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As usual, CA19 contains a new set of missions, or actually a "new" one since it is a collection of 6 missions taken from revised CA17 and CA18 with one new.

You can see them here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8E-oNoe44k

The result is as usual a big step in the right direction with eternal war missions, and i'm not going into the detail of them. I will just point out the biggest highlights:

- Acceptable casualties is still there in all missions (you don't lose on getting tabled)
- All objectives are scored at the start of your next turn
- Deployment rules have been updated again. You now roll off to decide who is attackerand who is defender. The defender can SELECT THE DEPLOYMENT TYPE and select the deployment zone. The attacker then deploys the full army and the defender counter deploys. The attacker goes first and can be seized, or can decide to go second but cannot seize. Since there are no longer missions where you score at the end of the round, going second will not give you an advantage on scoring. These deployment rules were implemented to give an overwhelming positioning advantage to the player going second. Sounds fair, but i will have to try it.
- The often maligned missions that gave advantages to some play styles, like no invul saves, only troops can score or fly models have ultra objective secured, have been removed. The only one left is four pillars, where characters have ultra objective secured.

The biggest change this year though, was to the maelstrom missions, that are trying to make the jump from semi-serious matched play missions not even used in the official GW events, to actual competitive missions. GW probably took a page from the ITC concept of selecting secondaries.

We have as usual 6 different missions with different quirks to them, but all use the same new core concept of tactical objectives.

The new rules are as follows:

- Same deployment rules as eternal war.
- Before the start of the game, after seeing the table and the opponent roster, you select 18 cards from your mission deck. That will be your deck for this match. All cards must have unique names.
- Before the start of the game you draw 5 cards and can call mulligan to 4 (i.e. discard all and draw 4 for non MtG players)
- At the start of your turn you take 3 cards from your hand, and position them on the table. One can be placed face down, hidden from your opponent. Those are your objectives for the round, you cannot score the ones left in your hand. Your opponent will know 2 of your objectives and 1 will be hidden. You then draw again to 5 cards.
- At the end of the morale phase you can discard any objective card played.
- At the end of the turn you check the objectives scored. You cannot refuse to score an objective. The scored objectives are discarded.
- At no point of the game you can have more than 3 objectives in play or more than one objective face down.
- There are new stratagems : 2CP Discard one or 2 cards from your hand and draw that many - 1 CP Look at the top cards of your deck. You can put them on the top or the bottom of your deck in any order (Scry 3 for MtG fans) - 2CP Take 3 objective cards from your discarded pile and shuffle them in your deck.


What this all means is that by selecting 18 cards from 36, all possible cases of "impossible objectives" or "too difficult objectives" are gone. Note that you still don't know where the objectives are or what the deploy zone you will have. On the other hand when positioning objectives you will know which ones are in your deck.

You then have a second filtering of which cards from your hand you want to play. After that you have even more chances to refine them.

With these rules, maelstrom of war games are no longer random. You have sufficient control over the objectives selected, that you are bordering the ITC secondary selection concept. It is now planning, not luck.

IMHO, with these new rules, the maelstrom is now officially part of the competitive package.

They represent the joining point of the CA18 eternal war package concept of forcing the player to adapt to multiple possibile conditions, while at the same time taking the ITC concept of selecting your own secondaries, so that in any condition of match up you can still forge a way to victory.

Literally effin' fantastic. Cant wait to give them a whirl.

Awesome

My Gaming community dropped out of playing Maelstrom in favor of ITC, but this just might bring it back.

I would love to give some games a try.

The fixes to maelstrom are fantastic.

I liked Maelstrom the way it was, but the changes sound interesting, too. Seeing how it took ages to choose the few cards you don't want to have, deciding for the 18(!) you want to have might take a while Or just some practicing. I always liked Maelstrom more than eternal war, this
might make them interesting for our tournaments where we usually concentrated on eternal war to keep it simple.

Those maelstrom changes... actually seem fun. Your choosing objectives that are tailored to your army style but are also required to have some stake in board control.

Looking at the default maelstrom objectives, there are 12 secure objectives, 6 defend, 6 board control (BEL, Supremacy etc.,), 8 Kill objectives, and 4 misc objectives.

So even if your army wanted to go full out kill, they'd have to choose 10 other objectives. I want to see where this goes.
Still not a fan of random VP for certain cards though, make them worth a set number.

My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever

That was my same concern when reading it.

Well in non tournament games you can tailor at home. And events could just put up a roll that you pick a deck at the start of game 1 and have to use it till the end of the event.

I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.

Karol wrote:


I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.

True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.

The markers are placed before you know which deployment you will use and on which side you will be.

You can only have them a bit more in the center or by the sides.

I really enjoyed the CA18 missions so I'm eager to give these a try. I'm up for anything but the ITC missions.

I would expect tournaments to make you pick the 18 maelstrom cards before the tournament purely because there is no time to do it every game.
Other then that I'm eager to try it out.

The maelstrom card picking idea is from a White Dwarf earlier this year. Doesn't have to add time to the game, just pre-select before you play stuff that will almost always be applicable for your army. Maelstrom cards don't depend as much on your opponent as ITC secondaries as you have options for generic kill anything objectives. Goonhammer did a good article on picking your cards back when the WD came out.

Karol wrote:
Well in non tournament games you can tailor at home. And events could just put up a roll that you pick a deck at the start of game 1 and have to use it till the end of the event.

I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.

Not having seen the missions but i think you're confusing the eternal war & maelstrom halves - eternal war objectives are scored at the start of the turn, maelstrom objectives are the end of the player turn. So unless the mission has both sets of objectives I imagine the 2 are mutually exclusive.

Snugiraffe 783005 10648631 wrote:
True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.

I don't disagree, I think it does add a lot of booking though, and favours armies with flexible new missions, with a lot of mobility. A RG or IH army could be on top of 3-4 objectives turn 1. If it gets to score first, it creates a huge edge vs any other army good or bad. At the same time if your opponent just kills you turn 2, you then have to wait for him to do the last 4 turns playing more or less solitaire. And it is not that it is bad, it is just boring, when opponent try to get max points.

Well am sure people will invent some ways to smooth it out. Plus it sucks for those that don't have the deck of cards, and rolled them objectives out of their book.

 Ordana wrote:
I would expect tournaments to make you pick the 18 maelstrom cards before the tournament purely because there is no time to do it every game.
Other then that I'm eager to try it out.

I don't think it would take significantly longer than choosing secondaries in ITC.

You want them to be game-specific, so I call pull out my "Cast/Deny" objective from my deck when playing Tau, but put it back in when playing Thousand Sons.

Snugiraffe wrote:

Karol wrote:


I kind of a worry though, how this is suppose to work for some faction. Scoring at the begining of the turn, and full control of the deck, makes it a really bad time for armies that can't swarm objectives or clear them in a single turn. Because there is a risk that if a model is left standing, it may score twice.

True, but depending on the faction, your own deck might not be too concerned with objectives. using the new Night Lords TacObs from Faith&Fury, for example, CSM could put together a deck that included 14 kill objectives. Now, that's not likely to be too sensible as some of the Kill X objectives might refer to enemies that aren't there (kill TITANIC was one, wasn't it?). But the whole thing really offers rewards for building an army around a strategy theme. In which case scoring an objective twice because you're refusing to let the enemy take it off you fits the bill, really. Hell, you could even score the same objective three times.
Does anybody know whether there's any rules on who gets to place which objective marker? I suppose they would have to be dealt out randomly. If you know you'll be placing marker 3 on the board, then any cards concerning marker 3 would be auto-includes in your maelstrom deck. That and the strat for returning discarded cards to your draw pile would be a dream for castling armies.

faction specific objective cards are usually not allowed at tournaments, only the basic set so that's not really a consideration.

I don't play at tournament, so I wouldn't know. We use the factions one. But for tournaments it would mean a lot more balanced, so that is veyr nice.

I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11

Anyway, this is a welcome change

tneva82 wrote:
My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever

How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?

Thanks @OP for the summary. Looking forward to try it out.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
My issue with new mael is that it's going to take more time. Now every game tailor deck. Gw keeps slowing down already slowest edition ever

How is it the slowest edition ever when "games are over by turn 3"?

because it takes 2.5 hours to get to turn 3?

Karol wrote:
I don't disagree, I think it does add a lot of booking though, and favours armies with flexible new missions, with a lot of mobility. A RG or IH army could be on top of 3-4 objectives turn 1. If it gets to score first, it creates a huge edge vs any other army good or bad. At the same time if your opponent just kills you turn 2, you then have to wait for him to do the last 4 turns playing more or less solitaire. And it is not that it is bad, it is just boring, when opponent try to get max points.

Well am sure people will invent some ways to smooth it out. Plus it sucks for those that don't have the deck of cards, and rolled them objectives out of their book.

Note that the rules in the OP say that you can only have 3 active objectives, so you can't score more than 3. You also need to draw those 3 cards, even if you put all 13 secure objective cards in there, you could be drawing the ones which are held by the enemy's castle or their troop blobs. There is also an option to fight this through d3 VP objectives. For example, casting 3 psychic powers is no problem for an army like GK.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 fraser1191 wrote:
I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11

Anyway, this is a welcome change

Last year's maelstrom missions allowed you to remove 6 cards from the deck before the game, this made this a little better. Many games were still lost or won by pure luck though.

I'm a big fan of Maelstrom, so this is a good thing. Now ITC just needs to endorse them instead of their own missions.

This sounds like a great change to me. I don't think it'll take too long to pick either. I suspect at least half of your objectives will likely be the same every game with only a few tailored to your opponent. Off the top of my head, No Prisoners, Overwhelming Firepower, Supremacy, Master the Warp, Hold the Line/Advance, Slay the Warlord will probably be in almost all decks (assuming you have Psykers). Then things like Big Game Hunter and Scour the Skies can easily go in against certain enemies and most factions have 1-2 of their faction-specific ones that are pretty good too. I reckon no more than 5 minutes extra absolute maximum once players get used to the system.

 Jidmah wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 fraser1191 wrote:
I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11

Anyway, this is a welcome change

Last year's maelstrom missions allowed you to remove 6 cards from the deck before the game, this made this a little better. Many games were still lost or won by pure luck though.

The capacity to tailor an objective set based on the mission and your opponent, as well as ways mid-game to jettison bad cards is going to take a lot of the randomness out the game mode IMO. We play mostly maelstrom at my LGS, and this seems like its gonna be a very popular set of changes.

 fraser1191 wrote:
I actually hated maelstrom just from the fact that I could draw the one to kill a psyker while facing DE or Tau, or even just drawing objectives that are downright impossible to achieve. Meanwhile my opponent is drawing cards for objectives he already has. I've played a couple where it was 3-11

Anyway, this is a welcome change

I think a lot of players made the house rule that if you can't score an objective you have just drawn, then you ditch it and redraw. This fixes that small problem.

I always felt that the objective deck should have been a pick rather than random, sort of a nod to the old 2nd edition Mission Cards where each person could have a different objective to achieve. It sounds like these do that, and if so that's great.