Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Preliminaries:

Eternal War missions "suck" because they give too much of an advantage to low model count, super killy, "death star" type armies.

Maelstrom missions "suck" because they are completely random and don't leave enough to player decisions/planning.

Here is my proposal for what a Maelstrom mission actually should look like:

Game Set-Up:

1. Divide a 6 X 4 game table evenly into a 9 space grid, placing at least one terrain piece in at least 6 of those spaces (ideally, one terrain piece or more in each space).

2. One mysterious objective must be placed in the middle of the center space. The competitors then alternate placing the remaining 8 mysterious objectives.

3. The competitors then must roll for night-fighting and for hammer/anvil or dawn of war deployment. [If they are complete masochists (I kid, of course, lest anyone take offense), they may choose, by mutual agreement, to set up their forces via vanguard strike).

4. The competitors then must choose table sides, roll for psychic powers and warlord traits and then decide who goes first (rolling to seize as normal, etc.).

Victory condition:

Whoever has the most VPs at the end of the game wins.

How to acquire VPs:

Primary:

At the end of each game turn, each player scores 1 VP for each non-center objective that he controls. He shall gain 2 VPs if he controls the center objective.
At the end of each game turn, each player shall score 1 VP if he has at least one model within 12 inches of the opponent's table edge.
At the end of each game turn, each player shall score 1 VP if he has at least 3 scoring units within 12 inches of his own table edge, and none of his opponent's models are within 12 inches of his own table edge.

Secondary:

3 VPs for slay the warlord

The game shall end on turn 5 provided a 1-2 result on a 1d6 roll. Failing that, it shall end on turn 6 on a 1-3 result. Failing that, the game ends on turn 7.

What do you think? Viable mission?

What you laid out is pretty much just a nova style primary objective. I would have a look at the nova missionsl if you have not seen it already.

Sounds viable, assuming both players know ahead of time that this will be played - there are 9 objectives, bonuses for having sufficient units near your board edge and for having a unit near the enemy board edge, so an army like a SM Battle Company will have a much easier time than a less msu or maneuverable army.

Also, hedged towards the person playing second (in a similar vein to standard Eternal War missions) as points are scored at the end of the game turn, the person going second already knows which units to shoot off objectives and which will be free to move his to, whilst the player going first has to "show their hand" as it were. Doesn't mean it's not viable, generally there is a massive advantage to going first, so this might act as a counterbalance.

D3's are a bad design choice.

pm713 wrote:
D3's are a bad design choice.

If you don't like 1d3, you could just replace it with the number "2."

 Traditio wrote:

pm713 wrote:
D3's are a bad design choice.

If you don't like 1d3, you could just replace it with the number "2."

You asked for my thoughts on the mission. I gave them.

Also dump mysterious objectives. If the goal is less random, don't make the objectives have random effects too. Just make them objectives.

*Edit* And I'll second the D3. If the goal is to remove randomness, then your proposal should reflect that and just commit to a number, in this case, 2. Or 3. Or 69.

Why so many random values on objectives?

 Blacksails wrote:
Also dump mysterious objectives. If the goal is less random, don't make the objectives have random effects too. Just make them objectives.

*Edit* And I'll second the D3. If the goal is to remove randomness, then your proposal should reflect that and just commit to a number, in this case, 2. Or 3. Or 69.

I've edited the random VPs in the OP to give them a set number.

I'm not sure about the mysterious objectives, though. Personally, I like them, and I don't often hear them complained about. The problem with maelstrom isn't that there are random occurrences; the problem is that literally the whole game is like that to the extent that it's just unrealistic and doesn't make much sense.

Mysterious objectives, though? Do people complain about that?

 Traditio wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Also dump mysterious objectives. If the goal is less random, don't make the objectives have random effects too. Just make them objectives.

*Edit* And I'll second the D3. If the goal is to remove randomness, then your proposal should reflect that and just commit to a number, in this case, 2. Or 3. Or 69.

I've edited the random VPs in the OP to give them a set number.

I'm not sure about the mysterious objectives, though. Personally, I like them, and I don't often hear them complained about. The problem with maelstrom isn't that there are random occurrences; the problem is that literally the whole game is like that to the extent that it's just unrealistic and doesn't make much sense.

Mysterious objectives, though? Do people complain about that?

I hate them. They barely make a difference but I spend half the time rolling on a table nobody cares about.

I would play this mission, it seems perfecttly acceptable and superior to most of the Eternal War missions (no great achievement) and adds a nice alternative to the Maelstrom missions.

Also, long live mysterious objectives and mysterious terrain!

It is hardly a Maelstrom style mission, it is just a "rebranded" table controll. I have played similiar scenarios many times at some point and they have some obvious flaws:

- they generate such a TON of automatic VPs for camping on remote objectives, that you can overhelm the score with just a single ObSec fearless hormagaunt in the corner and many, many times there is absolutely nothing to do about it.

- if scoring on an end of a player turn, they promote early rush to a point, when the first player will get almost entire board worth of VPs first turn, provided he can move that fast. You just promoted Jetbikes (without scatterlasers) to disposable VP grabbers and damage sponges, as you will have to get rid of every single one of them to even make draws possible.

That said - you can easily improve this scenario type by:

- scoring on the BEGINNING of a player turn. So to claim VP you have to spend entire enemy turn exposed. This prevents both early rush and disposable grabbers.

- allowing players to only score on each objective once. This prevents backfield camping and drops a maximum achievable VPs to sane levels (by sane I mean a point, when slaying a warlord will actually matter - with 9 objectives the scores can as high as 20-30pts for the winning side) (you will have to introduce some "backup" form of aditional scoring after that, if you want to play random lenght games, I usually play rigid 5 turns)

And you can make the entire scenario a bit more interesting and not so repetetitive by introducing assymetry (following points have to be introduced as a whole, it's not a list of possible solutions as those above):
1. play with smaller armies (2/3 of what you are used to play, as you'll efectively play at least 10 turns)
2. AFTER placing objectives assign a random D3 VPs to each one.
3. Play double match with exact same forces, on exact same terrain with exact same objective placement and value, just replay the scenario with switched deployment sides and player order.
4. The winner is a player with most VPs after two games.
This evens playstyles (usually you will have to perform both as an "attacker" and as a "defender") because of assymetry in "worth" of table areas. And usually moves a game from the centerfield, creating interesting situations that you can pre-plan for (but not earlier as in deployment phase, so no further list tailoring besides going TAC MSU). I sometimes play this type of games as even smaller point limit game and repeat it 4 times with two different layouts of deployment zones.

As for mysterious objectives: they indeed hardly matter if no player brings flyers to the table, but otherwise skyfire matters a lot! Because of that, if there are any flyers on either of lists I recommend assigning skyfire to 2-3 objective markers (at the same moment when VP values are assigned). This creates further assymetry on the table and creates no-fly zones or "take that hill at all costs" events in the game.

Secondary objectives like First Blood and Linebraker shouild IMHO stay secondary and have only a marginal effect on the game, so I leave them as they are. I have playtested this scenario (gradually introducing all my modifications) about 15-20 times (multimatches counting as 1) "in real" with my usual playpartner and it works well enough to be interesting.
[of course, as in OP format, there are no kill points other than first blood and slay the warlord in my proposition, as killing enemies is always a necessary activity at war and should not be additionally rewarded (and because I find them utterly silly in a setting, when the war is "eternal" and loses on any side hardly matter at all)]

As to "sane and balanced" "real Maelstrom" mission I will try to find some time and post a detailed scenario I'm usually playing now (with such high playrate as I like (one multi-match a week usually, with "multiplier" depending on point limit) all entirely non-random scenarios get old quite fast)

The poll is missing a "maybe" option.

As for the idea itself, it's kind of "meh". It's better than by-the-book maelstrom, but it's very difficult to do worse. There are two main issues:

1) It's too complicated. Why the table edge scoring? Why so many objectives? It seems like a lot of the goal is "be like maelstrom" rather than "make a good mission".

2) It's very vulnerable to early leads snowballing into boring games. An MSU player that rushes forward on turn 1 and claims a bunch of objectives can run up a huge lead, while armies like Tau/IG/etc that don't have fast aggressive (preferably melee capable) units either stay back and lose on VPs or make a suicidal charge and lose to tabling. If you're going to have cumulative scoring at least have it start counting at the end of turn 2-3 so you can't win by just zerg rushing forward and piling up tons of VP before your opponent can do anything about it.

Overall though there are probably better ways to punish death star armies. Limit the ability to combine a bunch of ICs from multiple codices into a single super-unit, and make a table quarters end-of-game objective that counts the number of units (so a death star only counts as one) for control of the quarter.

I've a counter proposal.

Before the game starts, both players choose which 12 tactical objective cards they are going to have for the game, with no more than 2 examples of any one card in the hand.

The board and objective markers are set up the same as currently before rolling to see which deployment method to use, who picks which side and who goes first.

Cards are never hidden, both players have the right to view their opponents cards at any point before or during the game and no extra cards are drawn during the game.

No more than 15 victory points can be scored during the game from objective cards, to mitigate against someone having a large number of easily scored D3/D6 cards.

Can choose/ignore/randomly roll for a secondary objective from Eternal War like Kill Points, kill Heavy Supports etc.

Tertiary objectives like Slay the Warlord remain, might be interesting to swap them out for other objectives like First Strike.

Tabling is worth 5VP.

Might require some changes to a few faction specific cards to work with this but it would reduce a lot of the randomness of Maelstrom and since you both players know what their opponent needs to do to score tactics can be more important as you're trying to score your own objectives whilst denying your opponent their's.

Traditio wrote:(Game Set-Up) 1. Divide a 6 X 4 game table evenly into a 9 space grid, placing at least one terrain piece in at least 6 of those spaces (ideally, one terrain piece or more in each space).

-- I understand that this is tied in with the objectives, but unless such an outline already exists on the board (which it likely won't), I get the feeling a lot of player would not be bothered doing such a thing and stop here.
-- Given that there is a precedent for setting up large (i.e. 6) objectives already, why not slightly alter the required distances between objectives in the existing system to compensate for the fact that you have 9?

Traditio wrote:(Game Set-Up) 2. One mysterious objective must be placed in the middle of the center space. The competitors then alternate placing the remaining 8 mysterious objectives.

-- I don't understand this requirement. It make sense to have it centered with respect to the deployment edges while allowing lateral movement within its section, but dead center? I don't see the need.
-- Mysterious Objectives is also very unnecessary if you ask me. At most it should be optional.

I have no problem with (3).

Traditio wrote:(How to acquire VPs) Primary:

At the end of each game turn, each player scores 1 VP for each non-center objective that he controls. He shall gain 2 VPs if he controls the center objective.
At the end of each game turn, each player shall score 1 VP if he has at least one model within 12 inches of the opponent's table edge.
At the end of each game turn, each player shall score 1 VP if he has at least 3 scoring units within 12 inches of his own table edge, and none of his opponent's models are within 12 inches of his own table edge.

-- As aforementioned, this can lead to a lot of snow balling very quickly. It also seems like an excessive amount of Victory Points to award (especially given they're awarded at the end of every game turn).
-- I have a problem with awarded Victory Points at the end of every game turn:
-- -- (a) In many situations, it can lead to the player who goes 2nd in the game turn to have a unique advantage over the 1st player mainly because if the first player captures an objective, there can often be very little they can do to prevent the 2nd player from taking it off them in their turn.
-- -- (b) In conjunction with aforementioned points, it awards too many Victory Points and [In conjunction with (a)] can lead to a distinct advantage to the player who goes second.

Traditio wrote:(How to acquire VPs) Secondary:

3 VPs for slay the warlord

This is unnecessarily excessive. The default 1 Victory Point for 'Slay the Warlord' is absolutely fine.

Traditio wrote:Viable mission?

Needs some improvement for sure, but there's some solid basis here.

Peregrine wrote:The poll is missing a "maybe" option.

Whether Traditio adds one in or not does not matter in the slightest, and here's why: If nothing else, Traditio has include the option (and I quote): THIS MISSION IS STUPID!!!!!

Traditio obviously had no intention of making this poll a seriosu poll. And even if Traditio - by some very flawed logic indeed (especially if history has taught us anything) - considers this to be a serious poll, (s)he will have no way of deducting the undoubtedly relatively large number of troll/disingenuous votes.

Solution? I think it's best to avoid this poll and all its results lest we get into yet another validity argument or yet another 'Strong Minority' or the god-awful '...accounting for Standard Deviation...' argument.

One idea I've seen mooted that I like, is that you only score points for controlling an objective at the top of your turn, so you have to grab the objective then hold it through your opponent's turn to score. This seems to remove the great advantage of going second in most progressive scoring arrangements. The flipside, though, is that it strongly rewards highly durable units and punishes glass cannons (and it's not like Dark Eldar or Orks really need the kick in the teeth...)

But on the other side, most durable units are not fast enough to be able to score all 9 objectives, scattered across entire field easily. So their durability to survive on objective is somewhat countered by the number of available objectives. And because scoring requires not to be locked in CC, you allways have at least one option to deny scoring by durable but not to punchy units (like scatterbikes, they are awfull in CC). Of course, as with most scenarios, there are some units that will overperform in it...

Even if you score at the top of your next turn as opposed to the end of the game turn, that still leaves a lot of potential for unnecessarily high scoring games.

jade_angel wrote:One idea I've seen mooted that I like, is that you only score points for controlling an objective at the top of your turn, so you have to grab the objective then hold it through your opponent's turn to score. This seems to remove the great advantage of going second in most progressive scoring arrangements. The flipside, though, is that it strongly rewards highly durable units and punishes glass cannons (and it's not like Dark Eldar or Orks really need the kick in the teeth...)

This is what I've come to do in Maelstrom. Make it so that all points are capped on your next player turn, except the last player turn who caps when the game ends. Advantages/disadvantages of going 1st, etc.

IllumiNini wrote:Even if you score at the top of your next turn as opposed to the end of the game turn, that still leaves a lot of potential for unnecessarily high scoring games.

Agreed. Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker and First Blood all need to matter, and capping objectives each turn can really skyrocket the scores. Where Maelstrom succeeds is in having unpredictable objectives, so you might keep guys on your backfield objectives just in case you get them, guys all go ahead in case the vanguard objectives come up, or split your force and suffer accordingly.