Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Following recommendations on this forum I've picked up a set of the Open War cards. I'm using them with the "Matched Play" system of building using points and detachments.

Some of the cards and the rules refer to "Power Levels". What's the "done" thing to handle that? Should we also add up the "Power Levels" for our armies? Or do people just swap any mention of "Power Levels" to points? That would give some "bidding" to the game as players might try to underspend to get the ruse card.

The cards appear to make the game more interesting and I'm a fan. I'm just wondering if I were to venture out to a store or club what the etiquette for using them is.

Use points instead of power level.

Don't add up because the system emphasises different things and you get really lopsided games.

If you want to use Ruse/ sudden death have their triggers be points rather then power lvl if that is wha tyou used for listbuilding purposes. At least that's what we do.

Yeah it can work for power level or points.

We use them with power level in campaigns and they are great, but you have to be open to games that aren't "equal points".

If you're playing equal points all the time, then you basically set fire to the ruse and sudden death cards and just the other three categories.

We disregard the PLS in regards to stuff like Ruse cards, but where it's used for scoring (the kill point missions) we use them because it's easier.

No use power levels. IN general you should have equal points in matched play, but you likely don't have matched power level. So if it asks for higher PL, use that it is easy to add up.

I use Battlescribe and just keep both Power Level and Points for all my army entries. That way I can keep track of relative PL, and activate the Ruse and Sudden Death cards appropriately.

I find that the Open War cards are the best $15 I've spent on WH40K since my first $30 box of Space Marines back in 1989.

Not for 40k but I've used the Open War cards with Matched Play in AOS and it was great fun. What I did was drew a deployment, objective and a twist (not sure if 40k has those), we ignored the normal method for Ruse cards and each drew one card and we ignored Sudden Death completely.

It was a blast.

If you want to use the ruse and sudden death cards then follow them as they say and refer to each army's power level. You can have equal points but quite different power levels

Wayniac wrote:
Not for 40k but I've used the Open War cards with Matched Play in AOS and it was great fun. What I did was drew a deployment, objective and a twist (not sure if 40k has those), we ignored the normal method for Ruse cards and each drew one card and we ignored Sudden Death completely.

It was a blast.

I have both. The 40k cards are pretty much the same as the AoS for the 3 categories. We just play with the deployment, mission and twist for both.

We also play with power and have fun with it.

PL is a bad system. For example a unit of company veterans (2 models) has PL3. Adding one model to that increases the PL to 8 ! Thats the same as a venerable dreadnought. A predator tank has 9. Three company veterans are as powerful as a venerable dreadnought, or almost as powerful as a predator tank. Thats so wrong.

I mean, part of the beauty of Open War is how customizable it is.

Personally, I've gotten rid of both of the "half and half" deployment cards, all the kill point missions, and I've separated the Twist cards so that I can only draw from one of the "game lengthening" ones - though most commonly we just elect to use Acid Rain as I find it a nice analog to night fight from 7th, blunting the turn 1 alpha and ensuring people have at least a turn to maneuver before the first ~33% of each player's list dies a violent death.

We use points for listbuilding as normal, then powerlevels to figure out who gets the ruse card and any other card specific requirements. The open war cards are fun, but hardly balanced. Using power levels for ruses just adds another fun twist layer.

These cards are fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

Rolling for a battlezone from the book is also a nice way to add a random factor to your games.

As far as PL goes, you don't need to base your armies on PL, but it still matters for the purposes of the cards. You can have equal points, but i guarantee someone will have more pL.

I am very happy with the Open War cards - tons of fun! We still use points to construct most of our lists, but we the PL equivalents when the Open War cards refer to them (Objectives mostly).

If you are using Open War you aren't too fussy about winning or losing, nor about somebody gaining an advantage through PLs.

Something me and a friend have done that is really, really fun is to give BOTH players a Ruse card - We actually have a 'Draw 2, pick 1' system as well, to ensure nobody gets stuck with a useless card.

We build our armies off of points.

Having just bought these myself I stumbled on this old thread.

The idea of handing out a ruse card to both players is a great idea. We might try that. Sudden death doesn't seem to me to have a place in matched play (by definition it's not matched).

Another reason to not use PL in a matched play game is that since the original discussion, points have been adjusted by successive CAs but PL has been left alone, so the relative magnitudes of points and PL could actually be different.

For narrative campaigns I have used sudden death cards to equalize lopsided list building.

Note the keyword Narrative Campaign. So if someone brings a fun narrative list and then Spike the tournament guy shows up in the campaign for whatever reason, (in my neck of the woods this was a common scenario) I used that if you did more than 20 mortal wounds total in a turn or summoned more than 25% of the game size into the game, that your opponent could pull a sudden death card.

It was actually received better than I thought, and did actually promote a more even keel experience other than tournament guy showing up and flatlining everything in their path based off of min/maxing vs narrative list.

Otherwise yeah there's no point in sudden death in a min/max tournament / matched play environment.

We play Open War in Matched.
General Rule is no Ruse or Sudden Death.

 Brother Castor wrote:
Having just bought these myself I stumbled on this old thread.

The idea of handing out a ruse card to both players is a great idea. We might try that. Sudden death doesn't seem to me to have a place in matched play (by definition it's not matched).

Another reason to not use PL in a matched play game is that since the original discussion, points have been adjusted by successive CAs but PL has been left alone, so the relative magnitudes of points and PL could actually be different.

That will end up quite similar to what GW were running last time I made it to Throne of Skulls.

Open Play cards with points rather than PL. One ruse card per player, to be used once over the 5 games.

For the kill points mission they used points rather than PL.

It is not a great format for serious tournament play but its fun and challenging for semi-competitive organised play. It definitely can force you out of your comfort zone and into using tactics and approaches that normally you would never consider; the downside is that sometimes it can throw up virtually unwinnable situations for one of the players.

 p5freak wrote:
PL is a bad system. For example a unit of company veterans (2 models) has PL3. Adding one model to that increases the PL to 8 ! Thats the same as a venerable dreadnought. A predator tank has 9. Three company veterans are as powerful as a venerable dreadnought, or almost as powerful as a predator tank. Thats so wrong.

I mean we are talking about using it for mission rules not army building. That said your argument is if you try to make bad armies with PL you can. I’m pretty sure 5 company vets all with plasma guns and powerfists is also 8 PL, and much more on par with the dread. It isn’t a granular system and as such fails when you use it as such. Which means if you want a granular system don’t build PL armies.

I love the Open War cards, and they could be used for both equally well.

One of the best investments in 40k ever. You should always know what both the point & power level of your army. if it's just simple math then nobody could argue otherwise.

Kill points based on pl really value the individual units that you kill. they cards work for pretty much every kind of player and every kind of army.

My advice with the Open War cards is to use a Star Wars Legions style mission creation phase to stop the terrible feelbadsies they can dish out. "Hey this mission is totally rigged against me!"

SO:
Roll off to see who picks first.

Then draw:
3 objective cards
3 deployment maps
3 twists

Starting with the player who won the rolloff, take turns to eliminate ONE of the cards. Each player can only eliminate one of each type.

So if you are playing a psychic army and the twist is "all powers are half range and -1 to cast" or whatever, then your priority is to remove that. If you're Tau and you get the "it's foggy nobody can shoot more than 24" or wharever it says... boom, gone.

After both players have eliminated 1 objective, 1 map and 1 twist each... what you are left with is what you play.

Works really well

I designed an alternate deck of 24 deployment layouts (having some printed right now). We use them locally for adding a lot more variety to deployment. We also have a method of "battlefield control", where the player who's currently doing well in the campaign is allowed to draw up to three deployment cards. If he passes on the first card, the second is drawn...if he passes on the second he must use the third card.



Adds a fun little challenge at the beginning (we set up the terrain first).

We used the Open War deck for a while but really found only the deployment and twist were really worth it - the rest being a little ....shallow? We use them with points as well.

Yeah the missions can be very "oh is that it?"

If you are used to ETC combined Eternal/Maelstrom missions that require mobility and flexibilty then they are very one-dimensional.

The most/least memorable was the mission where on T3 you roll to see which of the objectives is the "real" one and the winner is the person who owns it on T5.

The one that turned out to be real was the one my entire army were stood around. Stand still. Win.

GGWP

We use both the 40k and AoS open war cards across games with points, no points, power level, whatever. Sometimes we end up scoring with points, sometimes power level, sometimes wounds. It seems to work however we do it.