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So I am hosting a campaign which has the planet strike campaign as a sub campaign in it.
And of all sub campaigns (kill team, planet strike, Cities of Death, Siege Wars) this one seems to be extremely unbalanced.

We haven't had a game that was not played by the end of turn 2. (Or it was pretty clear who was going to win) By the end of turn 3 we usually see a board wipe.

The problem is people tend to make a defensible base. Cutting off direct reserve access to the closest boardedge and part of the boardedges having the attacker footslogging and deepstrike on a line of bunkers and vehicles, next turn retaliation with rapid fire and plasma fire, templates, reserves with melta popping up behind tank lines etc.

So the games are played like siege wars with free fortifications. Which is extremely unbalanced and not really the intention of planet strike I think (as we have siege wars for that)...

To change that and get the feeling of a planet striking invasion force in the middle of militarized zone I am thinking of making the following changes:

The Defender makes a list pre-game of the fortifications he wants to use with all upgrades etc. He does not pay for them.(the same fortifications are available to everyone so no need to fix that at the moment)

Aquila bunker counts as a superheavy slot in your armylist(we have a max 1 superheavy/gargantuan in armylist and they can only be played on mutual consent of the players due to a lot of new players that do not have an answer to them (yet) )

Divide the table in to 6 equal parts.

Throw a D3 for each part, this is the number of fortifications/ scenery pieces that can be placed on that part. Multipart fortifications/ buildings count as separate scenery pieces for this purpose. (So a fortress of redemption would need a 3 on the D3)

Impassable terrain that isn't a fortification cannot be placed on the board edges.

The Defender may put the scenery on the table, first he places his fortifications, if he has no fortifications left, or cannot place them due to not having thrown high enough on any part of the table, he has to place a non-fortification" piece of scenery (Like forest, ruins, hills) .If he has to many fortifications he will have to choose which one he will use.

then he places the objective markers.


Then the attacker may choose his boardedge.

What do you guys think? Will this make for a more interesting game?

Let the defending player have free fortifications, but armed ones can only fire if manned.

Attacker has twice the points

leopard wrote:
Let the defending player have free fortifications, but armed ones can only fire if manned.

Attacker has twice the points

would that not just turn the tables around and make it impossible for the defender?

Something to remember is that a fortress of redemption is several parts, so each part (I think it consists of 4 linked buildings in total) grants the attacker 4 of the pre-game bombardments plus the starting number of bombardments you get. your opponent should be tallying up each individual fortification part. From the sounds of this you may have missed this as taking too many fortifications practically grants the defender the win before the game even starts.

Tristanleo wrote:
Something to remember is that a fortress of redemption is several parts, so each part (I think it consists of 4 linked buildings in total) grants the attacker 4 of the pre-game bombardments plus the starting number of bombardments you get. your opponent should be tallying up each individual fortification part. From the sounds of this you may have missed this as taking too many fortifications practically grants the defender the win before the game even starts.

So I checked and you gain one blast for each building and each gun emplacement, not for each fortification. So you are right that a fortress of redemption gives 4 blasts. and we play it that way btw.

Usually the attacker has between 9-15 blasts in our games.

the bombardements do not do much in our games in comparison to the benefits of a well placed building. one building giving one extra blast with full scatter, but the blast can almost never take out a building, I mean you need a hit and pen to take out a building on mostly armour 14 buildings ... So the more buildings, the less actual damage those blasts will do. Especially when a void shield generator can absorb 3 of those blasts for the cost of 1 blast and you can upgrade almost any building with a void shield of its own absorbing the blast that it costs when targeted.

I'll have to check the rules but I don't think you can actually purchase upgrades on these buildings when you do. you choose to take the fortification and negate its point cost but does it say that you can upgrade the actual building with additional upgrades?

Tristanleo wrote:
I'll have to check the rules but I don't think you can actually purchase upgrades on these buildings when you do. you choose to take the fortification and negate its point cost but does it say that you can upgrade the actual building with additional upgrades?

No, it says:

The Defender can place any number of fortifications anywhere on the table. The Defender does not pay any points for these fortifications.

and further it says:

The Defender can place any number of units in Reserve, but must, whenever possible, deploy at least one unit for each building or gun emplacement that they placed on the battlefield. Multiple-part buildings count as several separate buildings for these purposes

As an upgrade is part of the fortification, I do not see why you would not be allowed to take upgrades. Otherwhise you could not take gun emplacements (they are always upgrades), and as the defender must put a unit on the table for each building or gun emplacement, It seems to me that it is intended that you can take upgrades.

Or am I reading this the wrong way? English is not my main language and I do misread these things from time to time.

 minisnatcher wrote:

Tristanleo wrote:
I'll have to check the rules but I don't think you can actually purchase upgrades on these buildings when you do. you choose to take the fortification and negate its point cost but does it say that you can upgrade the actual building with additional upgrades?

No, it says:

The Defender can place any number of fortifications anywhere on the table. The Defender does not pay any points for these fortifications.

and further it says:

The Defender can place any number of units in Reserve, but must, whenever possible, deploy at least one unit for each building or gun emplacement that they placed on the battlefield. Multiple-part buildings count as several separate buildings for these purposes

As an upgrade is part of the fortification, I do not see why you would not be allowed to take upgrades. Otherwhise you could not take gun emplacements (they are always upgrades), and as the defender must put a unit on the table for each building or gun emplacement, It seems to me that it is intended that you can take upgrades.

Or am I reading this the wrong way? English is not my main language and I do misread these things from time to time.

This is where GW's classic vague writing shines through yet again. I would read that as the fortification as it reads on the sheet itself, where other people may decide it includes the upgrades. My argument would be that as the upgrades are not an integral part of the actual fortification, they are not included in the fortification at all, but this would have to work both ways obviously.

the obvious workaround is that this is discussed and decided upon before the game and any similar circumstances would follow the same rules throughout the game.

TBH it's a hopeless cause and you're wasting your time. Planetstrike is inherently unbalanced by the idea of letting one player choose the entire table setup, to make it balanced you'd have to completely remove this part of the game and it would no longer be Planetstrike. The entire point of it is that the defender sets up a strong defensive position and challenges the attacker to a fight, of course that's always going to favor the defender. You should be glad that your players are only setting up difficult challenges with fluffy concepts like defense lines and retaliation fire instead of taking one of the options to have the defender automatically win*. That's the best you're going to get in a narrative campaign with fixed attackers and defenders, where you can't do a "swap sides and the defender from the first game has to attack their own table setup" kind of match.

*For example, the defender can literally cover the entire table in impassible terrain so that the attacker can not legally deploy any models, and loses at the end of the first turn.

Look, these games and scenarios are intended for people who are interested in having fun.

Your mistake is playing with people who are playing to win, rather than to enact a dramatic scenario which happens to have a victor at the end.

You need to make sure the attacker has cover they can move between, that they have channels to attack the base and that the defences aren't totally impenetrable.

Otherwise why the hell have you spent 3 hours of your life travelling to the game, setting all this up and trying to play it? Ridiculous.

The idea that

the defender can literally cover the entire table in impassible terrain so that the attacker can not legally deploy any models, and loses at the end of the first turn

is completely laughable! You might as well say "the defender can choose to stay at home and announce himself the winner". Yes, he could.

If you are not playing with people who are interested in creating a balanced fight, you are playing the wrong mission type or the wrong people. Either stick with more generic mission types like Eternal/Maelstrom or just talk it through with the opponent.

 Peregrine wrote:
TBH it's a hopeless cause and you're wasting your time. Planetstrike is inherently unbalanced by the idea of letting one player choose the entire table setup, to make it balanced you'd have to completely remove this part of the game and it would no longer be Planetstrike. The entire point of it is that the defender sets up a strong defensive position and challenges the attacker to a fight, of course that's always going to favor the defender. You should be glad that your players are only setting up difficult challenges with fluffy concepts like defense lines and retaliation fire instead of taking one of the options to have the defender automatically win*. That's the best you're going to get in a narrative campaign with fixed attackers and defenders, where you can't do a "swap sides and the defender from the first game has to attack their own table setup" kind of match.

*For example, the defender can literally cover the entire table in impassible terrain so that the attacker can not legally deploy any models, and loses at the end of the first turn.

How would they cover the mat in impassible terrain, not looking to do it, Just interested as I have run a planetstrike game as attacker before and he called in my third turn when I tore his stormraven in half with vector strikes from heldrakes, killing everyone inside when I still had a unit of raptors with accompanying lord and 2 Chaos marine squads with warlord still in reserve yet to deploy as well as 2 heldrakes, a scratched unit of CSM, 2 half strength (originally 8 man) raptor squads, 2 lightning claw terminators and a unit of warp talons. all he had left were 2 land raiders both with lascannons, a unit of centurions, 8 marines in scattered squads and his chapter master.

 Silentz wrote:
Look, these games and scenarios are intended for people who are interested in having fun.

Your mistake is playing with people who are playing to win, rather than to enact a dramatic scenario which happens to have a victor at the end.

You need to make sure the attacker has cover they can move between, that they have channels to attack the base and that the defences aren't totally impenetrable.

Otherwise why the hell have you spent 3 hours of your life travelling to the game, setting all this up and trying to play it? Ridiculous.

The idea that

the defender can literally cover the entire table in impassible terrain so that the attacker can not legally deploy any models, and loses at the end of the first turn

is completely laughable! You might as well say "the defender can choose to stay at home and announce himself the winner". Yes, he could.

If you are not playing with people who are interested in creating a balanced fight, you are playing the wrong mission type or the wrong people. Either stick with more generic mission types like Eternal/Maelstrom or just talk it through with the opponent.

Well we are playing with people that want a balanced fight, more role playing type of guys, but not with people that have played much other games then maelstorm/eternal and most of them never played fortifications.

We have no full table with impassable terrain etc.

Every game we play, without bringing hard lists, we get the feeling that it is impossible for the attacker to win, that is why I am proposing to limit and randomize table setup. It should at least make it a bit more difficult for the defender.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tristanleo wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
TBH it's a hopeless cause and you're wasting your time. Planetstrike is inherently unbalanced by the idea of letting one player choose the entire table setup, to make it balanced you'd have to completely remove this part of the game and it would no longer be Planetstrike. The entire point of it is that the defender sets up a strong defensive position and challenges the attacker to a fight, of course that's always going to favor the defender. You should be glad that your players are only setting up difficult challenges with fluffy concepts like defense lines and retaliation fire instead of taking one of the options to have the defender automatically win*. That's the best you're going to get in a narrative campaign with fixed attackers and defenders, where you can't do a "swap sides and the defender from the first game has to attack their own table setup" kind of match.

*For example, the defender can literally cover the entire table in impassible terrain so that the attacker can not legally deploy any models, and loses at the end of the first turn.

How would they cover the mat in impassible terrain, not looking to do it, Just interested as I have run a planetstrike game as attacker before and he called in my third turn when I tore his stormraven in half with vector strikes from heldrakes, killing everyone inside when I still had a unit of raptors with accompanying lord and 2 Chaos marine squads with warlord still in reserve yet to deploy as well as 2 heldrakes, a scratched unit of CSM, 2 half strength (originally 8 man) raptor squads, 2 lightning claw terminators and a unit of warp talons. all he had left were 2 land raiders both with lascannons, a unit of centurions, 8 marines in scattered squads and his chapter master.

you can put impassable stuff like mountains and cover the board edges, making it impossible for non deepstriking units to arrive, then place impassable structures and terrain like VSG, sentries, Battlecanons, mountains etc over the entire terrain that the slightest deepstrike scatter will probably be a mishap.
You can then just place intereptor firestorm redoubts that will shoot down any flyer that comes on the board.
Then you have the same sized army to deal with what did not scatter.

You can also literally put the table full with impassable terrain so that there is no room for an attacker model to be placed on the board, while your guys are on the battlefield and in bunkers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tristanleo wrote:

 minisnatcher wrote:

Tristanleo wrote:
I'll have to check the rules but I don't think you can actually purchase upgrades on these buildings when you do. you choose to take the fortification and negate its point cost but does it say that you can upgrade the actual building with additional upgrades?

No, it says:

The Defender can place any number of fortifications anywhere on the table. The Defender does not pay any points for these fortifications.

and further it says:

The Defender can place any number of units in Reserve, but must, whenever possible, deploy at least one unit for each building or gun emplacement that they placed on the battlefield. Multiple-part buildings count as several separate buildings for these purposes

As an upgrade is part of the fortification, I do not see why you would not be allowed to take upgrades. Otherwhise you could not take gun emplacements (they are always upgrades), and as the defender must put a unit on the table for each building or gun emplacement, It seems to me that it is intended that you can take upgrades.

Or am I reading this the wrong way? English is not my main language and I do misread these things from time to time.

This is where GW's classic vague writing shines through yet again. I would read that as the fortification as it reads on the sheet itself, where other people may decide it includes the upgrades. My argument would be that as the upgrades are not an integral part of the actual fortification, they are not included in the fortification at all, but this would have to work both ways obviously.

the obvious workaround is that this is discussed and decided upon before the game and any similar circumstances would follow the same rules throughout the game.

We tried discussing, the problem is both sides underestimate the impact of all the game changes(attacker can deepstrike charge) and the power of fortifications (are players are not really used to them yet) For that reason I am proposing the limit/ randomized setup. I wonder if that will work better and make for a better game.
We do not really have TFG situation. We just are trying to get it playable.

Some fortifications do have some of the upgrades modeled in it, and what do you do with people that model upgrades (I would, and have)... But even without upgrades, 1 S9AP3 blast with ordnance with full scatter is not going to take out a Armor 14 3-4HP building, let alone an Armor 15 building (there is a mission where all the buildings get +1Armor) . With much luck there might be a pen or 2-3 between 10 strikes, and very maybe 1 building down. as they get D3 blasts +1 for each building, you really get benefits from more buildings as the blasts will mean less with much more buildings.
The bonus of deepstrike + charge is much better, but that can be countered with the 3d6 scatter stratagem and not all armies have deep strikers.

 minisnatcher wrote:



you can put impassable stuff like mountains and cover the board edges, making it impossible for non deepstriking units to arrive, then place impassable structures and terrain like VSG, sentries, Battlecanons, mountains etc over the entire terrain that the slightest deepstrike scatter will probably be a mishap.
You can then just place intereptor firestorm redoubts that will shoot down any flyer that comes on the board.
Then you have the same sized army to deal with what did not scatter.

You can also literally put the table full with impassable terrain so that there is no room for an attacker model to be placed on the board, while your guys are on the battlefield and in bunkers.

yeah, the terrain cover really does seem like a powergaming move for every possible advantage, but I'd argue against it as on the example board it only shows a central fortification with some craters around and I've just checked the rules and it doesn't say about actually setting up terrain as in the main rule book. it states that your opponent positions their fortifications then the next step is that once the terrain has been set up (Which I would interpret as the fortifications) then the objective markers are placed, so mountains could not be positioned as they are not a fortification.

Tristanleo wrote:

 minisnatcher wrote:



you can put impassable stuff like mountains and cover the board edges, making it impossible for non deepstriking units to arrive, then place impassable structures and terrain like VSG, sentries, Battlecanons, mountains etc over the entire terrain that the slightest deepstrike scatter will probably be a mishap.
You can then just place intereptor firestorm redoubts that will shoot down any flyer that comes on the board.
Then you have the same sized army to deal with what did not scatter.

You can also literally put the table full with impassable terrain so that there is no room for an attacker model to be placed on the board, while your guys are on the battlefield and in bunkers.

yeah, the terrain cover really does seem like a powergaming move for every possible advantage, but I'd argue against it as on the example board it only shows a central fortification with some craters around and I've just checked the rules and it doesn't say about actually setting up terrain as in the main rule book. it states that your opponent positions their fortifications then the next step is that once the terrain has been set up (Which I would interpret as the fortifications) then the objective markers are placed, so mountains could not be positioned as they are not a fortification.

At the bottom of battlefield it says

once all fortifications have been placed, the defender sets up any other terrain on the table in a manner of their choosing.

So basically the defender can field any terrain he wants.

Tristanleo wrote:
How would they cover the mat in impassible terrain, not looking to do it

"The mat is a terrain piece which is lethal terrain to all enemy models."

The problem with allowing one player to set up the entire table is that they can make up whatever terrain ideas they want. This isn't a problem in normal games because both players have to agree on the table setup, and any silly "I win" ideas will be rejected, but Planetstrike explicitly takes away that balancing factor. The only limit on how one-sided the defender can make the game is a desire to have an interesting game, if they just want to win there's nothing the attacker can do to stop them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Silentz wrote:
If you are not playing with people who are interested in creating a balanced fight, you are playing the wrong mission type or the wrong people.

Planetstrike is explicitly marketed as "create an unbalanced fight and dare your opponent to beat it". The expansion talks, over and over again, about how tough this player's fortress is, ideas for making your defensive position stronger, etc.

So I had a game yesterday and playtested:

The Defender makes a list pre-game of the fortifications he wants to use with all upgrades etc. He does not pay for them.(the same fortifications are available to everyone so no need to fix that at the moment)

Aquila bunker counts as a superheavy slot in your armylist(we have a max 1 superheavy/gargantuan in armylist and they can only be played on mutual consent of the players due to a lot of new players that do not have an answer to them (yet) )

Divide the table in to 6 equal parts.

Throw a D3 for each part, this is the number of fortifications/ scenery pieces that can be placed on that part. Multipart fortifications/ buildings count as separate scenery pieces for this purpose. (So a fortress of redemption would need a 3 on the D3)

Impassable terrain that isn't a fortification cannot be placed on the board edges.

The Defender may put the scenery on the table, first he places his fortifications, if he has no fortifications left, or cannot place them due to not having thrown high enough on any part of the table, he has to place a non-fortification" piece of scenery (Like forest, ruins, hills) .If he has to many fortifications he will have to choose which one he will use.

then he places the objective markers.


Then the attacker may choose his boardedge.

We played mission 5 (the one with the banner)
I fielded: 2 bastions, 1 bunker, 2 battlecanons, 1 VSG, 1 Firestorm redoubt, 2 Wall of martyrs defence lines, 1 defence emplacement , 1 aegis defence line and one communication array (and that was all I could field I threw 4x1 and 2x 3)

I was the defender and did win the game, but the game was not played turn 2 like in most of our other games, it was only the second part of turn 4 that it was clear the attacker was not going to make it, and I mostly won because how the armies were played out, not due to the fortifications on the battlefield.

Not that it was completely balanced but it became a more interesting game and it seemed very possible to win for both sides.

The only shenanigan left is that you could possibly block the attackers board edge with your army, leaving him only his deep strikers, but players trying to do that really have no place in our campaign so I am not worrying about that.