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Drager wrote:
The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.

Are you sure? Can you type out what the rules say? Because the reviewer said specifically that the defender selects the deployment type.

This is the language

players roll off and the winner decides
who will be the Attacker and who will be
the Defender. The Defender determines
which of the standard deployment maps
is used in the battle (see the Warhammer
40,000 rulebook) and selects one of the
deployment zones for their army. The
Attacker uses the other deployment zone.

Drager wrote:
The Defender doesn't select the deployment type. They determine it. Determine means roll a dice and consult the chart. They do select the zone, which is a big advantage, they do have prepared positions and in some eternal war missions going second is a distinct scoring advantage.

You select it as you like it.

The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.

Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.

Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.

Martel732 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.

But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.

I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.

That's not a game, that's a spreadsheet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Ordana wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.

But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.

I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.

Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.

Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.

But to each his own.

Maelstrom forces this largely through arbitrary and meaningless randomness, lacking both narrative cohesion or tactical decision-tree elements and often heavily favors things that many armies simply don't have access to (such as the ability to redeploy across the board rapidly with multiple units) or awards points for things that can be out of a players control/trivial/impossible (e.g. "manifest a psychic power") and are fundamentally just bad game design. Dynamic or asymmetrical objectives can be fun, but Maelstrom's execution is, and always has been, pretty awful.

Pitched firefight missions have their issues, no doubt, but Maelstrom has never been a terribly well crafted answer to that.

It's better than Eternal Snore. It's nice that most missions have some sort of progressive scoring mechanic now, but they're all ultimately won by whoever kills the other person harder in the first two turns, with relatively evenly matched games going to either the faster opponent, or more likely whoever went first.

With Maelstrom, there's a chance that you'll have to do something that actively prevents you from killing your opponent in order to score. This is a VERY important mechanic to have in 40k missions, in my opinion. By having something you actually have to forgo damage in order to achieve you reduce the overall deadliness of armies and increase the value of strategic choice.

Every Eternal War mission's entire tactica boils down to 'kill them while moving forward', with Maelstrom at least you have to think occasionally.

Killing is no less effective in maelstrom. You are fooling yourself.

 Xenomancers wrote:
I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.

Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.

Making Prepared Positions 1CP (or controversially, free)

It's a detriment as it is going second.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Killing is no less effective in maelstrom. You are fooling yourself.

Indeed. Enemy can't score cards if they have no units left.

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Indeed. Enemy can't score cards if they have no units left.

But sometimes you ain't scoring if you go for the kill

Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.

Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.

tneva82 wrote:

 NurglesR0T wrote:
Indeed. Enemy can't score cards if they have no units left.

But sometimes you ain't scoring if you go for the kill

Maybe for an assault list. Shooting doesn't care.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.

Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.

Killing is still usually the right decision, because it removes enemy scoring in future turns. Enemy can't score cards with no units.

Wayniac wrote:I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.

But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.

feth ITC AND THE gakky HORSE THEY RODE IN ON!

Ordana wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Spoiler:

I pray this is the beginning of the end for the ITC missions. They are a big part of the reason that "competitive" 40k in the USA is a gak show since secondaries are fundamental changes to the nature of the game.

But people put way too many laurels on ITC and FLG so I doubt they will change anytime soon and continue to skew the playerbase with their terrible, bland missions that push listbuilding over play.

I like player agency and hate randomness. If i could get rid of die rolls i would.

Problem with that is that the more your remove randomness the more the battle is decided by looking at the lists and doing some math.

Maelstrom makes you do things on the battlefield and react on the fly. Which makes for more interesting games then 2 armies lining up and shooting eachother until one is dead.

But to each his own.

Martel732 wrote:I have to react on the fly in Starcraft, and it has no randomness at all.

pretty confident there is some randomness, you just dont see it on screen, but in the 1's & 0's of the program it's happening. An entire game of 40k represents like a minute of an actual battle at real speed. Slow down starcraft to a crawl and make you watch the 1's & 0's, you might think differently.

Xenomancers wrote:I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.

Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.

Something needs to be done but I think they're getting there(albeit slowly).

 Xenomancers wrote:
I wish they would just remove seize the initiative from the missions and come up with a real consolidation for going second and losing 1/4th - 1/2 of your army turn 1.

Perhaps the player going second should chose the deployment type and chose the player going firsts deployment zone.

Removing the seize would help alpha striking so not sure how that would help...

And as it is if you go 2nd you get to dictate deployment already. Not sure what more can be done.

Of course add in terrain and it helps. Last tournament game 2 I gave up first turn on the account that a) I could see literally nothing b) if I go first I can't even reach with most of the stuff I have even if they can manage to angle I could see something. Also game 3 only thing I could see were the 3 eliminators but at least slagged them with doomsday ark. Literally only casualties salamanders took 1st turn as everything else was hiding behind terrain.

So rely on free random terrain to turn off shooting? If you need that, seems like shooting is too good.

Well guess if you play on planet bowling ball...But then that's your choice. If gun power would be nerfed a lot here the shooting then would become way underpowered as the terrain currently keeps the gunlines in check nicely.

There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage

Martel732 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Well, that's a tactical decision right there, the magical unicorn that everyone is looking for.

Sometimes just scoring is the right decision, sometimes taking out a threat is the right one, and sometimes you charge Mortarion into a unit of Brimstone Horrors that were trying to defend an objective for 2 VP.

Killing is still usually the right decision, because it removes enemy scoring in future turns. Enemy can't score cards with no units.

I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.

 Jidmah wrote:
I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.

Not my last tournament but day before. Lost 2 games despite vaporizing enemy armies pretty well(especially first game). How? Opponent boxed me in and prevented me from scoring any objectives. By the end of first game there was not much left of blood angel/knight/ig/assasin tag team. Necrons had basically lost just dda, 3 destroyers and command barge.

He deployed better and used his mobility to essentially box me into my initial corner. By the time I cleared his army it was too late to score anything.

Martel732 wrote:
There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage

Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:

Jidmah: well, it pretty much is unless CoD rules are in effect. Whole midfield is open, there are long range firelanes everywhere and not much area terrain to take cover in. It's mostly a shooty dream unless mission dictates otherwise, besides some LoS blocks on the flanks for sneaky shenanigans.

All those containers and trees provide cover within 3" unless you are standing on them (basically sealed fronteris structure rules), and there are barricades everywhere (barrels, fences, sand bags) as well as craters. I don't think I shot at a single necron without cover in that game.
I remember getting sight on anything was a PITA for both sides. That blue predator moved to where the tray with dice are in the picture and was completely hidden from the DDA in the back, despite it sitting on top of a rather tall building.

Nice open lanes. Very hard to put any unit out of LOS. Gunline open fire!

Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).

I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha

tneva82 wrote:
Nice open lanes. Very hard to put any unit out of LOS. Gunline open fire!

You must have missed the part where I put an entire predator out of LOS.

 Sherrypie wrote:
Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).

I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha

Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).

I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha

Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.

Of course that adds up time. 8th ed turns takes so much time that you need less effective turns or your games take lot longer than before. Bloody GW and their fixation on just adding up more and more models and even more and more and more dice rolls.

Some people have time limits. I have ~2.5h including unpacking and packing. Can get bit dicey if opponent is thinking long types.

The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.

Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.

tneva82 wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Yeah, that does sound a lot better. The comparison to bowling often has merit with such setups, though, since many players seem to be opposed to using rules like your 3" crates or functional barricades (for some baffling reason, while moaning about nonfunctional terrain).

I think we killed a total of three models in our last game's first turn, what horrible alpha

Actually sounds like the start of a fun game to me. I never understand why people want shorter games. If you're having fun why do you want it to end quickly? I prefer when some of each army survive until the end and the winner is decided on points.

Of course that adds up time. 8th ed turns takes so much time that you need less effective turns or your games take lot longer than before. Bloody GW and their fixation on just adding up more and more models and even more and more and more dice rolls.

Some people have time limits. I have ~2.5h including unpacking and packing. Can get bit dicey if opponent is thinking long types.

Too many rerolls and too many units with insane amounts of dakka/attacks. Rolling 40 dice at a time is supposed to be for orks not everyone.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.

Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.

That's why it's better to have better rules for the cover/terrain you do have and not just more terrain. True los shooting is the problem.

tneva82 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
I don't think so. In Maelstrom usually scoring objectives should be your first priority - even if you manage to wipe someone out in the first three rounds, you will struggle to score enough points during the last 2-3 rounds to catch up. Keep in mind that many objectives require your opponent to be alive, and most missions give you less/no new objectives if you still have a bunch of them lying around.
Pretty much any opponent who focused on killing me lost the game, even if he wiped me out.

Not my last tournament but day before. Lost 2 games despite vaporizing enemy armies pretty well(especially first game). How? Opponent boxed me in and prevented me from scoring any objectives. By the end of first game there was not much left of blood angel/knight/ig/assasin tag team. Necrons had basically lost just dda, 3 destroyers and command barge.

He deployed better and used his mobility to essentially box me into my initial corner. By the time I cleared his army it was too late to score anything.

Kill faster. They're just BA.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
The thing is people always claim that you are playing on "planet bowlingball" when you raise any complaints about shooting. What people seem to forget that LOS blocking terrain also blocks movement of anything that is not infantry or FLY, ruins invalidate many close combat units due to them not being allowed to enter upper levels and dumb "measure-to-base" rules, and that the inevitable choke points created by all those LOS blockers primarily serve as defense against short ranged and assault units.

Large amounts of LOS blocking terrain only serves to make shooting vs shooting more interesting, it does nothing to help short-ranged or close combat units.

That board had plenty of terrain. People need to get over this obsession with LoS blocking terrain. The game needs to work even when you are not on your preferred board layout. Also, you are right that LOS blockers are a double edged sword.

ERJAK wrote:


It's better than Eternal Snore. It's nice that most missions have some sort of progressive scoring mechanic now, but they're all ultimately won by whoever kills the other person harder in the first two turns, with relatively evenly matched games going to either the faster opponent, or more likely whoever went first.

With Maelstrom, there's a chance that you'll have to do something that actively prevents you from killing your opponent in order to score. This is a VERY important mechanic to have in 40k missions, in my opinion. By having something you actually have to forgo damage in order to achieve you reduce the overall deadliness of armies and increase the value of strategic choice.

Every Eternal War mission's entire tactica boils down to 'kill them while moving forward', with Maelstrom at least you have to think occasionally.

Eh, most of the time you still have to kill stuff anyway (either because its on an objective or the maelstrom objective is to kill something), and "kill something with an axe" instead of just killing it however you normally would, or "kill X number of things" isn't any better, while stuff like "manifest a psychic power" is just absurd, and the narrative oddity of being assigned random new orders every turn really takes a lot out of the game.

Ive never personally found Maelsteom to really be any deeper tactically, zipping a jetbike unit across the field to sit on a random point because you drew a card that says "now hop over there!" instead of having it shoot something doesn't require any more thinking than just shooting.

The extra record keeping doesn't help, its just much messier in general. The newer progressive scoring missions I like a lot, and they make way more coherent battlefield sense, but random Maelstrom has always been really silly to me.

Spoletta wrote:
You select it as you like it.

The wording changed from CA18 where it said "Determines the deployment type following the rules on page xx of BRB" which then said that you roll.

Now it just says that the defender "Determines which of the standard deployment maps is used in the battle" and that's it.

I'm afraid you're mistaken. Here's a screenshot.

Spoletta wrote:
Also, all the eternal war missions now always score at the start of the turn (from second round), there are no longer missions which score at the end of the round, which gave an advantage to going second.

Again, this isn't accurate. See below.

 Jidmah wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
There are so many terrain setups between bowling ball and 90% blockage

Well, according to some people, this is planet bowling ball:

IMO, most of the terrain is placed around the edges of the table so will be mostly useless throughout the game. Apart from the Bastion, there is no LOS blocking across the centre so yeah, that sort of is "planet bowling ball"