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.

I'm really enjoying the format of this mission.

First Strike gives equal opportunity for each player. The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE).

I'm really eager to see how the rest of the missions work with each other to possibly create a set that can compete with ITC.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE)...

...And punishes armies that have Invulnerable saves to make up for the fact that they have crap/no armour saves? Or who get charged global rates for Invulnerable saves on everything? (Looking at DE, Daemons, Harlequins, Thousand Sons...)

I don't think "screw (Codex (X))" missions are going to help compete with ITC.

Well... suddenly I'm happy my bloodletters have to pay for the otherwise pointless 6+ armor save they have. Slaanesh and Tzeench daemons might as well not exist in this game mode.

Lol, Company Comanders get screwed. Tempestor Primes reign.

Harlequins saying a hard nope to that mission.

I don't know, I like varied missions. I think people want too much asymmetrical balance. That said though, I don't see them replacing ITC anytime soon. GW still wants to have interesting variants in Matched Play missions, while the community wants as little variant as possible and as close to identical everything.

What is interesting to note, they went back to the old first turn rules (whoever finishes deploying first chooses) rather than the +1 they had in 2017's missions.

They also deploy all the list at the same time.

Spoletta wrote:
They also deploy all the list at the same time.

That makes the wording even odder, since there is no "finish setting up their army"

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE)...

...And punishes armies that have Invulnerable saves to make up for the fact that they have crap/no armour saves? Or who get charged global rates for Invulnerable saves on everything? (Looking at DE, Daemons, Harlequins, Thousand Sons...)

I don't think "screw (Codex (X))" missions are going to help compete with ITC.

Aside from daemons it isn't screw codex X. It otherwise forces more list building considerations.

But I was thinking of it as an 18" diameter instead of radius, which is much larger. I was envisioning gunlines being forced to move right away - my bad.

That said you need to be really aggressive getting into the bubble as second player has the last laugh.

Wayniac wrote:
I don't know, I like varied missions. I think people want too much asymmetrical balance. That said though, I don't see them replacing ITC anytime soon. GW still wants to have interesting variants in Matched Play missions, while the community wants as little variant as possible and as close to identical everything.

What is interesting to note, they went back to the old first turn rules (whoever finishes deploying first chooses) rather than the +1 they had in 2017's missions.

However, they also went for "deploys entire army first" as well.

Imperial Guard or any army with a gak base save - generally the ones that can take hordes - will have a field day with that mission.

Just when you thought Terminators couldn't get worse!

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...Aside from daemons it isn't screw codex X. It otherwise forces more list building considerations...

It's pretty much "screw (Codex X)" for anyone with widespread or global Invulnerable saves since it means you're paying points (usually a lot of points) for something the mission prevents you from using; so Daemons, Harlequins, Dark Eldar, and Thousand Sons are very screwed, and AdMech and Custodes are mostly screwed.

The problem with saying things like this "force more list-building considerations" is that they screw any effort to build your list before rolling a mission; 40k is supposed to go "build list->roll mission". If you put things on the matched play/pick-up game chart that a) can't be played by certain Codexes, and/or b) require a completely different list to play than other missions, you're more likely to create dead space on the chart ("we have to reroll (result X) because if we don't I have to concede before we start since my Codex doesn't allow me to play it") than anything else. It's like trying to play The Relic in 7th; the player with the first turn and the bike squad won every game because they got to grab the relic and play keep-away with a fast, tough unit while everything else in their army just stood in the way. Having a better army comp for the mission wasn't a slight advantage, it was a guaranteed win, and it turned the mission into dead space on the chart because it was too easy to look at the army lists and say "I refuse to spend two hours rolling dice to achieve a foregone conclusion".

Most tournament games go 5 rounds and are typically set at that value.

That means you need to win 3 rounds with first strike and linebreaker while keeping your warlord alive to take the whole game. It doesn't matter if you lose every model (aside from warlord unless you kill theirs, too) or if you kill nothing else aside from the first unit. If they're a Loyal 32 + Castellan list it's unlikely they'll get linebreaker unless they've saved a Smash Captain to do so.

I suspect this mission plays much different than on first inspection and much differently than the relic in 7th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE)...

...And punishes armies that have Invulnerable saves to make up for the fact that they have crap/no armour saves? Or who get charged global rates for Invulnerable saves on everything? (Looking at DE, Daemons, Harlequins, Thousand Sons...)

I don't think "screw (Codex (X))" missions are going to help compete with ITC.

It also totally hoses "elite" armies, good luck controlling the objective when your opponent has three to ten times more units than you do.

Edit: Actually that's a bugbear for a lot of missions already, there's no sane reason I can think of that they didn't base control on the total points (or at least total Power Level) in the bubble instead of model count. It's baffling that a tooled up 40 point Marine Sergeant loses the control point contest to two Gretchin.

The Newman wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE)...

...And punishes armies that have Invulnerable saves to make up for the fact that they have crap/no armour saves? Or who get charged global rates for Invulnerable saves on everything? (Looking at DE, Daemons, Harlequins, Thousand Sons...)

I don't think "screw (Codex (X))" missions are going to help compete with ITC.

It also totally hoses "elite" armies, good luck controlling the objective when your opponent has three to ten times more units than you do.

Edit: Actually that's a bugbear for a lot of missions already, there's no sane reason I can think of that they didn't base control on the total points (or at least total Power Level) in the bubble instead of model count. It's baffling that a tooled up 40 point Marine Sergeant loses the control point contest to two Gretchin.

That's an unrelated issue: That Objective Secured is and certain units (grots, cultists, poxwalkers, scarabs, rippers, conscripts to name a few) should have a rule that prevents them from counting, if not able to hold objectives at all.

Wayniac wrote:

The Newman wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
...The objective punishes going too light on models or too heavy on models with invulnerable saves (looking at DE)...

...And punishes armies that have Invulnerable saves to make up for the fact that they have crap/no armour saves? Or who get charged global rates for Invulnerable saves on everything? (Looking at DE, Daemons, Harlequins, Thousand Sons...)

I don't think "screw (Codex (X))" missions are going to help compete with ITC.

It also totally hoses "elite" armies, good luck controlling the objective when your opponent has three to ten times more units than you do.

Edit: Actually that's a bugbear for a lot of missions already, there's no sane reason I can think of that they didn't base control on the total points (or at least total Power Level) in the bubble instead of model count. It's baffling that a tooled up 40 point Marine Sergeant loses the control point contest to two Gretchin.

That's an unrelated issue: That Objective Secured is and certain units (grots, cultists, poxwalkers, scarabs, rippers, conscripts to name a few) should have a rule that prevents them from counting, if not able to hold objectives at all.

I'm not sure that doesn't cause a host of other issues. Making the obsec rule only apply to units without the Character, Vehicle, Bike, or Monstrous keywords instead of just troops (and then basing it off something other than model count) would probably work better

When I was reading the article the mission sounded really cool as it placed more value on objectives over just ignoring the mission and going for the tabling... until I read Null Zone which is an auto lose for Daemons..

Yeah. Not a fan of that.

Its not a fun missions at all, it engages players to fight till last turn and ignore it, it also makes invul save armies even more so to ignore it.

Doesn't seem particularly "matched" to punish armies with low model counts and/or low armour saves. Sounds like it could be fun for Narrative play though, where symmetry is not as important.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its not a fun missions at all, it engages players to fight till last turn and ignore it, it also makes invul save armies even more so to ignore it.

Ignore what? Objective? It's 1 vp per turn so if you wait to the end opponent scores too many points to compensate with rest. And wiping out enemy army isn't too much of a help unless you do it in like 2 turns.

tneva82 wrote:

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Its not a fun missions at all, it engages players to fight till last turn and ignore it, it also makes invul save armies even more so to ignore it.

Ignore what? Objective? It's 1 vp per turn so if you wait to the end opponent scores too many points to compensate with rest. And wiping out enemy army isn't too much of a help unless you do it in like 2 turns.

You only need 1 model in it, you only need to kill units in it, its just a game of whole can kill better.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Ignore what? Objective? It's 1 vp per turn so if you wait to the end opponent scores too many points to compensate with rest. And wiping out enemy army isn't too much of a help unless you do it in like 2 turns.

You only need 1 model in it,...

In what, the objective scoring range? I think you mean you only need one more model in it.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
...you only need to kill units in it, its just a game of whole can kill better.

That kinda sounds like the intention. Create a big kill box in the middle that gradually gets smaller (PUBG anyone?) so that as the game goes on, opponents get more and more desperate to commit more and more troops into the kill box to score points while simultaneously putting their forces in harms way. It actually sounds awesome. Though if your point is that it's not particularly balanced for all factions, then I completely agree.

Great mission. I hope we see more of that!

The mission is not balanced for all factions, but that is intended. Remember that this is a mission from CA2018, not from an ITC packet. ITC packet uses a single mission for all games, so it must be balanced for everyone (it is not, but that is not a topic for this thread).

CA missions are a packet of 6 missions randomly generated, in which every mission favors a particular list/playstile, and the logic is that if you go a tournament which uses those missions you have to be prepared to face all of them.

Like the rulebook missions and the CA2017 missions, the single missions are not balanced for everyone, but the whole packet of missions is. Honestly i prefer this approach over the ITC one, but that's my personal opinion.

Sounds like a fun mission. However, that is probably because I imagine throwing waves of Tallarn Guardsmen into the central meat grinder. It's not like there haven't been unbalanced missions before. Pretty much anything with kill points makes me cry.

It doesn't have to be a "central meat grinder" though. 18 inch radius is potentially quite a lot of range between each armies.
A lot of armies can't just stay in the middle of everything, so they will have to find other ways like scoring early and then try to keep opponent out afterwards or whatever.
I think it's an interesting one.

dhallnet wrote:
It doesn't have to be a "central meat grinder" though.

It would be if my commanders have anything to say about it.

(-:

Spoletta wrote:
CA missions are a packet of 6 missions randomly generated, in which every mission favors a particular list/playstile, and the logic is that if you go a tournament which uses those missions you have to be prepared to face all of them.

Okay, so how are Harlequins supposed to be "prepared to face this mission?" I assume by "prepared" you mean "prepared to scoop and take the loss." Because there's no game to be had here.

Never before have I seen something that screams "F*** Harlequins* this hard. The entire army relies on 4++ invulnerables. Just scoop. It's saying "your already fragile army doesn't get a save. Have fun."

ThePorcupine wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
CA missions are a packet of 6 missions randomly generated, in which every mission favors a particular list/playstile, and the logic is that if you go a tournament which uses those missions you have to be prepared to face all of them.

Okay, so how are Harlequins supposed to be "prepared to face this mission?" I assume by "prepared" you mean "prepared to scoop and take the loss." Because there's no game to be had here.

Never before have I seen something that screams "F*** Harlequins* this hard. The entire army relies on 4++ invulnerables. Just scoop. It's saying "your already fragile army doesn't get a save. Have fun."

Manage to win the objective the first two turns (you don't have to be at 12 or under during these to score) and get the points for other objectives without giving them yourself => you probably won.
While it might be a hard one for harlies (mainly because they lack numbers imho), it doesn't look like completely unwinnable.