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Hi there,
so what do you think about this way to play ?
Does it give you news challenges ? Does it bother you to accomplish all the objectives ?
Personnally, I don't like it: there is too much hazard (random ? which is the correct word ?).
For example, the last time I played it, my opponent scored 6 (!) points at his very first turn, picking up only card which asked him to grab objective in his deployement zone, or to be near his board edge...

Does-it happens to you ?
How do you manage to deal with this issue ?
Do you mix Eternal war and Maelstrom ? Does it work ?
Feel free to share your personnal experience !!

(I searched, but I didn't find any trace of a similar thread, neither in Tactics nor in General, if it already exists, juste delete this !).

I'm not too sure at the moment, it's certainly different, I need to play more games before I decide.

I like it, but sometimes I find it a bit too random, you can be at a massive disadvantage due to sheer bad luck with drawing objectives, or be at a massive disadvantage if your army has little access to mobile units *Cough*, Guard *Cough* and such.

It's different and I like the concept, but some of the objectives need revising I think, Recon should be a bonus objective I think, worth 1 VP to the player who discovers the most objectives first or something.

Good concept but the rules that GW wrote for them are flawed and tend to make the game snowball and/or cause somebody to get stuck with a bad set of objectives. RAW Tau draws harness a psychic power, win close combat, destroy a building when there are no buildings on the board. Looks like your going to be discarding one objective a turn and hope you get something usable. House rules for objectives are an absolute must as its way too easy to get completely squigged by a bad draw. With house rules the games are fun and it makes objectives matter on turns 1-4.

I really dislike Maelstrom. The randomness of what I'm trying to do in a given turn means that I can't develop an overall strategy for the game.

The points spread accumulated between turns makes it very obvious by turn 3 who is gonna win... most games at my LGS are forfeited by turn 4.

This IMO is breaking the spirit of the game. I always play through, and encourage my opponent to do the same on the rare occurrence I'm the one ahead... I've always been more interested in a units performance than the total outcome of the game, (FORGE THE NARRATIVE!) but too often when one Player has a 18 to 5 lead, the game seems hopeless and just a chore rather than a fun time.

It heavily favors mobile armies like Eldar and Slaanesh daemons. Eternal War, of course, favors static gunline armies like IG, so it's a wash.

Personally, I prefer Maelstrom, but I play DE so I'm about as biased as it gets.

Almost all my maelstrom games are close enough to play out.

Almost all tournaments and house rules allow you to swap an objective that cannot be met (tau winning combat doesn't count unfortunately lol)

Most maelstrom games I've played with amateur players have been much more interesting and fun.
Serious waac players seem to hate it for obvious reasons.
Sometimes deathstars aren't the best at gaining tac objectives

I think its a joke.

Our group loves Maelstrom of War save one of the Necron guys. It is different and forces you to think fast and adapt to rapidly changing circumstances.

In addition, I think it can lower the interactivity between the two players, as some objective can be reached alone (like:
to grab an objective away from the opponent, cast a psychic spell, etc...).

I prefer it, obviously I utilize the rule of throwing out ones you couldn't get at the start. We also use the first 18 cards from the cities of death deck whenever possible, including just swapping out the 20's and 30's in the army specific ones . Adds much more strategy to the draw for objectives.

Incredibly poor execution of a concept that was probably not a very good idea in the first place. I'd be quite happy if I never played another game with maelstrom objectives, and the people responsible should be fired for their sheer incompetence.

 Peregrine wrote:
Incredibly poor execution of a concept that was probably not a very good idea in the first place. I'd be quite happy if I never played another game with maelstrom objectives, and the people responsible should be fired for their sheer incompetence.

You should play in Southern Illinois, since virtually event organizer who isn't me agrees with you.

It's too random. I can get random objectives to represent changing objectives but D3 VP cards kill any semblance of tactics left. "Oh, look, I rolled two 6s for my D3 cards and you rolled two 1s. I guess I win then even though you had more objective cards." Might as well just show each other your models then flip a coin at that point.

As a CSM Player Maelstrom is the only way I could hope to get a win off, but the randomness makes it infuriating. I have drawn so horribly that I was ready to call it turn 3. Stuff like take X objective that half his force is sitting on shooting me from. I excel when I get the issue a challenge, CC, and hold objective ones though, since I run a PM themed army and my PMs are troops. If they had CSM God specific objectives, same for every faction, then it might even it out a bit. So that way when I play Tau I won't draw a manifest psychic power card.

It is very random, and can be just too much luck of the draw. We house rule it slightly so no one is stuck with literal impossible objectives, that helps a lot.

The game type as it lays is a failure. It has to have several house rules added to be a workable game.

Even then you still see this happen on turn 1:
"Player 1, you should hold two of the objectives in your opponent's deployment zone, and kill a unit in melee even though you literally can't assault this turn!"
"Player 2, kill something with shooting, cast a psychic power or 3 for d3 points with your eldar, and hold your deployment zone."

We already have times where the dice screw up a game, like when you have a superior strategy until the opponent makes 50 2+ saves without a single fail. We don't need more ran-dumb.

Our local group uses them all the time. I actually do enjoy it. We just did a minor house rule for the cards you cannot possibly do. If it is for example harness the warp and you have no psykers, or destroy a vehicle or building and your opponent has none, etc, then you immediately discard that card and draw a new one.

Cards that are technically possible but incredibly unlikely, such as assault with tau, or grab that heavily camped objective in your opponents deployment, can be discarded at the end of your turn normally.

Yes it is more random in the game. This does help with armies that are bad match ups though. If you can't beat your opponent in power, play the objectives, at least you have a chance. Unless you are playing bike spam Eldar, then you may be boned either way.

I love it. But the thing to keep in mind with it is that it isn't designed to be a random bit of missions run alongside Eternal War; it's a separate playstyle altogether that requires you to build for it. It favors completely different armies - a lot of the armies considered bottom tier by EW players - and requires you to spend as much time keeping your opponent from scoring as you do trying to score yourself.

The thing that trips a lot of folks up is that they see it as a race to see who can score the most rather than a very tactical game that asks you to sacrifice your own units just to keep the other guy from getting points on the board. In basketball you don't just put your five best shooters on the court - you have to have a mix of shooters and defensive players if you want to win. Same thing with Maelstrom. You need units good at slowing the other guy down or keeping him from claiming an objective just as much as you need fast ObSec to skate across the board and take the ones you need. In addition to all that, you need to think about being able to score as many of the "worthless" objective cards as you can with your list. Players won't think twice about allying in a bizarre army choice to create an EW geared killing machine, but Tau players complain that they can't score Psyker or CC objectives when they could ally in a Farseer, a Jetbike squad and a great CC unit and shore up their army's weaknesses.

I love it. Love the randomness. Love the fact if your army is out classed in raw "killing power" you can still win a game. I like playing games where a little bit of luck can go a long way.

Last 2 games I played were maelstrom. 1 game i had really bad draws early in the game and did not get much I could score, the opponent got lots of good pulls. Early game I had to concentrate on just killing stuff because I could not get the objective cards. I could have "given up" on turn 3 because the opponent had way more points. But guess what? By turn 6 fortune had turned and the opponent had a couple of turns of bad draws and all of a sudden I was back in it. Ended up losing the game because I rolled low on one of the D3 objective cards. I got 1 point for the loss, 2 would have netted a tie, and 3 would have netted a win. Game 2 neither myself or my opponent were drawing great cards but we were both getting points. I was however obliterating his army in terms of killing stuff. He conceded at the beginning of turn 5, but when we counted score he was actually only 1 pt behind me (although if the game had continued it probably would have been a lot more since he had only 1 unit of terminators left.)

We typically roll off for mission type 1-3 eternal war 4-6 maelstrom that way you can't tailor your list for one or the other.

I can understand how people might not like it as much in a tournament setting. For me though I would even like to see it there.

It's far too random and breaks my immersion due to the schizophrenic nature of "objectives."

It is absolutely the best thing to happen to the game since it was invented.

Every single game using standard missions (since they became a thing in 2nd edition) played out in exactly the same way.

Malestrom forces people into playing non-static games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 pwntallica wrote:
Our local group uses them all the time. I actually do enjoy it. We just did a minor house rule for the cards you cannot possibly do. If it is for example harness the warp and you have no psykers, or destroy a vehicle or building and your opponent has none, etc, then you immediately discard that card and draw a new one.

Cards that are technically possible but incredibly unlikely, such as assault with tau, or grab that heavily camped objective in your opponents deployment, can be discarded at the end of your turn normally.

That's very common, and I highly suggest everyone use that. We do, and it's awesome.

In my gaming group, we tried playing a sort of less competitive rip-off of the ITC scenario rules, which is to say a mix of Eternal War scenarios (as a Primary mission) and Maelstrom of War missions (as a Secondary mission). We had a fun lil' mini tournament and now we almost exclusively play this mixed scenario setup.

We find it makes games a lot more fun and interesting. I think a lot of what makes 40k interesting to play is as much about the scenario as the armies themselves. It took a little bit of fine-tuning, and some helpful inspiration from minds much greater than my own, but you can definitely make maelstrom work.

On it's own? It's not the worst. But as has been said before, it can end up being really luck-of-the-draw.

it works very well with a few house rules. We have found it makes each game much more dynamic and varied and allows for TAC lists across the board.

I like it but I modify it to reduce randomness.

1) redraw if you cannot achieve the objective due to models in the lists being played OR if you draw an exact duplicate card to one you have active.

That reduces "oh hey I got three Secure Objective 4's, and it's right here/your whole army is on it!"

2) All D3s on objective cards become 2s. "Wow I killed your Baneblade so I get *rolls* oh, 2." "You have 1 objective, I have 2 so thats double and I get *rolls* four points! Wow I'm doing twice as good as you!"

Given that most games hover around rolling 2-3 D3s in that manner, I dislike having a 4-6 point spread of pure randomness in scoring.

You guys are all aware that the rules allow you to discard 1 card per turn anyway right?

At the end of the turn. You can still be very screwed.

Edit: bleh, sometimes I even bore myself.


To be clear. I don't like them. They aren't tactical, just another unnecessary random element in a increasingly stale game.

Like them, especially if combined with a rolloff between them and Eternal War as it suggests (That both sides are aware of). This forces both sides to make much more flexible armies than the usual gunlines that seem to dominate Eternal War missions.