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lambadomy wrote:Am I missing something on mission 2?

If they changed mission 2 so that dedicated transports counted, that would only help guard.

The way I read it, right now, if a mech guard vets list had, say, 15 kill points and 6 of those are dedicated transports, the max the guard player could score would be 9 (9 kill points alive). They just count as "dead" automatically. Yes, you'd not get a lot for killing the transports, but only because you already got those points from the start.

Of course, this mission is still designed to *help* high kill point armies, and screw low kill point armies, which I don't really get - isn't the point of kill points to try to prevent MSU and mech spam, or at least make it a disadvantage sometimes? I can't wait to play a foot guard or marine army and watch them split up all their squads just to get extra kill points to score with.

You're missing something.

Not sure how I haven't made this clear over multiple posts, but I'll try elaborating clearly.


1. Presume that a mechanized guard army has 8 dedicated transports and 3 non-dedicated transports (Vendettas) and other random manticore/hydra/etc.

2. Those 8 chimeras (and please don't anyone argue with me about the reasonableness of 8; 5-7 if you prefer. contain killpoints.

3. You can't access those killpoints until the chimeras are dead.

4. Killing the chimeras rewards you with nothing. Doesn't matter that them living doesn't reward the mech IG player - the multilasers and hull heavy bolters and the AV12 front armored platform that provides a hideout for meltas and plasma to shoot from in safety until their transport gets wrecked is reward enough for the mech IG player.

5. So for this mission, the IG opponent is going to have to spend the same amount of firepower and assault power to disembark all those vet squads / IG squads / stormtroopers / whatever. And all the effort involved with trying to kill up to 25% of the enemy army doesn't count for anything.

My point is that mechanized IG and mechanized spacewolf (Overdrive, or Razorback spam) are potentially the two most powerful codexes and builds within those codexes in existence in 40k at the moment. Building the most powerful freakin' list possible is only offset by threatening players who abuse MSUs in killpoint missions. Taking 20-24 killpoints is meaningful. Giving these two immensely powerful mechanized armies a free pass on exploiting what they do best - removing the only negative side-effect of them doing it, that they have a lot of killpoints in a killpoint mission....

That's simply wrong, abusive, unfair, and ridiculous. Its an incredibly EASY fix too.

Whoever has the most killpoints alive at the end of the game wins the primary objective. Surviving dedicated transports don't count towards your surviving killpoints. Destroyed dedicated transports count for -0.5 or -1 killpoint towards your surviving killpoints.

Alternatively: Whoever has the most killpoints alive at the end of the game wins the primary objective. Units with dedicated transports each count for half of that FoC's killpoint. If both the transport and the unit that took it are alive, you have one surviving killpoint. If the transport or the unit is killed, you have 0.5 killpoints surviving.

It's not broken. It fits the scheme.

Mission 1: Seize Ground (slightly modfied)
Mission 2: Reverse KP's (Helps mech armies mildly)
Mission 3: Modified Capture and Control (designed for less ties)
Mission 4: KP's but with the proviso that below half or immobolized count to which makes it even harder on MSU armies
Mission 5: Slaughter Style KP's which will hurt MSU more than standard armies.

So I'm seeing 2 missions (4,5) that hurt MSU/Mech Armies. A different mission that mech are going to have a hell of a time pulling a win (3). A DoW mission that will limit alpha strike armies (1). And a mission that favors meched armies. Yep, IG's got the advantage here

It's actually a pretty balanced set-up in my opinion but to each their own.

And we'll miss ya Ozy. Maybe next year

Wait, now they changed 4 to "you have to reduce ALL of your enemy units to below half" instead of whoever does the most. Doesn't this cause the same problem, forcing you to kill transports (Guard will just hide, even in immobilized transports). It isn't a kill point mission when you have to get ALL of the kill points to do anything. I'm not sure this is really harder on Mech.

Right now, all of the kill point missions either do nothing, or do the opposite of what kill points intend - give an army with MSUs a disadvantage since they have an advantage in objective missions.

lambadomy wrote:Wait, now they changed 4 to "you have to reduce ALL of your enemy units to below half" instead of whoever does the most. Doesn't this cause the same problem, forcing you to kill transports (Guard will just hide, even in immobilized transports). It isn't a kill point mission when you have to get ALL of the kill points to do anything. Ugh.

Hopefully that's a horrible mistake.

Missions 2 and 4 have been the focus this last week of playtesting and I specifically ran mech guard and mech sisters with the scenarios. Here are the results:

Scenario 2-
My Mech IG vs All around DA - Tie
My Mech IG vs footy SWolves - Tie (should have lost)
My Mech SoB vs same DA - Win (15 BP tabled him)

Scenario 4-
My Mech IG vs Foot IG - Loss
My Mech SOB vs same DA - Win (17? BP tabled him again)
My Mech SoB vs Swarm Nids - Loss (too much attrition)

From talking to others who have played the scenarios, it seems that really the second scenario slightly favors mechanized lists, but not overtly. Our concern was having a variety of missions with different goals, rather than "metagame" our scenarios against what we though would be the likely field. There is enough random objective grabbing mixed with other bonuses to make it hard for even the balls out hardest mech lists to rack up 20s in BPs every round. Again, this is the intent.

Really trying to design missions so that Razorspam/meltavet spam does not fare as well is tantamount to army prejudice, and generally impossible to do, anyhow. The comp pairings will pit those people against each other in the first two rounds, anyhow, which should (has in the past) leveled things, a bit. Simply put, if your list cannot handle transport spam to some degree, you probably should not expect to fair extremely well (in BPs) in most tournaments, so its pointless to skew scenarios against these builds. Its up to the players to comp these sorts of lists correctly and up to the organizers (Scott and myself) to make sure no chipmunking is going on.

And on that note, cue the Danny Internets nerd rage in 5, 4, 3, 2,.......


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Dashofpepper wrote:

lambadomy wrote:Wait, now they changed 4 to "you have to reduce ALL of your enemy units to below half" instead of whoever does the most. Doesn't this cause the same problem, forcing you to kill transports (Guard will just hide, even in immobilized transports). It isn't a kill point mission when you have to get ALL of the kill points to do anything. Ugh.

Hopefully that's a horrible mistake.

Might be, didn't notice the change when scott handed me the last update. I will talk to him tonight about it. I will get back to you after I discuss it with him.

Yeah thanks. I was able to travel to Adepticon half-way across the country, but a few hours south for a weekend and it's a no go...

Honestly, scenario 4 is the one that makes my dick itch the most too, but Scott is very passionate about running it in some form. Let me see if Hulk and I can talk him into something less brutal. I know his thought process on it is a KP mission where single man marine units not giving up KP is countered, but I think the whole 12+ chimera/Immospam army effect on this scenario has not occured to him, fully. In all fairness, Hulk is the only guy (other than Blackmoore when he lived here) that runs that sort of an army lately in the LA area. LA is generally a hybrid foot/mech town.

Yeah, I have no problem with mission 4 if it is just kill points, with half strength counting as a kill point. That isn't really a boon to mech, and also requires slightly different strategy than regular killpoints. It sounds interesting and is fine. But forcing you to get ALL the kill points just says "hey, you got a lot of units? Hope you can hide just one for 5 turns!" Making kill points less of a boon to armies that show up with 7 kill points is fine, but having it turn around and make having more of them actually be a bonus when it is normally a handicap twice in the tourney seems weird.

I will say that your play testing does tell me one thing....don't play DA

@Phazael

There were a lot of fully meched armies at the Bash just as a heads up Q.

@OT

Yeah the 4th mission is now the only one I truly have an issue with. I didn't notice that he'd changed the wording back to "all" instead of "the most" when I originally posted. Hopefully we can get this fixed as it is the single glaring mission issue I see and absolute grounds for an auto-tie.

Heck I'll keep a single unit in reserve and force a tie. I have enough units that this isn't even an issue.

Hopefully we can get this fixed.

I am going to be there tonight to put the final packets to print. I will do what is nessecary to put that scenario into a more workable state, instead of the auto-tie it presently is.

As an aside, how many of those meched armies were Razorspam or Chimeraspam? Maybe I am not seeing the same things, but most of the RTTs I have been going to lately I (or you) have been the only really meched up people there.

There were around 4 Razorspam armies including mine and about 5-8 fully meched guard armies (i.e. 8+ AV12+ vehicles). So around 25% of the field was light armor spam. Add in the Marine players in LR/Rhino mech armies, meched eldar, and orks and it jumped to over 50%. I was actually impressed at the number of meched armies that showed up.

<rage>

Mmm, the dangers of trying to "balance" the meta game. For any amateur game designers out there wanting to go pro, look at this for how to NOT design missions Sorry to poke at the mission creators here, but I seriously question the practice of how these missions were created, the implied style through which they are being adjusted, and the perceived last minute changes and "uncontrolled" playtesting.

Again, I am going to have fun regardless, since the missions are only part of the fun for me and just hanging out with fellow 40kers trumps that on the fun scale, but this sort of mission design is sad.

I know I am being meaner than usual and maybe its over the top, so apologies for that I just wanted to voice my own temporary "rage" at the conception of these and other tourney custom missions.

</rage>

I'm not saying that you should write missions that negatively impact mechanized lists....I'm just asking that you not put in missions that are slanted towards their success. neither pro nor anti-mech missions are balanced; they should be neutral.

And one of those missions is clearly pro-mechanized, specifically best for mechanized IG.

I hate to break it to you Dash but 2/3 scenarios in the main rulebook are slanted toward mechanized. It's why 5th is called the Mechanized Edition by a lot of people.

Basically no mission will ever be totally neutral. Even the book missions are slanted so all you can really hope for is a spread across the tourney of missions that balance it out. And this will have that as long as they fix mission 4 and take out the auto-tie.

Again this list only applies if they fix mission 4. I'll write them as they effect your personally hated army. The Mech IG

Mission 1: Modified Seize and Control w/DoW (Hurts mech IG because most of their anti-vehicle weapons won't be able to fire turn 1) And they are going to have to take the center objective which isn't a good thing with all the assault based armies that can get there under cover of night and camp it.

Mission 2: Reverse KP's that don't include dedicated transports. It's different and does slightly favor meching up. But the edition does this. It's a neat twist and it's a good thing they didn't count transports or it would be horrible slanted.

Mission 3: Capture and Control modified to make it less likely to result in a tie. A good mission that will create a nice spread at the end of day 1.

Mission 4: KP's. Hurts mech even more because now all you have to do is immobolize it to get the point for it. That's a 17% increase to score a KP on a vehicle compared to standard. Definitely painful for light mech armies.

Mission 5: Modified KP's which light mech spam will be easier to collect points from. Lots of smaller lighter units result in faster accumulation of points. Mech IG fast attack and heavy support would be worth 12 KP's all by themselves (assuming no squadrons). And that isn't that hard to get on AV12 front, AV10 sides. This mission does favor deathstar units a little bit since they are more durable but KP missions do this.

Missions will always favor a specific build. To many builds to account for and even the rule book favors certain builds. Hence making it as smooth as you can across 5 games which they will do assuming they fix mission 4. If not I forsee a lot of $#@!$ing about mission 4 at the tourney and after it.

AbsoluteBlue wrote:<rage>

Mmm, the dangers of trying to "balance" the meta game. For any amateur game designers out there wanting to go pro, look at this for how to NOT design missions Sorry to poke at the mission creators here, but I seriously question the practice of how these missions were created, the implied style through which they are being adjusted, and the perceived last minute changes and "uncontrolled" playtesting.

Again, I am going to have fun regardless, since the missions are only part of the fun for me and just hanging out with fellow 40kers trumps that on the fun scale, but this sort of mission design is sad.

I know I am being meaner than usual and maybe its over the top, so apologies for that I just wanted to voice my own temporary "rage" at the conception of these and other tourney custom missions.

</rage>

Your concerns are valid and I would have preffered a more controlled playtest than what has been done to this point, but we took over our club and had a limited amount of time to handle things relating to this GT, most of which was spent on getting terrain up to snuff and getting a venue (problems we inherrited as a direct result of the changing of the guard). The aim was to try and not hammer any one playstyle too much. I am personally happy with all of the scenarios except the 4th one, which we will be discussing in great detail when our committee meets tonight. Scott is ultimately in charge of the 40k side of the league (I am primarily the fantasy guy), so I try not to piss on his lawn. He really is passionate about doing the 4th mission in some shape or form, or it would have probably been dumped by now. The only mission that was mine is the third one, so there is where my bias lies. Honestly, designing and refining missions is one of the most difficult and frustrating parts of the process, since someone always gets irritated. I guess in encouraging Scott to use non-book missions with the limited time we had, the fault lies mostly with me on this one.

All things considered, with how last minute a lot of this has been, I will be thrilled if we get it done without incident. We are going into this pretty much knowing we are losing money, but with an eye towards building toward the future, hence the venue we selected. By all means flag me down and talk to me at the Slaughter. I'll be the fat guy with bleached hair running the Fantasy events with a magaritta in his hand.

@Phazael - So you're the one! Understood, I am nit picking at this point and I will always have my list of complaints.. sportsmanship, comp, custom missions, etc. but at the end of the day its all good The fact that people are independently putting these together in the first place is awesome and kudos as I know putting together any event of this scale is "work" and making even some people happy is a challenge .. I will continue to whine of course, but its really about me voicing my preferred set up, otherwise TOs wouldn't know... and then I also know they aren't there to make me (only me) happy, but I am in the hobby for a lot of reasons and even if I don't always get my way, there will be ton of other awesomeness at the event for me to partake in, meeting more people, seeing great looking armies, playing against armies I never played against, or rarely play against (than means I hopefully won't play any ork or ig armies, fingers crossed though doubtful), and rolling dice. I am sure every one of these is a learning experience too.

So I talked to Phazael tonight and mission 4 is changing to:

3 BP's for every slot, excluding HQ, where you destroy or reduce to half/immobolize all slot entries (for a total of 12 points). If both sides accomplish this in for example the elites slot then both players would recieve 2 points instead of 3 (like a tie). If the slot is empty at the start of the game (i.e. guard that don't bring elites) then you get the credit for eliminating the slot.

Transports will count toward the slot they were bought for. Ex. A termi squad that takes a landraider as a dedicated transport means that the landraider counts toward the elite slot.

I'm pretty sure he said the secondary and bonus would remain the same.

This means that mission 4 will create a nice solid spread for points going into the final round.

Overall I'm happy with the change. Focus on the easiest slot to get the points and move on. Much better than having to eliminate all enemy units and it also hurts mech IG since your only out 3 points if you don't kill/halve all the troop choices.

Hulksmash, I actually don't understand. :(

Three battlepoints for every slot. Excluding HQ, where.....all slot entries (for a total of 12 points).

FoC slot? Because there are 17 FoC slots. I don't know where 12 comes from. If you take out HQ, then there's 15. If all 15 of those slots were worth a potential 3 BP apiece, that would be 45 points. I'm confused. :(

Or is it that there are 3 battle points possible for each section of the FoC? 3 for elite, 3 for heavy, 3 for fast, 3 for troops?

And if that's the case, how do the troop choices work? With six troop choices and 6 dedicated transports, what is required to get 3 points?

Sorry I should have been more clear. It's 3 BP's per type of section. I.E. 3 for all elites, 3 for all FA, 3 for all HS.

For troops you'd have to kill/halve or destroy/immobolize all the transports and units. Making the troops the hardest points to get.

Hope that helps

Its 3 points per catagory (1 for HQ, seperately) but only 2 if both sides achieve it. If the opponent lacks any such units, then both players get 2 points. To claim it, everything in the respective catagory has to be either at half strength or immobilized. We made reserves start a turn earlier to limit the reservehammer impact on the mission, as well. This should work to spread the pack on game four, as there is a lot of room for point spread in it.

On a side note, if you have not emailed tiv@cox.net your name and list, please do so. We would like to limit the number of "sharpie" nametags we use.

I'm in.

Now I just have to get a list together and emailed in a day!

@Absolute-
Naw, its all good. Your "whines" were actually very constructive and reasonable. That sort of feedback is always helpful.

We'll see you there Yak

Aww....I must have had bad whining then. :(

At least things got changed around.

Also, Hulksmash has convinced me to do something dramatic; I'm sending in a new army list; untested, unplayed, unexperienced....gonna do it anyway.


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Note on mission 3:

The deployment description and the deployment picture don't match up.

The words say that the objectives must be 12" away from a board edge, meaning that you may not put any objectives inside your deployment zone for capture and control. That ALSO means that the board is not big enough to put all four objectives on the table and meet both the 12" and 18" away from each other requirement.

*EDIT* Also, do you guys want someone to proofread the rules packet? Its got some pretty bad grammatical problems.

I think we are suffering from some burnout. At this point I don't want to mess with it and we will just field questions day of. The Mission three is supposed to be 6" from a table edge, so thats a typo and the diagram is correct. The intent is to allow you to place objectives in areas you can defend properly during deployment, so assclowns in fast transports cannot pop them turn one.


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ps- Really only one person has not been constructive in this thread and its obvious who that is.

You mean the description is right and the diagram is wrong Don't sweat the burnout. It happens. If you wanna bring them saturday I'll check them over between games so at least the final print out copies don't have typo's.

And he's not pointing at you Dash as the non-constructive person

Phazael wrote:On a side note, if you have not emailed tiv@cox.net your name and list, please do so. We would like to limit the number of "sharpie" nametags we use.

One minor item, for future events: it'd be lovely to receive some confirmation email when I send you guys money/lists, or have names of registered participants posted on the web. (As-is, I'll print my Paypal receipt, and trust that everything is fine, or can be resolved the morning of.)

Looking forward to it! Glad you're coming, Faceofayak.

Yeah, not making excuses or sounding like a broken record, but a lot of this was done on short notice and we had a ton of terrain to build up since the previous SCGWL commish borrowed most of his 40k terrain for the first 40k slaughter. We are in the process of revamping our webpage, it just was not as high a priority as getting terrain and venue locked in, to say nothing of cleaning up the scenarios.

Speaking of which, we had someone with technical writing experience help us clean up the language and clarify the writing in the packet. I think we have the bulk of the kinks ironed out now.
~Q

I would get your money back.

For example

Mission 3 states:

Step One: Discuss terrain features with your opponent. (Reference Chart)
Step Two: 12” in from each long table edge and 6” in from each short edge. See diagram.
(See diagram)
Step Three: The players roll-off, and the winner chooses to go first or second. The player that
goes first then chooses one of the deployment zones and deploys his/her forces.
Step Four: (Total of 4 objectives, 2 each) Choose sides and then place your two objectives
anywhere in the shaded areas with at least 12” away from and 6” from a table edge.


Note that step two doesn't actually tell you anything except to see the diagram, ... twice. Also the written information in the diagram doesn't match what I infer step two means.

Both steps three and four have you choose sides.

Step four tells you to place your two objectives but doesn't say in what order they are placed. Does the player going first place both of thier objectives before the other player? Do the players take turns placing the objectives?

I don't think the "new and improved" versions are posted.