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Revised post, original below.

Proposal: Solicit for feedback on the concept of a mid-game bonus deployment option when playing maelstrom of war missions.

Call For Backup!
You have encountered an enemy force and alert your superior officers immediately. Help is on the way but your forces are stretched thin. With luck, backup will bolster your troops to ensure safe evacuation with all the necessary resources you've been deployed to recover.

Before setting up the map you and your opponent must each select a faction and create a battle-forged army of an agreed upon measure (points or power level). Additionally, when using Call For Backup! determine a measure for the maximum size of your backup and create a separate roster of units that remain battle-forged for your army to use as backup (such a force will be made of detachments that share at least one keyword with each other detachment in your army, for 2000 point matches a 500 point backup list is recommended). Begin play as usual, excluding the backup roster from your army. After the player who went first has finished her third turn, but before the player who went second begins his third turn the players alternate deploying the backup roster starting with the player who went first*. Units may deploy in their controlling players deployment zone at any location which is not within 1" of an enemy unit** or using special rules included on the units datasheet. Abilities for units that have deployed from backup which would normally trigger before the first battle round may activate instead before the third turn of the player who went second (immediately after this deployment phase). This deployment counts as a phase for the purposes of using stratagems***. Command points that are awarded from the use of detachments are granted at the start of this deployment phase, detachments which spend command points may only deploy if a command point is available to be spent. If a command point is not available at this time to deploy a detachment but becomes available at a later time the unit may not be deployed. At least half of the units in the backup roster must be deployed onto the battlefield, any backup units not on the battlefield at the end of turn 5 are destroyed.

*I think this is the best way to do it, a roll off is certainly fair as well. My thought is that this allows the player who went first an opportunity to fortify her deployment zone defensively, similar to how the player who does second would attempt to protect himself from a first turn alpha strike. It also allows the player who goes second to react to any offensive plays by providing a counter defense or by deepstriking into the area player1 willingly left open. Doing it the other way isn't so different so if you prefer the reverse order please let me know, it was my initial feeling that if player2 deploys first then that's too much of an advantage all at once.

**If this is too overpowered and you'd prefer a table edge then that's understandable. I don't see anything too silly since deployment zones aren't usually all that big and this limits a players ability to totally block deployment by lining bodies up. Also CC units will still have to deal with overwatch and retaliation, I think it's ok to let them get to where they need to go within their home base and shooty defenders will be in point blank range regardless. But I likely have less experience with these things so please feel free to make a counter argument.

***I feel like stratagem spam could happen somehow, 1 of each per person seems safer. And really a person shouldn't be relying on using stratagems to infiltrate an entire detachment into position mid-game, or shooting down enemy units in normal deployment schemes. Thoughts on things that would be broken to keep in or keep out?

The intention is to provide a means to enable more tactical movement to secure objectives as they are drawn from the tactical objectives deck, create more diversity in interacting with opponents armies and their objectives, reducing the reliance on wiping the opponent off the table instead of playing towards victory points, and give some level of counter-balance against first turn advantage


Original post. Feel free to skip
So, I have been enjoying Maelstrom games with casual lists that try to make it to the natural conclusion but it's been pretty obvious that first turn is really big even if it doesn't win the game outright. I would like to try playing a 2K pts list with 500 additional pts in mandatory reinforcements that are deployed after player1 has finished turn 3. This would give player2 an opportunity to be ahead for a moment much like how first turn gives player1 a leg up. It would also let the game continue on with some action rather than a predictable decline or total wipe. The game might not need it too horribly but please consider trying it out if you get the chance and posting how it changed the game for better or worse.

For reinforcements detachments would not be required but units would not belong to a sub-faction if not in a detachment. Detachments would award CP on arrival or if the detachment costs CP the CP must be available at the time. Reinforcement points can be left blank for demonic summoning and the like but become unlocked at the bottom of turn 3.

Any other ideas on how else to achieve an objectives game that involves aggression but sticks to the objectives?

A couple of quick questions:

A.) Am I correct in understanding your intention to be that the player who takes second turn would get the 500 extra points and their opponent would not?

B.) How would the mandatory reinforcements enter play? Would they gain deepstrike? Come in from your board edge? Any board edge? Specific points on the map?

I'd be willing to try this out as a narrative game mechanic, although I feel like this would basically just be doubling down on the advantages reserves heavy lists already have. As is, I can hide most of the parts of my list that I care about behind terrain, then hit my opponent hard as everything comes in from reserves. This would basically just give me an extra 500 points for doing so if I happen to go second.

Wyldhunt wrote:
A couple of quick questions:

A.) Am I correct in understanding your intention to be that the player who takes second turn would get the 500 extra points and their opponent would not?

No, it gives player two's 500 reinforcement points an alpha strike against player one's 500 point reinforcements + depleted 2000 point army.

There are many things about this that don't work.

First, any set amount of points you want to sequester off to reserves is going to be near impossible for every army to build to that exact point limit.

Second, not every army can place much if any forces into reserves. And even if they could, are you suggesting that every player has to build x amount of points worth of units out of units that are capable of being deployed in reserves (either through vehicles like drop pods or abilities like Trygons)? What if those units don't fit in the players list?


Basically, this is a terrible idea that is untenable for many reasons.

Ok.

It's a normal, separate list of 500 points. They are not reserves, not rolling for reserves, neither requiring special rules, neither respecting the rules for what proportion of an army can be in reserve.

pelicaniforce wrote:
Ok.

It's a normal, separate list of 500 points. They are not reserves, not rolling for reserves, neither requiring special rules, neither respecting the rules for what proportion of an army can be in reserve.

So where do they deploy? A board edge? Anywhere in your deployment zone? Do you deep strike them? So I can end up placing 3/4s of my army into reserves?

Again... a lot of problems with this idea.

To clarify, both players get the reserves. It does not have to be exactly 500pts. They deploy entirely as usual no special rules necessary, back and forth, wherever they normally could outside of 1" of an enemy unit. Yes generally in your deployment zone. The 500pts is on top of and seperate to the rest of the army. Meaning if your 2000pts aren't tabled by then you get a chance to keep playing for objectives. Maybe I should have called it reinforcements, like holding out for reinforcements, getting saved by the cavalry, letting the rest of the faction know there is a battle afoot instead of going it alone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It raises some tactical options too. Do i punish the opponent for being in my zone, do I ds into theirs or mid to grab a point?

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
To clarify, both players get the reserves. It does not have to be exactly 500pts. They deploy entirely as usual no special rules necessary, back and forth, wherever they normally could outside of 1" of an enemy unit. Yes generally in your deployment zone. The 500pts is on top of and seperate to the rest of the army. Meaning if your 2000pts aren't tabled by then you get a chance to keep playing for objectives. Maybe I should have called it reinforcements, like holding out for reinforcements, getting saved by the cavalry, letting the rest of the faction know there is a battle afoot instead of going it alone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It raises some tactical options too. Do i punish the opponent for being in my zone, do I ds into theirs or mid to grab a point?

You don't understand. If I can already put half my drops into reserves AND an extra 500 points that HAS TO go into reserves I could place next to nothing on the table turn 1 so whoever goes first has nothing to even shoot at.

Your bringing back null deployments from 7th. Turn 1. You have nothing to do. My turn, alpha strike.


This doesn't fix any problem, it only moves it to player 2 and opens up new avenues of abuse.

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
To clarify, both players get the reserves. It does not have to be exactly 500pts. They deploy entirely as usual no special rules necessary, back and forth, wherever they normally could outside of 1" of an enemy unit. Yes generally in your deployment zone. The 500pts is on top of and seperate to the rest of the army. Meaning if your 2000pts aren't tabled by then you get a chance to keep playing for objectives. Maybe I should have called it reinforcements, like holding out for reinforcements, getting saved by the cavalry, letting the rest of the faction know there is a battle afoot instead of going it alone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
It raises some tactical options too. Do i punish the opponent for being in my zone, do I ds into theirs or mid to grab a point?

I would worry that this strongly favors long-ranged armies (that generally have more alpha strike potential in the first place) by giving gunlines ever more guns to bring to bare while a short-ranged army only really benefits from this if they have a way of crossing the table quickly (or if the shooty guy gets close to their deployment zone for some reason). So I'd worry about things like...

* Basically saying that you're playing a 2500 point game, but 500 poitns of a short-ranged army can't really participate until halfway through the game.

* Deepstriking armies show up, do their thing, but then promptly get ganked by these reinforcements that can show up within an inch of them, essentially making deepstriking units a bad idea.

* Punishing players based on their model collections. Lootas might not mind waiting until turn 3 to show up as much as meganobz, but if a player only has meganobz and not lootas...

Still, I think reasonable people could get a variation on this to work for a friendly narrative game.

I'm in the process of updating the post to be more like an actual rule. I didn't anticipate that people would project aspects of 7th so strongly onto it.

As for null deployment, if you want to bring 1000pts vs 2000pts and assume that you won't be tabled by turn 3 then ok, your funeral?

In regards to army composition, I don't think I'm doing much damage that GW hasn't already done. This isn't intended to be a lets make this happen all the time officially, adjustment but an option for both players to agree on. If an army has no deepstrike or quick units but wants to play maelstrom then i don't know what to do for ya, Either way I'll be working on making this better worded. The original post was just a rough concept sketch and I've already thought of more situations that could be clarified.

I do still want constructive feedback to help refine the thought into something that could potentially have positive impact should it be used.

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I'm in the process of updating the post to be more like an actual rule. I didn't anticipate that people would project aspects of 7th so strongly onto it.

As for null deployment, if you want to bring 1000pts vs 2000pts and assume that you won't be tabled by turn 3 then ok, your funeral?

In regards to army composition, I don't think I'm doing much damage that GW hasn't already done. This isn't intended to be a lets make this happen all the time officially, adjustment but an option for both players to agree on. If an army has no deepstrike or quick units but wants to play maelstrom then i don't know what to do for ya, Either way I'll be working on making this better worded. The original post was just a rough concept sketch and I've already thought of more situations that could be clarified.

I do still want constructive feedback to help refine the thought into something that could potentially have positive impact should it be used.

Perhaps it would help to format it as one of the battle zones (war zones?) from the main rulebook to help reinforce the intended use?

While I agree overall with above, but if I were to provide some constructive C&C, I think this will go a lot better if you gear this towards a homebrew mission, rather than an add-on to existing.

Having said, it is interesting idea to bring in a reinforcement-to-reinforcement reinforcements (hah.) having the current ruleset that destroys any tactical reserve units that hasn't arrive by turn 3. However, currently the game is aimed for it to be over within turns 3, where games that go on to turns 4 and 5 considered to be a dragged out game.

Taking your initial idea, I think it could be interesting to place a restrictions on the reserves (as a whole and not your 500pt restriction) that only allows them to enter starting turn 3 and after. This can potentially discourage lists that abuse tactical reserves rule where they place single model, low cost models on board and have 80~90% of their actual army in reserves.

You're probably right that this is a mission all in itself, I have not yet seen a nearly null deployment this edition and I have a hard time imagining it working out holding units after turn 2. Maybe I can see it being ok in eternal war since only turn 5 matters for win condition.

It might be best to add that normal reinforcements die at the end of turn 2 rather than 3 to limit shenanigans.