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 Marmatag wrote:
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.

Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.

Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.

There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.

"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."

I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.

Buuuuutttt if your army is built with the understanding that the no-invulnerable-save mission is a possibility, then you're basically in the same position as understanding that failing a charge from deepstrike is also a possibility, and planning to mitigate/circumvent that.

The cards missions are, indeed, oftentimes frustratingly random, I'm not exactly talking about those. I don't think GW uses those in their tournaments either.

The new maelstrom missions still are a bit too random, but are much much better already.

You don't play with the full deck, there is a deck building phase before the game starts, so you can avoid drawing the objective deep in the other player's deploy area.

Martel732 wrote:



The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.

This thread is littered with comments like that - all from Americans so far as I can make out. I think part of the issue is that the US tournament scene never tried maelstrom in any serious way and pretty much dismissed them out of hand.

The ETC uses maelstrom in its missions. Those are some serious competitive tournaments and players using those missions, maybe they worked out something that you have not.

 Crimson wrote:
Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.

If GW could come up with halfway balanced missions that don't completely screw over one faction or another because reasons, big tournaments would use them. ITC and Nova have to come up with their own house rules and missions because GW gives us a clusterfeth made for nothing but beer and pretzels casual play.

 Toofast wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.

If GW could come up with halfway balanced missions that don't completely screw over one faction or another because reasons, big tournaments would use them. ITC and Nova have to come up with their own house rules and missions because GW gives us a clusterfeth made for nothing but beer and pretzels casual play.

Pretty much all the big tournaments in the UK do use them. Mostly with the ETC rules pack (play an EW and MW mission simultaneously).

Kdash wrote:


I agree. GW doesn't generally do "good" tables at WHW or their events. Sure, they are adequate and some tables are great, but most are "alright" or "lacking". This is something they need to address, but, they are also pretty limited on what they can do due to the terrain kits they make and sell. Maybe we'll eventually see them sell a "building" kit or something similar, then we'll start to see more LoS blocking on their tables, but until then we have to rely on statues (some of which are actually big enough to hide a Helverin or Dreadnough) or stacks of Crates.

Last time I was there I would say there was good terrain on 3/5 tables and OK terrain on the other two.

Not as much LOS blocking as at the LGT but I would happily go back to WHW and you would need to pay me to even consider going to the LGT.

In any even the whole LOS block thing is far too binary, it is like that is the only way that terrain can work in the minds of some players. There are better rules in CA that scale in a much less binary manner, let us see if anyone uses them. I can say that if WHW uses them that all 5 of my tables would have had good functional terrain on that last visit.

 mokoshkana wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
Randomization does the exact opposite. That's why a noob can beat a pro player in Hearthstone but would lose 100 out of 100 games to a pro player in MtG. Randomization narrows the gap between a good player and bad player. That's why casual games have more random aspects and more competitive games tend to have less.

You do realize that MtG is randomized as well, right?

Card draw order is random. Few if any cards have random effects. Card draw is equivalent to dice rolling in 40k. Random effects are the equivalent of maelstrom cards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:



The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.

This thread is littered with comments like that - all from Americans so far as I can make out. I think part of the issue is that the US tournament scene never tried maelstrom in any serious way and pretty much dismissed them out of hand.

The ETC uses maelstrom in its missions. Those are some serious competitive tournaments and players using those missions, maybe they worked out something that you have not.

I did try maelstrom. I played through every maelstrom mission a couple times with 2 different factions. Myself and everyone else in my group came to the conclusion that we would be better off flipping a coin to see who won and heading to the pub for a pint because whoever draws the cards that are easier to achieve wins nearly every game. There is no skill involved. It's like your central command is headed by an 8 year old with ADHD that can't make up his mind about what your army should be doing.

HQ - "Go over here!" "Now go over there!" "Now kill their flyer!"
Me - "But sir, they don't have any flyers..."

It's much too gamey and nothing like actual combat. It doesn't work well for narrative gaming or competitive gaming, at least in my opinion and the opinion of everyone I ever played the missions with.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.

Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.

Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.

There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.

"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."

I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.

Buuuuutttt if your army is built with the understanding that the no-invulnerable-save mission is a possibility, then you're basically in the same position as understanding that failing a charge from deepstrike is also a possibility, and planning to mitigate/circumvent that.

The cards missions are, indeed, oftentimes frustratingly random, I'm not exactly talking about those. I don't think GW uses those in their tournaments either.

This is not even remotely true. To put it simply: you are wrong. Deep strike charge is a choice i am making. I have no input whatsoever in what mission is chosen. You can try to design a list around all of the different missions you might face, but that is not strategy, and it's still blind, dumb luck if you encounter it or not. Hopefully you can understand the difference between tactics and luck. Who knows.

GW uses maelstrom cards in their games. So what you think doesn't really matter when it's factually incorrect lol.

 Toofast wrote:

 mokoshkana wrote:

 Toofast wrote:
Randomization does the exact opposite. That's why a noob can beat a pro player in Hearthstone but would lose 100 out of 100 games to a pro player in MtG. Randomization narrows the gap between a good player and bad player. That's why casual games have more random aspects and more competitive games tend to have less.

You do realize that MtG is randomized as well, right?

Card draw order is random. Few if any cards have random effects. Card draw is equivalent to dice rolling in 40k. Random effects are the equivalent of maelstrom cards.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

happy_inquisitor wrote:

Martel732 wrote:



The laws of large numbers of dice says that's wrong, actually. If you want to play with the cards, fine. But I won't be. Tournaments shouldn't use them either.

This thread is littered with comments like that - all from Americans so far as I can make out. I think part of the issue is that the US tournament scene never tried maelstrom in any serious way and pretty much dismissed them out of hand.

The ETC uses maelstrom in its missions. Those are some serious competitive tournaments and players using those missions, maybe they worked out something that you have not.

I did try maelstrom. I played through every maelstrom mission a couple times with 2 different factions. Myself and everyone else in my group came to the conclusion that we would be better off flipping a coin to see who won and heading to the pub for a pint because whoever draws the cards that are easier to achieve wins nearly every game. There is no skill involved. It's like your central command is headed by an 8 year old with ADHD that can't make up his mind about what your army should be doing.

HQ - "Go over here!" "Now go over there!" "Now kill their flyer!"
Me - "But sir, they don't have any flyers..."

It's much too gamey and nothing like actual combat. It doesn't work well for narrative gaming or competitive gaming, at least in my opinion and the opinion of everyone I ever played the missions with.

As was pointed out a few posts back, the new CA Maelstrom missions allow you to remove 6 cards from your deck at the start of the game. It’s not much, but, it will make a difference.

Pair that with the general event house rule of “if you couldn’t score the card at the start of the game then you can discard and re-draw” then the whole “But they have no flyers” argument is null and void. There are also stratagems inside most of the Maelstrom missions that allow you to re-draw cards.

Sure, Maelstrom is not perfect, and I personally think more needs to be done in regards to making it more towards “pre event”/”pre casual game” deck building, more akin to how AoS Champions works – x number of 1 type of card, x number of type 2, x-y number of everything else. Maybe then, once there is a bit more “control” over the game, then we can see it being more competitive. Right now, in ETC, all it does is either make you happy or seriously frustrate you.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Toofast wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.

If GW could come up with halfway balanced missions that don't completely screw over one faction or another because reasons, big tournaments would use them. ITC and Nova have to come up with their own house rules and missions because GW gives us a clusterfeth made for nothing but beer and pretzels casual play.

General question for everyone involved in this thread on both sides of the argument.

We have 6 new EW missions in CA18. Which armies do each of the missions “screw over” or “greatly favour” and why?

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.

Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.

Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.

There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.

"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."

I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.

Buuuuutttt if your army is built with the understanding that the no-invulnerable-save mission is a possibility, then you're basically in the same position as understanding that failing a charge from deepstrike is also a possibility, and planning to mitigate/circumvent that.

The cards missions are, indeed, oftentimes frustratingly random, I'm not exactly talking about those. I don't think GW uses those in their tournaments either.

This is not even remotely true. To put it simply: you are wrong. Deep strike charge is a choice i am making. I have no input whatsoever in what mission is chosen. You can try to design a list around all of the different missions you might face, but that is not strategy, and it's still blind, dumb luck if you encounter it or not. Hopefully you can understand the difference between tactics and luck. Who knows.

GW uses maelstrom cards in their games. So what you think doesn't really matter when it's factually incorrect lol.

It is strategy, in the actual meaning of the term. If you aren't sure what the mission will be, but know that it will be one of X known missions (say, from CA18 for an example), you will indeed take that into consideration in your list building if you want to do well. The ITC set is more akin to tactics in that regard, as you already know the situation your forces are going into (since the missions are pretty close in their parameters). Luck has a say in what the mission will be, but being prepared for it with a generally capable allrounder list is part of your strategic skill as a player. I personally find this a lot more interesting and a better measure for competitive wargaming than basically repeating the same scenario over and over again. Fortune favours the prepared, as the saying goes.

 Toofast wrote:

 BoomWolf wrote:

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.

How about shining spears, which went from being the worst unit in the entire Eldar/Dark Eldar arsenal to one of the best units in the entire game? Or jetbikes that went from almost never played, to 20-30 in every army, back to never played.

Two adecdotal cases, out of how many?

Because I can throw so many counter-ancedotes.
Tau jets and riptide came out the same time, at no point the riptide wasnt good, at no point the jets were worth a second look.
Oblits and muties? one always good, the other always bad. possessed-were never good princes were never not good, rubrics got a brand new (amazing) kit at 7th when you could expect them to be much better if the "rules for sells" conspiracy was true, but they kept they sucky rules they had for SO long, and only now getting a minor discount to be semi-viable.
Necrons? the wraiths and destroyers were always their top shelf. monoliths? sucking forever.
Heck, how about the brand new line of primaris who take front and center? speaking of marines, has their AA tanks EVER seen competitive play? how about land raiders and terminators only now getting sorta-viable after HOW long? (and only sorta, not really.)

Sure, SOME things swing from good to bad, but that's just a logical effect of balancing attempts that don't go well-if you overcompensate, a good thing turns bad and vice versa. and these are the exception, not the norm.

But in the COMMON case, most things gets undercompensations. heck, base marines/CSM are unchanged for several editions despite sucking for a long time, and these are supposed to be the main line units of the "main factions"

Both cases are common, a lot of models went from good to bad and viceversa, and other models stood were they were.

There is no general rule, all cases are equally represented.

There is no commercial conspiracy behind those models (99% of times), balancing follows its own indipendent process.

Spoletta wrote:
Both cases are common, a lot of models went from good to bad and viceversa, and other models stood were they were.

There is no general rule, all cases are equally represented.

There is no commercial conspiracy behind those models (99% of times), balancing follows its own indipendent process.

I think the process is they all get really drunk, put blindfolds on, then throw darts at a giant wall with pictures of the models on them to determine what gets buffed and what gets nerfed.

 Toofast wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Both cases are common, a lot of models went from good to bad and viceversa, and other models stood were they were.

There is no general rule, all cases are equally represented.

There is no commercial conspiracy behind those models (99% of times), balancing follows its own indipendent process.

I think the process is they all get really drunk, put blindfolds on, then throw darts at a giant wall with pictures of the models on them to determine what gets buffed and what gets nerfed.

I think it works like that for 95% of the units. Something like 5% of them it's about grudges.

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.

Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.

Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.

There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.

"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."

I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.

Buuuuutttt if your army is built with the understanding that the no-invulnerable-save mission is a possibility, then you're basically in the same position as understanding that failing a charge from deepstrike is also a possibility, and planning to mitigate/circumvent that.

The cards missions are, indeed, oftentimes frustratingly random, I'm not exactly talking about those. I don't think GW uses those in their tournaments either.

This is not even remotely true. To put it simply: you are wrong. Deep strike charge is a choice i am making. I have no input whatsoever in what mission is chosen. You can try to design a list around all of the different missions you might face, but that is not strategy, and it's still blind, dumb luck if you encounter it or not. Hopefully you can understand the difference between tactics and luck. Who knows.

GW uses maelstrom cards in their games. So what you think doesn't really matter when it's factually incorrect lol.

It is strategy, in the actual meaning of the term. If you aren't sure what the mission will be, but know that it will be one of X known missions (say, from CA18 for an example), you will indeed take that into consideration in your list building if you want to do well. The ITC set is more akin to tactics in that regard, as you already know the situation your forces are going into (since the missions are pretty close in their parameters). Luck has a say in what the mission will be, but being prepared for it with a generally capable allrounder list is part of your strategic skill as a player. I personally find this a lot more interesting and a better measure for competitive wargaming than basically repeating the same scenario over and over again. Fortune favours the prepared, as the saying goes.

Explain to me the strategy behind rock-paper-scissors. I'll wait.

Marm there is actually a stratagy for winning at RPS. Data has shown rock is like 35% of thrown choices. Paper is like 31%. So paper is king LOL.

 Toofast wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
Both cases are common, a lot of models went from good to bad and viceversa, and other models stood were they were.

There is no general rule, all cases are equally represented.

There is no commercial conspiracy behind those models (99% of times), balancing follows its own indipendent process.

I think the process is they all get really drunk, put blindfolds on, then throw darts at a giant wall with pictures of the models on them to determine what gets buffed and what gets nerfed.

They actually said at a Q&A panel recently that they do, in fact, have a formula for stats it's not random. Whether we believe that is another story...

 Xenomancers wrote:
Marm there is actually a stratagy for winning at RPS. Data has shown rock is like 35% of thrown choices. Paper is like 31%. So paper is king LOL.

OMG! Nerf the paper!

 Marmatag wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would play with a computer rolling the dice / generating outcomes for both players. There is an acceptable level of randomness. For instance, if we played purely with expected value, deep strike charge would actually be impossible. There is a difference between blind luck and a calculated risk.

Drawing a maelstrom card, or getting a lucky eternal war based mission, has 0 input from either player.

Meanwhile, trying for a deep strike charge is random, yes, but it's also a choice i'm making - a calculated risk.

There is a huge gulf between these two kinds of random.

"I failed my charges" is entirely different from "We played the no invulnerable save mission, so naturally i lost," or, "He drew cards to control his side of the map and I drew stuff to make him fail morale checks, and take his objectives which had 100 guardsmen on it."

I like mission variety. The secondaries add a lot of this. GW forces you to take fixed secondaries (first strike, slay the warlord). Seems kind of silly really.

Buuuuutttt if your army is built with the understanding that the no-invulnerable-save mission is a possibility, then you're basically in the same position as understanding that failing a charge from deepstrike is also a possibility, and planning to mitigate/circumvent that.

The cards missions are, indeed, oftentimes frustratingly random, I'm not exactly talking about those. I don't think GW uses those in their tournaments either.

This is not even remotely true. To put it simply: you are wrong. Deep strike charge is a choice i am making. I have no input whatsoever in what mission is chosen. You can try to design a list around all of the different missions you might face, but that is not strategy, and it's still blind, dumb luck if you encounter it or not. Hopefully you can understand the difference between tactics and luck. Who knows.

GW uses maelstrom cards in their games. So what you think doesn't really matter when it's factually incorrect lol.

It is strategy, in the actual meaning of the term. If you aren't sure what the mission will be, but know that it will be one of X known missions (say, from CA18 for an example), you will indeed take that into consideration in your list building if you want to do well. The ITC set is more akin to tactics in that regard, as you already know the situation your forces are going into (since the missions are pretty close in their parameters). Luck has a say in what the mission will be, but being prepared for it with a generally capable allrounder list is part of your strategic skill as a player. I personally find this a lot more interesting and a better measure for competitive wargaming than basically repeating the same scenario over and over again. Fortune favours the prepared, as the saying goes.

Explain to me the strategy behind rock-paper-scissors. I'll wait.

Depends on the setting, really. If you can play enough games of RPS with someone, you can gather enough data on how they choose their picks. Almost everyone has a pattern, even if a weak and chaotic one, and people have built AIs that take notes, adapt and start beating them. So if you go in blind and refuse to adapt, in an infinite game you will lose to the machine. Just going by the averages would probably land you an over 50 % win ratio. But this is a digression and you know it.

The relevant point here is that in a wargame like this it is indeed very important for many folks to keep the variability after listbuilding quite high so that one has to adapt to the missions on the fly, rather than adapt the missions to their force as seems to be the case with ITC. Having a varied bunch of missions that might favour certain unit types, as long as that set is well-known beforehand, is very different from dumb luck. If you say "I might as well give up" when the mission is chosen, that is your fault for having built a list that is too skewed. This is good, especially when it is combined with progressive scoring and tabling being a non-factor. The set of missions that are possible is a limiter one has to live with and is a strategic consideration. Go heavy on some unit types, have some of all? That's a call you have to make instead of going for the "solved" list that does the best under one set of conditions. Also, as we very well know, we don't live in the land of ad infinitum and any set of tournament missions is going to be relatively small, say, half a dozen maybe. If you can hammer out a good list for one, you can do that for the others too and create a combined force that does well in all. Sure, it looks a bit different from the optimized killing machine that is the core of ITC. I find that pleasing, personally.

 Toofast wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.

If GW could come up with halfway balanced missions that don't completely screw over one faction or another because reasons, big tournaments would use them. ITC and Nova have to come up with their own house rules and missions because GW gives us a clusterfeth made for nothing but beer and pretzels casual play.

Nonsense. ITC is far more imbalanced than GW missions. It favours a very limited type of list, so that's naturally all we see. It's clear that players can tolerate, even champion, imbalanced missions as long as they're consistently imbalanced in their favour - hence ITC. Hopefully someday we'll abandon that house rules favouritism bs.

Lemondish wrote:

 Toofast wrote:

 Crimson wrote:
Frankly, I think big tournaments should use GW missions, completely irrespective of how good or bad they are. GW relies on tournament results for balancing, but if tournaments are not even using the actual 40K rules that feths up the data.

If GW could come up with halfway balanced missions that don't completely screw over one faction or another because reasons, big tournaments would use them. ITC and Nova have to come up with their own house rules and missions because GW gives us a clusterfeth made for nothing but beer and pretzels casual play.

Nonsense. ITC is far more imbalanced than GW missions. It favours a very limited type of list, so that's naturally all we see. It's clear that players can tolerate, even champion, imbalanced missions as long as they're consistently imbalanced in their favour - hence ITC. Hopefully someday we'll abandon that house rules favouritism bs.

Now here's the rub. ITC is no more imbalanced, but it's less obvious and you can game it. Ergo, it is good. GW missions are more flavorful so yes, you might have the occasional mission where your army is at a disadvantage and some where you are at an advantage, but somehow this is bad.

Again, the GW missions are the way they are BY DESIGN. That mission imbalance is INTENTIONAL to try and encourage ("force" is too strong a word but would also be apt) a well-rounded army rather than a 100% min/maxed skew where the only real skill is making sure your list is the best it can be. That has always been the case at Warhammer tournaments. You can't guarantee which mission you'll get so you have to bring a force that can cope with getting "that" mission where you get a handicap. That's the entire fething point of them. And as expected the response is to whine how it's imbalanced and houserule that design goal away instead of seeing the reason why and adapting to it. That's why ITC is the way it is; they're removing an intentional part of balancing the game, and then crying that the game isn't balanced as well as they'd like. No gak it's not balanced, you're taking away an intended balancing mechanic because you don't like that it's an intended balancing mechanic, and then have the balls to say that your Frankenstein version of the game isn't balanced.

I completely understand how some people feel random mission types show true skill, but in reality they don't.

Randomness takes away from skill, no matter how you feel about it. It improves the chance of some scrub beating a top teir player by getting everything in his favor.



ITC missions are far more true to player skill. Are they boring? Yes sometimes. Are they fair? Yes, basically all the time.

In a highly competitive scene (major tournaments) you don't want random. Randomness is fine for casual play and for fast paced games, that don't last for more than 30min. It doesn't cut it for 40k.


If you don't enjoy playing ITC missions then you don't have to, but don't expect tournaments to drop em when they are currently the most balanced missions available.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
I completely understand how some people feel random mission types show true skill, but in reality they don't.

Randomness takes away from skill, no matter how you feel about it. It improves the chance of some scrub beating a top teir player by getting everything in his favor.

Surely that should mean that this "top tier player" has even more of a chance to show their skill by beating the opponent who has the game in their favour through their own skill and tactical ability?

It is really the randomness in itself which requires more skill, it is the variety of missions. If different missions require different strengths from the army, it forces you to build more balanced list and vary your tactics accordingly.

If you can fool yourself into thinking skill will trump bad luck I'd ask why you aren't making millions at the casino right now.


If someone draws bad maelstrom cards, and the opponent draws good ones, he will not win, no matter how good he is.

There's no such thing as bad luck. Only the lack of skill needed to adapt to changing scenarios.

So why cant you adapt to ITC missions then?

Why should I have to? You said yourself above the missions are boring. Why should I spend my time playing a mission that's boring after the time, effort and money I put into making the army? Why shouldn't the ITC adapt instead and make their missions fun?

 Eihnlazer wrote:
So why cant you adapt to ITC missions then?

House rules should adapt to the main rules, not the other way around. There's no real reason why ITC has to deviate so much from base 40k now. They don't deviate in AOS, so why 40k?

 Eihnlazer wrote:
If you can fool yourself into thinking skill will trump bad luck I'd ask why you aren't making millions at the casino right now.


If someone draws bad maelstrom cards, and the opponent draws good ones, he will not win, no matter how good he is.

Question.

What luck is involved in regards to the CA18 Eternal War missions?

No-one is really advocating the Maelstrom become the "standard", rather, that Eternal War becomes to standard whereas Maelstrom still needs work in regards to "competitive" play.