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They could give Elite infantry the old(?) daemon rule that allows them to claim objectives if they were the last unit to claim it even if they have moved off the objective. Kind of like this objective is secured, carry on with the mission rule for multi-wound infantry.

Apart from maelstrom objectives being random. I dislike how they have random rewards. If a player always roll a 1 for their d3 rewards, why should the exact same objective be worth more for one player than another?

I think there is room somewhere that combines progressive and end-game scoring. I see progressive objectives as a reward for how you fight, and end game objectives as a reward for why you were fighting. Combined in the same scenario, the progressive objectives should give you points as you go, and the end game objective should give you a slightly larger amount of points at the end. You might be able to hang close till the end and snatch the end game objective to sneak out a win.

Alpha strike is less of a problem in progressive games.

End of game scoring is a complete joke that awards gunlines, and armies that don't need to move.

And ITC already has end of game scoring. They're called secondary objectives.

And don't use elite armies to justify end of game scoring. By the end of a game they won't have enough models to hold anything. End of game scoring favors gunlines. And they don't need any more of an advantage than they already have.

 Vankraken wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
As mentioned, endgame scoring is terrible from a game balance perspective. Take the first Konor battle - Chaos effectively had to table their opponent to win (which was reflected in who won that fight).

40k cannot be a tactical game of endgame scoring as long as it sticks to You Go, I Go, as one army is normally obliterated T1 and incapable of fighting back. Gradual scoring has the added depth of requiring you to make decisions - objective or killing? A bandaid solution would be increasing the cost of all weaponry massively to make units relatively more durable for their points.

ITC solves first turn nicely (they have a 45/55 win split between who goes first and who goes second). Maelstrom is fun for casual games, but the issue is the huge randomness. Objectives like Domination and Supremacy, which are just designed to totally wreck the opponent once you're winning and not allow any chance of a comeback.

YGIG is a problem but its not THE problem of every game being an alpha strike slaughter. 6th and 7th were still YGIG but a much bigger portion of those games played out to where end game objectives mattered instead of a Turn 3/4 tabling. The lack of deployment options, poor cover mechanics, and weapons just generally being more deadly (AP is king, everything can wound, etc) in 8th means that the game is pushed towards who can gun/chop down the other person first.

7th edition had plenty of alpha strike slaughter, but I agree there's more now. Screens can, to a degree, mitigate this. I see it as a mix of all the above, but YGIG being the main offender.

pismakron wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:


ITC solves first turn nicely (they have a 45/55 win split between who goes first and who goes second)..

I wouldn't say ITC solves first turn. There are still too many games that are decided by the roll for first turn. It is just not always to the advantage of the first turn player. But I agree that it is a huge improvement over Eternal War, where getting first turn is pretty much always a huge advantage.

Maybe they should change the objective secured rule, so that elite infantry would count all their wounds towards the total. That would help them out a bit in the mission game.

True, I should've said addresses or mitigates. They've done what they can without altering the core game itself.

I'm of the crazy opinion that any competitive scene should have a blend of such missions?

Like in my head the "perfect" day of wargaming would be:
1. The Tables are grouped into types halve the number of rounds you play. Each group is a different style of terrain. (One flat with craters, one city fight, one death world with rules, etc) Players would fight at each type as the day went on.

2. The swiss style stuff would only apply to players that are in the same group. So you'd still play better comp as you won, but it's not this grudge match nonsense you see.

3. The final pairings are based on overall score not generals score. I'm sorry but if it's my event and your army looks like trash, your a total dimwit, and you've been slow playing all day; do I want to highlight this in the finals? (NO)

4. Each mission would be tailored how Bug Eater and Renegade open handle it, each player has a deck of objectives they can only use once thru the tourney. It keeps things extremely fun, and prevents the staleness matchup we see too often.

5. Finally, mission deployments methods would vary ever round. Staggered turn deployment, Eternal War Deployment, etc. You would only be lining up and shooting at each other once during the day, not every damn mission.

Call me crazy, but you can still have an ITC balanced tourney and mix it up a bit so gun line X doesn't face gun line Y in the finals.

 sfshilo wrote:
I'm of the crazy opinion that any competitive scene should have a blend of such missions?

Like in my head the "perfect" day of wargaming would be:
1. The Tables are grouped into types halve the number of rounds you play. Each group is a different style of terrain. (One flat with craters, one city fight, one death world with rules, etc) Players would fight at each type as the day went on.

2. The swiss style stuff would only apply to players that are in the same group. So you'd still play better comp as you won, but it's not this grudge match nonsense you see.

3. The final pairings are based on overall score not generals score. I'm sorry but if it's my event and your army looks like trash, your a total dimwit, and you've been slow playing all day; do I want to highlight this in the finals? (NO)

4. Each mission would be tailored how Bug Eater and Renegade open handle it, each player has a deck of objectives they can only use once thru the tourney. It keeps things extremely fun, and prevents the staleness matchup we see too often.

5. Finally, mission deployments methods would vary ever round. Staggered turn deployment, Eternal War Deployment, etc. You would only be lining up and shooting at each other once during the day, not every damn mission.

Call me crazy, but you can still have an ITC balanced tourney and mix it up a bit so gun line X doesn't face gun line Y in the finals.

Sorry, I giggled.

Also, having a totally flat table would just mean IG table everyone. You might as well not play ;p

 ChazSexington wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:
I'm of the crazy opinion that any competitive scene should have a blend of such missions?

Like in my head the "perfect" day of wargaming would be:
1. The Tables are grouped into types halve the number of rounds you play. Each group is a different style of terrain. (One flat with craters, one city fight, one death world with rules, etc) Players would fight at each type as the day went on.

2. The swiss style stuff would only apply to players that are in the same group. So you'd still play better comp as you won, but it's not this grudge match nonsense you see.

3. The final pairings are based on overall score not generals score. I'm sorry but if it's my event and your army looks like trash, your a total dimwit, and you've been slow playing all day; do I want to highlight this in the finals? (NO)

4. Each mission would be tailored how Bug Eater and Renegade open handle it, each player has a deck of objectives they can only use once thru the tourney. It keeps things extremely fun, and prevents the staleness matchup we see too often.

5. Finally, mission deployments methods would vary ever round. Staggered turn deployment, Eternal War Deployment, etc. You would only be lining up and shooting at each other once during the day, not every damn mission.

Call me crazy, but you can still have an ITC balanced tourney and mix it up a bit so gun line X doesn't face gun line Y in the finals.

Sorry, I giggled.

Also, having a totally flat table would just mean IG table everyone. You might as well not play ;p

So one table where is bit less LOS blocking which is virtually non-existant in 8th ed anyway but still has craters for covers for the rare cases you can actually get cover in 8th ed in tournament with ~4 more types of boards would mean every army in tournament would be IG?

8th ed terrain rules are so lol-bad there's not much functional difference between empty board and non-empty board anyway. IG hardly benefits from crater board as it's functionally pretty much identical to any other board.

tneva82 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:
I'm of the crazy opinion that any competitive scene should have a blend of such missions?

Like in my head the "perfect" day of wargaming would be:
1. The Tables are grouped into types halve the number of rounds you play. Each group is a different style of terrain. (One flat with craters, one city fight, one death world with rules, etc) Players would fight at each type as the day went on.

2. The swiss style stuff would only apply to players that are in the same group. So you'd still play better comp as you won, but it's not this grudge match nonsense you see.

3. The final pairings are based on overall score not generals score. I'm sorry but if it's my event and your army looks like trash, your a total dimwit, and you've been slow playing all day; do I want to highlight this in the finals? (NO)

4. Each mission would be tailored how Bug Eater and Renegade open handle it, each player has a deck of objectives they can only use once thru the tourney. It keeps things extremely fun, and prevents the staleness matchup we see too often.

5. Finally, mission deployments methods would vary ever round. Staggered turn deployment, Eternal War Deployment, etc. You would only be lining up and shooting at each other once during the day, not every damn mission.

Call me crazy, but you can still have an ITC balanced tourney and mix it up a bit so gun line X doesn't face gun line Y in the finals.

Sorry, I giggled.

Also, having a totally flat table would just mean IG table everyone. You might as well not play ;p

So one table where is bit less LOS blocking which is virtually non-existant in 8th ed anyway but still has craters for covers for the rare cases you can actually get cover in 8th ed in tournament with ~4 more types of boards would mean every army in tournament would be IG?

8th ed terrain rules are so lol-bad there's not much functional difference between empty board and non-empty board anyway. IG hardly benefits from crater board as it's functionally pretty much identical to any other board.

Ei saa peittää, I didn't understand that! Do you mean LoS blocking is non-existent in 8th? Of course IG benefit massively from a crater board with no LoS-blockers. They are currently the ultimate gunline army bar none.

 ChazSexington wrote:
Ei saa peittää, I didn't understand that! Do you mean LoS blocking is non-existent in 8th? Of course IG benefit massively from a crater board with no LoS-blockers. They are currently the ultimate gunline army bar none.

Yeah with the TLOS rules resulting even slight tip giving LOS past maze of windows etc it's ridiculously hard to get anything short of single infantry models(who tend to be characters thus not requiring LOS block anyway) out of LOS.

Crater, ruin. Either way you are seen through anyway. Crater is actually the kind of terrain that actually has any chance of doing anything if you park over it though need pretty big crater to fit some units completely.

tneva82 wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Ei saa peittää, I didn't understand that! Do you mean LoS blocking is non-existent in 8th? Of course IG benefit massively from a crater board with no LoS-blockers. They are currently the ultimate gunline army bar none.

Yeah with the TLOS rules resulting even slight tip giving LOS past maze of windows etc it's ridiculously hard to get anything short of single infantry models(who tend to be characters thus not requiring LOS block anyway) out of LOS.

Crater, ruin. Either way you are seen through anyway. Crater is actually the kind of terrain that actually has any chance of doing anything if you park over it though need pretty big crater to fit some units completely.

This is why the Way of the Statue has rapidly overtaken where I play. viva la functional terrain! Hooray for vehicles getting cover! Huzzah for being able to hide behind things again and get actual cover!

After all, what is a ruin but a large statue that people can go inside? You can go inside the statue of liberty, yet nobody would contest it is not a statue. I rest my case. What is a forest but a large wooden naturally occurring statue? Walls? Long, thin statues, as you can clearly see from the Vietnam Memorial STATUE wall in DC.

The only thing that is obviously not a statue is a crater...because it is the only terrain piece in 8th where the rules for Statues do not function better than the actual bespoke rule for the terrain piece.

I generally agree that end of game scoring is kind of pointless in 8th overall -- almost every casual Eternal War game I've seen or played has ended with a concession or tabling by turn 4, and people rarely pay any attention to the objectives. The only exception is The Relic, where sometimes people decide to try to snatch it turn 1 and then avoid combat as much as possible for the rest of the game (but obviously this is a terrible tournament objective, and actually these games still often end in tabling).

End of game scoring is particularly problematic in time-limited tournaments because it's not always clear in advance when the game will end. In many cases the player who goes second will have some ability to actually determine whether the game ends immediately after his current turn or whether there will be another round. The first player can at least force the game to end earlier than it otherwise would.