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the problem was it was easily exploited by taking something like eye to eye, building aroud it and getting some good advantages. I really only "believe" in using "real" chapters (ie:GW ones) so i never really contemplated the system, but can see how it can be taken advantage of.

whitedragon wrote:
@Redbeard
I'm against weird missions, and doubly against missions that introduce actual "penalties" against your models. What's even worse, is that usually these types of things are not posted in advance, so you're really just walking blind into what could potentially be a disaster. I would think this could be a bone of contention for most, although most locals probably are used to the stuff that happens in their own local scene.

I'm not a big fan of such missions in general either, but they're out there. I remember playing one game where the mission required your troop choice to be completely within a terrain piece to control it. Great for those 5-man combat squads. Awful for those 30-man ork boy units. I've seen missions that go out of their way to screw with mech armies (out of gas - roll when moving, on a 1, you're immobilized for the rest of the game), I've seen missions that go out of their way to screw with gun-line armies (you must move to the center of the table to hold the game), and missions that screw with assault armies (deploy on the short table edges). I've seen missions that screw with deathstar units (opponent may pick one unit to be put inreserve until turn 4). These sorts of conditions theoretically reward the "balanced" army (an interesting concept at least, as not all codexes can field armies that would be considered balanced by some of these criteria, but even then they really seem more like a way to screw over a build that the TO specifically doesn't like.

But, hey, if horde armies are game for screw-you missions and mech armies are and assault armies and gunline armies, why not special-characters too...

Joetaco wrote:the problem was it was easily exploited by taking something like eye to eye, building aroud it and getting some good advantages.

The thing is, you paid extra in points for any advantage that you got (except for the extend game length one, and that one allowed your opponent to use it also.

skyth wrote:

Joetaco wrote:the problem was it was easily exploited by taking something like eye to eye, building aroud it and getting some good advantages.

The thing is, you paid extra in points for any advantage that you got (except for the extend game length one, and that one allowed your opponent to use it also.

And those points were completely random and only helped making a few traits/doctrines good and the rest garbage. There were also many good ones that were free, like close order drill/drop troops for IG. The special characters OTOH are much better balanced. The traits/doctrines opened up too many different combinations, were probably not play-tested (and they could hardly play test all the different combinations) and were therefore not balanced

I was only talking about the Marine ones...And I have yet to see a combination that was OTT. Normally the strongest builds were just straight codex builds rather than trait builds.