not that they do move at cruising speed. Therefore drop pods never move more then 6" (remember that scatters are not considered movement), so drop pods give up 1 killpoint.

If you are playing Dark Eldar or jump pack Blood angels against foot IG or the green tide you won't win the 3rd game unless you clear the table, but that is assuming you are matched up against them in the 3rd game.

If you can go and hold 4 more objectives & have 1200 more victory points you should be sitting in a pretty good spot come game 3. If I'm facing a 10 killpoint list in game 3 I'll be a little discouraged, but I doubt that a list like that will be on the top table or two where I'm hoping to be after the 1st two missions.

Black Blow Fly wrote:Last year had solid missions each round.

G

Hence why I wrote 'nearly every year'.

I dont see what the big deal is, your going to have match up problems regardless of what you take. Its not the first time or the last time in my life that a mission will be an uphill battle. If a list that has a low kp count is able to do well enough in the first 2 missions where multiple low cost scoring units have an advantage then they deserve to have an advantage in the last mission.

Increase your spiritual pressure and prepare! The best player will win, but like always people will blame other factors to belittle others victories.

Best player wins games usually yes.. If you mean the overall event? Not really due to 3 round swiss leaving many undefeated people

Grand total KP mission 3: --62-- Mech Wolves

It appears they are trying to thin the Mech lists out some this year in round one, but triple points for transports? Double I think would have worked just fine.

Seeing as how I have spent almost $300 in the past month and a half buying Razorbacks + parts I will not be changing my list. I could care less if the mission is busted or not. However, you can count me in the group of people that will be rightfully blaming the scenario if I get massacred last round.

With the advantages mech has over foot armies, and the ability of list like wolves and guard to play themselves, I doubt many people will be going into round 3 against anything other then another mech army. Oh noes my netlist space wolves lost to someones netlist guard army, must be because of transports.

I will find great satisfaction in my old school WH Sisters killing netlists. Even with my 48 kp.

I grappled the shoggoth wrote:With the advantages mech has over foot armies, and the ability of list like wolves and guard to play themselves, I doubt many people will be going into round 3 against anything other then another mech army. Oh noes my netlist space wolves lost to someones netlist guard army, must be because of transports.

You mean general advantages of mech over non-mech right? Since there is no scenario that punishes horde, and one that clearly is meant to nut shot mech lists in the last round. Although I will admit that as you said there is a good chance it will end up mech v mech in rnd3. I will also agree that mech lists generally do better than horde, and maybe they were trying to reward the players not going the way of the meta these days and meching up. Still as I said before I think triple points was a bit harsh. Even at 2pts apiece I would have over 50KP in the list as opposed to 62.

Examples:

I kill 90 boyz - 3pts
He kills one razorback - 3pts

I kill 30 plague marines - 3 pts
He kills one razorback - 3pts

There are many others, but it is pretty clear with just those two examples. Like I said before though I am going to play my list as it is and power through it. Not gonna go spend hundreds more to make an assault based list (need TWC) simply because the organizers came up with a balls scenario for rnd3.

Foot lists will probably do poor in the other 2 rounds due to time constraints.. also foot lists require a certain amount of close range to kill the enemy.. Again, time constraints will hinder that

Ork horde may be low KP but might end up with draws in round 1 and 2

Kaotik wrote:
You mean general advantages of mech over non-mech right? Since there is no scenario that punishes horde, and one that clearly is meant to nut shot mech lists in the last round.

Umm... Hate to break it to you but all missions nutshot horde. Manueverability > Numbers in most 40k missions nowadays.

5 objective modified spearhead with a foot sloggin army... Tell me how you like walking to every objective and getting tank shocked off of them on turn 6. Better hope for a massacre.

Spearhead VP. I think this one is pretty even Mech vs Foot, but Spearhead can be a biznitch with big armies for deployment.

pretre wrote:

Kaotik wrote:
You mean general advantages of mech over non-mech right? Since there is no scenario that punishes horde, and one that clearly is meant to nut shot mech lists in the last round.

Umm... Hate to break it to you but all missions nutshot horde. Manueverability > Numbers in most 40k missions nowadays.

5 objective modified spearhead with a foot sloggin army... Tell me how you like walking to every objective and getting tank shocked off of them on turn 6. Better hope for a massacre.

Spearhead VP. I think this one is pretty even Mech vs Foot, but Spearhead can be a biznitch with big armies for deployment.

It is alot easier to string 20-30 boyz across multiple nodes than it is to spread one tank, or the 5 guys inside it. I fail to see how the balance is thrown off in round 1, especially with a set 5 nodes. Round 2 as you said does seem to be pretty equal.