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Martel732 wrote:
The new missions are still trash, imo.

The irony here is supposedly the new missions are what the updated points costs in Chapter Approved are balanced against, not ITC missions.

Maelstrom is hot garbage. I ain't touching those with a 10 foot pole. You can't plan, which is the fundamental skill of a strategy game.

There's limited fore-planning, since objectives are new and random each turn, and there's limited counter-planning, since the enemy objectives are also unknown, and objectives pretty much only exist for a single player turn.

Eternal War is okay, but frequently boils down to "blast them to bits; then move out take the point". It's okay, but not amazing.

ITC Champion's Missions are pretty good. They're consistent, and progressive scoring rewards being aggressive a little more.

I think the *CONCEPT* of Maelstrom is cool. But the execution is terrible. It should be like, you only draw at the start, can discard any card which you cannot achieve, and then keep the stratagem that lets you redraw some cards during the game (with the same caveat for discarding). Something like the old Mission Cards in 2nd edition where each player could have their own objective to achieve. The drawing every turn is just silly.

That would be really cool IMHO.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Maelstrom is hot garbage. I ain't touching those with a 10 foot pole. You can't plan, which is the fundamental skill of a strategy game.

There's limited fore-planning, since objectives are new and random each turn, and there's limited counter-planning, since the enemy objectives are also unknown, and objectives pretty much only exist for a single player turn.

Eternal War is okay, but frequently boils down to "blast them to bits; then move out take the point". It's okay, but not amazing.

ITC Champion's Missions are pretty good. They're consistent, and progressive scoring rewards being aggressive a little more.

That's only for BRB eternal war missions, which indeed are bad (like all brb missions). CA2017 missions are already much better.


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Martel732 wrote:
The new missions are still trash, imo.

Do you have any info on those? I can't find any leaks.

Let me rephrase. As rumored at my flgs they are still trash.

Here is a BatRep for the first mission out of CA18 as well as a SoB preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBxfGTjIWoQ

Here is the article which contains the image of the 2nd mission from CA18:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/12/03/3rd-dec-chapter-approved-matched-playgw-homepage-post-1/

Tabletop Tactics also did a BatRep of GK vs Necrons which demonstrated the 2nd mission in action. Both seem very fun and much improved over the previous missions from the subpar BRB and the slightly better CA17

 mokoshkana wrote:
Here is a BatRep for the first mission out of CA18 as well as a SoB preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBxfGTjIWoQ

Here is the article which contains the image of the 2nd mission from CA18:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/12/03/3rd-dec-chapter-approved-matched-playgw-homepage-post-1/

Tabletop Tactics also did a BatRep of GK vs Necrons which demonstrated the 2nd mission in action. Both seem very fun and much improved over the previous missions from the subpar BRB and the slightly better CA17

I’ve watched a lot of their content and they don’t play the game in any sort of competitive way.

ITC isn’t perfect but at least it forces you to make important decisions every turn and rewards thoughtful list building.

But it doesn't. ITC rewards specific types of skews and stacking combos. It doesn't reward anything other than pure min/maxing to the Nth degree. In contrast, the GW CA missions reward a balanced approach because you aren't sure what mission you will get or what it might entail. With ITC you can prepare for almost all possible scenarios relating to the mission itself because they are so similar.

 Kommisar wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
Here is a BatRep for the first mission out of CA18 as well as a SoB preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBxfGTjIWoQ

Here is the article which contains the image of the 2nd mission from CA18:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/12/03/3rd-dec-chapter-approved-matched-playgw-homepage-post-1/

Tabletop Tactics also did a BatRep of GK vs Necrons which demonstrated the 2nd mission in action. Both seem very fun and much improved over the previous missions from the subpar BRB and the slightly better CA17

I’ve watched a lot of their content and they don’t play the game in any sort of competitive way.

Outright untrue. Lawrence has won multiple larger tournaments and is indeed known as a highly capable player, BBone places all right now and then. What they show on their Youtube battle reports isn't cutthroat competitive stuff, mainly because it isn't as entertaining to watch or make as their good ol' banter and experimentation with wacky stuff. Rule of Cool applies and makes for a much better viewing. This does not in any way decrease their ability to comment on the changes or the game. I recommend their Vox Cast videos for those more competetive thoughts, where they are more serious about it.

Wayniac wrote:
But it doesn't. ITC rewards specific types of skews and stacking combos. It doesn't reward anything other than pure min/maxing to the Nth degree. In contrast, the GW CA missions reward a balanced approach because you aren't sure what mission you will get or what it might entail. With ITC you can prepare for almost all possible scenarios relating to the mission itself because they are so similar.

Can't agree with this enough.


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 Sherrypie wrote:

 Kommisar wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
Here is a BatRep for the first mission out of CA18 as well as a SoB preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBxfGTjIWoQ

Here is the article which contains the image of the 2nd mission from CA18:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/12/03/3rd-dec-chapter-approved-matched-playgw-homepage-post-1/

Tabletop Tactics also did a BatRep of GK vs Necrons which demonstrated the 2nd mission in action. Both seem very fun and much improved over the previous missions from the subpar BRB and the slightly better CA17

I’ve watched a lot of their content and they don’t play the game in any sort of competitive way.

Outright untrue. Lawrence has won multiple larger tournaments and is indeed known as a highly capable player, BBone places all right now and then. What they show on their Youtube battle reports isn't cutthroat competitive stuff, mainly because it isn't as entertaining to watch or make as their good ol' banter and experimentation with wacky stuff. Rule of Cool applies and makes for a much better viewing. This does not in any way decrease their ability to comment on the changes or the game. I recommend their Vox Cast videos for those more competetive thoughts, where they are more serious about it.

This guy gets it!

So, a question for you all. Are you:

A) Going to stick to the RaW deployment for each mission (BRB's Autofirst included);

B) Going to use Alternate drop then Rolloff+Bonus for BRB and CA17 missions, new deployment for CA18;

C) Going to use Alternate drop then Rolloff+Bonus for all missions;

D) Use the new deployment rules for all missions?

I assume you can guess what one I do.

I'll probably stick to exclusively playing the CA18 missions, so I will be using that deployment style. I think there is more strategy in a full deploy/counter deploy, and I like the ability for the first deployer to elect to go 2nd in the event that a successful counter deploy limits a potential first turn.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
So, a question for you all. Are you:

A) Going to stick to the RaW deployment for each mission (BRB's Autofirst included);

B) Going to use Alternate drop then Rolloff+Bonus for BRB and CA17 missions, new deployment for CA18;

C) Going to use Alternate drop then Rolloff+Bonus for all missions;

D) Use the new deployment rules for all missions?

I assume you can guess what one I do.

Should be E: Whichever is specified by the mission you're selecting, since BRB have one, CA17 has another and now CA18 has a third. Oh, and ITC have their own if you play that. The deployment rules are tied to the mission, after all.

I hope that people embrace the CA18 missions. The tournaments will continue to use ITC because ITC is ingrained, but since I don't care to play in tournaments I'll probably push CA18 missions if I'm not doing some sort of narrative mission for fun.

That's option A

Wayniac wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The new missions are still trash, imo.

The irony here is supposedly the new missions are what the updated points costs in Chapter Approved are balanced against, not ITC missions.

The points are balanced against the idea of "how to shift what sells around". Not to concept of balance.

And as usual GW scenarios are lol bad for competive use. Fun enough if you don't care about competive game but if you want competive game burn them with fire until they stay down. Only way to be sure.

Yeah I really like the new Chapter approved missions (minus the null-zone single objective one), but stilli feel as though ITC is still the best format for competitive 40k. Yes it’s not clearly not the not the same as regular 40k, but that doesn’t seem like too much of a problem. In competive 40k, the name of the game is balance, and ITC does the absolute best job at balancing 40k. For example, in the mission that table top tactics plays during their battle report, an objective is randomly choosen to be worth more than all others each turn. That adds variety and fun to a casual game, but is an absolute disaster in competive 40k. While some might see this as a good way to add dynamic desicion making to a game of 40k, it will very likely w give one player a large advantage over the other. For a game were some can spend months preparing for a tournament, this is a very bad thing. Yes 40k is a game of dice, but in most cases players have some control over the chances they are given, where as here a critical mission point Is given pretty much at random. To bring up the table top tactics video again the first double point objective is placed in way which all but guarantees bones will get a point over beard for doing absolutely nothing. Sure maybe that changes over the course of the game, but we all know that there will be games where the double point odjective roll will favor one player massively over the other. Maelstrom missions suffer this to a much more extreme degree. The reason ITC has a lot of flaws naysayers bring up is because it’s designed to have next to no randomness in it, which means it’s more balanced than around 95% book mission.

Salt donkey wrote:
Yeah I really like the new Chapter approved missions (minus the null-zone single objective one), but stilli feel as though ITC is still the best format for competitive 40k. Yes it’s not clearly not the not the same as regular 40k, but that doesn’t seem like too much of a problem. In competive 40k, the name of the game is balance, and ITC does the absolute best job at balancing 40k. For example, in the mission that table top tactics plays during their battle report, an objectively is randomly choosen to be worth more than all others each turn. That adds variety and fun to a casual game, but is an absolute disaster in competive 40k. While some might sees this as a good way to add dynamic desicion making to a game of 40k, it will very likely will give one player a large advantage over the other. For a game were some can spend months preparing for a tournament, this is a very bad thing. Yes 40k is a game of dice, but in most cases players have some control over the chances they are giving, where as here a critical mission point Is given pretty much at random. To bring up the table top tactics video again the first double point objective is placed in way which gaurntees bones will get a point over beard for doing absolutely nothing. Sure maybe that changes over the course of the game, but we all know that there will be games where the double point odjective roll will favor one player massively over the other. Maelstrom missions suffer this to a much more extreme degree. The reason ITC has a lot of flaws naysayers bring up is because it’s designed to have next to no randomness in it, which means it’s more balanced than around 95% book mission.


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Salt donkey wrote:
Yeah I really like the new Chapter approved missions (minus the null-zone single objective one), but stilli feel as though ITC is the best format for competitive 40k. Yes it’s not clearly not the not the same as regular 40k, but that doesn’t seem like too much of a problem. In competive 40k, the name of the game is balance, and ITC does the absolute best job at balancing 40k. For example, in the mission that table top tactics plays during their battle report, an objectively is randomly choosen to be worth more than all others each turn. That adds variety and fun to a casual game, but is an absolute disaster in competive 40k. While some might sees this as a good way to add dynamic desicion making to a game of 40k, it will very likely will give one player a large advantage over the other. For a game were some can spend months preparing for a tournament, this is a very bad thing. Yes 40k is a game of dice, but in most cases players have some control over the chances they are giving, where as here a critical mission point Is given pretty much at random. To bring up the table top tactics video again the first double point objective is placed in way which gaurntees bones will get a point over beard for doing absolutely nothing. Sure maybe that changes over the course of the game, but we all know that there will be games where the double point odjective roll will favor one player massively over the other. Maelstrom missions suffer this to a much more extreme degree. The reason ITC has a lot of flaws naysayers bring up is because it’s designed to have next to no randomness in it, which means it’s more balanced than around 95% book mission.

I watched that battle report. The special objective is only worth 6 extra points during the entire game. This means that, if someone manages to hold the special objective at the end of every single battleround, they'll have only six points over their opponent. That's not a drastic unconquerable difference, especially if you infer that the same player will NOT have control over the special objective for what, probably 3 turns? And since its scored at the end of the Battle Round, rather than Turn, the other player has a chance to go deal with it that they otherwise wouldn't've had if they went second.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
That's option A

Missed the "each mission" part

Also again, I get the impression the reason for things like "special objective" is to encourage you to take a balanced army list rather than doubling down on some skew/soup with a single tactic that you try to achieve. It's like auticus always says: People seem to want to treat Warhammer (or most tabletop games) like Magic The Gathering where there is one killer combo you try to get off, and if you do you win.

That's why I like the GW missions. They encourage you to prepare for everything. ITC missions encourage you to play skew lists instead.

The mark of a good player shouldn't be bringing a min/maxed to the nines skew list with a major combo like it was a CCG. It should be the person who can bring a well balanced and tactically flexible "take all comers" force and win a variety of missions that may not play to their strengths. That's how it's always been in 40k, which is why you were always encouraged to bring well-balanced armies (and a big reason why Army Comp was a thing) to events rather than pure min/maxed ones; because there was a chance you might get into a mission that didn't play to your strength. ITC seems to have eliminated that as a balancing factor, which leads to the problems we see now. The fact you might get a mission that has a varying victory condition is PART of the balance.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


I watched that battle report. The special objective is only worth 6 extra points during the entire game. This means that, if someone manages to hold the special objective at the end of every single battleround, they'll have only six points over their opponent. That's not a drastic unconquerable difference, especially if you infer that the same player will NOT have control over the special objective for what, probably 3 turns? And since its scored at the end of the Battle Round, rather than Turn, the other player has a chance to go deal with it that they otherwise wouldn't've had if they went second.

I’m not arguing in blowout game it will matter, but in a closer game? For example say there are 3 special objectives placed in area I can reach, 2 in 1 an area that only you can reach, and 2 in areas that reached by both of us. In that situation you would have to get both constested objective to tie me on bonus points. This is not that unreasonable of situation, and would be mean I would have an inate 2 point advantage over you. While you claim that this isn’t much, when you get to high tables at top tournaments where players rarely get crushed, it makes a massive difference. Nobody wants to have their narrow win turn into a narrow loss because the mission. Screed them.

I love that people get upset about randomness in a game which is largely comprised of rolling dice. How is it losing to a random mission is worse than losing because you roll nothing but 1s and 2s

Wayniac wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
That's option A

Missed the "each mission" part

Also again, I get the impression the reason for things like "special objective" is to encourage you to take a balanced army list rather than doubling down on some skew/soup with a single tactic that you try to achieve. It's like auticus always says: People seem to want to treat Warhammer (or most tabletop games) like Magic The Gathering where there is one killer combo you try to get off, and if you do you win.

That's why I like the GW missions. They encourage you to prepare for everything. ITC missions encourage you to play skew lists instead.

The mark of a good player shouldn't be bringing a min/maxed to the nines skew list with a major combo like it was a CCG. It should be the person who can bring a well balanced and tactically flexible "take all comers" force and win a variety of missions that may not play to their strengths. That's how it's always been in 40k, which is why you were always encouraged to bring well-balanced armies (and a big reason why Army Comp was a thing) to events rather than pure min/maxed ones; because there was a chance you might get into a mission that didn't play to your strength. ITC seems to have eliminated that as a balancing factor, which leads to the problems we see now. The fact you might get a mission that has a varying victory condition is PART of the balance.

I’m struggle to see any evidence that backs up your claims. In what way does brings a “more balanced/take all come list” (whatever the heck that means) help you capture an objective that is in the middle of your opponents deployement zone? Or stop from drawing domination from The maelstrom deck while you’re opponent gets an easy supremacy? I think your saying that GW’s missions encourage armies that have; a variety of unit types, a large board presence, and ways to handle many different types of threats, better than ITC missions, but I’d argue the opposite. Look at some winning list of some the large ITC events. All them fulfill the criteria I mentioned to a T.

Really I think people like the book missions because they A) are more flavorful and B) give the player with the weaker list a much better chance to win. Both a great for causal games, but we are debating which format is best for competitive 40kz


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 mokoshkana wrote:
I love that people get upset about randomness in a game which is largely comprised of rolling dice. How is it losing to a random mission is worse than losing because you roll nothing but 1s and 2s

While this seems true in theory it doesn’t really Match reality, In the last ITC game I played from friend made around 20 invulnerable saves with swarmlord in row (any fails would have killed it) yet what won him the game was me forgetting he had rippers to steal my objective last minute.

This is the most Extreme experience with luck I’ve had in about 10 games, yet it was playing toward objectives that determined the game not the dice rolls. As another example on the other side of pendulum one of the first games I played in 8th had me win because I drew far better maelstrom cards than him. He outplayed me in all stages of the game, yet I won because fate was on my side.

To put my argument simply, luck in killing and saving models matters a great deal less than luck in the mission.

Look at winning lists of GW's own tournaments, that don't use ITC missions. You will see vastly different criteria and lists that are doing well. That's the problem in a nutshell: ITC changes the dynamics of how you build armies completely, and IMHO does so to such an extent that it's essentially a different game using the same rules, a fork of the game if you will. The ITC missions fundamentally change the nature of the game.

Salt donkey wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:
I love that people get upset about randomness in a game which is largely comprised of rolling dice. How is it losing to a random mission is worse than losing because you roll nothing but 1s and 2s

While this seems true in theory it doesn’t really Match reality, In the last ITC game I played from friend made around 20 invulnerable saves with swarmlord in row (any fails would have killed it) yet what won him the game was me forgetting he had rippers to steal my objective last minute.

This is the most Extreme experience with luck I’ve had in about 10 games, yet it was playing toward objectives that determined the game not the dice rolls. As another example on the other side of pendulum one of the first games I played in 8th had me win because I drew far better maelstrom cards than him. He outplayed me in all stages of the game, yet I won because fate was on my side.

To put my argument simply, luck in killing and saving models matters a great deal less than luck in the mission.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. It is irrelevant.

tneva82 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
The new missions are still trash, imo.

The irony here is supposedly the new missions are what the updated points costs in Chapter Approved are balanced against, not ITC missions.

The points are balanced against the idea of "how to shift what sells around". Not to concept of balance.

And as usual GW scenarios are lol bad for competive use. Fun enough if you don't care about competive game but if you want competive game burn them with fire until they stay down. Only way to be sure.

Oh enough with this conspiracy nonsense.

Most models are either always has been bad, or always has been good.
If GW was shifting points to make sells, what is good and what is bad would change, and often. but it doesn't, at all.

The same things that were great from the day they dropped were always at the very least OK, and usually good or better, and many models were released with bad rules, and never got better.

Wayniac wrote:
Look at winning lists of GW's own tournaments, that don't use ITC missions. You will see vastly different criteria and lists that are doing well. That's the problem in a nutshell: ITC changes the dynamics of how you build armies completely, and IMHO does so to such an extent that it's essentially a different game using the same rules, a fork of the game if you will. The ITC missions fundamentally change the nature of the game.

I could debate that to a degree, but you are right that ITC does change how armies are made.
Still why exactly is this a bad thing? People keep claiming that ITC causes more skewed lists to be played, but the evidence shows the exact opposite.

ITC provides downsides to guardsmen. GW has yet to do this. Game, set match.

It's easier to balance a faction with the objective that it is able to do decently well in a specific set of mission rather than against all other factions.
We should be giving feedback on this new set of missions rather than dismissing them (without even knowing all of them afaik) because "lolz GW missions".
Some factions will do well in some missions and poorer in others and you can't tailor your list to a set of objective in advance, so you won't see massive one trick ponies. It's fine really.
If you're annoyed that an objective in a mission can be worth one more point because a die roll said so, maybe you can have a part of your army dedicated to steal these, I dunno. You just have to put more troops in range after all (provided that the mission place objectives sensibly though).

Wayniac wrote:
Look at winning lists of GW's own tournaments, that don't use ITC missions. You will see vastly different criteria and lists that are doing well. That's the problem in a nutshell: ITC changes the dynamics of how you build armies completely, and IMHO does so to such an extent that it's essentially a different game using the same rules, a fork of the game if you will.The ITC missions fundamentally change the nature of the game.

This is a considerable overstatement.

I'll counter. ITC changes nothing about the game. It changes how you make decisions during play.

It's not like you can't create the same armies in both ITC and "vanilla". A Leman Russ is still a Leman Russ. A lascannon still a lascannon.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Look at winning lists of GW's own tournaments, that don't use ITC missions. You will see vastly different criteria and lists that are doing well. That's the problem in a nutshell: ITC changes the dynamics of how you build armies completely, and IMHO does so to such an extent that it's essentially a different game using the same rules, a fork of the game if you will.The ITC missions fundamentally change the nature of the game.

This is a considerable overstatement.

I'll counter. ITC changes nothing about the game. It changes how you make decisions during play.

It's not like you can't create the same armies in both ITC and "vanilla".

I disagree.

Having only played the book missions, and a few CA17 missions, the CA18 look super fun.

I started looking into ITC to see if I could get in on local tournies...people say that tracking CP for each faction is too much bookkeeping, but the ITC missions are a crazy amount of bookkeeping.

I'm very visually impaired, and I have a blast with the core missions (not the tactical objective ones though), and the ITC missions seem like the same basic objective mission over and over. The Secondaries and general sameness of mission mean that some lists, while playable and can win book missions, just don't work for ITC.

Why should I be forced to use a large groups House Rules when I can play the mission that GW gives and have a great time? Mixing the BRB! CA17 and CA18 missions and randomly picking one per round, ahead of time, on the day of the tournament means people can't tailor, they have to adapt to the mission at play, like everyone else.

 Blndmage wrote:


I disagree.

Having only played the book missions, and a few CA17 missions, the CA18 look super fun.

I started looking into ITC to see if I could get in on local tournies...people say that tracking CP for each faction is too much bookkeeping, but the ITC missions are a crazy amount of bookkeeping.

I'm very visually impaired, and I have a blast with the core missions (not the tactical objective ones though), and the ITC missions seem like the same basic objective mission over and over. The Secondaries and general sameness of mission mean that some lists, while playable and can win book missions, just don't work for ITC.

Why should I be forced to use a large groups House Rules when I can play the mission that GW gives and have a great time? Mixing the BRB! CA17 and CA18 missions and randomly picking one per round, ahead of time, on the day of the tournament means people can't tailor, they have to adapt to the mission at play, like everyone else.

To be clear I'm not advocating against CA 2018 missions. I haven't been able to read them all in person yet, but I like what I saw so far.

ITC secondaries get a little easier as you learn. A well formatted piece of paper helps.

I think there's room for all the formats.