Maelstrom of War vs Eternal War

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**Frozocrone**

Morning/Afternoon/Evening to y'all

Wanted the communities opinion on the mission type that you can play.

I ask this as I was talking to a couple of guys who say Maelstrom is great as it discourages gunline armies whereas those in favour of Eternal War say Maelstrom is too random to play.

Then you've got those people that don't mind what they play as they enjoy both and those that hate both of them and just like killing stuff on the table (usually some variation of Eternal War, even if they deny this

)

**Jimsolo**

Both are fine. I usually get screwed by the cards in Maelstrom, but I think that's a bad luck thing, not a game design thing.

**Loborocket**

People in my area don't seem to want anything to do with Maelstrom missions. I wish they did though. The couple of times I have played it, I found it much more enjoyable. Kill 'em all approach to the game gets a bit stale which all of the eternal war missions kind of lend themselves to.

**Tiger9gamer**

Both are fun to play, especially with house rules for the card draws (if absolutely impossible, discard and draw again)

been playing more eternal war missions because it's a bit easier for pick up games.

**Eldarain**

We play the BAO missions which combine the two.

**Poly Ranger**

I think maelstrom was the greatest achievement of 7th. It bought the game back to more of a tactical exercise and stopped, to an extent, the sit back on a gunline approach. It really makes players think more, not just in the game, but also to army composition. The only EW mission that even came close to this was relic.

**Ratius**

Maelstrom is too random for me. Eternal can be samey but at least you know what you have to achieve/aim for. Some of the maelstrom missions are very random and one cant even achieve them (kill the enemy flier - opponent has no flier?).

**Poly Ranger**

Ratius wrote:
Maelstrom is too random for me. Eternal can be samey but at least you know what you have to achieve/aim for. Some of the maelstrom missions are very random and one cant even achieve them (kill the enemy flier - opponent has no flier?).

You do get multiple cards most of the time though.

Also I find it represents the changing aspect of a battlefield far better.

**pelicaniforce**

Eternal war is the reason pickup games are terrible.

Http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/349231.page

**Eldarain**

Not seeing how the three year old thread from 5th supports your point.

**Ratius**

You do get multiple cards most of the time though.

Also I find it represents the changing aspect of a battlefield far better.

True

**CrownAxe**

Frankly the way maelstrom plays is a lot of fun. Playing for turn by turn objectives keeps the game active and involving which is fun as opposed to eternal war where a lot of matches were castle up and wait for turn 5 to go grab objectives. The problem is that maelstrom was poorly implemented by having cards that are completely unscore-able (and can't just be discarded) and have some terribly designed missions to use said cards (namely Contact Lost and Deadlock).

Just a few tweaks and Maelstrom would be a lot of fun all the time.

**ClassicCarraway**

I find this poll and thread very interesting. If you had asked this question a couple of months ago, all you would read are how its far too random, removes any strategy, and half the cards can't even be used.

I personally love the Maelstrom missions. I'm not sure my small group will ever go back to Eternal War again. I even like how each of the 7th edition armies have gotten their own decks with a few custom cards (too bad none of my armies are 7th edition :( )

**Zewrath**

pelicaniforce wrote:
Eternal war is the reason pickup games are terrible.

Http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/349231.page

I don't get it. You make a statement and link something entirely irrelevant to your statement and end your post.

**Vaktathi**

I haven't been too much a fan of the Maelstrom missions. They do mix things up, but there's too much random, too much "that's not even possible" (e.g. having to kill an enemy flyer when your opponent didn't bring any), and too much that's even more open to cheesing than Eternal War mission objectives (watch my three jetbike units zip to every objective on the board every time I pull one!).

**bubz**

The few Maelstrom games I've played made me kind of sour as I had terrible luck of the draw and lost to someone I normally manhandled on Eternal War missions. We played the same army so it wasn't really a "gun line castling" problem either.

That being said, I've gotten pretty bored of a lot of the Eternal War missions. Emperor's Crusade is the most boring version of the game. Purge The Alien is pretty ham-fisted. And The Scouring can be a lot of work during set-up if you're trying to just get a quick game in.

Starting to play around with the BAO missions next week and I'm hoping that's a bit more interesting. Recently we've been doing The Relic with d3+2 secondary objectives and that's made a bit of a difference.

**ClassicCarraway**

Vaktathi wrote:
I haven't been too much a fan of the Maelstrom missions. They do mix things up, but there's too much random, too much "that's not even possible" (e.g. having to kill an enemy flyer when your opponent didn't bring any), and too much that's even more open to cheesing than Eternal War mission objectives (watch my three jetbike units zip to every objective on the board every time I pull one!).

The way I see it, if my Eldar (or DE) opponent has to zoom his bikes out early on in the game to claim an objective, that's a prime opportunity to kill of the damn things, while in EW missions, all they do is hang back out line of sight until the last turn or two.

Also, there are only 2-3 cards out of the whole deck that could lead to a "that's not even possible" scenario and even then its kind of rare. Kill a Psyker generally only proves useless against necrons, DE, or tau. Kill a Flyer is generally only useless against Eldar, Dark Angels, or in smaller games. All of the others are just scenarios that are more difficult or impractical for some armies to accomplish, but by no means impossible.

**Vaktathi**

It's entirely possible and super common not to face an SM army, or IG army, or CSM army that don't have psykers, just because an army has access to them doesn't mean they're included in every army. Likewise flyers. I've encountered something like that in most of my games thus far using the Maelstrom missions. Others are "near impossible" for many armies (oh yeah, my mechanized IG or Tau are really going to accomplish Blood and Guts or Hungry for Glory and destroy enemy units in my assault phase/issue challenges...).

As to the objective nabbers, even if they only live a turn or two, that may leave you 5-6 objective points in the hole, and killing them may not contribute to digging out of that at all. Sometimes yeah it works out, but too often it leaves you just way too deep in the hole to dig back out.

**Chumbalaya**

Eternal War missions are boring, stale and unbalanced.

Maelstrom missions are random, unfocused and ludicrously unbalanced.

**spunkybass**

For pure fun, I think Maelstrom missions are awesome. To me, that's the best thing about 7th. The randomness can get to you but I guess them's the breaks ...

**Crazyterran**

People in my area almost exclusively play Maelstrom now. Eternal War missions have been pretty much the same since I started playing back in 4th (with the relic being added later), so these new mission types and more movement oriented play are a god send.