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 RazgrizOne wrote:
I used to like tactical objectives but I realized how fethed up they were last time I played. It was a 2500 IG vs Eldar game and I killed everything and anything in his list. My attrition rate was 51%, he had 3 or 4 space elves on the TT at the end of the 7th turn.

I lost 18-13 because he had jetbikes and good objectives. We're still trying to explain such a "defeat" in our campaign fluff.

The fight was about getting a black box from a downed imperial cruiser that contained very important information about imperial movement in the sector.
While it was a Pyrrhic victory and a devastating blow to the Eldar on that planet, one of the bikers managed to flee the field with the prize while the rest of the army held the Imperial Guard back for long enough to let him get away safely.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE HARDER, YOUNG RAZ!

In Soviet 40k, narrative forges you!

While it was a Pyrrhic victory and a devastating blow to the Eldar on that planet, one of the bikers managed to flee the field with the prize while the rest of the army held the Imperial Guard back for long enough to let him get away safely.

FORGE THE NARRATIVE HARDER, YOUNG RAZ!

Ahah yes I will ! We were thinking about a massive imperial assault on a very important eldar tomb which the Inquisition was interested in. Eldar threw all their forces in the battle to withstand the overwhelming numbers of the IG, had horrible losses but in the end, save the artefacts and gave a big middle finger to the mean Inquisitor-Lord!!

While the OP has a point, our group enjoy playing them. Which is all that matters for us.

One idea we are toying with is drawing X cards secretly at the beginning of the game. You then win when you've cashed them all in. Any duplicates or impossible cards drawn are shown, discarded and replacements secretly drawn.

This way you know what you need to do but your opponent doesn't.

Normal game length and most cards achieved (not VP) wins at the end.

What we don't know is the X amount to be drawn. We'll need to test that.

My group is looking at experimenting with grouping the objectives and then letting you pick.

Say you have groups of 4 objectives in each pile and you get to see what's in the piles and pick a new pile each round. After the round is done you have to discard anything you couldn't do and pick a new pile. It might mean you will discard cards you could have done next round though. We don't play often enough to have managed to playtest this yet though.

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

That would create a situation where you sit bunkered down on your own objectives and try to blow the enemy off of his.

Makes me think of Domination Mode in League of Legends.

For friendly games i dont even use the cards. If i want to pick up a play of random cards and hope to get something good in my hand ill play MTG.

I need to learn the rules for this latest edition, but I was thinking of seeing what I could do to combine multiple versions.

I remember in 2nd ed, there were no objectives, it was simply score VP for killing the enemy (1 VP/100 pts or something like that) which made for very strategic maneuvering.

But I also like the idea of objective counters, just not 6 of them on the table, maybe 1 per side for extra VP.

And finally, I liked the narrative missions from 3rd ed as that gave story and reasoning for the battle as well as some odd deployment zones for interesting play but I can't remember what all the missions were off hand.

Maelstrom is huge in my local meta. Everyone wants to play missions that are based around the cards. I would have to say that the tactics are still there. Yes it more luck based now, but it force you to choose to you play just for points or does unit b leave the objective to deal with the opponent. 40k has always been what can I do to force my opponent's hand. I think the tactical objective cards make the game more interesting.

 Purifier wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:

 BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I don't know why anyone ever thought Maelstrom was a good idea

Maybe they wanted to do more with the hobby than sit in their deployment zone for 4 turns then jump on a couple objectives just before the game ends. My Guard army is well suited for EW games, and they're extremely boring.

I disagree, but for people who think as you do, there is a very simple solution that doesn't include a deck of cards and random luck. Take your basic eternal war missions, such as Crusade with d3+2 objectives, and allow the objectives to be scored by either player every turn. That makes ALL objectives worth fighting for ALL the time, and eliminates the static nature of the EW missions, the randomness of the mission card system, and the heavy advantage of jetbikes/skimmers in maelstrom.

Voila! Balance. Took me 2 lines of text and 2 minutes to fix 40k's mission system. They should pay me a salary.

That would create a situation where you sit bunkered down on your own objectives and try to blow the enemy off of his.

Makes me think of Domination Mode in League of Legends.

Or contest his, thus denying him the points. But yes, that is how the game would play. It would be constant action. You'd have a REASON to be trying to blast those marines out of cover. Much like Maelstrom does now, except you'd know before your turn what objectives you'd need to capture to score: All of them. You'd want to bunker down and hold any objectives you have, sieze any that aren't held, and contest any that are held by the enemy. If each player scores points at the end of their own turn, it encourages fighting, not hiding. Hiding and turbo boosting from cover in turn 5 to score is what people complained about in EW. This mission style takes the best parts of both EW and Maelstrom, while abandoning ther terrible parts that were designed to make us buy more products we don't need, in the form of Maelstrom mission decks. These decks are a huge profit center for GW. Imagine, selling paper and cardboard that can fit in the palm of your hand for 8 USD each. With the cost of production and shipping being cents, they're basically pure profit.

I don't know if I agree. It wouldn't be any worse than what is there now, for sure. But it's much easier to sit tight than it is to move onto someone else's objective.

If you have the superior fire power you will have a better than average chance to win a shoot-out, so you never have to move. Just keep your own objectives and put your money on managing to at least one round manage to keep the enemy off one of his objectives. As long as you then sit tight on yours, he can't catch up.

And since you can focus all your fire every round, if he is a more melee heavy army, he has to keep some units back to hold his objectives just to keep up, so he's trying to breach your heavily defended objectives with a slimmed down version of his army.

It would be a very good way to play for shooting heavy armies.

And two shooting armies wouldn't move at all. Just sit there and try to blast the other army off of an objective for one round.

 Purifier wrote:
I don't know if I agree. It wouldn't be any worse than what is there now, for sure. But it's much easier to sit tight than it is to move onto someone else's objective.

If you have the superior fire power you will have a better than average chance to win a shoot-out, so you never have to move. Just keep your own objectives and put your money on managing to at least one round manage to keep the enemy off one of his objectives. As long as you then sit tight on yours, he can't catch up.

And since you can focus all your fire every round, if he is a more melee heavy army, he has to keep some units back to hold his objectives just to keep up, so he's trying to breach your heavily defended objectives with a slimmed down version of his army.

It would be a very good way to play for shooting heavy armies.

And two shooting armies wouldn't move at all. Just sit there and try to blast the other army off of an objective for one round.

Perhaps you change VP values or randomize which objectives are scored at the end of a round. Say, objectives in no man's land are worth 2 points. Maybe you place 6 objectives and roll 4d6 at the end of game turns, scoring 1 VP for every die you take. It doesn't completely solve lolrandom scoring but at least it forces people to put effort towards capping all objectives instead of just shooting across field all game.

the tac objectives are good but require some house rules to avoid getting boned on luck.

re: tactics.. you all need to research what the word means.

almost wiping an opponent out and losing because they scored more objectives literally means your tactics were poor. if you use objectives the tactical focus is objectives not tabling. Just house rule removal of certain unattainable ones or silly ones. We also only place one objective in each deployment zone to avoid the easy camping points.

tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

 tenebre wrote:
tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

You've completely misunderstood the complaint. The complaint about these objectives is that if you have a lucky streak when drawing and your opponent has an unlucky streak, you can win without really doing anything.
And that's compounded when you feel like you did everything right. You took out all of his units, you flanked and you moved up the board and all perfectly, but you drew the exact wrong objectives every turn, while he had one unit that you couldn't get to that randomly sat there chugging points on an objective far behind enemy lines that you couldn't get to.

Yeah, it's a nice theory that it keeps changing and you adapt to it. But sometimes that's not how it works out. Sometimes the objectives means whoever happens to get the right objectives wins, while the other guy can do anything he want because he didn't get the right objectives, so he never could have won.

I still like the objectives better than the alternative, because most times it does allow for some more fluid and tactical play. But sometimes it does the opposite.

 Purifier wrote:

You've completely misunderstood the complaint. The complaint about these objectives is that if you have a lucky streak when drawing and your opponent has an unlucky streak, you can win without really doing anything.
And that's compounded when you feel like you did everything right. You took out all of his units, you flanked and you moved up the board and all perfectly, but you drew the exact wrong objectives every turn, while he had one unit that you couldn't get to that randomly sat there chugging points on an objective far behind enemy lines that you couldn't get to.

Yeah, it's a nice theory that it keeps changing and you adapt to it. But sometimes that's not how it works out. Sometimes the objectives means whoever happens to get the right objectives wins, while the other guy can do anything he want because he didn't get the right objectives, so he never could have won.

I still like the objectives better than the alternative, because most times it does allow for some more fluid and tactical play. But sometimes it does the opposite.

sure.. but the first portion addresses that with house ruling the cards.I freely admit some cards need to be removed and others discarded based on the game being played. We also dont allow duplicate cards (so you cant have 2 objective 5s or what not) Or have a GM rule on cards

but also if the objective is to secure a servitor with important battle plans for the large assault coming up next month and a the general decides he wants to flank the enemy and wipe him out but ignore the data... whose fault is that? killing the enemy isnt always the best way to win a battle.

so for the cards here are my suggestions:
1. no duplicate cards in hand at the same time
2. only 1 objective marker each in deployment zones
3. remove the control all objectives card since if you do you already wont eh game anyway
4. discard and replace any objectives that are impossible to attain (impossible not difficult)
5. as per the rules any card may be discarded once per turn and replaced.
6. mulligan on first turn allowed (discard all objectives and redraw)

This has worked very well for us. most games are withing 1-3 points of each other and both players feel challenged.

The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

 Blacksails wrote:
The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

I enjoy the random aspect myself. For not random i play ASL. different type of game but no randomness.

 Blacksails wrote:
The best solution is to remove the random element entirely.

In other words, you get to pick exactly what objectives you'd like to complete. Same goes for most other random nonsense in the game, like warlord traits and psychic powers.

Asymmetric missions are a good idea, but making them random with random rewards is about as far away from tactical as I can imagine.

I actually agree. I think the random element is silly. Would be better if you chose your loadout. I still think the entire Maelstrom idea should be scrapped in favor of Eternal War missions that each player can simply score on objectives at the end of their own turn.

Killing many of the enemy troops as possible has always been an objective in an open battle (not counting things like covert ops as those aren't really battles anyway) because what you are doing is
1. reducing the likelihood of a counter attack
and 2. weakening the enemy in it's entirety (not just the division you are currently fighting).
The weaker an enemy is, the easier it will be to obtain future objectives and ultimately win the war.

So even while trying to cut off supply lines, gain possession of a weapons stash, or whatever, you're still going to want to take out as much of the enemy as possible.

And you really can't come up with any kind of strategy when your goal is consistently changing during the same battle.
When this does happen, troops are pulled out and mission aborted while generals and such figure out what's most important. They don't keep their troops running randomly around the battlefield while they consistently change their mind on what they want done.

What good is holding a position if you can't drive the enemy off (almost always due to loss of numbers) so you can rest and fortify said position so you don't just simply lose it the next day to a counter-attack?

It's almost as if GW was trying to condense the happenings of an entire war into a single battle, like reenacting the entire Gulf War in a single 1800 pt warhammer game.

*edit*
I should have stated this is just simply my opinion and if you have fun with missions the way they are, great! If you have house rules for missions that work for you, awesome! That's what really matters, for people to find a way that makes the game fun for them and their group

I see alot of games forfeited end of turn 4 when one player has a tremendous lead on another, and to me that takes away the fun of the game.

Personally, I think some of the D3 VPs should be rolled after the game, not during (more randumb!)

And count Secondary Objectives as D3

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
I see alot of games forfeited end of turn 4 when one player has a tremendous lead on another, and to me that takes away the fun of the game.

Personally, I think some of the D3 VPs should be rolled after the game, not during (more randumb!)

And count Secondary Objectives as D3

I've started playing a house rule where D3 VP = 2 VP and D6 = 3. I like that secondary objectives are just tie breakers but that puts quite a bit of weight on FB (although probably less than it has now).

 koooaei wrote:
It's way more tactical than: "hug cover for 4 turns than turbo-boost on objectives".

Yay, 5th edition Eldar!

I have a blast every time I play the Maelstrom missions.

I agree.. I played a game against orks and all my slower units did was spend the game trying to get into the action... all my faster ones wore themselves out prematurely feeding the orks easy assaults.. just seems robbed of any real fun :/ or brains.. I do think tho that if you table someone it should cancel all their VP's inmediately

ConanMan wrote:
I agree.. I played a game against orks and all my slower units did was spend the game trying to get into the action... all my faster ones wore themselves out prematurely feeding the orks easy assaults.. just seems robbed of any real fun :/ or brains.. I do think tho that if you table someone it should cancel all their VP's inmediately

We hardly need more incentive for people to play with killing as their only objective. There are other modes for that.

I actually enjoy maelstrom objectives. Random, yes, more fair than KPs, yes, as fun as 40k foot ball (relic) definitely not

 dragoonmaster101 wrote:
I actually enjoy maelstrom objectives. Random, yes, more fair than KPs, yes, as fun as 40k foot ball (relic) definitely not

You'd probably enjoy Betray's Maelstra-Crusade then too. And it'd be balanced instead of vastly favoring jetbike/skimmer armies.

It's funny. All these non-Eldar, Non DE armies arguing in favor of Maelstrom, while myself being a DE/Eldar player, argue against it. Maybe I should shut my trap, go out an stomp people into the dirt in Maelstrom, and convince them 1 at a time that it's not a fair mode.

Seriously it'd be a waste of time though, people would just be like ...Eldar so OP. - Don't hate the player. Hate the game!

The game mode is unbalanced. Not the armies you're playing against!

The best fun I've had recently is using missions out of the 3rd ed rulebook.

Maelstrom, I'm not even sure why I bought the cards! The game turns into go fish with dollies.

This game hasn't been about tactics forever.

its all about the strategy.

 tenebre wrote:
the tac objectives are good but require some house rules to avoid getting boned on luck.

re: tactics.. you all need to research what the word means.

almost wiping an opponent out and losing because they scored more objectives literally means your tactics were poor. if you use objectives the tactical focus is objectives not tabling. Just house rule removal of certain unattainable ones or silly ones. We also only place one objective in each deployment zone to avoid the easy camping points.

tactical != killing opponent
"of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end"

so unless the only way to win to 100% enemy attrition, playing a game and only counting casualties in fact means you are not playing tactical.

with cards it allows for dynamic and ever changing tactics in order to meet the new objectives. This requires sometimes scrapping your entire initial plan and going a different route. This should prove more challenging and exciting.

Name one real life instance where an army was destroyed but still won the battle.