ITC Maelstorm Proposal

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**PanzerLeader**

Given the controversy in the ITC voting thread, I felt compelled to show how receptive the Frontline crew is to feedback and how player centric the ITC process really is. Below is the text of an email I sent to FLG with a proposed change to their mission format and the response I got. I've also put the full proposal here as well. If its something that interests other people, shoot them an email and let them know as well. They are trying to put together the best possible "product" for us, their customers.

Email text:

Spoiler:

Proposal:

Spoiler:

**jifel**

While I currently enjoy the ITC format/rules/FAQs, I'll admit that the Maelstrom you proposed is actually pretty darn good. Looks quite fair while also being more varied than what they have currently. With any luck, the next round of ITC polls will have a "Would you like Maelstrom missions upgraded to a larger pool of cards?" question. I'm glad to see though that the ITC crew is being receptive to new ideas being sent in, and I hope to see good things come from this!

**niv-mizzet**

Admittedly one of my annoyances about ITC maelstrom is that you can't "keep" an objective. You may be 1" too far away this turn to hold objective 2, and have it for sure next turn, but you don't have the option to keep it.

I noted that your version has that option, which is a nice point in favor of it.

In their current formats, ascendancy and supremacy would be highly impractical to get in ITC relic and purge missions, where there ARE only 3 objectives on the table. It may require switching all the game types to have more objective markers to fix.

I've never been a fan of scoring at the end of your turn with no chance of response from the enemy, nor a fan of bottom of the round where only player 2 gets to respond. I believe the best method would be to score at the START of your next turn for any position-based objectives. That would give both players a chance to counter-move.

**RiTides**

Is the email address you used the ITC one listed here:

https://www.frontlinegaming.org/contact-us/

I.e. Frankie AT FrontlineGaming DOT org?

Awesome that they're considering your suggestion

**PanzerLeader**

@niv-mizzet: That's a fair point. I was mostly concerned about balancing out the ability to respond so it was equal. I'm ok with either method really. Its fair if both people get a response or both people can score without response. The current one is weighted too much towards going second in my opinion.

@RiTides: That's the email I used.

**jy2**

That is a great idea, Mike. However, using a deck of 15 Maelstrom objectives really isn't practical, especially when you are talking about an event potentially as large as the LVO with up to 300 players. Instead, rolling for them is a better idea as it wouldn't require any extra material. Something like this, roll 2D6 to generate 2 Maelstrom objectives (from 2 to 12). You can probably remove some of the objectives such as:

Ascendancy - not practical in certain ITC missions like the Relic or Emperor's Will.

Overwhelming Firepower - these Maelstrom objectives favor shooty armies like Tau or Eldar way too much. It is practically a "gimme".

Blood & Guts - these Maelstrom objectives favor assaults armies too much, especially if they Re fast and resilient.

Witch Hunter - not all armies will have psykers.

**Red Corsair**

Thats a solid solution jy2, but there is a part of me that wonders why players can't be asked to use any cheap business card site and print off the deck. We already are expected to bring our own models, dice, rules, measuring device, templates, packets etc etc. At what point does the community recognize that these objective decks are a required item for playing. Also if it's ITC then you are getting to use that deck in a lot of events.

Not disagreeing with you, just posing a question that's been popping up in my mind. Actually I am shocked no one has sold after market objective decks, if the wording is generic I see no real issues.

**kloma**

For a lot of the UK events that use the ETC packs, cards can be printed very cheaply, some events provide them either as part of the pack, or to buy for a few quid. I've used my caledonian uprising cards all year and people often ask about the event as the logos printed on the back so it's a decent way to spread the word

**PanzerLeader**

jy2 wrote:That is a great idea, Mike. However, using a deck of 15 Maelstrom objectives really isn't practical, especially when you are talking about an event potentially as large as the LVO with up to 300 players. Instead, rolling for them is a better idea as it wouldn't require any extra material. Something like this, roll 2D6 to generate 2 Maelstrom objectives (from 2 to 12). You can probably remove some of the objectives such as:

Ascendancy - not practical in certain ITC missions like the Relic or Emperor's Will.

Overwhelming Firepower - these Maelstrom objectives favor shooty armies like Tau or Eldar way too much. It is practically a "gimme".

Blood & Guts - these Maelstrom objectives favor assaults armies too much, especially if they Re fast and resilient.

Witch Hunter - not all armies will have psykers.

The nice part about the cards is that you can just use the generic GW maelstorm deck pared down to the appropriate cards. I also like the cards because they give an equal probability for ever objective being generated (i.e. 1 out of X) where a 2d6 distribution lends itself to the middle. Its also a little easier with the cards to keep track of what objectives have bee generated to avoid repeats. If you wanted to do it with dice, I'd probably go up to 18 objectives in 3 columns and then say "Roll a d3 for column, roll a d6 for objective. You can only generate each objective once."

Swapping out Ascendancy is a good point. Maybe replace it with something like Dominate (control all objectives) for a total of 3 or 4 VP? That would at least be applicable in every scenario.

I don't think having objectives that favor an army is a bad thing. It helps keep the game competitive. You already have "gimme" objectives with the destroy a unit being prevalent as well as the hold any objective X where X is normally in your deployment zone. Its a little more fair when the "gimme" objectives can only be generated and scored once by each player.

**greyknight12**

From a logistical standpoint, I think an 8.5x11" sheet give you 10 business cards, so either 10 or 20 objectives would make printing simple...you either print them at home or the tournament could simply print the sheet and put it in the mission packet for the players to separate. Alternatively you could stick with your 15 (which honestly sounds like a good number) and have 5 blanks or figure out something else to print on them...scorecards? WL traits? Powers?

**RFHolloway**

A bit of quick googling got me to http://www.makeplayingcards.com/design/custom-game-cards-token.html

Not a recommendation, but at a few bucks for an 18 card deck you could always add it as an option to support those organising an ITC tournament. With an ITC logo on them (and sold through the store) it could help with the branding, or add to the swag bags for the LVO and BAO with custom backs for the event.

**eltrain728**

I like this alot. You could potentially go to 12 objectives and skip turn 1 for scoring, drawing one turn ahead of time. Though in all honestly I would love to see a more expanded maelstrom table.

Then you could use dice to avoid logistics of printing cards. Then have the objectives be 11-16, 21-26. Then when you roll for them the 10s column is 1/2/3 for 1 and 4/5/6 for 2. Something along those lines.

Adepticon made decks last year for everyone in both the championship and gt which is ~650-700 people.

I attended primer for the adepticon maelstrom even this year and they are doing something along these lines except that its 3 objective cards per turn and there is a deck building phase during pregame. It works really well, but there is a bit of learning curve to picking it up.

**jy2**

Red Corsair wrote:
Thats a solid solution jy2, but there is a part of me that wonders why players can't be asked to use any cheap business card site and print off the deck. We already are expected to bring our own models, dice, rules, measuring device, templates, packets etc etc. At what point does the community recognize that these objective decks are a required item for playing. Also if it's ITC then you are getting to use that deck in a lot of events.

Not disagreeing with you, just posing a question that's been popping up in my mind. Actually I am shocked no one has sold after market objective decks, if the wording is generic I see no real issues.

While bringing your own Maelstrom deck/providing decks for players is certainly a viable option, there are 2 main reasons why I think that they are better off leaving the deck at home.

1. Simplicity. The simpler you make it, the easier it is for both the players and the TO's. That's one less thing the players have to worry about bringing. That's one less thing TO's have to do (print out cards) when organizing their tournaments. Also, you don't have to address issues like lost cards during tournament play, potential cheating in the decks (switch out cards or leaving out cards), people forgetting to bring their decks, etc. It's ok to bring decks so long as there is a backup way of generating Maelstrom objectives in the case of issues like above.

2. Wide-spread Adoption. The simpler you make a system, the easier it is for it to spread. If your tounament requires decks to play, that's another inconvenience TO's have to consider when adopting your system for their tournaments. You make it easy for them with minimal material requirements and your standard will more easily be accepted. But like I said, having cards is fine for those TO's who don't mind, but those cards should only be an optional supplement. There should be a system in place to generate Maelstrom objectives that require no additional materials. In essence, that is what makes open-source worked. Everything is free and you don't need to expend extra money. All you need is to put in your time to run the tournament.

**tjkopena**

I posted a link in this forum a couple months ago, but thought I'd put out there again how I've been running Maelstrom in my events:

http://www.rocketshipgames.com/blogs/tjkopena/2015/10/alternate-maelstrom/

My events are small-ish, up to 20 people or so. But we've run this alternate Maelstrom in a bunch of events over the past year, with a variety of armies and players present, and it's worked well. I am also currently planning on using it for the NOVA 40k Trios Team Tournament, for which I am the new organizer. I emphasize that I'm not particularly putting this forward as an alternative to the suggestions above or the current ITC objectives. But people might find it interesting.

It's worth making the distinction that any discussion about Maelstrom mechanics really has two parts:

- The actual tactical objectives and scoring;

- The logistics of the supporting bookkeeping.

To a large extent my take on the actual tactical objectives is a fair bit different and more extensive from what people are mostly talking about here. For example, I make no commitment to using the standard objectives or even really sticking with the structure of the list. But I think my scheme has worthwhile design points and may be interesting to others.

To the logistics, which much of this thread has concentrated on, there are ups and downs to either cards or tables. A big event could definitely print cards (Adepticon does in fact do so), and probably for cheaper than the links above. A de facto standard like ITC could certainly do it, i.e., Frontline having sets produced. I'm sure a number of tournament organizers and even players would be happy to buy cheap decks for their events, test playing, etc. You wouldn't want to require it though, so a dual approach like the actual official setup makes sense (play via a table, or cards if you have them).

But, otherwise, cards are tough for smaller events. For the logistical reasons jy2 and others have touched on, I use a table. But the table, printed out for each player in their mission packet, has a system of checkboxes to make the bookkeeping faster and more clear than scribbling notes on paper or such as you would otherwise to keep track.

Any comments are welcome, and thanks for the interesting discussion in this thread!

**Dozer Blades**

The TOs can hand out cards. It's not a big deal.

**tjkopena**

Somewhat obviously the actual concern is the cost and/or effort in producing or acquiring cards, not any difficulty in simply handing them out.

**Dozer Blades**

It's not expensive. A lot of GTs hand out rule packets.

**tjkopena**

GTs and the huge events can definitely afford it, either through being big enough to have sufficient economies of scale, or having a high enough entry fee to absorb the cost.

I'm thinking about small scale events. My impression is quite a number of people have adopted ITC rules + missions for their monthly shop tournaments and such. They're looking at either a non-trivial cost compared to their entry fees to have cards printed, or a non-trivial amount of effort to print sheets and cut them up. So it would be potentially problematic for those events if the mechanism really really needed cards to play well.

That said, like I suggested above, ITC/Frontline is probably in a position to work around that by having a significant run of cards made and then offering individual and bulk sales to players and TOs.

**PanzerLeader**

tjkopena wrote:
GTs and the huge events can definitely afford it, either through being big enough to have sufficient economies of scale, or having a high enough entry fee to absorb the cost.

I'm thinking about small scale events. My impression is quite a number of people have adopted ITC rules + missions for their monthly shop tournaments and such. They're looking at either a non-trivial cost compared to their entry fees to have cards printed, or a non-trivial amount of effort to print sheets and cut them up. So it would be potentially problematic for those events if the mechanism really really needed cards to play well.

That said, like I suggested above, ITC/Frontline is probably in a position to work around that by having a significant run of cards made and then offering individual and bulk sales to players and TOs.

The reality is you could easily do both once you have a common set of objectives. Lets assume its fifteen. Label them 11-15, 21-25, and 31-36. Players can either use homemade cards, the corresponding GW made cards, or roll dice (d3 + d6) to generate objectives. It doesn't have to be an either/or system. To assume such is to create a false dichotomy.

**Dozer Blades**

It is easy to do but ultimately is the decision of FGL. I respect that aspect.

**DJ3**

jy2 wrote:
That is a great idea, Mike. However, using a deck of 15 Maelstrom objectives really isn't practical, especially when you are talking about an event potentially as large as the LVO with up to 300 players.

Adepticon provided a deck last year (and I don't think the tournament cost went up either), it was high-quality enough that most of us that have one still use it for Maelstrom games.

It included enough cards to have both the "Adepticon Rules" Maelstrom deck and replacement cards (noted by different coloration on the face of the card) to also act as a "standard" Maelstrom deck.

**muwhe**

We produced this Maelstorm deck for AdeptiCon.

Along with a file for anyone that wanted use a table or produce their own cards

http://adepticon.org/wpfiles/2015/201540Ktocards.pdf

For all the play testing, we just label printed them and attached them to standard cards. Fairly straight forward affair.

**Dozer Blades**

Those are really nice !

**mortetvie**

Just from personal experience, I think that some of the maelstrom objectives really need to be revised. In the current meta, they favor Space Marine/Drop Pod armies too much. Specifically the "have a scoring unit in opponent's deployment zone" and "have 3 scoring units in your deployment zone and no enemy units" objectives.

For example, being able to drop a large amount of Ob-Sec units all over the objectives (or in opposing player's deployment zone) with little or no cost or danger of having your overall battle plan compromised is a bit too strong ATM.

Every other army that I can think of needs to dedicate something more valuable or fragile to achieve the "get a unit in enemy deployment zone" objective. Also, it makes it virtually impossible to secure the "3 of your scoring and no enemy scoring units in your deployment zone" objective.

Just my thoughts on those two objectives in particular in light of the current meta. After all, since the ITC is about changing with the times, I think the actual Maelstrom missions should be revised and revamped from time to time.