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 Blackie wrote:
A less "gamey" experience could be picking the secondaries in a totally random way, not by choosing them, like objective cards in 7th edition. I never tried, and I'm not even interested in doing that since I consider the game mechanics great, but it could be interesting for people who don't like picking secondaries to counter specific armies.

That could be an interesting way of doing it - make Mission and Faction secondaries into a sixth table, and expand the Purge the Enemy and No Mercy, No Respite categories to six options rather than four, and you're in a position where a d66 (or d63) roll can determine a secondary. Allow for a reroll if you a, get a duplicate; or b, get an objective that can't be completed due to the composition of either army (such as the Warpcraft category, or Titan Slayers), and away you go.

Some objectives might still warrant a review to even out potential scoring (Slay the Warlord, for example, and Thin Their Ranks (which I agree should count the Wounds of removed models, not just count the models themselves)), but it would definitely add in the feel of getting strange objectives from theater commanders sat well away from the front lines.

That, and it'd be funny to hear the conniption fits from the tournament community when they realise they can't micro-manage their pre-game planning so much.

 Jidmah wrote:
Agree, random can be fun if done right (SAG, foul blight spawn or many of the pick one/roll two tables) but deciding the game before you start by three dice rolls is just an idiotic suggestion. There are just too many secondaries that potentially yield 0 VP in a game no matter what you do.

Let's dial back the hyperbole here - I already said that secondaries that can't be achieved due to army construction should be rerolled. If you take that into account, how many of the core secondaries are truly a "potential 0 VP no matter what you do"?

Sure, you might not be able to get a full 15 VP out of some of them, but those should be looked at anyway - I have no idea how you rebalance Slay the Warlord to be worth 15 VP, but I'm sure there's something that could be done.

Jidmah wrote:

Sure, you might not be able to get a full 15 VP out of some of them, but those should be looked at anyway - I have no idea how you rebalance Slay the Warlord to be worth 15 VP, but I'm sure there's something that could be done.

In the tournament pack, slay the warlord is worth more the earlier you score it. However, for some faction a durable warlord that has LoS is impossible to kill before turn 3 or 4, essentially leaving your with a maximum of 6 VP here. There also would be no need for every secondary to max out at 15 if 15 VP weren't so easy to archive on many others. A guaranteed 10VP or easy to get 12VP could be more valuable than hard to get 15VP if all the secondaries were balanced properly.

Ah, I've not picked the Chapter Approved pack up yet, as it's not clear when I'll get to play a game safely - are other secondaries tweaked? That sounds like a reasonable tweak to StW, off-hand.

Karol wrote:Plus rolling 3 troops, 3-4 elites, 3 psykers , some with multiple powers would make the opponent hate you for a 30 min pre game phase.

We're talking 10-15 rolls there - how the heck is that taking you half an hour?

yukishiro1 wrote:
1) Abhor isn't in the same category as other kill secondaries, so it's in addition to anything else you may be giving up. GKs and Tsons will typically give up at least 24 points for abhor/assassinate, for example, usually 27 or 30, so the game basically just becomes about whether you can keep your characters alive or whether your opponent can kill them, which is a very boring sort of game to play.

2) It skews the meta because you can't take it if you don't have a psyker, meaning there's a strong disincentive to take a single psyker in a list.

We've actually had 9th ed events during a global pandemic, bafflingly - this means we have some degree of data which can be reviewed regarding these assertions.

Does the data back up your claims? Are factions that could take psykers apparently choosing not to, given ATW exists?

For that matter, are secondary objectives being tracked as part of the tournament dataset - and if not, why not?