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I'm moving this over here, because I think it's an interesting discussion, but it's not on-topic in the thread about getting games to end on time.

To bring others up to speed;

DevianID wrote:
Breng, if a mission is solely won on a single primary mission, and you lose that mission because of an odd match and your opponent going second despite your best effort to try to tie it, that mission is not balanced for win loss tournament play. A mission where all secondary win conditions are rendered pointless if you meet one primary condition simply punishes some armies and rewards others. In a win loss format each match needs to be fair for players. It's like a football playoff game granting 8 points for field goals for 'variety.'

As for timed player rounds, I made it clear in my post its a horrible idea. However, the part you missed was that if someone pays you to play in your tournament but has a handicap meaning he plays a bit slower, rushing them or forcing them out of the hobby is bull crap. A solution that punishes people not intentionally slow playing but instead just trying to have fun is no solution.

Also, a game that ends on turn 4 misses assault phases and shooting phases the same way a timed player round game misses combats and such. As for your criticism that players will 'game' a timed player round system, again the point was that they are already 'gaming' time limit games. The advantage of player timed rounds is that they 1) always finish and 2) provide more chances to identify a slow player as 'slow play' will have to occur at obvious times, such as when rolling overwatch to stall a close combat.

An actual solution to slow play needs to first remove the win loss format. If you lose to a slow player in round 1, and complain, its too early to tell if your opponent is certainly a slow player. If that slow player is discovered on round 3 to definitely be slow playing people, the bracket win loss system is too damaged at this point to retroactively grant players from rounds 1 and 2 who won their other games a 3-0 record. Now with a battle point system, you can add in a few points here and there to people who lost to players who, over the course of 8 games did not finish a majority of them. Sure it doesn't make up for losing the game, but in a battle point system it can be enough so that if you won your other games the loss to a slow player can put you in position to still win the event.

 Redbeard wrote:

It's nothing like changing field goals, that's a really poor analogy.

Perhaps the real point here is that win/loss isn't the only way to play. That combining book missions isn't actually playing 6th ed, and likewise rewards some armies and penalizes others.

I remember in 5th, all the people playing the parking-lot armies complaining about the kill point missions because they'd lose those ones. They argued that kill point missions were inherently unbalanced, tried to add caps, tried all sorts of things. When the real problem was their perception of how the game should work. They'd convinced themselves that MSU shooty was the best army, so they then argued to remove the mission that hurt MSU-shooty.

Whatever. If your army can't handle "the relic", it's not a good 6th ed army. All combining missions does is provide alternate ways for the same army to win each match, without having to alter itself to handle the outlier missions. Is it any wonder that we see the same lists at the top of tournaments that run this way? "I didn't bother to plan for how I'd win "the relic", because I knew I could ignore it and win on secondaries."

DevianID wrote:
My point about changing field goal points still stands. If in the playoffs 1 playoff match has substantially different rules, whether in the NFL with 8 point field goals or in 40k with the 'relic' as the only win condition that mattered, and your playoff match consists of only a single game before never be used again in the rest of the playoffs, its a terrible addition.

Your point about an army not being able to handle the relic being a bad 6th ed army is not true. If you built a list by sacrificing a lot so you can do well in 5 out of 6 mission types you have a good army. Someone who is amazing in 1 out of 6 mission types and terrible at all the others has a bad army. Do you honestly believe the 1 in 6 person who won the relic was the better player? If the point of a particular tournament is to find the best player, and your missions dont allow that, then you have bad missions.

In battle point missions, relic (or 5th ed kill points as the only win condition) is fine, as over the course of the event the better balanced army will win despite losing bad matchups by keeping their losses to a minimum. In win loss events, the only round that matters is the one you are currently playing. Effectively win loss is many 1 game tournaments, thus each game needs to be balanced.

A good pass/fail test for a win loss format is that if a particular mission was duplicated for all the games, would the winner be determined fairly or would the winner have had an unfair advantage.

In 5th I really liked using all 3 missions at once. Kill points hurt MSU parking lots, Emp Will was considered a drawfest, and objectives favored the MSU. With all 3 equally in play at once, you had an advantage, a neutral, and a disadvantage mission condition at the same time. Thus MSU or Deathstar or whatever, the mission would balance out overall allowing playskill and luck to determine the outcome.

Now note that only a select few Nova style missions were formatted in such a way that the winner of a single primary invalidated the rest of the objectives on the mission sheet. Those are the missions that I dislike. If you have relic, objectives and quarters, but really just winning the relic is enough to win the entire game despite anything else the opponent does, then certain armies will have an overwhelming advantage in that mission. With a win loss format that bad match will knock out better balanced armies, and those armies can effectively just stop playing the rest of the many game event. That is simply not acceptable if you want a fair event.

DarthDiggler wrote:
I disagree. 5/6 missions are not non-relic. There are only 3 mission types. Objectives, kill points and the relic. All others are variations of that. An army that can not do well with the relic is not deficient at 1/6 missions, they are deficient at 1/3rd of the missions and yes they are then a bad tourney army.

Redbeard is dead on when he says tourney organizers have been pressured to eliminate, or at least minimize, non objective based primary missions and it is having an amazing affect on the meta.

 hyv3mynd wrote:

Pretty much agree with Redbeard here, but this is tangential to actually finishing games. Altered missions are a form of comp as they alter which lists are successful in a similar fashion as hard comp restrictions or soft scores alter a meta.

I play tyranids, gk, eldar, dark eldar, and csm in roughly ten 3 round RTT's a year and one GT. Since 6th came out, I've finished approximately 25% of my 1850pt games due to random game length in a timed setting (2.5hrs). About 75% of my 1500pt games finished naturally (2hrs), and 100% of my 1000pt games finished naturally. I read dozens of competitive 40k blogs and have watched all the live streams from adepticon and NOVA. I can honestly say the guys who claim "I always finish my games naturally in a timed tournament" are the minority.

Games may have been decisive by the end of turn 4, with one player seriously crippled, but that is not the same thing. I would gladly play every game at 1500pts if that meant more natural finishes. With point costs decreasing, new codexes can fit nearly as much in 1500 as 4th/5th ed at 1850. Like others have also said, knowing turn 5 is the last due to time is a massive benefit over the possibility of playing 5-7 turns randomly.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

To be fair I rarely agree with Redbeard, nothing personal we just end up on the opposite side of things a lot, but in this I agree 100%. One of the reasons the local Meta in our area is healthy and armies that are considered "dead" like DE can compete is we don't shy away from playing the missions in the book. Including the Relic.

 Phazael wrote:
Relic is a crap mission, plain and simple. You might as well call it "first blood wins" when the players are of equal ability, because that's what happens almost all the time if you play it by the book. The previous version of it (take and hold) was a much better mission and when they test ballooned early versions of this turkey at Hard Boys a couple of times, people hated it. You can get the same blood bath in the middle of the board just by counting all scoring units within 6inches to determine victory. Hell, add elites into the scoring bracket for this one since they are the only slot to get no love elsewhere.

Scouring is not a bad mission, per se, but the set up for it is very lengthy and the random objective thing is just plain stupid if one guy ends up with all the good objectives on his side of the board. There were a lot of faster and more intelligent ways to do this type of mission, mostly by giving each player a 3/2/1 objective and having alternating placements requiring at least one each in no mans land. That was me after a post work cocktail and it took me all of 20 seconds to come up with a better version of that one.

The rest of the missions are solid as written, though.

None of these have anything to do with this discussion, however.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So, here's how I see it.

The Relic isn't a crap mission. It just requires tools that you don't need in the other missions. There are armies that can do quite well in The Relic and win it on a regular basis. For example, a Drop-pod list can wall-off the relic from the opponent's forces, and engage in a falling-back battle, while the opponent has to chew through the pods to get to them.

For that matter, I actually like the Scouring too, random points and all. Because, it too, rewards a balanced army, and punishes an unbalanced one.

If your entire army is designed to push forwards and fight in your opponent's deployment zone, then having high-point objectives end up in your backfield can really hurt you. Likewise, for the more-obvious gun-line that finds that it has to go get the better objectives.

If you remove the randomness from The Scouring, your meta will reward gunlines more than if they have to account for the possibility or take a loss.

If you remove The Relic, you punish armies that can take durable scoring units, and reward armies that simply play the 'hide my little scoring unit until the end' game.

And, of course, by combining multiple missions into a single win condition, you allow people to build lists that can ignore the outlier missions and win on the other ones.

And that's exactly what happened with the 5th ed metagame. By the book, 1/3rd of missions should have been kill points and 2/3rds should have been objectives. Kill points are a game mechanic that stands as a counter to the natural advantage that MSU armies have in a shooting game. But too many players liked the MSU approach, and lobbied hard to get tournaments to combine missions, so that they weren't hobbled by the kill point game.

That's the same thing happening now with Scouring, Relic, and to a lesser extent, Kill Points. These missions all serve as counters to specific army types. But because they make people play outside of their comfort zone, it's easier to ask tournament organizers to remove them, or at least combine them with a mission you know you can win.

That creates a meta that's not what the game designers are working towards, and skews results in favour of the armies that can dominate the objective missions regularly, regardless of what weaknesses they have against the other types.

That said, let's say, for sake of argument, that "Relic" is a crap mission, as Phazael claims. So what? It's part of the rules. You know what other rules are crap? Not being able to attack a building unless it's occupied. Rolling random charge distances. But these are part of the game. People complain that assault is dead in 6th. TOs could get rid of random charge distance in their events just as easily as they can get rid of the Relic mission. But that wouldn't be 6th ed either.

What army does Relic counter exactly?

Leafblower/Taudar/Insert Gunline of choice-
Any of these armies on the other side of the table means one thing. A big Red Smear in the middle of the table, where any unit that attempts to actually complete the mission is deleted in a single turn. Said same armies tend to win the first blood point, so unless you score that off them by blind luck, you may as well call it at turn one. Its even worse when facing a cron or wraithguard army, because you will never get the wraith type units off of the objective and getting first blood on those armies is harder than Chinese arithmetic.

Mechanized (Insert poor bastard here) Army-
You are probably taking the transports because your troops suck even worse in their absence. Taking them is basically conceding first blood. All of your mobility is down the toilet the moment you grab the relic and try to relocate it to a secure spot on the board. And trying to Pod wall is just handing out bonus wounds to an army capable of killing drop pods easily (ie every army other than Tyranids) and giving assault armies a nice closer target to leapfrog into the heart of the action.

Biker Armies-
Good at getting the relic, but pants once you have it since all of your mobility got tossed out the window. Ok at reclaiming it, assuming the opponent isn't just ignoring it and busy filling you so full of lead you can use your junk as a pencil, like he should be. Still, these guys are better off than typical assault armies.

Infantry Spam-
Your reward for enduring a giant poop sandwich in every other mission is to get tar pitted in the middle and lose to first blood in this one. Unless your infantry is stupidly shot resistant (See Wraithguard wall or Camp Crons), the wound allocation rules will make sure that you pick up and drop the objective like its a greased pig, if you even get close enough in the first place.

FMC/Flyer Spam-
Either they get first blood or they lose it and that decides every game, because no one is going to live in the middle of the table with this army in play. So basically, anyone who packs so much as one ADL and can avoid a turn one kill automatically wins this one against you. Damn you OP Flyers!!!!!

But seriously, I am a fan of the other four book missions. Hybrid missions do exactly what Red is saying, specifically letting certain armies avoid counterbalance. Scouring just needs some minor tweaking to be balanced and less time consuming and I lump it in with the other four. The choose your own adventure missions that AdeptiNova favor lead to weird (and frankly annoying) armies being really powerful (hi2u Tervigon Spam) because they can essentially ignore their weaknesses and draw out on the missions they do not like.

Relic creates crap matchups where already dominant armies dominate even more strongly. When the armies and player ability are equivalent, first blood always decides this mission. Do Taudar, CampCrons, or IG+ Ally of the Week really need another mission they dominate in?

 Phazael wrote:
What army does Relic counter exactly?

Leafblower/Taudar/Insert Gunline of choice-
Any of these armies on the other side of the table means one thing. A big Red Smear in the middle of the table, where any unit that attempts to actually complete the mission is deleted in a single turn. Said same armies tend to win the first blood point, so unless you score that off them by blind luck, you may as well call it at turn one. Its even worse when facing a cron or wraithguard army, because you will never get the wraith type units off of the objective and getting first blood on those armies is harder than Chinese arithmetic.

Mechanized (Insert poor bastard here) Army-
You are probably taking the transports because your troops suck even worse in their absence. Taking them is basically conceding first blood. All of your mobility is down the toilet the moment you grab the relic and try to relocate it to a secure spot on the board. And trying to Pod wall is just handing out bonus wounds to an army capable of killing drop pods easily (ie every army other than Tyranids) and giving assault armies a nice closer target to leapfrog into the heart of the action.

Biker Armies-
Good at getting the relic, but pants once you have it since all of your mobility got tossed out the window. Ok at reclaiming it, assuming the opponent isn't just ignoring it and busy filling you so full of lead you can use your junk as a pencil, like he should be. Still, these guys are better off than typical assault armies.

Infantry Spam-
Your reward for enduring a giant poop sandwich in every other mission is to get tar pitted in the middle and lose to first blood in this one. Unless your infantry is stupidly shot resistant (See Wraithguard wall or Camp Crons), the wound allocation rules will make sure that you pick up and drop the objective like its a greased pig, if you even get close enough in the first place.

FMC/Flyer Spam-
Either they get first blood or they lose it and that decides every game, because no one is going to live in the middle of the table with this army in play. So basically, anyone who packs so much as one ADL and can avoid a turn one kill automatically wins this one against you. Damn you OP Flyers!!!!!

But seriously, I am a fan of the other four book missions. Hybrid missions do exactly what Red is saying, specifically letting certain armies avoid counterbalance. Scouring just needs some minor tweaking to be balanced and less time consuming and I lump it in with the other four. The choose your own adventure missions that AdeptiNova favor lead to weird (and frankly annoying) armies being really powerful (hi2u Tervigon Spam) because they can essentially ignore their weaknesses and draw out on the missions they do not like.

Relic creates crap matchups where already dominant armies dominate even more strongly. When the armies and player ability are equivalent, first blood always decides this mission. Do Taudar, CampCrons, or IG+ Ally of the Week really need another mission they dominate in?

If you know it will be a mission build lists to deal with the mission. You should already be building lists to deal with those army builds you listed.

The Relic is so different from the other possible missions that it creates a situation where players will be forced to retool lists because they know it will be played.

Except it doesn't. Firepower armies can basically blow down anything within a mile of the Relic, once they have secured first blood, assuming Interceptor does not accomplish that for them first. Smart players with strong armies just ignore the mission and go about shooting the bejesus out of the other guy, because any unit straying into the kill zone gets murdered instantly. Or, in the case of Necrons running a side of Wraithwing or anyone spamming Hamminators, the middle ends up such an unwinnable tar pit that the game drags out even longer.

At least back in the day with Take and Hold, the extra bodies meant something and there was this timed push to the center. Relic is just about slamming a hammer on any hand that tries to reach in the general direction of the center of the table. Firepower armies play no differently at all in Relic, except now once the other guy loses first blood they have a desperate incentive to get into the murder zone. The only armies the mission really changes things for are ones that are low on solid troops or based around mobility/assault. That is to say, armies that this edition in general already punishes greatly, since kill points now comprise 1/6th of all missions instead of 1/3rd. Except for that first kill point of First Blood, which decides 90% of Relic Games in my experience (and I can back with statistics from a couple leagues that tracked those numbers). And we all know which armies rock the house at getting first blood....

Again, I am a big fan of straight up book missions as written, but Relic is just an unfun mess, especially if you roll Hammer and Anvil Deployment. Scouring is not terrible, it just takes a lot of setup and the random numbers thing kind of is potentially unfairly random. But it is still playable and enjoyable, unlike Relic. Considering GWs track record (and insular "playtest" policies), I think 4 good missions, one meh, and one turd is pretty good. Fantasy has two unplayable turds....

 Phazael wrote:
Except it doesn't. Firepower armies can basically blow down anything within a mile of the Relic, once they have secured first blood, assuming Interceptor does not accomplish that for them first.

Sounds like some games need more LOS blocking terrain. And, what if they didn't secure first blood? What if the other guy got first blood. Now they need to get the relic. Right there is the perfect example of how the mission does work to balance the army type.

You're insinuating that whoever gets first blood will win the mission. That to me indicates a not a failure of the mission, but a failure of the people making these lists to understand that they might not get First Blood. Or perhaps a willingness of those people to take a game loss on the first-turn roll, rationalizing it to themselves that if they lose that mission because they lost First Blood it was because the mission was bad.

Sounds like the classic definition of scrub mentality to me. If you lose The Relic because you lost First Blood, it doesn't mean the mission sucks, it means your list didn't keep you in the game. You can complain about the mission, or you can figure out a way to change your list so it's not so dependent on First Blood.

Quentin I think you need to play in events with more centrally located LoS blocking terrain!

I thought it was understood that GW didn't build the game/missions for tournament play. . .

Relic literally rewards whoever goes first. Because of the structure of the claiming rule, if you go second and are equally mobile as your opponent, you are at a substantial disadvantage for claiming it. If you kill the claiming model on your turn, your opponent is the first player with the opportunity to move to it and pick it up again. Whoever gets it first has a very strong chance of keeping it. Because the imbalance is based on turn order and is largely army neutral, it IS a bad mission.

I'd like the relic if it was essentially an objective that could be moved about. Having your relic guy sniped out *again* by JOTWW right at the end of the game and so 'no longer having it' is stupid.

Only mission I really, really disagree with is kill points. Rubbish.

The relic is just an awful mission, I've tried to enjoy it but as has been pointed out whoever goes first is at a significant advantage as if they've got anything even slightly fast they're all over it turn 1 and you can't grab it in your turn 1 if you also happen to have a fast option. Another frequent problem particularly in the age of tau is just ignoring the mission, they'll set up to focus fire the area near the relic, then if they get first blood it's game over, there's no troop unit that they can't blast in a turn with focused fire. I've seen the argument about 'what if they don't get first blood', what happens then is they lose, tau have nothing that will survive grabbing the relic, even in a terrain dense field they're too slow and fragile. That doesn't make it a well designed mission in any way shape or form.

The scouring however I am fine with, the only reason people I know seem to dislike it is they don't have the tokens ready for objective markers so they just reroll it in casual games instead of messing about making temporary ones. It forces you to be flexible which is no bad thing, yes occasionally you'll get an unlucky placement but the game has that much random in it already you can hardly complain at a little more.

Three is no advantage to going first in the relic, if you plan for it in your army.

The relic mission will absolutely hurt the current meta. 4 Riptides with minimal troops, shooty Eldar with weak troops in Seroents, FMC with portal scoring units. All three are the same type of army. Hit the enemy with non-scoring super units and mop up objectives with weak sauce at the end of the game.

Each One of those armies would have to bring a durable scoring unit to get the relic and that would take points away from getting a 4th Riptide or a 5th Serpent or a 2nd Wraithknight or a 5th FMC. It would tone them down.

And as for shooting the enemy off the relic, tough for anyone to do with a wall of drop pods or vehicles in the way. Tough to do when the enemy unit holding the relic is a Wraithguard unit with Spiritseers and Eldard attached.

There are units available in the books to accomplish the task. We just don't see them because the Relic is minimized and those units are shunned in favor of more ranged shooting.

You do understand that the relic is most often won on secondary objectives. You say it is tough to shoot off units when a wall of drop pods are in the way....Eldary and Tau care about this how? You get cover...I ignore it blow away squad with relic. Furthermore, as a Daemon Player I land an FMC on the relic, you cannot claim it. If I have 5 FMC, I land one each turn, you never claim if I get more secondaries then you I win.

I'm not saying the Relic is terrible, but as written it leads to secondary objective wins more often than not. Also if it appears 1 round out of 6, and my army sucks at objectives, Great I win the relic mission but I have already lost the tournament.

The book missions need some balancing. As a TO what I strive to achieve are missions that are always(or at least often) fun for both players.

Straight Kill points if I face a Kill point denial army....not fun
Scouring when my opponent gets the two 3 point and 4 point objective, not fun. Relic, is slightly better, but if my opponent can infiltrate on the relic and then run away...not fun.

I think what people fail to realize about complex missions is that in general because both players can compete the missions tend to be more enjoyable. There is less of a sense that they lost before the game even started.

The objective of a tournament is really to be as fun for as many players as possible while still being competitive.

I would also disagree that the Relic is a crap mission. Many (if not most) of the games in 40k rely on armies that are excessively troop heavy - Crusade, The Scouring, Big Guns etc. There are many armies in which taking a large contingent of troops just detracts too much from making the army effective.

For example, An Iyanden army filled predominantely with Wraithguard will perform strongly in the reilc - and also in the Emperor's will. It will also as a result of the army list's creation be below average at any mission with 4 objectives or more. I think the Relic is crucial to keeping these armies in circulation at tournaments. I actually think that if you combine missions like the Relic and the Emperor's will, you detract from these armies ability to collect more tournament points.

Breng77 wrote:
You do understand that the relic is most often won on secondary objectives.

But, is this because the mission is flawed, or (more likely), is it because too many players do not have armies that take it into account, because too many tournaments have essentially voided it? The current meta, especially at big events, favours an army that can ignore this mission. Given that most players aren't going to completely redesign an army for the smaller number of events that may actually use book missions, even in those events, people are still likely to own, and bring, armies that have overlooked this mission. So of course it's going to come down to secondaries.

You say it is tough to shoot off units when a wall of drop pods are in the way....Eldary and Tau care about this how? You get cover...I ignore it blow away squad with relic.

and if you don't get line of sight because of those pods?

Furthermore, as a Daemon Player I land an FMC on the relic, you cannot claim it. If I have 5 FMC, I land one each turn, you never claim if I get more secondaries then you I win.

This seems like a draw strategy that lends itself to losing on secondaries. Sure, you could approach the mission this way, but are you likely to get First Blood if you're holding your expensive FMCs back to block the relic one turn at a time? I think not. And, if you expose your FMCs to actually go after secondaries, you risk losing them, which invalidates the draw strategy you're pursuing. It's an interesting argument to toss out, but I don't think you thought it all the way through.

I'm not saying the Relic is terrible, but as written it leads to secondary objective wins more often than not. Also if it appears 1 round out of 6, and my army sucks at objectives, Great I win the relic mission but I have already lost the tournament.

So make an army that doesn't suck at objectives, but that can also address the Relic issue. Or, perhaps you're claiming that no army can do both?

The book missions need some balancing. As a TO what I strive to achieve are missions that are always(or at least often) fun for both players.

Straight Kill points if I face a Kill point denial army....not fun

Conversely, if I'm using a KP denial army, and have to play nothing but objectives against MSU armies, I'm not going to have fun either.

Scouring when my opponent gets the two 3 point and 4 point objective, not fun.

Why is this not fun? Your opponent is forced into playing a static, 'defend what I have' game, and you get to play offensively. Oh, right, if you both have static gunlines, I guess that might not be fun, because you're fighting against his strength with your weakness. Well, maybe that just reinforces my point - that the static gunline isn't the only way to play, and that maybe it's not a balanced approach to the game at all. Sometimes, you're going to have to move forwards.

I think what people fail to realize about complex missions is that in general because both players can compete the missions tend to be more enjoyable. There is less of a sense that they lost before the game even started.

I disagree with both halves of your assertion. First of all, no, both players cannot always compete in a "complex" (is that your way of saying combined) mission. There's a reason that Blast&Grab armies have become prevalent - because they're good at these combined missions. But not everyone wants to play blast&grab armies. And if you're not, and you get matched up against one, there is every bit as much of a "already lost" feeling. That it doesn't matter what you do, because the other guy has 2nd turn, and can rush his tiny fast scorers out on the last turn.

The objective of a tournament is really to be as fun for as many players as possible while still being competitive.

So, your argument is basically that because a majority of players have decided that they only want to play blast&rush armies, and those players wouldn't have fun using book missions, that all tournaments should only feature missions that blast&rush armies dominate in? But they're only playing blast&rush armies because that's what the tournaments are incentivising.

As it happens, there are not so many armies that are good at that strategy. What do you know, the winners lists from the last few events are full of Tau/Eldar mixes. Mix up the missions, and you'll mix up the meta. Mix up the meta, and you'll see more variety in what people bring. And, maybe I'm alone in this, but I'd rather face four or five different codexes over a weekend, even if one of those matchups felt like an auto-loss, than face 5 tau/dar armies in a row.

I've won more games of The Relic going second than I have going first. Being able to kill the relic carrier and deny my opponent the points if he has it or pick it back up if I had it on my previous turn and my opponent shot me off of it. I've found the relic does come down to secondary objectives a lot, but that's a good thing in my opinion. I haven't seen many WAAC lists do too well in my area, well balanced lists usually end up winning. If you can't win one of the book missions than your list is crap or you think you play a lot better than you really do (which is the case 9/10 times).

I simply don't agree with your assertion. The GT I run uses my own combined missions, Drop Pod wolves won...With Paladin Deathstar second for general ship. Iyanden Eldar (Not Serpent spam) won Best Overall (including soft scores going 4-1).

So it is not just Blast and Grab if you make good missions. The issue with just book missions is this. Lets say I have 3 rounds, or 5 rounds, which ones do I use?

Say I go 3 rounds and play Crusade, Big Guns and scouring, and you bring a KP denial list.... you lose because your strength is never used. Similarly if I go Emporers will, Kill points and Relic, MSU gets hammered.

But lets say I play all 6 missions. There are still more Objective missions, so skewing my effectiveness towards those while still addressing the other missions (which I must do in good combined missions as well.)

My argument is not that everyone wants to play one way, my argument is that missions should be designed such that any army can attempt to compete.

To address some more specific points.

I've never seen a drop pod wall completely block LOS completely. You can see through the pods (and most GTs rule that Pods don't block LOS if their doors are closed so lets just preempt that assertion). OS with Eldar or Tau mobility I'll be able to see you pretty easily.

Scouring when your opponent does not need to do much to win is not fun. If I have 10 objective points, I just need to make sure you don't kill me an I win... I don't see the assertion that somehow my (and I don't play gun line) needing to rush forward into a gun line or to kill my opponent entirely is a fun game and if I don't make it I lose.

IT seems like what your saying is that "good" armies are good at all the missions, and so they are better at combined missions because of this, where as a list tailored to a specific mission cannot compete on all missions so it loses?

I think the assertion that somehow Taudar would be bad at book missions is simply false. I think we would largely see the same types of armies

Eldar and Tau are powerful mission does not change this much. Could they lose say a kill point mission, sure, but then what you are saying is that these armies win unless they draw a bad matchup on a specific mission. Which adds more random luck to who wins than anything.

So Say I'm the MSU serpent player, and I play the KP denial army on objectives...I win no contest. Then I face another MSU in KPS and win, same with relic.

Where as you play MSU serpent and face KP denial in KPs and Lose...then the KP denial list loses next round on objectives to the same build....

Is this a good tournament format?

Essentially straight book missions makes the game feel far mor RPS than if the KP denial army can compete against the MSU army because KPS and Objectives are combined.

Breng77 wrote:

The issue with just book missions is this. Lets say I have 3 rounds, or 5 rounds, which ones do I use?

Boy, that's a tough one. The rulebook really doesn't provide any mechanism for determining what missions people might play...

Say I go 3 rounds and play Crusade, Big Guns and scouring, and you bring a KP denial list.... you lose because your strength is never used. Similarly if I go Emporers will, Kill points and Relic, MSU gets hammered.

You're listing these archetypes as though they win/lose without action. A good KP denial list still has to be able to compete in objective games, if only because KP are only 1/6th of the possible missions. If the KP army really had no chance in objective missions, it would be a very bad choice to take to any tournament, wouldn't it.

An objective mission is easier for MSU armies, but it's by no means the only way to approach those missions. KP denial doesn't necessarily mean 'weak at objectives'. I'm not sure the opposite isn't true though - MSU is a liability in KP games, but only when facing a KP denial list. Two MSU armies facing off in a KP mission are on even footing.

My base assertion is that a good army needs to be able to handle all the missions. If a KP denial army auto-fails at one of them, then it's not a good army by this standard.

But lets say I play all 6 missions. There are still more Objective missions, so skewing my effectiveness towards those while still addressing the other missions (which I must do in good combined missions as well.)

What makes a "good" combined mission?

My argument is not that everyone wants to play one way, my argument is that missions should be designed such that any army can attempt to compete.

But that's blatantly not true, ever. You cannot make a mission with parameters that I cannot make an army that has no realistic chance to win at. See, you're approaching the problem from the wrong side.

You're saying missions should be designed so that any army can compete at them.
I'm saying armies should be designed so that they can compete at any (book) mission.

Here's why I'm right, and you're wrong. (yes, I went there.)

As a tournament organizer, you have zero control over what armies people bring. If your goal is to provide missions that anyone can compete at, that include the guy who brings an army with no scoring units. How does he win? That include the guy who, for whatever reason, doesn't take any weapons that can kill a vehicle. You cannot control for that. And, even at small 20-person one-day gamestore tournaments, I'm guessing at least half the players there aren't up on what's super-competitive. You've set yourself a goal that you have no control over, and that you've likely failed by simple math. In 20 players, one of them is going to get screwed by the matchup in at least one of the games.

On the other hand, by saying you'll use book missions, you've set a clear expectation for your players, and the onus is now on them to bring a list that can win in any of those missions. If someone loses because their army can't claim The Relic, well, that's their responsibility to solve, not yours. If someone loses because the Scouring put the valuable objectives on their opponent's side of the table, well maybe they should have brought an army that could take the fight to their opponent's side of the table... This approach is fairer to players, because it sets a standard and then leaves the matter in their hands. It's a far more reasonable goal for a TO to have than "making missions everyone can win".

I've never seen a drop pod wall completely block LOS completely. You can see through the pods (and most GTs rule that Pods don't block LOS if their doors are closed so lets just preempt that assertion).

That's up to those GTs, I guess. Do they also say that when you disembark from a rhino, you have to open the doors and allow line of sight through them? What a silly rule.

Scouring when your opponent does not need to do much to win is not fun. If I have 10 objective points, I just need to make sure you don't kill me an I win... I don't see the assertion that somehow my (and I don't play gun line) needing to rush forward into a gun line or to kill my opponent entirely is a fun game and if I don't make it I lose.

You're only seeing this from half the picture though. You're saying "what if I'm the guy that has to rush a gunline". And, in any given tournament, yes, that might happen to you, and that might suck. I'll grant you that.

But I'm looking at this from a big-picture view. I'm looking at this thinking, every time a gunline loses in this way, that gunline player is going to question whether a gunline is a good army to use. I'm looking at this from the effect that this will have on the metagame, where we'll see fewer gunlines, because gunlines cannot compete in Scouring missions that are stacked against them. And, I'm positing that the positive long-term effect on the metagame, of reducing the number of static gunlines and increasing the number of balanced armies, is worth the short-term negative that might be a few individuals losing a game along the way.

IT seems like what your saying is that "good" armies are good at all the missions, and so they are better at combined missions because of this, where as a list tailored to a specific mission cannot compete on all missions so it loses?

Not at all. I think a good army doesn't have to be good at all the missions, but it has to have a plan for all the missions. A good army is an army without an auto-loss, one that allows a player's skill to win them the game.

I think what combined missions do is that they provide alternate avenues of victories to armies that have weaknesses, making them more powerful than they actually are, to an extent that those armies then come to dominate the metagame.

Eldar and Tau are powerful mission does not change this much. Could they lose say a kill point mission, sure, but then what you are saying is that these armies win unless they draw a bad matchup on a specific mission. Which adds more random luck to who wins than anything.

So Say I'm the MSU serpent player, and I play the KP denial army on objectives...I win no contest. Then I face another MSU in KPS and win, same with relic.

Where as you play MSU serpent and face KP denial in KPs and Lose...then the KP denial list loses next round on objectives to the same build....

Is this a good tournament format?

Let's call the first player Bob, and call that second player Joe.

If the goal of the tournament is to establish who played the best that day, then I'd argue that Joe didn't deserve to win because he brought a list with an obvious weakness, and lost because of that weakness. Joe brought a list that could dominate some missions, but that had an obvious weakness against KP denial lists, in KP missions. Let's assume that Joe's a good enough player to recognize this fact too. Joe gambled. He gambled that the advantage he got in the other missions was going to be significant enough to win him the tournament, and that the known weakness in his list was not likely to bite him. Joe gambled, and, this time, Joe lost.

Is it "fair" that Joe lost, while Bob made the exact same gamble and won? I dunno. We're playing a dice game. Is it fair that some people win the lottery and I'm still at work? Is it fair that some people make 66% of their 5++ saves and others make 16%?

You're dissatisfied, because you see the result of the tournament being decided by a random factor - Bob and Joe's first round matchup. But I'm going to say that you're placing the blame in the wrong place. Joe knew what he was doing. Joe chose his list. Joe could have given up some of his dominance in objective missions in order to get a better game in KP missions. That Joe's gamble failed and Bob's gamble worked is the nature of gambling. But Joe didn't have to make this gamble, that was his choice.

Now, next tournament, will Joe gamble again? Will he learn? Maybe he will. And maybe next time, he'll win, while Bob will lose his gamble. And then, maybe in the 3rd tournament, with Bob and Joe both now wiser and playing lists without auto-lose matchups, maybe in that third tournament we'll see a winner based on who played better overall.

That's what needs to happen on a larger scale. Right now, people are gambling, they're playing lists with weaknesses. But because the missions get combined, losing the gamble doesn't cost them much. So they keep gambling, and those lists are defining the metagame. Those combined missions remove the downside to the gamble, and so the upside (the strength in objective games) dominates the meta.

That's why the meta looks so homogeneous. And, frankly, boring. The gamble needs to have a downside, and it needs to bite people from time to time, because that's what makes for an interesting meta.

Even if the Relic rewards who goes first (which Im not 100% sold on) this isnt any worse than the other objective missins rewarding who goes second.

First blood can decide a lot of these, but folks should know that. Hide your weak sauce units. It brings up interesting dilemmas like "do I try to go all out to kill one of my opponents units, but if I fail, I will give up first blood by being to agressive". Even if First blood is lost, there are 2 other 2ndry objectives to remember, not to mention the often forgotten about Tau Ethereal always giving up a bonus point if he is killed. Also it makes the warlord traits that reward foks for killing charachers actually mean something, as opposed to rewarding 50 VP if the game goes to the 7th tiebreaker.

I dont think the book missions are superior to the way most major GT's run their events, they are just different. Time issues seem to be a reason folks are gripping, as is the same style of builds doing well at GT events. Book missions MAY cut time, and they MAY reward folks for bringing something other than shooty armies that dash to objectives late game. At Adepticon it was primarily Necron Scythes that ruled the top 16, and NOVA was dominated by the Tau/Eldar/Taudar. Would things change if pure book missions were run, maybe, do folks want them to change?

We wouldnt really know since no major GT wants to run pure book missions and I can understand why. GT's want to create unique experiences and some folks find the book missions dull. No one wants to risk running a huge GT with folks traveling from all over the world to be tikked off by the mission they drew round 1. (Even though this could happen at any of the current GT's). That being said, perhaps if a GT did try this and folks who attended the events gave feedback, we could see what folks think of the pure book missions. Perhaps some tournies while playtesting missions could try and see what happens when they playtest pure book missions. Are the games over in 2 turns due to unbalance? Are the games close fought and down to the wire? Im assuming the latter is what most GT's strive for, as well as a diverse field of armies attending. Perhaps not.

What I'm saying is armies without auto-lose match-up do not exist if we are taking missions into account. So say I make a list that is good at all missions. I have a reasonable ammount of KPs, but enough Scoring to take objectives, and a sturdy fast unit for the relic.

And I just happen to run into the guy with 4 Kill points...and I lose in KPs. Complete random chance of a game I stand little to no chance of winning with a balanced list.

You say, well we should just play the book missions because even though they are terribly balanced and frequently will make for bad games between players, that is ok because when those rare bad match-ups happen the player that loses them will go out and purcahse a new army or re-work his army to win.

What I am saying is that people in general (not the top tables) don't run out and change armies frequently so providing missions with multiple paths to victory creates a scenario where any list (not just the ones you think are OP) can with a propper strategy compete.

You seem to think that these combined mission are the only reason Taudar are on top...they are not.

My point is that as a TO the bigger picture is irrelevant in light of the enjoyment of players at my particular event.

For me missions should all begin with both players needing to play the game to achieve their objectives. (so no objective mission should be winnable by simply sitting and shooting)

I actually feel that the propostion you are making makes armies like Tau and Eldar even stronger. Both these armies have the tools to play relic and kill points.

Tournament winning armies will more often than not gamble, because if they win the gamble they win the event, where as an army that is decent at everything will pull bad matchups to those gambling armies when playing against their strengths.

Lets put it this way, if I were to play an army designed to beat Tau or Eldar I will more often than not do well in the current meta. SO it is a calculated risk that I won't face an army that I am bad against because it is bad against the meta.

We can disagree but unless you are running events the players I host for like the missions as designed and most people I know don't like books missions. Further I believe that your looking through rose colored glasses believeing that the randomness inherent in the book missions will some how balance the meta.

What will happen in reality will be players who are pissed because they lost the game due to the mission .

 OverwatchCNC wrote:
Quentin I think you need to play in events with more centrally located LoS blocking terrain!

Sure, but most large events usually do not bring enough and, if they do, all a tau player has to do (and I have done this, personally) is put a Ripsnort or two on top of a taller piece on the perimeters and let Interceptor or straight up shooting collect the first blood for them. Even in the age of the Grav Gun, there are not exactly a lot of ways for people to turn one a Riptide. Eldar can also battle focus their way to an easy risk free first blood in that game. Guard and Friends, same deal. Then their are Necrons....

I agree that there is not nearly enough LOS breaking terrain, as a general rule, but in the age of the Smart Missile System, Markerlight, Reveal, and assorted other long range mobile firepower/ no cover shenanigans, its not as if it matters that much. If anything, its helps these armies as it allows them to hide their only vulnerable units from reprisal until they have secured first blood.

"But I'm looking at this from a big-picture view. I'm looking at this thinking, every time a gunline loses in this way, that gunline player is going to question whether a gunline is a good army to use. I'm looking at this from the effect that this will have on the metagame, where we'll see fewer gunlines, because gunlines cannot compete in Scouring missions that are stacked against them. And, I'm positing that the positive long-term effect on the metagame, of reducing the number of static gunlines and increasing the number of balanced armies, is worth the short-term negative that might be a few individuals losing a game along the way. - Redbeard"

This is essentially my feeling as well.

We know 40k is not designed for tournament play. However, taking the missions at face value is the closest thing we have to playing it as designed.

By using complex missions, armies can be designed to ignore one scoring criteria and win on others. While this allows for new and unique builds, it's essentially "not 6th ed". Follow Ailaros' battle reports if you want to see this in action. He's designed an army to draw on objectives and win on kill points and first blood every time. While this is fine for the format, it's the BAO/NOVA mission template making this possible.

If we use randomly generated pure book missions, we're playing the game as close to intended design as possible. If someone designs an army that cannot take backfield objectives in hammer/anvil deployment, or pick up a relic, or ever score linebreaker, leave that fault on the list designer. It's not the TO's job to design missions that anyone can win, it's the player's job to design a list that functions in all 6 current missions.

I'm totally OK with TO's creating their own tiered complex missions, but I view it identically to comp as they change which armies are successful by allowing people to "game" the mission format.

Except that assumes that all Combined missions are done in such a way that being good at one thing allows you to win...this is not always true.

Also you do know the rules in the book allow for player created missions so in no way are tournaments not playing 6th ed.

Also the idea that you cannot possibly game the book missions is also false.

"Even if the Relic rewards who goes first (which Im not 100% sold on) this isnt any worse than the other objective missins rewarding who goes second. "

True in the sense that its a one point advantage that the other side cannot capture back, but remember that the person going first has revealed their entire deployment first. The difference with Relic (and to be fair, Capture and Control 2.0 to a lesser extent) is that it is very likely that this is the only point to be scored in the game, when two equally skilled players face off with top tier lists.

In kill point missions and multiple objective missions, the opposing player has various chances to score points, beyond dumping their entire army into the crossfire killzone of a gunline in the center of the table. Now, if there are an even number of objectives, First Blood becomes more likely to be overly important, but the other player still has options beyond getting shot to ribbons in a suicide push at six inches a turn into and out of the center.

I am a big fan of book missions and avoiding TOs trying to redesign the game. The closer we are to book missions, the more level a playing ground. Not meaning that everyone has the same chance on every mission but that everyone knows exactly what to expect from each mission.

As for the anti0gunline argument it is simply put false. Lets look at modern "gunlines"

Eldar: Wave Serpent spam = mobility to play other missions (blcok LOS to the relic with Serpents disembark behind pick up relic....

Tau: Out flank kroot, Riptides jumping 4D6 ", hammer units on the relic with ranged shooting....

Sooooo....not sure how these won't work in book missions just as well.

Let's call the first player Bob, and call that second player Joe.

If the goal of the tournament is to establish who played the best that day, then I'd argue that Joe didn't deserve to win because he brought a list with an obvious weakness, and lost because of that weakness. Joe brought a list that could dominate some missions, but that had an obvious weakness against KP denial lists, in KP missions. Let's assume that Joe's a good enough player to recognize this fact too. Joe gambled. He gambled that the advantage he got in the other missions was going to be significant enough to win him the tournament, and that the known weakness in his list was not likely to bite him. Joe gambled, and, this time, Joe lost.

Is it "fair" that Joe lost, while Bob made the exact same gamble and won? I dunno. We're playing a dice game. Is it fair that some people win the lottery and I'm still at work? Is it fair that some people make 66% of their 5++ saves and others make 16%?

You're dissatisfied, because you see the result of the tournament being decided by a random factor - Bob and Joe's first round matchup. But I'm going to say that you're placing the blame in the wrong place. Joe knew what he was doing. Joe chose his list. Joe could have given up some of his dominance in objective missions in order to get a better game in KP missions. That Joe's gamble failed and Bob's gamble worked is the nature of gambling. But Joe didn't have to make this gamble, that was his choice.

Now, next tournament, will Joe gamble again? Will he learn? Maybe he will. And maybe next time, he'll win, while Bob will lose his gamble. And then, maybe in the 3rd tournament, with Bob and Joe both now wiser and playing lists without auto-lose matchups, maybe in that third tournament we'll see a winner based on who played better overall.

That's what needs to happen on a larger scale. Right now, people are gambling, they're playing lists with weaknesses. But because the missions get combined, losing the gamble doesn't cost them much. So they keep gambling, and those lists are defining the metagame. Those combined missions remove the downside to the gamble, and so the upside (the strength in objective games) dominates the meta.

That's why the meta looks so homogeneous. And, frankly, boring. The gamble needs to have a downside, and it needs to bite people from time to time, because that's what makes for an interesting meta.

+1 This. It's totally true. Terrain can also affect the meta. If you know the terrain is the "same"...then you can plan your units around the idea that the terrain will be: xyz. I see this happening a lot locally. The tables have so many ruins on them that some people's unit choices are determined by that. If I know there will always be a giant LOS blocking piece in the center, and 2-3 area terrain pieces on my table half and 2-3 terrain pieces exactly in the same spot as my opponent's table half...you can easily gamble with unit choice there in terms of what is needed to secure zones on a table.
Lastly, I haven't played on the national competitive scene since 2010...and the reasons why are all the reasons Redbeard listed. I agree with him 100%. I actually miss the days where you didn't know what the missions were in a tournament ahead of time. Or...you saw 10 missions on the tournament website...but knew that only 5 of those 10 were missions that would be randomly picked to be played. Thus you had to build a list that could compete in all of those missions to some degree of success. You may not be able to cover all outcomes...but you at least knew your army could cope with a mission that isn't your armies strong suit..versus it being decided as "an auto loss".

Breng77 wrote:

And I just happen to run into the guy with 4 Kill points...and I lose in KPs. Complete random chance of a game I stand little to no chance of winning with a balanced list.

And you think that using combined missions means no one ever runs into a list designed to beat theirs?

You say, well we should just play the book missions because even though they are terribly balanced and frequently will make for bad games between players, that is ok because when those rare bad match-ups happen the player that loses them will go out and purcahse a new army or re-work his army to win.

What I am saying is that people in general (not the top tables) don't run out and change armies frequently so providing missions with multiple paths to victory creates a scenario where any list (not just the ones you think are OP) can with a propper strategy compete.

...

We can disagree but unless you are running events the players I host for like the missions as designed and most people I know don't like books missions. Further I believe that your looking through rose colored glasses believeing that the randomness inherent in the book missions will some how balance the meta.

What will happen in reality will be players who are pissed because they lost the game due to the mission .

Doesn't this say something about the people you're playing with? We have a set of rules. None of us like all of them, but we've made an agreement to play with them because they're what 6th ed is. And the missions are part of that. If someone is going to get pissed off because they didn't make an army that could win the Relic, how is that different than someone getting pissy because they failed a random charge?

My point is that as a TO the bigger picture is irrelevant in light of the enjoyment of players at my particular event.

As a TO, it is not your job to remove everything that players do not want to adjust to. 6th ed came out over a year ago. "I don't like a 6th ed mission" shouldn't be a valid argument, anymore than "I don't like 6th ed casualty removal rules". Some players will never be happy unless they win all the time. Some players will look to blame anything except their choices for their loss.

Tournament winning armies will more often than not gamble, because if they win the gamble they win the event, where as an army that is decent at everything will pull bad matchups to those gambling armies when playing against their strengths.

Absolutely. I've used this approach to get top-ten GT finishes myself. But, when I've lost a game along the way, I've owned the fact that it was my choice that led to that, not "a bad matchup" or "a bad mission". I chose to bring an army with a bad matchup - that's on me. That's what you don't seem to want to let your players accept. They whine to you, "I only lost because The Relic sucks", and you buy it, and change the missions for them, rather than letting them own their choice to bring an army that couldn't play that mission.

You seem to think that these combined mission are the only reason Taudar are on top...they are not.
...
I actually feel that the propostion you are making makes armies like Tau and Eldar even stronger. Both these armies have the tools to play relic and kill points.

I don't know. On one hand, I agree, both those armies have some very powerful generalist units. On the other hand, both have weaknesses in scoring units, either durability or mobility, or both. Maybe those codexes would still be good, but I don't think they'd look the same, and I think the changes they'd need to make would open alternative builds from other books too.

Or maybe Tau and Eldar are just uber regardless - but we won't know that until we start playing 6th ed.

Is your implication then that during 5th ed tournaments were also not playing 5th Edition?

I sue the 6th Edition missions, just not straight from the book.

I use Scouring but do so with fixed objectives, and fixed point values.

I use the Relic, but typically with additional objectives so as not to have the mission result in a lot of First blood decsions or ties. The relic is still of primary importance, but if no one claims the relic a winner is typically still decided and not simply by first blood.

I use Big guns, mysterious objectives and terrain...

SO is it only 6th ed if I don't make any changes from the book. Then we end up with tables not playing the same mission. Why don't I just say. Hey it is a tournament and at the start of your turn roll for your mission. No need for me to decide what you will play after all rolling for the mission is in the book. Oh you rolled KPs 3 times, and brought MSUsucks for you, but that is 6th ed for you.

Apparently though you think everyone should play book missions good or bad, fun or not....

I don't change the missions because people say..I only lost because of the mission, I change them because even they guys who won thought they were dull and boring, or lopsided.

The 6th ed book does not say hey there 6 missions are the only ones you can ever play, gives guidelines for creating missions, so changing the missions is as much "playing 6th edition" as not.

What I find interesting is the guys saying we should play book missions are
1.) Not running tournaments (seemingly)

2.) Not attending touraments (because they don't like the missions? and blame the missions for the armies that are winning.)

Again, the last assertion is untrue, strong players and armies will win, in any format with any mission.

Breng77 wrote:
Is your implication then that during 5th ed tournaments were also not playing 5th Edition?

Yes, quite often. I think that the minimization of kill points in combined 5th ed missions led to the over-popularity of the MSU parking lots.

Why don't I just say. Hey it is a tournament and at the start of your turn roll for your mission. No need for me to decide what you will play after all rolling for the mission is in the book.

I would be completely comfortable attending a tournament like this. Or one that had the TO roll once, for everyone, at the beginning of each round. Wouldn't phase me at all.

Apparently though you think everyone should play book missions good or bad, fun or not....

That's because I don't think any of the book missions are not fun. But then I make armies that have a way to deal with all of them...

The 6th ed book does not say hey there 6 missions are the only ones you can ever play, gives guidelines for creating missions, so changing the missions is as much "playing 6th edition" as not.

You know, you're right about this. But it also says you can change any rule you want (Page 8), and we're not ignoring random charge distances. Even still, no where does it suggest that adding conditions that can be ignored is a good idea.

What I find interesting is the guys saying we should play book missions are
1.) Not running tournaments (seemingly)

2.) Not attending touraments (because they don't like the missions? and blame the missions for the armies that are winning.)

Whether we run, or attend tournaments has no bearing on the logic of this discussion, implying that it does is a fallacy.

Correct attending or running events has nothing to do with the logic of the discussion. But is has everything to do with why tournaments run the way they do. If players attending (or TOs running) tournaments have more fun/prefer not to play strict book missions, that would be a good reason for it not happenning.

Far to often people come on here and say things like Tournaments should run in such and such a way, because that is how the game is meant to be played/the game would be better etc...

but then put no effort into doing these things, and expect others to do them.

IF all the book missions are great fun, run tournaments using them, and people will (seemingly according to you) flock to those events to play them.

Instead of making unfounded claims like "if we ran book missions the meta would be different" run tournaments using book missions and prove that claim.

IF not expecting someone else to do it makes little sense.

I have no issue if an event wants to run the book missions, I personally don't consider them evaluative or balanced for producing conistent close games, which is why I make slight modifications to make them more balanced. If someone does not like those changes (no one has complained so far, and in playtesting when issues have come up changes have been made.) then they are free to not attend my events, or approach me about the missions with constructive criticism.

I personally would not like a tournament where I was playing different missions from everyone else and then a winner was decided. Further I am not a fan of the random roll each round method.

SO round 1 is "hammer and anvil and Kill points"
ROund 2 "hammer and anvil and Kill points
Round 3 wait for it "hammer and anvil and Kill points..."

Perhaps you would enjoy this...I personally would not.