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I like it, mostly. Granted, thinking about it in a 'realistic' sense of mind of a commander barking orders, it's like they're losing their mind in the fight, but it's fun, I really don't care a lot about muh turnements and whatnot with 40k, I have a lot of fun just playing a game with my friends, hanging out and rolling some dice and having some fun. It's fun to have the objective change generally, and a couple house rules make it work better IMO, like discarding impossible cards upon draw, stuff like "Demolitions" when we don't have buildings on the board. It's fun.

 FakeBritishPerson wrote:
I like it, mostly. Granted, thinking about it in a 'realistic' sense of mind of a commander barking orders, it's like they're losing their mind in the fight...

I tend to think of that as shifting fog of war, the unknowns that the troops are dealing with and reacting to, further events off the field shifting the advantage on the field, etc. I don't find it hard to think of reasons for otherwise 'weird' changes in objective.

It's fun to play, but pretty random, and the non-iteractivity of most of the maelstrom missions is a poor point.

Perhaps if you had half a dozen cards each at the start of the game, and only scored at the end?

It'd need a major overhaul. As pointed out previously - good idea but rubbish execution (dear GW: please hire some people who know how to write rules and development staff, cos your current lot are god-awful).

We love it around here. We don't play Eternal War missions at all after 7th came.

We have a small house-rule: cards you can't complete (i.e. Harness the Warp when you play Necrons, or the destroy Buildings when none are in the field) are automatically discarded and you can grab a new one.

 Vector Strike wrote:
We love it around here. We don't play Eternal War missions at all after 7th came.

We have a small house-rule: cards you can't complete (i.e. Harness the Warp when you play Necrons, or the destroy Buildings when none are in the field) are automatically discarded and you can grab a new one.

I'm curious about the house rules like this. What about...

1). I'm playing Tau, and my Warlord is a Cadre Fireblade, and I'm playing against a player with Deamons and his warlord is a Greater Deamon of Khorne. Can I throw away the "Slay the Warlord" card?

2). I draw on turn 1 "secure objective 3" which just happens to be deep into my opponents deployment zone. There is no way I can get it before turn 4. Can I throw it away?

3). There is a building on the table... a Fortress of Redemption. Can I discard the "Demolitions" card?

I play GK mostly...so...If i get bad objectives I just try to table the enemy. Usually im ignoring objectives to try to table anyways - I don't really care if I win based on objective points. A tabling though...that is fun for me.

The worst part of Maelstrom is that the objectives feel like Xbox Achievements rather than actual tactical objectives. I feel like I can Forge The Narrative a lot better in Eternal War games.

I prefer Maelstrom now, but it needs a lot of refinement. The Maelstrom game types don't "churn" the cards fast enough, and so you may only see half the deck in a game - the half of the deck that screws you (or benefits you wildly). It also has the weird issue of un-accomplish-able objectives.

With Maelstrom, you need to divide your attention between your goals, killing the enemy, and preserving your army enough so that you can accomplish future goals. There is much more significant decision making for the players to make.

The huge issue with Eternal war was that the tempo of all the missions was the same:
Turns 1-4: Kill the enemy
Turns 5-7: DROP EVERYTHING and octopus your army out towards all the objectives.

Maelstorm is not perfect but it's way better and more interesting than eternal war.

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Vector Strike wrote:
We love it around here. We don't play Eternal War missions at all after 7th came.

We have a small house-rule: cards you can't complete (i.e. Harness the Warp when you play Necrons, or the destroy Buildings when none are in the field) are automatically discarded and you can grab a new one.

I'm curious about the house rules like this. What about...

1). I'm playing Tau, and my Warlord is a Cadre Fireblade, and I'm playing against a player with Deamons and his warlord is a Greater Deamon of Khorne. Can I throw away the "Slay the Warlord" card?

2). I draw on turn 1 "secure objective 3" which just happens to be deep into my opponents deployment zone. There is no way I can get it before turn 4. Can I throw it away?

3). There is a building on the table... a Fortress of Redemption. Can I discard the "Demolitions" card?

We only auto-discard cards that you can't achieve during the entire game, not that turn. So point 2 isn't an auto-discard.
I don't get your point 1. You have the rest of your army to kill it (even the Fireblade can hurt a GDoK).
Point 3 is only auto-discarded if there are no buildings on the field. If there's a FoR, you keep it.

 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.

This.

I dislike the randomness, I dislike the randomness within randomness (random VP rewards) and I dislike that the number of VPs scored seems to have no correlation to the actual difficulty of the mission. e.g. fighting through the enemy ranks to capture an objective in the heart of his deployment carries exactly the same reward as sitting on an objective you've controlled since the beginning of the game and enjoying a sandwich.

Also, a lot of things about it just don't sit right with me. For example, let's say I get the order to secure objective 1. Ok, I'll send some troops to capture objective 1 (after clearing any enemies off it). So, I've secured objective 1, right? Well, apparently not because either my opponent or myself can receive orders to secure objective 1. Again. And, what's more, this is apparently entirely possible. So, what the bloody hell did my troops do when I sent them to secure objective 1? Are the objectives some sort of mushroom, and as soon as you pick one another sprouts up to take its place? Or does 'secure objective 1' translate to 'go and take some pictures of yourself standing next to objective 1'? Is that what happens? After the battle does each army compare photos and the winner is one with the most pictures of their blokes faffing about near objectives? Boy has warfare changed in the 41st millennium.

Then you have nonsense like "cast a psychic power". Leaving aside once again the difficulty aspect, how exactly does that contribute anything? And how the hell is it used to determine the outcome of the battle? Is it a tiebreaker in the event that both players are evenly matched in the 'have your blokes faffing around near objectives' competition?

 vipoid wrote:
Then you have nonsense like "cast a psychic power". Leaving aside once again the difficulty aspect, how exactly does that contribute anything? And how the hell is it used to determine the outcome of the battle? Is it a tiebreaker in the event that both players are evenly matched in the 'have your blokes faffing around near objectives' competition?

That really is the worst maelstrom objective card, because there is almost nothing a player can do that will influence whether they get the points or not. Playing Eldar? You get D3 points just because you randomly drew this card. Playing Necrons? You don't get any points, and you have a usless card clogging up your hand, just because you randomly drew this card.

 DanielBeaver wrote:

That really is the worst maelstrom objective card, because there is almost nothing a player can do that will influence whether they get the points or not. Playing Eldar? You get D3 points just because you randomly drew this card. Playing Necrons? You don't get any points, and you have a usless card clogging up your hand, just because you randomly drew this card.

But, as well as that, I just don't see the relevance of this "mission" to the overall battle.

How does casting a psychic power at this particular time somehow affect the outcome of the battle? Especially since the power doesn't need to do anything in order for you to accomplish this objective. "Did you cast a witchfire power and then miss with every shot? Great job, soldier! We're that much closer to victory!"

It's like one of those baby's first achievements you get in games these days. Ones like 'play for 5 minutes without falling off your chair and cracking your skull open' or 'cast a psychic power'.

I'm not a fan. It breaks suspension of disbelief too much for me to have ever-shifting battlefield objectives. I prefer Eternal War games, or custom scenarios.

 godardc wrote:
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 !).

Overall, it was an interesting idea implemented in about the most idiotic way possible, an increasingly unfortunate GW hallmark.

Assymetrical objectives can be great.

The problem is that there's simply way too much randomness, and far too much stuff that's simply nonsensical, and too many things that often simply aren't even possible or that end up being complete "gimme's"


It's way too easy to rocket ahead and gain a decisive advantage in a turn or two, often with relatively minimal effort. One of my first maelstrom games I won simply by being on two objectives at the start of the game, and rolling for those two three or four times, while my opponent drew things like "kill a flyer" (I had no flyers), claim an objective on the other side of the board that I've got three tanks sitting on, and the like. Luck of the draw makes or breaks games.

Likewise, there's a lot of stuff that simply makes no sense. Why are my guardsmen being ordered to kill something in close combat? Why must my Khornate warband kill something through shootng? Why does that matter? Why is simply killing *any* unit an obejctive in and of itself? Why is simply casting a psychic power a mission objective?

Then there's stuff that one can't possibly achieve, like destroy a building or flyer when there are none present, or trying to cast a psychic power when you have no psychic powers. Or they can be auto-achieves (yes my Daemon army has 6 Pyskers, D3 victory points for me for casting psychic powers).


Then of course there's the record keeping. The constant rolling, dropping, recording, etc is something of a headache, that i see players muck up all the time, particularly when missions have different rules for doing so, and adds a ton of time.

So, ultimately, interesting idea, absolutely crap implementation, and we stopped using them entirely for local events and any sort of pickup play months ago.

TL;DR too random, too many nonsensical objectives, too many auto-achieve/auto-fail objectives, too much record keeping and extra dice rolling. It results in games where it feels like your high command is an ADHD afflicted child changing their mind and pointing at random things for you to do every turn.

 jasper76 wrote:
I'm not a fan. It breaks suspension of disbelief too much for me to have ever-shifting battlefield objectives. I prefer Eternal War games, or custom scenarios.

That's my main grievance with it. Random, non-coherent objectives breaks my suspension of disbelief.
If my officer started telling us to do something completely different every minute that had no bearing on the battle, I'd frag him
"Taking that ruin" (or whatever) should be something tied to the battle, like that will give you a vantage point to snipe at his devestators or whatnot. Yes, battles do have changing objectives, but they're tied into what is actually going on. You don't take a farmhouse just to take it, you take it to set up a casualty collection point or get a machine gun in the window to fire at the palm grove, etc.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:
I tend to think of that as shifting fog of war, the unknowns that the troops are dealing with and reacting to, further events off the field shifting the advantage on the field, etc. I don't find it hard to think of reasons for otherwise 'weird' changes in objective.

The problem is that a 40k game represents a minute or two of combat at most. So with maelstrom missions you have the mission objectives changing every few seconds, in ways that have nothing to do with what is happening on the battlefield. That isn't "fog of war", it's an army commanded by a raving lunatic.


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 Massawyrm wrote:
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.

And this is a terrible way to do things. Why should a Tau army take a psyker just to score arbitrary "cast a psychic power" objectives? It doesn't fit the fluff, it doesn't do anything for their overall strategy, it just checks off a box on a random table. Same thing with having to bring shooting objectives in a khorne army. Why does it matter if I kill a unit with guns or with chainsaws? Dead is dead, and I shouldn't have to change my army's theme by including shooting units just because that's what the random objective table requires.


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Loborocket wrote:
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.)

Why do you think that this is a good thing? You played a game and your strategic choices had very little to do with the outcome. Your opponent got an early lead by rolling well on the random table, and then you came back to win the game by rolling well on the random table. How exactly is it satisfying to "win" a game just because you rolled well on a random table? Why not save yourself hundreds or thousands of dollars in models and rulebooks by playing "flip a coin" instead of 40k?

 Peregrine wrote:

Why do you think that this is a good thing? You played a game and your strategic choices had very little to do with the outcome. Your opponent got an early lead by rolling well on the random table, and then you came back to win the game by rolling well on the random table. How exactly is it satisfying to "win" a game just because you rolled well on a random table? Why not save yourself hundreds or thousands of dollars in models and rulebooks by playing "flip a coin" instead of 40k?

I just like the fact that both sides were "in the game" until the end. I don't think the decisions that were made had "little to do with the outcome". Since I could not score objectives at the beginning of the game I concentrated on reducing the opponents ability to score later by eliminating units. Who is to say THAT decision and degree of success or failure did not impact his ability to score later in the game? I dislike games where a player is basically "eliminated" from contention before the conclusion of the game (ever played Risk and lost a large portion of your army early? It sucks to play that out to the end.) If luck is the mechanic that makes the outcome in question til the end, I am ok with that. I actually prefer it.

I used to play Heroscape with my son and we played in tournaments. There were certain armies that depended on rules interactions and tactics and others that depended more on luck. I preferred playing with armies that depend on a luck mechanic. I suppose that is part of the reason I like playing with Orks in 40k. I just like the luck aspect of the game. Maelstrom missions depend on luck more than eternal war so I prefer them.

Perhaps I derive the "satisfaction" from the game less from winning and more from the act of playing the game and feeling like everyone at the table is having a good time because they have a chance to win even if they are getting units stomped right and left. If there is a possibility of them winning at the end they will play with more interest and it makes the game a better experience for me. The coin flip would not offer much satisfaction for me. I like the luck aspect, but it is not quite as rich of an experience getting to the winner as a game of 40k is.

 jokerkd wrote:

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

Well, given my tau's recorn with dice in CC, I'd say its not only possible, but plausible



In any case, I found that malestorm games tend to be rather close, unless you are erasing your enemy and approaching tabling anyway, and in that case he has bigger problems than scoring.

Never had a game that wasn't tabling nor "practical tabling" (as in, few stragglers left while the other side is mostly unscaled) that were more than 2-3 points apart. while it seems luck would be a factor on getting easy/hard missions-the easy, or even "potential easy" are worth 1, and the ones that are a bit of a challenge often offer more, balancing it out a bit. the random element also prevents you from per-calculating your opponent's score potential, making it harder to just play the math game, and forces you to constantly decide between chasing points, to being efficent killer.

My last game had my tau facing off a codex marines. while I did a number on his guys, he chased objectives well and forced my hard quite a bit at defending/attacking certain objectives, making it a near 11-12 point result. went great.
The game before it was completely one-sided, because my oppoent played deathstars, who got oblivirated due to a tactical mistake-and by that handing me total control over the battlefield, so it had be conceded at turn 3, to a score of about 12-3.

Battlefield control MATTERS in malestorm. more than mobility. if you got guys everywhere, the enemy needs to remove them, if you controlobjectives, the enemymust constantly think of clearing them, even if they are on no current mission.

Malstorm works much, much better than ethernal war. in fact, the only ethernal war mission I find noteworthy is relic, when you play small games. (and that enforces a "everyone, get in here!" scenario), and beyond that some altar of war missions are cool.





Also, as for the "luck choices" disccusion, I'd like to add what every TCG player knows, especially heartstone.
RNG (random number generator) elements are not only fun (as they add those WTF moments), but are generally really good choices, when you use alot of them.
Because while the individual RNG can and WILL fail you at times, the more RNG involved, the less actual luck is there, because things tend to even out in the long run.
And these RNG picks are, on average roll, superior to their non-RNG counterparts, because the mere fact you get uncertine value, and often cause unpredictable results means they are worth LESS than a comperable power level of a fixed effect, making them usually very cost efficent, despite being an unknown variable in your deck, and yet the very same randomness is often a boon, as even a "poor" result may screw up your opponent simply because he had no way of telling what to prepare for, even if the effect caused is something that he COULD prepare for with ease if he knew its coming-but preparing for them all just isn't an option.

Same goes for "enemy choice" effects, or lack-of control over your own things-but to an even greater degree. the more you give away control, the stronger the cost/effect ratio tends to be, as some sort of conpensation for losing control. this ratio is at times so tilted, that strategies involving intentionally losing controls at time rises, especially as counters to mindgames (if you ever saw a poker player betting without looking at his hand-that's exacly what he is doing. giving away control in order to gain perfect "poker face", he honestly has no idea!), or to fight off better players (as you know the better player can prepare a counter to your best desicions, but a random effect might just chatch him off-guard by doing something you would NEVER do on purpose.)

RNG is great to have in a game. in fact, the more the better-as low RNG tends to be swingy, but high RNG tends to balance out and create unpredictability rather than inconsistency.

Warhammer is a game where you shoot randomly fight randomly run randomly save randomly randomly roll for the outcome of randomly generated psychic powers to win randomly generated missions.

But heaven forbid those missions have a random aspect to them (besides deployment mission type and who goes first obvs) that would just be CHAOS. I mean why don't you just flip a coin, Rando Calrissian?

Maelstrom. Should it be made less random? Yes. I would change the objectives to be based on relative position to your troops, remove random point gain, and just play Contact Lost as it makes all objectives always have value. I'd probably change the game to "play Contact Lost and also play An EW mission worth 5 points as the "primary" objective."

Is it better than straight EW or Annhialation? Oh yeah.

the_scotsman wrote:
Warhammer is a game where you shoot randomly fight randomly run randomly save randomly randomly roll for the outcome of randomly generated psychic powers to win randomly generated missions

But heaven forbid those missions have a random aspect to them (besides deployment mission type and who goes first obvs) that would just be CHAOS. I mean why don't you just flip a coin, Rando Calrissian? .

Ever single game in existence is based on probability, but there's a difference between elements being built around probability and elements being built around randomness.

Maelstrom missions are random and incoherent, they actively work against any sort of narrative or immersion through schizophrenic objective assignment with very little regards to any sort of sense or timescale, while simultaneously also being massively imbalanced through said randomness and the fact that many of the objectives turn out to be functionally or literally either impossible or auto-achieves. From just about every possible wargame design aspect they fail.

Maelstrom is only purely random if you're looking at the entire board with nothing on it. When there are actually armies on it, it's about controlling probability through board control and destroying the enemy army. In maelstrom the strategy is deciding how much you want to reach for objectives or position to create auto-succeeds. Deciding which objectives you want to discard and assigning priority to objectives based on which cards haven't been drawn yet.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, not every single game in existence is based around probability. Diplomacy isn't. All sports aren't. Chess/checkers isn't. Some games are random, some are not. 40k is really, really random.

Give Warnachine a whirl sometime, see how an actual probability curve as a game mechanic treats you.

the_scotsman wrote:
Maelstrom is only purely random if you're looking at the entire board with nothing on it. When there are actually armies on it, it's about controlling probability through board control and destroying the enemy army. In maelstrom the strategy is deciding how much you want to reach for objectives or position to create auto-succeeds. Deciding which objectives you want to discard and assigning priority to objectives based on which cards haven't been drawn yet.

In theory, perhaps. In practice, the wide variability of the objective draws, the variability of the nature of the objectives, etc all contribute to the game effectively being exceedingly random.

I won a tournament earlier this year based on a Maelstrom mission game with my IG versus a Space Marine army. We each started the game sitting on a couple of objectives, with a couple others in the middle of the board, I pulled the objectives I was already sitting on, and lots of easy "kill/kill with shooting" etc type cards. He kept pulling cards for things he couldn't accomplish (I had no flyers, he had no psykers, and the objectives he was having to take I was sitting on with multiple tanks) and there wasn't much he could do to win given that he was forced to exert much more effort, take much more risk and expose his forces, and engage the board much more aggressively than I did and I got to sit back and play exactly how I wanted thanks to the way the cards came up. I've experienced that from both sides routinely. We stopped using Maelstrom missions in local events precisely because this was such a common phenomenon, and because ultimately, like I said earlier, it felt like getting orders from an ADHD afflicted child rather than a coherent tactical task.

Also, not every single game in existence is based around probability. Diplomacy isn't. All sports aren't. Chess/checkers isn't. Some games are random, some are not. 40k is really, really random.

I guess I should have stated "wargame" being within the context of the discussion.

Give Warnachine a whirl sometime, see how an actual probability curve as a game mechanic treats you.

Still uses dice and probability. I've played Warmachine (way back in V1), not a badly designed game but just couldn't get into the setting (also not a fan of big punchout combos that WM/H is big on)

Missions 1-3 are IMO excellent. By the same token, 4-6 can die in a fire.

If I want to have fun, I love to play Maelstrom. The random element keeps you on your toes, and puts a greater focus on moving around the board.

Is it the best system? Hardly. I refuse to play without house rules to deal with the worst aspects. But there's a reason why most tournaments are using a modified version of the system: Maelstrom has overall changed 7th edition for the better.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
Missions 1-3 are IMO excellent. By the same token, 4-6 can die in a fire.

If I want to have fun, I love to play Maelstrom. The random element keeps you on your toes, and puts a greater focus on moving around the board.

Is it the best system? Hardly. I refuse to play without house rules to deal with the worst aspects. But there's a reason why most tournaments are using a modified version of the system: Maelstrom has overall changed 7th edition for the better.

Also on that subject, most tournaments aren't simply modifying the maelstrom objectives, they're effectively rewriting them entirely in many/most instances.

The ITC for instance scrapping the rulebook's (and codex books') objectives entirely and replacing it with a significantly more limited set of objectives rolled for on a single D6 that are just "hold OBJ1, hold OBJ2, have a scoring unit in enemy deployment zone, kill something, kill something, have 3 scoring units in your deployment zone with no enemy units", and are still tied into the traditional "Eternal War" missions.

Personally I like MoW missions even though I got to play one.
We did do the Discard Useless Card bit.

The only problem we had was it was a 1,000 point game and there were just not enough units on the board to really take advantage of most of the cards.

I think it works better at the 1750+ range of game.

Also a pair of Large d20s make keeping score so much better.