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Made in ua
Storming Storm Guardian




After I've played a few games of 8th, and following on the End game scoring is boring thread, I realized what I love most in turn-based strategy games - fighting over territory. This isn't something you really see in 40k - linebreaker is almost impossible to prevent late-game, because there's a huge DZ and usually not many models left by turn 4 or 5, so I wouldn't call 'Keep the enemy out of your DZ' a practical territory concern. Instead, and to not deviate from the intended gameplay of 40k 8th, I've been brainstorming a new game type that should encourage more tactical gameplay. What do you guys think? I'll admit I only picked up 8th a few months back, so I may be completely off here. Or maybe you've played a mission type like this already and have some feedback! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Territorial Conflict:

The vagaries of war change with the wind. Soldiers die fighting over the next square meter, or a ruin, for no reason other than conflict itself. Only a commander who can adapt to the changing wyrd has a chance of victory.
- unknown T'au commander, recovered diary during the Damocles crusade


This is a Maelstorm of War mission.

The battlefield, deployment, battle length, and armies are set up as standard for Maelstorm of War.

FIRST TURN
Roll off to determine first turn. The player who finished setting up their army first adds one to their result. The winner of the roll off can choose to take the first or second turn. The loser can roll to seize as usual.

Common objectives (as detailed in TERRITORIAL OBJECTIVES below) cannot be scored on the first turn.

TERRITORIAL OBJECTIVES
Territorial conflict is all about trying to hold a point, or shake the enemy from the point. At the beginning of the game, seperate the objective deck into objective marker cards and non-marker cards. (Marker cards include objectives that have the text SECURE or DEFEND. Discard all SUPREMECY, HOLD THE LINE, DOMINATION, MISSION CRITICAL OBJECTIVE, and BEHIND ENEMY LINES objective cards.) Then, draw two objectives from the objective marker deck. If the marker card is duplicated, discard the duplicate and generate a new marker card. These objectives can be scored by either player. New common objectives are generated each time a common objective is scored. Two common objectives should be in play at all times.

TACTICAL OBJECTIVES
This mission uses tactical objectives. Each player generates 2 tactical objectives. These objectives are hidden from the opposing player. If at any point a player runs out of tactical objectives, then they generate two new tactical objectives at the beginning of their turn.

VICTORY CONDITIONS
Whoever scored more victory points at the end of the game is the winner. Additionally, points are scored for both Slay the Warlord and Solo Blood (score 1VP each time you kill a unit in a game round and your opponent doesn't).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/04/05 10:00:20


 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





quentra wrote:
After I've played a few games of 8th, and following on the End game scoring is boring thread, I realized what I love most in turn-based strategy games - fighting over territory. This isn't something you really see in 40k - linebreaker is almost impossible to prevent late-game, because there's a huge DZ and usually not many models left by turn 4 or 5, so I wouldn't call 'Keep the enemy out of your DZ' a practical territory concern. Instead, and to not deviate from the intended gameplay of 40k 8th, I've been brainstorming a new game type that should encourage more tactical gameplay. What do you guys think? I'll admit I only picked up 8th a few months back, so I may be completely off here. Or maybe you've played a mission type like this already and have some feedback! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Territorial Conflict:

The vagaries of war change with the wind. Soldiers die fighting over the next square meter, or a ruin, for no reason other than conflict itself. Only a commander who can adapt to the changing wyrd has a chance of victory.
- unknown T'au commander, recovered diary during the Damocles crusade


This is a Maelstorm of War mission.

The battlefield, deployment, battle length, and armies are set up as standard for Maelstorm of War.

FIRST TURN
Roll off to determine first turn. The player who finished setting up their army first adds one to their result. The winner of the roll off can choose to take the first or second turn. The loser can roll to seize as usual. Common objectives (as detailed in TERRITORIAL OBJECTIVES below) cannot be scored on the first turn.

TERRITORIAL OBJECTIVES
Territorial conflict is all about trying to hold a point, or shake the enemy from the point. At the beginning of the game, seperate the objective deck into objective marker cards and non-marker cards. (Marker cards include objectives that have the text SECURE or DEFEND. Discard all SUPREMECY, HOLD THE LINE, DOMINATION, MISSION CRITICAL OBJECTIVE, and BEHIND ENEMY LINES objective cards.) Then, draw two objectives from the objective marker deck. If the marker card is duplicated, then discard the duplicate and generate a new marker card. These objectives can be scored by either player.

TACTICAL OBJECTIVES
This mission uses tactical objectives. Each player generates 2 tactical objectives. These objectives are hidden from the opposing player. If there are no common marker cards (as detailed in Territorial Objectives above), then the player whose turn it is generates two new common marker cards. If at any point a player runs out of tactical objectives, then they generate two new tactical objectives at the beginning of their turn.

VICTORY CONDITIONS
Whoever scored more victory points at the end of the game is the winner. Additionally, points are scored for both Slay the Warlord and First Blood.



So it's pretty much standard maelstrom but with extra rules to ensure there's always a pair of "secure objective X" cards in play? Sure. That could be neat. A couple thoughts:

*It looks like you don't generate any additional Marker cards after the first four are generated. This might result in the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish. In an extreme example, my mobile eldar army might be able to land on all 4 Markers on the first turn thus rendering territory control pointless for the rest of the game.

* First Blood seems to be kind of universally hated by the player base. It strongly favors alpha strike armies (who already have the advantage of being alpha strike armies) and doesn't really offer any meaningful counterplay to the player who goes second If your opponent can shoot or stab a unit to death on turn 1, that's that. He has a 1VP advantage for the rest of the game. Consider replacing this with popular variants such as First Strike (kill a unit in the first game round) or Solo Blood (score 1VP each time you kill a unit in a game round and your opponent doesn't).

* I like that this avoids the "drunken commander" effect where your army changes directions every turn in an effort to stand on a newly-generated objective. Knowing your targets from the get go can be fun when it doesn't reward shooty armies for sitting back and stabby armies for running forward.

* Consider scoring Marker objectives at the end of each turn and never discarding them OR scoring them only at the end of the game. This prevents situations where players score all the objectives on turn 1 and then never worry about land again.

*


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in ua
Storming Storm Guardian




Wyldhunt wrote:*It looks like you don't generate any additional Marker cards after the first four are generated. This might result in the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish. In an extreme example, my mobile eldar army might be able to land on all 4 Markers on the first turn thus rendering territory control pointless for the rest of the game.
Ah, I feel like maybe my language on the common objective cards isn't the clearest. The idea is that you continously generate new common objectives each time the pair is scored, to A) force people to be mobile - You're not going to scoring much with a static gunline and B) Ensure that you're always clashing with your opponent over objective markers. While a mobile force can just immediately camp all the objectives (and score them regardless of which common markers are in play), the opponent can (ideally) use obsec units focus fire the squads camping the objectives that actually are in play.

Wyldhunt wrote:* First Blood seems to be kind of universally hated by the player base. It strongly favors alpha strike armies (who already have the advantage of being alpha strike armies) and doesn't really offer any meaningful counterplay to the player who goes second If your opponent can shoot or stab a unit to death on turn 1, that's that. He has a 1VP advantage for the rest of the game. Consider replacing this with popular variants such as First Strike (kill a unit in the first game round) or Solo Blood (score 1VP each time you kill a unit in a game round and your opponent doesn't).


Good point on First Blood, I hadn't considered that. I think that Solo Blood is a good replacement, as it aims for that interactive counter-play that I'm looking to incentivize with this mission.

Wyldhunt wrote:* I like that this avoids the "drunken commander" effect where your army changes directions every turn in an effort to stand on a newly-generated objective. Knowing your targets from the get go can be fun when it doesn't reward shooty armies for sitting back and stabby armies for running forward.


Yeah - I've noticed that in a lot of Maelstorm games, people have won by utterly ignoring the opponent, or utterly ignoring objectives and focusing on tabling the opponent. So this hopefully rectifies that situation by making objectives more relevant and forcing, basically, the two sides to a clash.

Wyldhunt wrote:* Consider scoring Marker objectives at the end of each turn and never discarding them OR scoring them only at the end of the game. This prevents situations where players score all the objectives on turn 1 and then never worry about land again.


You can't score stuff on turn 1 - the player going first explicitly cannot score objective markers (but can score individual objectives, such as Deny the Witch or smth) on turn 1 to give less of a bonus for alpha striking.

I think my language again wasn't that clear, I'll update it - the idea is that the common objectives are scored at the end of each turn, and then new common objectives are generated once the pair have been scored.
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





Ah I see. Well, fi you're generating more Marker cards thorughout the game, you may want to have players shuffle duplicates back into their Marker card deck rather than discarding them. Otherwise, you potentially end up drawing duplicates very frequently thus diminishing your total available Marker cards. Also, you should clarify whether or not players are still allowed to swap out their 11-16 cards with faction-specific cards.

Generating new land cards basically every turn will mean you see some "drunker commander" behavior. To my mind, a game of 40k takes somewhere between 30 seconds and a minute of in-universe action. So in a 6 round game, you're talking about units scrambling halfway across the battlefield every 10 seconds please the hill that was precious a few moments ago is now worthless, and the ruined statue in front of the enemy is now all that matters. Ten seconds after that, you're scrambling back towards the hill again. But that's a personal preference and more a criticism of changing objectives than of your rules.

I feel like preventing the player who gets first turn from scoring on their first turn shifts the problem rather than solving it. It basically just means that the tau player who happens to be standing on all the objective sthat came up at the start of the game will score them at the bottom of the turn rather than the top. On the other hand, scoring objectives at the start of each player turn means each player will always have at least one turn to try and dislodge their enemies.


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
 
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