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I love terrain placement. I feel it makes assault armies viable, which would other-wise be unuseable on a Nova board. It also adds another level of tactical play while taking very little time.

Of course, you still need to have fair terrain. Ie. 2 Ruins, 2 Hills, 2 LOSB, 2 Forest. Two of each means noone is getting screwed unless they do it to themselves. Their shouldn't be scenarios like the one Mike described.

On the topic of objectives, the setup with those last year was.. Less than optimal. I heard wayyy to many stories from good players losing because of a ridiclous disadvantage starting the game. To reference sports, starting one player with an extra objective or extra pts worth of objectives would be akin to starting a football game down 7 pts. Arguing that you have to plan on playing from behind is nonsense.

Either way, I can't wait for Adepticon '14! Gonna be a blast! Definitely looking forward to meeting up with all of my 40k acquantinces in one building.

Still no response on why people want objective placement after the roll for table sides.

I think we found out last year that whenever you had an odd number of objectives that it gave one player a huge advantage. Even when you have an even number of objectives it turns into a capture and control (Emperor’s Will?) mission since the objectives are all placed on the back board edge and everyone knows why that mission got the nickname “Roll dice and Tie” and “Draw Bore”.

@MVBrandt - I played quite a few sports in my time... Active play has been so long ago though that you youngins could not even imagine us old guys doing such things.

Upon reviewing your sports analogy, there are several influences that affect game play. Home field advantage (an advantage for one team over the other) and weather conditions (ie: in football - a random advantage goes to whoever wins the coin toss by letting them potentially choose the side not affected as much by the sun/wind either earlier or later in the game). Like in sports, the board/field is defined (in our case 4'x6'). Like in sports with varied conditions (ie: stadium and weather) any type of terrain setup, mission type, random player pairing, etc can give a player an advantage.

Ultimately - there are a number of different terrain options whether it's static boards of the same layout, static by judge placement, player placed, etc. I do not take any differences in opinion as a knock on any of the events throughout the world. Each event brings their unique feel to the game. Different options bring their pros and cons. But for greater variety and more tactical play, I give the nod to player placed terrain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Blackmoor wrote:
Still no response on why people want objective placement after the roll for table sides. I think we found out last year that whenever you had an odd number of objectives that it gave one player a huge advantage.

I think if events took a page out of Epic 40K, it would allow for better objective placement.

First - the same number of objectives for each player or at least have the odd objective designated to be in a neutral position. This is nothing new since there are plenty of organizers who have done this throughout a number of events.

Second - in Epic 40K (if memory serves me correct), two of the three player placed objectives had to be in your opponents table half. This really mixes things up and I have found games of Epic 40K to be really engaging due to this dynamic.

The BAO Format does exactly this. Either you're placing half your objectives in your opponents deployment zone or you're putting some in the "neutral," zone.

Honestly, when I played Adepticon, the missions felt like an early version of the BAO Format.. Pre-Playtest. I mean no ill will by that, I just feel the guys out west have really nailed down a fair and balanced version of the dual-book-mission + secondaries idea. I don't understand why it isn't used over here at more events.

@Hippest

I agree, the missions in general were awesome, but player placed Objectives with book variables is a bummer.

We play test the crap out of our scenarios and document them frequently on YouTube and we've found it is more enjoyable to have as close to an even spread of objectives as possible. It's just more fun.

In my game 2 at Adepticon, I played an IG player in Hammer and Anvil with the Scouring and he has the 3,3,4 objectives as far away from me as possible and I had the 1,2,2 with my Nids having to march across the board into his army with a huge gap in terrain due to player placed terrain between us (which he wisely used to his advantage).

He had a HUGE advantage before the game started and I barely won due to some good luck. It was ultra lopsided before it began which is a cardinal sin of tournament scenario design, IMO.

That said, I love 95% of Adepticon's format, these are just minor critiques.

I enjoyed player placed terrain even though I was agaisnt it before trying it in a tournament format. As Adepticon uses big pieces of terrain and only about 6, it goes super fast and was really fun as it added another layer of player skill to the game. In Hammer and Anvil it can be a tad abusive but in general I really liked that.

BAO terrain doesn't really lend itself to that, we're actually looking at making big bases for terrain like Adepticon does to be able to implement that into our events.

As a suggestion on objective placing, one thing I really like that I saw DaBoyz GT has in their missions is this little addition:

DaBoyz GT Mission Packet wrote:
If there is an odd number of objectives, place one in the dead center of the table. Then each player gets half of the remaining objectives to place.

This is a really small but great tweak if Adepticon is still going to have player placed objectives, especially if random points are going to be used again. I really hope you guys look at using it, or something else, to prevent a repeat of what Blackmoor is talking about from last year where one player gets a natural advantage because they have more objectives in their deployment zone (which is made even worse when random points are used for each since they now also have much higher odds of getting a higher sum of objective points in their deployment zone). It was made a lot worst last year because the one mission that utilized this design also was hammer & anvil, which is fine as a deployment ype but when the two are put together repeatedly it can set up for very non-competitive games.

Hi Matthias,

What did you mean by this?

 Matthias wrote:
Registered Teams lists are next!

I'm guessing you mean posting up / going through the teams that have registered and filling out the members? I vaguely remember this from 2012 but it's been a little while

Just bringing this question back up to the top since I don't think Matthias / muwhe noticed it

That is part of it - but we have always just posted a list of participating team names. These can be found on the main AdeptiCon page (http://www.adepticon.org) under Registered Teams.

Ah got it, thanks for that!

What is Adepticon's rules committee current thoughts on dataslates, formations, escalation, stronghold assault, etc. for 40k...i.e. the champs, friendly, and team tourneys...for instance myself and my team are in construction of an army for the team event and the champs.......not really sure how to procede though...Do we need to be picking up a revenant titan for some D-weapon love?.......I will throw my thoughts in on that now....D-weapons are not for tourney play unless the tourney is built like the Gladiator...Personally I do not really even like the idea of formations that do not take up FOC space...anyways...just wondering where Adepticon is going to stand on this one...as Adepticon and the NOVA are oft followed tourney formats...The BAO format has really caught on for the west coast...but I know Frontline is having difficulty dealing with the rapid fire release of all the crazy stuff for 40k also...thanks for your thoughts in advance...

Gorress

My 2cents on this, formations and escalation are for narrative play. Not for tourney.....the allies matrix makes enough opportunity for creativity (read shenannigans) for people to enjoy. Stick with that and supplements (i.e. Iron Hands Clan whateveritwascalled).