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Martel732 wrote:
GW is technologically backwards for sure.

When they are absolutely killing it theres very little incentive to innovate

My only problem with maelstrom is that gw hasn't released any cards for the legions tactical objectives from Faith and Fury. C'mon gw, get with the program.

I’m in the middle of a 4 month long league that uses slightly modified maelstrom missions. There are about 20 of us and the general consensus is that most people are not fans of the cards at this point. Most of the specific army tactical objectives are pretty bad and then there’s this gem:

16 - Power of the Cabal
Score 1 VP (to a max of six VP) for every two psychic powers you have successfully manifested at the end of the turn.

I tabled my opponent but he was able to use this 3 times and beat me on points, which in our league was still close enough to be a tie at least.

I don’t necessarily hate the idea of maelstrom but I do think the cards and scoring needs to be looked at again.

Look at ETC missions. The best way to play maelstrom.

 Kommisar wrote:
I’m in the middle of a 4 month long league that uses slightly modified maelstrom missions. There are about 20 of us and the general consensus is that most people are not fans of the cards at this point. Most of the specific army tactical objectives are pretty bad and then there’s this gem:

16 - Power of the Cabal
Score 1 VP (to a max of six VP) for every two psychic powers you have successfully manifested at the end of the turn.

I tabled my opponent but he was able to use this 3 times and beat me on points, which in our league was still close enough to be a tie at least.

I don’t necessarily hate the idea of maelstrom but I do think the cards and scoring needs to be looked at again.

How did he score the same card three times?

The issue of faction card imbalance is really easy.
"Only the main rulebook cards are used, faction specific objectives are not allowed".

Viola, problem solved.

?

 Corrode wrote:
?

Well played, indeed Like a fiddle.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
...But if you want to compare 40k to a game at all, I 'd compare it to the Wargame/Steel Division series, by Eugen...

...I wonder how hard it would be to build a Warhammer total conversion mod for Wargame?

I mean, probably not TERRIBLY hard all things considered-- Wargame and Steel Division are relatively easy to mod. The graphics changes would be the hardest part, as is usually the case.

 Ishagu wrote:
This is a tabletop wargame, not an RTS video game.

Starcraft has far less units and only 3 factions so there's only so much comparison you can make. Also, in 40k you don't build up the armies during the game so the system of competition is fundamentally different.

Point taken. What I wanted to illustrate is that if a player just hates Lockdown, they can thumbs-down that mission and there's still 5/6 missions from CA19 that can be played. So it's a bit of player agency in terms of mission selection, which would help those factions that lack certain options in list building, or to not give a skew list a favorable matchup.

So despite the RTS analogy, I'm thinking specifically of applications in 40k.

I would honestly say dropping the points would go a long way to help. But people like their 2k points and being able to mostly have their cake and eat it too. 1750 or even 1500 would IMHO be much better, especially if they would (not that they would) add a Superheavy 25% limit or something like that to help curb the really outlying stuff that otherwise might dominate too much at 1500.

Alas, that ship sailed. I'd bet we would more likely see points go up to 2500 or beyond than go down to 1500.

Slipspace wrote:


So this player was outsmarted in placing the objectives and utterly lacked any board control or ability to take back board control once it was lost? Seems like they were outplayed or their army had deficiencies to me and if that's the reason they lost then things are working as they should. I've played Lockdown a few times now and I think it's a very dynamic mission that pushes players to change their plans on the fly and often requires a lot more thought during deployment than the other missions. I agree it can have problems with a runaway leader as the points available decrease over time but that's part of the challenge for each player, IMO.

I find Lockdown very dynamic and also very punishing of bad deployment. If you deploy badly and do not correct on your first turn the game can very much get away from you.

I think that is very much by design and has its place within a mission pack. I would not want to play that same mission all weekend as that would rather specialise the skill-set needed but it does have a place in a balanced mission set.

On paper BA would be good at lockdown. But both times I played it I just got shredded.

Martel732 wrote:
On paper BA would be good at lockdown. But both times I played it I just got shredded.

Y'know, there's a common denominator in all of your tales of woe about using BA and I don't think the problem lies with the army.

I mean it was shredded by vanilla marines. Maybe I could have won vs Xenos. But yeah, fast units would seem good for lock down, but as I've said, killing always works. It's really easy for gunlines when they know where you have to go, too.

There was a discussion earlier in this thread about losing games despite tabling opponents. So it doesn't always work.

I"m not talking tabling. I"m talking about killing everything within 24" of the lockdown objectives. Having crap hiding in the back doesn't help at all because there is no engineer secondary in lockdown. So yes, killing the PROPER UNITS always works. Dead units can't score.

And in lockdown in particular, its easy for gunlines to target the proper units.

Your problem there was vanilla marines, not the mission.
Playing my tau or custodes agaisnt a competitive vanilla marine list with a good player on it has easely become a futility.

Martel732 wrote:
I"m not talking tabling. I"m talking about killing everything within 24" of the lockdown objectives. Having crap hiding in the back doesn't help at all because there is no engineer secondary in lockdown. So yes, killing the PROPER UNITS always works. Dead units can't score.

And in lockdown in particular, its easy for gunlines to target the proper units.

You put down half of those objective, why aren't they where you are hiding your units in the back?

I did with two, but they got TFCed and we were using GW terrain. They were getting shot through windows and such. I put one where I wanted to assault under the delusion I'd have assault elements that lived. Devil is always in the details I suppose, ITC terrain vs GW terrain.

 Jidmah wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I"m not talking tabling. I"m talking about killing everything within 24" of the lockdown objectives. Having crap hiding in the back doesn't help at all because there is no engineer secondary in lockdown. So yes, killing the PROPER UNITS always works. Dead units can't score.

And in lockdown in particular, its easy for gunlines to target the proper units.

You put down half of those objective, why aren't they where you are hiding your units in the back?

Because with smart objective placement, only one of those objectives is where you want it.

First off, objectives are placed before deployment zones are selected, so they're going to be pretty balanced between players.

Second, I usually make my second placement near my opponent but in a location that's hard or inconvenient to capture and hold, such that more than 6" in and 12" from another objective denies them the ability to place their second and/or third objectives in places where they would like to have an objective. My opponents almost always approach the matter in the exact same way, placing objectives so that of the three you end up with at the end, one is good for you, one sucks for you, and one really could be better but could be a lot worse. Sometimes I make my first placement aggressive [especially if I'm placing first], if there's a commanding building or strong position and I want to make sure an objective can't be placed there and it's closest objective is like in the middle of a square with firing lines into it from all directions or something.

Martel732 wrote:
I did with two, but they got TFCed and we were using GW terrain. They were getting shot through windows and such. I put one where I wanted to assault under the delusion I'd have assault elements that lived. Devil is always in the details I suppose, ITC terrain vs GW terrain.

Thunder Fire cannons don't kill that many Marines. Sounds like you're making excuses to me lol

Of course it sounds like that to you. Fortunately, that doesn't matter. I don't see you trotting out BA and winning with them vs vanilla.

TFCs kill plenty of marines as well. Especially when you can't afford to leave many behind because you have to send 1200 pts to get 500 pts into CC.

They're worse than some Chapters end better than others. Now move on.

 Ishagu wrote:
They're worse than some Chapters end better than others. Now move on.

You're new here, aren't you?

(We've been trying to get Martel to move on from grumbling about how bad the Blood Angels are, independent of how bad they actually are, for a very long time.)

I was just very hopeful they'd get us back to at least 5th ed levels. No such luck. Despite a truckload of rules.

Martel732 wrote:
I was just very hopeful they'd get us back to at least 5th ed levels. No such luck. Despite a truckload of rules.

And just like in other threads where you bring this up you still haven't told us what your list is. Blood Angels have shown themselves to be good enough to get near the top tables at some fairly big GTs recently so the army obviously has some power to it. It's not on the level of most of the Codex Space Marines chapters but they're not a bad army at all.

I've been seeing a bit of the Prague Open this across this weekend. It's just depressing to see such great looking terrain sectioned off into dull repetitive ICT layouts.

The whole thing seems counter-intuitive. It's not 40K. It's some weird hybrid that seeks to suck the fun out of it.

Slipspace wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I was just very hopeful they'd get us back to at least 5th ed levels. No such luck. Despite a truckload of rules.

And just like in other threads where you bring this up you still haven't told us what your list is. Blood Angels have shown themselves to be good enough to get near the top tables at some fairly big GTs recently so the army obviously has some power to it. It's not on the level of most of the Codex Space Marines chapters but they're not a bad army at all.

They're doing better than Salamanders and Ultramarines.

Trouble with the IH-dominated meta though - there's one huge outlier, so everyone compares themselves to the outlier and thinks their army sucks.

If you remove BA's 80% loss rate to IH from their stats, they go to an exact 50/50 win-rate, which sounds about where things should be.

 Asmodai wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I was just very hopeful they'd get us back to at least 5th ed levels. No such luck. Despite a truckload of rules.

And just like in other threads where you bring this up you still haven't told us what your list is. Blood Angels have shown themselves to be good enough to get near the top tables at some fairly big GTs recently so the army obviously has some power to it. It's not on the level of most of the Codex Space Marines chapters but they're not a bad army at all.

They're doing better than Salamanders and Ultramarines.

Trouble with the IH-dominated meta though - there's one huge outlier, so everyone compares themselves to the outlier and thinks their army sucks.

If you remove BA's 80% loss rate to IH from their stats, they go to an exact 50/50 win-rate, which sounds about where things should be.

Ih are warping all kinds of things in the meta. See: people calling for a ban on fw.