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 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Doesn't matter how much you argue it, Eternal War is not a "better player" game, it's a "better army" game.

Doesn't matter how much you argue it, Maelstrom is not a better player game, its a better army game.

Maelstrom greatly favours the armies that have ready access to multiple, fast, durable scoring units or quick deathstars to grab objectives and rapidly eliminate units.

That extra layer of randomness you dispies changes the game from being "who has more money" to "who can think faster".

SJ

Errr...the money thing applies equally to both, don't see how one favours money more than the other. And Maelstrom isn't a thinking man's game either. It literally tells you what to do, same as Eternal War. The difference being that in Eternal War I know from the get go what it is I'm trying to do and how to do it. In Maelstrom, a card tells me what to do, and those things vary in simplicity from score an objective I'm sitting on, to killing something in a way I have no desire to or take an objective on the opposite side of the table.

And that's not even mentioning the cards with random VPs. I'm sure rolling a 5 or 6 compared to a 1 or 2 is the hallmark of a real fast thinker or tactical genius.

This put into words why I really love 40k. I have more stories of heroic last stands, truly epic challenges, hilarious failures, and unlikely outcomes from 40k than I have actual 40k games under my belt. While I may not remember the precise battleplans and moment to moment gameplay of those games I had many years ago, I still remember Techmarine Bob: Thunderfire Cannon gunner, fighting off an entire mob of Nobz and wiping them out, becoming a hero in the process. I remember when 11 grots killed 200 points of Terminators in one round of shooting. I remember the 4 turn long epic duel between Captain Sicarius and my opponent's nefarious sorceror STEVE, and how every single dieroll was the difference between life and death.

It's why even if 40k isn't the tightest or best written game, I still keep loving it and coming back to it almost every week.

What makes a game exiting to play for me is the level of personal investment in the game play.
If I decide the fate of my table top minions, based on my decisions , I feel a lot more immersed in the game play.
If the game has the tactical depth to allow a close game when players of equal skill are playing , then I find the game enjoyable.

If its just rolling dice to see what happens with minimal input from the players , the game has no interest to me.
All my most memorable games have been closely contested.(And I always learned more tactical lessons from loosing , than I ever have from wining a game.)

I understand some folks are happy just rolling dice and pushing some minatures around for giggles.

But if the aim is making up a story by rolling some dice.Why do you feel you need a rule book to let you do this?

A rule set to deliver enough tactical depth and game balance for an interesting random pick up game is incredible difficult to develop.
That is why most gamers buy these sorts of rules from games companies.

If you buy the 'rolls some dice and make up a cool story' rules from GW .You are paying them to do the least difficult rules writing , you could easily do yourself.
(And at the same time ensure the elegant and intuitive rules 40k deserves. are never written for the game.)

Lanrak wrote:
What makes a game exiting to play for me is the level of personal investment in the game play.
If I decide the fate of my table top minions, based on my decisions , I feel a lot more immersed in the game play.
If the game has the tactical depth to allow a close game when players of equal skill are playing , then I find the game enjoyable.

If its just rolling dice to see what happens with minimal input from the players , the game has no interest to me.
All my most memorable games have been closely contested.(And I always learned more tactical lessons from loosing , than I ever have from wining a game.)

I understand some folks are happy just rolling dice and pushing some minatures around for giggles.

But if the aim is making up a story by rolling some dice.Why do you feel you need a rule book to let you do this?

A rule set to deliver enough tactical depth and game balance for an interesting random pick up game is incredible difficult to develop.
That is why most gamers buy these sorts of rules from games companies.

If you buy the 'rolls some dice and make up a cool story' rules from GW .You are paying them to do the least difficult rules writing , you could easily do yourself.
(And at the same time ensure the elegant and intuitive rules 40k deserves. are never written for the game.)

This is again based on a false dychotomy - that you cannot have deep, tactical decisions when game involves even a tiny amount of randomness… I can only reiterate, what I wrote previously: I do derive my in-game decisions based on expected values of dice rolls, VP return values of my actions, etc... - all that stuff that is involved when playing tournament level Eternal War. The fact, that in 40K (and especially in Maelstrom) I do not have CERTAINTY of the outcome of such decisions does not imply, that I'm some dumb dice rolling, model pushing and hand claping robot… It just makes the game more interesting for me, that I actually have to play a game to witness the outcome - I cannot just prepare a couple of strategies at list building stage (I'm talking about the layer of "explain how your army works" in interviews with tournament players). I have to adapt to much wider set of events than in Eternal War missions and not a single of my games was determined by Seize The Initiative roll.

But, and I cannot stress it enough - this is just what is fun for me and I do not think, that enjoying Eternal War is in any way "an inferior way to play 40K".

On a side note, to give you some further insight on my choices as a 40K player: I do not like chess and only moderately like Go, but I have been playing Bridge on a tournament level for a couple of years back in a day, so I perfecly know what is appealing in a game totaly lacking any randomness. And for those unfamiliar, in Bridge, the actual gameplay is about perfect execution of a "contract" determined in the "auction" phase. You can actually measure players "skill" in that game and your developement as a player evolves to a point, when you can (and must) determine exact flow of a game beforehand. I find Eternal War somewhat similiar, model involving cousin of Bridge, which can be, to a huge extent, predicted as early as list building or deployment/target selection stage. This is perhaps why I don't find 40K to be the best game there is for a competitive playstyle as it has a "dead wall" of random dice mechanics that you cannot de-randomise further and there is allways some degree of pure luck involved, so I personally prefer to embrace this randomness and derive my fun from it than to work around it.

@nou.
Where did I state that any level of randomness precluded tactical depth?

I simply pointed out GW is selling a rules set based on rolling dice to see what happens and making a story up to explain the results.(Forge the narrative.)


Nowhere in this 'directive to sell toy soldiers to children' is much thought given to game play implications.
In 40k all the effort and emphasis on placed on strategic loading , which helps drives the short term sales of minatures.

Compared to other games from other companies , 40k is very tactically shallow.
(Apart from target selection there is very little in the way of tactical decision making in 40k.)

Lanrak wrote:
@nou.
Where did I state that any level of randomness precluded tactical depth?

I simply pointed out GW is selling a rules set based on rolling dice to see what happens and making a story up to explain the results.(Forge the narrative.)


Nowhere in this 'directive to sell toy soldiers to children' is much thought given to game play implications.
In 40k all the effort and emphasis on placed on strategic loading , which helps drives the short term sales of minatures.

Compared to other games from other companies , 40k is very tactically shallow.
(Apart from target selection there is very little in the way of tactical decision making in 40k.)

My bad, I understood your post as a reference to different approaches on 40K (Eternal vs Maelstrom), not different wargaming systems and strategic games as a whole.

I like Maelstrom missions mostly. They really can screw with you though. One match I had, my opponent kept drawing cards that suited him perfectly every time(just short of laugh at an opponents unit, gain D3 victory points), I kept drawing ones that I could not achieve in any way(felt like it was recite the first 18 numbers in π) I ended up with a game of 3 points to 14.

 conker249 wrote:
I like Maelstrom missions mostly. They really can screw with you though. One match I had, my opponent kept drawing cards that suited him perfectly every time(just short of laugh at an opponents unit, gain D3 victory points), I kept drawing ones that I could not achieve in any way(felt like it was recite the first 18 numbers in π) I ended up with a game of 3 points to 14.

Shhhh. You'll give GW ideas for 8th edition Maelstrom cards.

nou wrote:
This is again based on a false dychotomy - that you cannot have deep, tactical decisions when game involves even a tiny amount of randomness…

No, that's not it at all. Remember the OP that started this discussion? About how, to have a fun game, you should deliberately avoid options that reduce randomness and bring an army that is really inconsistent? That's not "a tiny amount of randomness", that's seeking out as much randomness as possible.

It just makes the game more interesting for me, that I actually have to play a game to witness the outcome - I cannot just prepare a couple of strategies at list building stage (I'm talking about the layer of "explain how your army works" in interviews with tournament players). I have to adapt to much wider set of events than in Eternal War missions and not a single of my games was determined by Seize The Initiative roll.

I really fail to see the difference here. Maelstrom missions have just as much of a "build an army and prepare strategies" factor as normal missions, they just change what the best army is. Going from "shoot the enemy for 4-5 turns and then grab objectives" to "use my MSU obsec jetbikes to farm easy VP while shooting the enemy" is no more of a change than "{army} just got an overpowered codex, I'm using that now". The occasional stupid card draw (kill a unit your opponent has, kill a unit in melee with your Tau, etc) might on paper force you to deviate from your plans, but most of the time you just discard it and get frustrated at wasting the turn's draw on a blank card.

Also, why do you think that maelstrom-style "having to play the game to witness the outcome" is a good thing? It's not like that hidden ending is something you as a player control, it's nothing more than random rolls on the objective table. What does "I could draw nothing but 'destroy a flyer' when my opponent doesn't have any flyers in their army" add to the game? You don't know it's going to happen, but why is this a good thing? Wouldn't it be better to have, as you do in non-maelstrom missions, an unpredictable ending that is determined primarily by player choices?

Your reading comprehension needs checking. OP was not sayi g that random = fun at all. The major point was that decisions had to matter. Some random may be necessary, but more random makes your decisions less relevant.

@ Selym: this is a longer discussion now and not a list of unrelated replies to OP post. So what I'm doing here is trying my best to explain to some of the discussants how playing random Maelstrom may be both entertaining and strategically interesting and is not just a "random bull gak" in eyes of some players who do not wich to make 40K a chesslike game.

@ Peregrine: I should stress at this moment, that I play a custom Malestrom scenario and objective set, which largely evens the "poll of possible VPs for both players" (it is a modified mix between standard and advanced objective card decks). And one thing, that you probably assume - that I mostly play against marine style army, with quite uniform threat profile. That is not the case. Playing against custom Tyranids (mix of the 4th, 5th and current codexes) does not allow to bulid anything resembling an "universal army", exceling at all tasks (anti mass infantry, antiMC, anti multiwound, ObSec MSU). Even the most universal units - Scatbikes spam or Warp Spider spam is not good enough (scatbikes are one-shots against obsec hormagaunts on crowded, LOS blocking terrain with objectives scattered all over the place, as they just get stuck in CC after a single run for far objective). Warp Spiders are better because of Hit&Run, but are realtively easy prey for Biovores and Hive Guards and still die to massed hormagaunt assaults or Flyrants. And in the principle: if you increase the number of different factors involved in achievieng victory, then it is harder to build a winning army in a given point limit. Of course, ANY AND EVERY strategic game has it's own more optimised builds/strategies, but my point of view is actually very clear - if you increase the number of important parameters (both random and definitive) the harder it gets to develop such strategy. And besides, Maelstrom adds a "real time" factor, which I personally find more interesting than "predetermined strategy" in Eternal War.

And again - and I thought it was perfectly clear that far into discussion - I completely understand all the fun and challenge in Eternal War and "definitive winning strategy" gaming. I simply try to picture, that there is ANOTHER way, perfectly suiting the needs of players with different than competitive (or self competitive) focus on 40K. And that from this point of view the game can be both entertaing and challanging and is not somehow inferior overall. It is, obviously inferior in some aspects, but those are not the sole and only possible focus points in a game like 40K.

Peregrine wrote:
No, that's not it at all. Remember the OP that started this discussion? About how, to have a fun game, you should deliberately avoid options that reduce randomness and bring an army that is really inconsistent? That's not "a tiny amount of randomness", that's seeking out as much randomness as possible.

Selym wrote:Your reading comprehension needs checking. OP was not sayi g that random = fun at all. The major point was that decisions had to matter. Some random may be necessary, but more random makes your decisions less relevant.

nou wrote:@ Selym: this is a longer discussion now and not a list of unrelated replies to OP post. So what I'm doing here is trying my best to explain to some of the discussants how playing random Maelstrom may be both entertaining and strategically interesting and is not just a "random bull gak" in eyes of some players who do not wich to make 40K a chesslike game.

I think you missed the part where this is a discussion forum. It is a normal part of a discussion to point out factual inaccuracies.

And brings up the point that random =/= fun, but that player decisions should matter. These points are central to this thread.

@ Selym: I honestly do not know how I could write anything more, to try to show to you, how random warlord traits, psychic powers and all other "unnnecessary and excessive" randomness (which it seems is your point of view) can actually improve the replayability of the game in some cases of possible ways of using 40K. And at this point I simply do not know how do you manage to impute any ill intent in my posts or that I somehow forget, that this is a public forum, where everyone is entitled to their point of view. I could only reply with yours "your reading comperhension need a check" but this is pointless. You play your way, and it is not my role, power or intent to change it for you, so at no point in this tread I'm trying to force anyone to change their way. You seem to think that random =/= fun, and I say that for some people increasing randomness can be fun (and that there is valid logic behind such reasoning). That's it, there is nothing more to my point of view, so I'll just leave this thread be. Cheers!

And this is where I start wondering if you are reading the same thread as me.

> Point out that Peregrine was making a factually incorrect statement
> Get told not to make statements that are unrelated to thread
> Point out that it is entirely relevant
> Get told that I am saying random cannot ever be fun

@ Peregrine
As stated by Selym, my point was not randomness = fun, but that making things not random enough or overly random is poor. Going to the extreme in either case is what's not fun. I do not want to play a game of 40k where the outcomes of decisions are precisely known, but I also don't want a game where my decisions have no meaning either because every action's result is completely random. The point of my original post was that to have an exciting game, you need to allow yourself to be surprised. If surprises happen so infrequently that they effectively don't happen at all, that's not a fun game to me. But at the same time, to be surprised, you need to have a reasonable expectation to begin with. More random isn't good, but no random is also not good. Any randomness that exists needs to have meaning.

I dislike the current Warlord Trait system because it's mostly meaningless randomness. Some traits are better than others, there's a few that are amazing, but many that won't change how I intend to play the game. My favourite Warlord Traits are "-1 to your opponent's reserve rolls", "+1" run/charge", and "reroll Seize the Initiative". Why? Because these add meaningful actions and decisions to the game; my opponent now has to re-craft their strategy for how reserves will arrive as they are far less likely to come on turn 2 now, I might want to put my Warlord with a different unit than I was intending to, and if my opponent gets the option and wanted to go first they need to think more carefully about it.

My least favourite Warlord Traits are "Move Through Cover in Ruins, Stealth in Ruins", "opponents within 12" use lowest leadership", and "+4 to Seize the Initiative". Why? Because these don't add meaningful actions or decisions to my game. I probably want to be in Ruins anyways and this just randomly makes me way better at it, almost all opponents are Fearless or otherwise immune to psychological effects anyways, and my opponent needs to be inattentive to realize what +4 to Seizing the Initiative means for them to make a decision that makes this Trait actually useful (if they realize that I Seize on a 2+ and they still try to go first they're making a huge and dumb mistake, and that's not fun. But if I fail that roll, then this trait feels like it's randomly screwed me over for their mistake...).

 Selym wrote:
And this is where I start wondering if you are reading the same thread as me.

> Point out that Peregrine was making a factually incorrect statement
> Get told not to make statements that are unrelated to thread
> Point out that it is entirely relevant
> Get told that I am saying random cannot ever be fun

Perhaps this is the case, because of almost single sentence nature of your posts, or making a single posts referring to multiple sentences by multiple people? It is quite hard for me to read your intent clearly and to whom you are referring to in posts without quotes. Or perhaps because I have not read all of your almost 9k posts on dakka and do not know you, or anything about your wider view on 40K and wargaming in general. I'm bound to those few statements you made in this tread. Or because english is not my native language and some thing may be lost in translation for me. Whatever the reason, if anything I said does not apply to your intent, please don't take it personally. Cheers!

Well, fair enough. Best way to read my posts is to take them as literally as possible. If I don't quote, I'm referring to the poster immediately above me.

@Yarium.
I agree that some degree of uncertainty is required for a engaging game play.And having no degree of certainty at all is far to random to be enjoyable by the majority of people long term.

Because 40k started off as a RPG skirmish hybrid .The narrative element has always been quite strongly promoted in 40k.
Unfortunately it has been promoted as an excuse to increase the levels of uncertainty well past the limits of a lot of players.

Adding random elements is something any players can agree to do between themselves.

For example if Warlord Traits were costed accurately to allow them to fit in random pick up games.

Players in a narrative game could roll them randomly for fun if they wanted to.

However, rolling them randomly in the core rules,( you pay for,) means those wanting more accurate balance can not have it .So they play something else instead.

If you look at a rule set written with enough clarity and balance for random pick up games.(Like F,O,W for example.)
It is a piece of cake to write narrative scenarios for.

In short anyone is capable of adding random /narrative elements to any rule set, as long as both players agree.

Very few people can write clearly defined intuitive rules that deliver enough balance for fun random pick up games.(Its very hard to do even for professional game developers. )

I'm still mystified that people equate less randon as more fun. Look at how many people play the lottery versus chess, or poker versus checkers. Random is the great equalizer, less random does not in any way equal balance. Remember, the white pieces go first, netting one side of a mirror match an advantage over the other. That is as non-random as you can get yet still resulting in millions of possible outcomes while still being reduced to one player making less mistakes than the other. That can be exciting, but the conclusion is predictable. Predictable isn't fun for half the players involved.

SJ

Hence why neither I nor OP claim that random precludes fun. Just that additional, irrelevant, randomness does not add fun.

 Selym wrote:
Hence why neither I nor OP claim that random precludes fun. Just that additional, irrelevant, randomness does not add fun.

What in the current game is irrelevant?

SJ

Random warlord traits, random psychic powers, random game modes, random wargear selection in CD, random charge moves, random running.

All utterly unnecessary, they add nothing to the game, and they reduce the value of player decisions.

 Selym wrote:
Random warlord traits, random psychic powers, random game modes, random wargear selection in CD, random charge moves, random running.

All utterly unnecessary, they add nothing to the game, and they reduce the value of player decisions.

So play chess.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Random warlord traits, random psychic powers, random game modes, random wargear selection in CD, random charge moves, random running.

All utterly unnecessary, they add nothing to the game, and they reduce the value of player decisions.

So play chess.

SJ

Maybe you should play yahtzee.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Random warlord traits, random psychic powers, random game modes, random wargear selection in CD, random charge moves, random running.

All utterly unnecessary, they add nothing to the game, and they reduce the value of player decisions.

So play chess.

SJ

That is not a logical conclusion. A suitable answer would have been "so play 5E". None of those things existed in 5E, and it's almost universally regarded as a far better ruleset than 7E.

Wasn't running still random in 5th?

Well yeah, but there was faaar less random overall. You had the necessary random for determining damage and hitrates, but things that should have been easy to judge, like what sort of leader do you have, is your psyker a specialist in this power, can you charge this turn, were solid.

Oh totally, I just wanted to clarify your argument and the facts that will eventually be questioned anyways.

I can't remember a single person cheering the changes from set charge distance to random, or picking /paying for your powers vice rolling them.

There will always need to be a random element to be the impartial judge for stuff like dealing damage. But elements that pertain to having synergistic army effects like traits and powers should most definitely be within the players control. This allows for a better narrative and more tactical control, while having no negative impact beyond the extra 15mins of work it would take the developers to balance the choices.

I started playing 40k with Rogue Trade, a table top RPG with about 80 pages of random tables. 40k has always had random tables, random distances, and random outcomes. Remember guess range weapons? I do. Removing all of the mentioned random elements from the game is not 5E, its Chess.

SJ

Yes, because chess has a wide variety of factions, unit types and weapon types, each with their own unique rules and values.
Chess also allows you to differentiate between the effects of anti-infantry weapons against large targets and anti-vehicle weapons against large targets.

Chess also allows the tactical use of cover, and the varying speeds of movement of different unit types.

Chess does not have a system whereby one attack move = one guaranteed kill, and is a highly intricate system.

Chess allows for story based gameplay, and regularly changes things up.


When someone has an objection to the current state of 40k, it never makes any sense whatsoever to tell them to play chess, rather than discussing the advantages and disadvantages of particular features.