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As someone who is just getting back into 40K after a while, I decided to give the Maelstrom missions a try. I felt a bit bittersweet about them. My draws weren't very good; the objectives I held were never the ones I had cards for. While it seemed every one of my opponent's cards were scoring.

Just curious of yall's opinions of how these missions affect the learning of the game. Do these give an unfair advantage to the vet player who knows more about manipulating their army and being more flexible? Does it add too much of a level of randomness to the game? Have you tried new ways of fixing this?

Just wanting some opinions

I have seen 5 Maelstrom games and it was always one sided. I haven't seen a close one yet. It seems luck of the draw has too much to do with these cards.

Our store ruling is if one can't possibly be scored then redraw. We are going to try that. i.e. - Say you pull the kill a flyer and the opp. has no flyer you redraw.

Maelstrom Missions are terrible. Don't play or play a very abbreviated version of them. Like pick three for the entire game or something. 3 a turn just takes too much attention away from the primary mission.

Mythra: I see you are located in NOLA, where do you play?

IMO the idea of hidden objectives is cool. But the way GW did it is bad. There should not be so many objectives some armies can't do no matter what. The discard is also flawed. If someone can do the missions he gets a constant flow of new ones. But if you can't do any you can discard only one per turn. Maybe not ground breaking if you get only one bad , but if you draw two or three ,the handicap is huge.

I was thinking it like this:

Pick out the objectives that pertain to the army, that are actually doable, and the ones pertaining to the terrain/mission and use those. The others could be discarded. I see no problem with one player having more objectives to draw from, as it seems highly unlikely you could ever run out.

Thoughts on that?

My experience was the exact opposite, we've been using them exclusively and found they've made for very dynamic and exciting games.

My play group started using them a few days ago and so far it has been very fun for us.

Though we do remove the cards that tell us to do some things we simply can't, like destroy a building when we haven't bought any for our table yet.

I've enjoyed playing the Maelstrom of War Missions so far. They really seem to help even out some armies, as you can't focus on 1-2 super units, and you need to keep objectives in mind instead of just derpaderp kill plastic soldiers. My opponents and I have had some good draws and some bad draws, but lets be honest, who here has heard about a lone guardsman killing a Demon Prince all on his own -- meaning once in a while you will get screwed? Good/bad draws will happen (just like good/bad die rolls), but in the games I've played, neither side has blamed the card draws. Just like with dice, you can use probality -- half of the cards are to secure an objective, so you can keep that in mind, and even keep track of the cards.

My issue is i always end up getting objectives that are impossible for an army (speaking for my tau here) that need to get across the board quickly. I keep getting objective cards i either cannot do (psyker crap, challenge crap, etc) or for objectives on the opponent's side of the board, which unless i have my piranha wall i almost never can get that far into enemy territory and not get the snot beat out of me for being that far forward. And i cant bring that piranha wall until i hit 2k points, otherwise i cut big guns out to get them and more hurt than gain if i do.

I dont like them. So far only one of us afaik at my FLGS does, and he plays a biker marine army sooo....dats why lol.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
My issue is i always end up getting objectives that are impossible for an army (speaking for my tau here) that need to get across the board quickly. I keep getting objective cards i either cannot do (psyker crap, challenge crap, etc) or for objectives on the opponent's side of the board, which unless i have my piranha wall i almost never can get that far into enemy territory and not get the snot beat out of me for being that far forward. And i cant bring that piranha wall until i hit 2k points, otherwise i cut big guns out to get them and more hurt than gain if i do.

I dont like them. So far only one of us afaik at my FLGS does, and he plays a biker marine army sooo....dats why lol.

Maelstroms prevents Tau from sitting back and taking pop-shots though which I think is fair as, from what I've seen and heard from others this is something called "cheese" because the map would then be in their favor in a flat out fight

I liked the mission cards. They changed up the game for me.

I played one game and it was one sided due to the card draw. Still fun but more of a chance than a tactic type game. I think 6 objectives are to many. I am thinking about playing with 4 and removing the cards that use objective 5 and 6. Then have each player place one in their deployment and one in no mans land.

Translation flip which side the game favors - the assaulty army because in order to get most of those objective cards i have to be dangerously close to something i cannot possibly beat in assault.

Im all for balancing out the gun lines. Other gunline armies at least have some units that can play in these styles, Tau have zilch. Barring crazy luck or a couple random marines against a riptide, youre going to beat me if i try to get 70% of the cards i draw. Literally our only melee-capable model is Farsight and he isnt that great either for the cost and having no unit that wants to assault with him.

The missions we've played have all been fun, and the luck of the draw can help with the big comeback! Having said that, the almost universal rule that you redraw/reroll impossible objectives was in play.

Generally the missions which are either secret, or where either player could score seemed to be more enjoyable that the others.

Re new players, I think that the Maelstrom missions require a type of list that is radically different from the eternal war missions. So, to that extent, many 6e power lists (taudar, eldau and screamerstars) don't bring the same advantages to a maelstrom mission and in some cases are very disadvantaged. This, plus objective secured benefits, helps to some extent to reduce the experience gap.

In respect of how we house ruled, the discard an impossible objective was almost instantaneously implemented.

We now play a variant sort of like poker. Only one deck of objectives is used. Each player gets 2 objectives in their hand, with 3/4 face up on the table which can be scored by either player. If you run out, shuffle and continue.

This seems to work as both players are competing for known objectives (face up) but also have 2 hidden as well.

Maelstrom of War missions are great if you prefer games where the outcome is determined by chance instead of tactical skill or strategy.

We play a house rule where if you draw a card that says "capture objective 1" or something, you set it aside, and only get the Victory Points if you're holding it at the end of the game. That stops people getting lucky and drawing objectives they're sitting on (or the inverse) but still preserves some of the "think-on-you-feet" tactics that Maelstrom Missions were meant to provide. For example, one objective you're sitting on could still be worth nothing to you, whilst one of your opponent's is worth a great deal. You've still got to adapt your plans to try and take it, you just get more than a single turn to do it, which is far fairer.

Still doesn't stop you drawing "Kill a Psyker" against Necrons or anything like that, but such is life. We did think of house-ruling that too (to the immediately re-draw that seems so common) but we reckoned we'd get through cards too quickly if that were the case.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Maelstrom of War missions are great if you prefer games where the outcome is determined by chance instead of tactical skill or strategy.

I think that comment is fair if you don't have the "dump impossible objectives" rule. Generally though, I think it requires more flexibility and a clearer strategy to play a maelstrom game. I use the comparison that instead of playing 1 game of 5 turns, you are playing 5 games of 1 turn, but you don't get to redeploy at the beginning of each game. So, Maelstrom games every turn matters and your positioning (and whether you try and score the objective in this turn) depends on how effectively you positioned your units (and what units you brought) in the previous turn.

Overlaid on top of that is the overall strategy for all 5 turns. The "kill them all" or "kill the troops" strategy can be run over all 5 game turns, but then you risk a bit more if the plan doesn't work and your opponent has a large lead.

I definitely agree that there is more randomness and chance plays a larger part - however for me that is part of the tactical and strategic challenge - how do you construct a list, deploy and choose objectives to fulfull so you have more points at the end of the time.

Yes, with house rules I expect you can make them work. If I were playing a Maelstrom of War game I would remove all cards from the deck that aren't "Capture Objective X". You still have the issue of of someone constantly drawing objectives on their side of the board but at least you don't have manifest a "psychic power" and other bs.

Maelstrom of War missions are fantastic...once you realize that you have to build for them. Standard 6E TAC armies don't cut the muster. They require fast moving troop units with Secure Objective and are as much about objective denial as they are objective completion. If your opponent is winning because they drew a better hand, it's only because you haven't done enough to stop them from achieving their objective. Most people are playing these as some sort of race where you run from objective to objective and discard any cards for objectives that your opponent is sitting on. In truth, the art of winning these games is building an army that can deny those "easy objectives" while you're busy fighting tooth and nail to get points on the board yourself.

They require mad strategic thinking and forethought in your list building. Playing them with whatever army you felt like bringing to the store/club with you means you have to deal with the luck of the draw. But that's not the game's fault. It's the player.

Huh, I only played one game of 7th so far, and it was a Maelstrom mission against my GW manager.

He apparently played the maelstrom mission wrong though, since we discarded any unusable Mission Cards, and only drew a new card for every objective we held (starting with one card at the start of the game).

That worked pretty well, I only got two cards I couldn't use, and it didn't matter in the end.

So, of course, you're boned if you don't actually have fast moving Troops.

Or if you're not playing a Battleforged list.

PrinceRaven wrote:So, of course, you're boned if you don't actually have fast moving Troops.

Not necessarily. capture and hold works well, particularly against the domination/supremacy objectives. Drop pods on objectives are awesome.

Furyou Miko wrote:Or if you're not playing a Battleforged list.

yep, you're boned (unless your opponent is also unbound). Actually, you can be boned playing a battleforged list, because I'm not sure if formations get "Objective Secured" for anything. So if you just take a couple of formations, you could be boned as well.

Well, I did well with three footslogging troops choices, a mounted HQ choice and a footslogging (but outflanking) fast attack choice.

Of course, part of that might be that my opponent's army list was absolutely terrible,. but...

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Huh, I only played one game of 7th so far, and it was a Maelstrom mission against my GW manager.

He apparently played the maelstrom mission wrong though, since we discarded any unusable Mission Cards, and only drew a new card for every objective we held (starting with one card at the start of the game).

That worked pretty well, I only got two cards I couldn't use, and it didn't matter in the end.

Except the discard unusable part, there IS such a mission. it strongly rewards the ability to just grab and hold objectives, rather then race around.


Anyway, what I think many people miss, is that you place objectives on the table prior of knowing table edges, as as such most objectives should naturally fall within generally the "no-man-zone" and no objective should be easy to hide with, as you wont place it there knowing you got 50% to be on the other side.

And if you play an army that isn't about speedy troops, then play around durable ones. get to objectives and SIT on them, denying the enemy from ever scoring on them. each objective you sit on is 3 less cards he can score with, and 3 more cards you can score with, meaning you play the "occupation" game rather then the "race" game. move your troops you the lines, clear one objective at a time, and them hold position on it with a troop.
Deny the objectives before they even become objectives, your opponent will not know where to divert his attention until he draws a card for it, and by that point you also knows its important and got time to send further reinforcements to defend the location. and if you got a secured objectives, don't even bother to try and rank up kills with it, just focus on staying alive. (go to ground at every time it matters even a little,try to avoid LoS as much as possible even if it blocks your own shooting, etc)

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Maelstrom of War missions are great if you prefer games where the outcome is determined by chance instead of tactical skill or strategy.

By tactical skill or strategy you mean - everything neatly accounted for in the list building phase then? ...These Maelstrom of War shifting objectives are exactly the sort of thing that call upon tactical skill and strategy, you actually have to PLAY the game and react and make difficult choices, and sometimes the odds are against you, and sometimes they are with you - but as a skilled player you still find a way. It's not just about your 'list' getting the win which I think is entirely the point.

I don't like them because they don't allow for long term planned strategy. It's just reacting to random and non-narrative objectives that make no sense.
If you like it, awesome. But it's not for my style of game. So, try it, if you like it, you're good. If you don't, then...

Tried them out. Brilliant idea, terrible execution. The best way to play them is modified. Step one, all the d3 victory points have to become either 2 or 3 VP. Step 2, you need to find a way to play a mobile army. A slow and durable force is going to struggle excessively (so don't play an army like CSM or a slow walking tyranid force that moves 6" per turn naturally). Step 3, organize it so that all of the objectives are possible to be accomplished.

As per myself on them, we still won't be using them. We like campaigns and fluffy battles but it is simply ridiculous. We don't want to forge the narrative simply because it makes no sense. Charge this way! No wait now shoot that plain no kill a psyker (sir there isn't one) alright then *next turn* charge that objective wait charge that other objective. It's a hectic battle that doesn't fit any type of war and, no matter what you do, will still make games go on tilt.

 StarTrotter wrote:
Tried them out. Brilliant idea, terrible execution. The best way to play them is modified. Step one, all the d3 victory points have to become either 2 or 3 VP. Step 2, you need to find a way to play a mobile army. A slow and durable force is going to struggle excessively (so don't play an army like CSM or a slow walking tyranid force that moves 6" per turn naturally). Step 3, organize it so that all of the objectives are possible to be accomplished.

As per myself on them, we still won't be using them. We like campaigns and fluffy battles but it is simply ridiculous. We don't want to forge the narrative simply because it makes no sense. Charge this way! No wait now shoot that plain no kill a psyker (sir there isn't one) alright then *next turn* charge that objective wait charge that other objective. It's a hectic battle that doesn't fit any type of war and, no matter what you do, will still make games go on tilt.

I love the d3 mod idea... these missions are a game within the game. You have to think about where you deploy your objectives for your type of army. With my nids or assaulty BA I put them all nearest the middle of the board. But a non-mobile gunline still has the advantage in the game overall... even if they cannot quickly jump to grab certain objectives, they can capitalize on their opponent spreading units to do just that. I find these missions really make for dynamic games that isn't just decided by your list.

And since when do Tyranids move only 6" per turn (fleet, move through cover, bounding leap etc)?

And since when is war about a single long term objective? ...in war the objectives and orders change constantly.