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 Ishagu wrote:

The Salt Mine wrote:
Even with all the changes to Maelstrom missions there is still a heavy RNG factor involved. I don't think they are great for competitive play as you are stacking more RNG into an already RNG heavy game. You are lessening the impact of player interaction and decisions the more RNG you add into the system. Its one reason why ITC missions are popular you can plan several turns in advanced on how you are going to complete your objectives.

I make a case for the Eternal War missions, not the Maelstrom.

You are aware there are two sets of missions in CA2019, right?

It's fun having to say that every 5 posts.

A case can be made that the additional randomness inserted by ca19 missions, since you are given the tools to manage it as a player, makes the game MORE competitive than the alternative.

I still maintain that having each mission with a different "twist" on the objective, if CA19 still has those (I know CA18 did), adds to removing the "stagnant" nature of the game. If you don't know what mission you may get with a specific twist, it should encourage you to build a list to account for that rather than know everything you might come across beforehand so you just build the same old skew/min-max/netlist since there's no drawback to taking it. But if you could get a mission where only characters can hold objectives, or where models with FLY get super objective secured even over troops (CA18 had a mission like this), now all of a sudden you need to prepare for that happening. Your list needs to be more diverse to handle those things which might happen, since they are unknowns and you can't fully prepare for them beforehand.

 Ishagu wrote:

The Salt Mine wrote:
Even with all the changes to Maelstrom missions there is still a heavy RNG factor involved. I don't think they are great for competitive play as you are stacking more RNG into an already RNG heavy game. You are lessening the impact of player interaction and decisions the more RNG you add into the system. Its one reason why ITC missions are popular you can plan several turns in advanced on how you are going to complete your objectives.

I make a case for the Eternal War missions, not the Maelstrom.

You are aware there are two sets of missions in CA2019, right?

There are posts right above mine talking about Maelstrom missions. You do realize there are other people posting in this thread right?

Snark aside. I actually agree with you. If only because I think the game would be easier to balance if all competitive 40k events used the same set of missions. One of the larger problems with this game right now is the more rules there are the harder they are to balance. This is even more compounded by the fact that many different competitive events across the world are using different mission rule sets.

I havent bothered reading 8 pages of ishagus ramblings and repetetive circular arguments.

But in a nutshell, is he basicaly claiming marines with their ninja centurions centurion, milliond of re-rollable dice and character dreads abusing the poor targeting mechanic etc
Are only busted in itc and gw has done no wrong and everyone is wrong about GW being terrible at balancing the game?

Martel732 wrote:What a glorious pack of internet bullies. All because i said i don't like dice.

You cry out that you hate dice, in a dice based game, and then call foul when people wonder just what you're actually doing playing a dice game?
There's nothing wrong with hating dice - but why would you hang around on a forum talking about a dice game? Seems rather much like a waste of your time, and a waste of ours-
Oh.

I should have known that this was a troll attempt.
Gr8 b8.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Martel732 wrote:What a glorious pack of internet bullies. All because i said i don't like dice.

You cry out that you hate dice, in a dice based game, and then call foul when people wonder just what you're actually doing playing a dice game?
There's nothing wrong with hating dice - but why would you hang around on a forum talking about a dice game? Seems rather much like a waste of your time, and a waste of ours-
Oh.

I should have known that this was a troll attempt.
Gr8 b8.

Master baiting, in fact!

 Argive wrote:
I havent bothered reading 8 pages of ishagus ramblings and repetetive circular arguments.

But in a nutshell, is he basicaly claiming marines with their ninja centurions centurion, milliond of re-rollable dice and character dreads abusing the poor targeting mechanic etc
Are only busted in itc and gw has done no wrong and everyone is wrong about GW being terrible at balancing the game?

Lol maybe you should read through the topic. I've actually posted very little, and I'm not claiming GW is balancing anything perfectly.

And guess what, particular unit discussion has nothing to do with this topic.

Spoletta wrote:
A case can be made that the additional randomness inserted by ca19 missions, since you are given the tools to manage it as a player, makes the game MORE competitive than the alternative.

Why don't you make the case instead of making an empty assertion then? Adding randomness to a game only increases the likelihood of the winner being randomly selected, if something is random it is not earned.

Wayniac wrote:
I still maintain that having each mission with a different "twist" on the objective, if CA19 still has those (I know CA18 did), adds to removing the "stagnant" nature of the game. If you don't know what mission you may get with a specific twist, it should encourage you to build a list to account for that rather than know everything you might come across beforehand so you just build the same old skew/min-max/netlist since there's no drawback to taking it. But if you could get a mission where only characters can hold objectives, or where models with FLY get super objective secured even over troops (CA18 had a mission like this), now all of a sudden you need to prepare for that happening. Your list needs to be more diverse to handle those things which might happen, since they are unknowns and you can't fully prepare for them beforehand.

Champions missions each come with a twist, not to mention that half the missions use alternating while the other half uses all at once deployment. Unlike what some would have you believe, choosing your own secondaries quite often shakes up games. The bonus objective is just a relatively small part of the game and the you're never forced to play kill points against Knights or something equally silly. Champions format is pretty complicated, it has its own learning curve, but it's fun and often gives me a feeling that I could improve and potentially win games I lost.

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
A case can be made that the additional randomness inserted by ca19 missions, since you are given the tools to manage it as a player, makes the game MORE competitive than the alternative.

Why don't you make the case instead of making an empty assertion then? Adding randomness to a game only increases the likelihood of the winner being randomly selected, if something is random it is not earned.

Spoiler:

Wayniac wrote:
I still maintain that having each mission with a different "twist" on the objective, if CA19 still has those (I know CA18 did), adds to removing the "stagnant" nature of the game. If you don't know what mission you may get with a specific twist, it should encourage you to build a list to account for that rather than know everything you might come across beforehand so you just build the same old skew/min-max/netlist since there's no drawback to taking it. But if you could get a mission where only characters can hold objectives, or where models with FLY get super objective secured even over troops (CA18 had a mission like this), now all of a sudden you need to prepare for that happening. Your list needs to be more diverse to handle those things which might happen, since they are unknowns and you can't fully prepare for them beforehand.

Champions missions each come with a twist, not to mention that half the missions use alternating while the other half uses all at once deployment. Unlike what some would have you believe, choosing your own secondaries quite often shakes up games. The bonus objective is just a relatively small part of the game and the you're never forced to play kill points against Knights or something equally silly. Champions format is pretty complicated, it has its own learning curve, but it's fun and often gives me a feeling that I could improve and potentially win games I lost.

so all those dice rolls aren't earned? man, I must be playing the game wrong. Kinda weird thing to say in a game that's pretty much dependant on said die rolls.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
A case can be made that the additional randomness inserted by ca19 missions, since you are given the tools to manage it as a player, makes the game MORE competitive than the alternative.

Why don't you make the case instead of making an empty assertion then? Adding randomness to a game only increases the likelihood of the winner being randomly selected, if something is random it is not earned.

Spoiler:

Wayniac wrote:
I still maintain that having each mission with a different "twist" on the objective, if CA19 still has those (I know CA18 did), adds to removing the "stagnant" nature of the game. If you don't know what mission you may get with a specific twist, it should encourage you to build a list to account for that rather than know everything you might come across beforehand so you just build the same old skew/min-max/netlist since there's no drawback to taking it. But if you could get a mission where only characters can hold objectives, or where models with FLY get super objective secured even over troops (CA18 had a mission like this), now all of a sudden you need to prepare for that happening. Your list needs to be more diverse to handle those things which might happen, since they are unknowns and you can't fully prepare for them beforehand.

Champions missions each come with a twist, not to mention that half the missions use alternating while the other half uses all at once deployment. Unlike what some would have you believe, choosing your own secondaries quite often shakes up games. The bonus objective is just a relatively small part of the game and the you're never forced to play kill points against Knights or something equally silly. Champions format is pretty complicated, it has its own learning curve, but it's fun and often gives me a feeling that I could improve and potentially win games I lost.

so all those dice rolls aren't earned? man, I must be playing the game wrong. Kinda weird thing to say in a game that's pretty much dependant on said die rolls.

You're missing the point. It shouldn't be THAT randumb. That's the complaint.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
A case can be made that the additional randomness inserted by ca19 missions, since you are given the tools to manage it as a player, makes the game MORE competitive than the alternative.

Why don't you make the case instead of making an empty assertion then? Adding randomness to a game only increases the likelihood of the winner being randomly selected, if something is random it is not earned.

Spoiler:

Wayniac wrote:
I still maintain that having each mission with a different "twist" on the objective, if CA19 still has those (I know CA18 did), adds to removing the "stagnant" nature of the game. If you don't know what mission you may get with a specific twist, it should encourage you to build a list to account for that rather than know everything you might come across beforehand so you just build the same old skew/min-max/netlist since there's no drawback to taking it. But if you could get a mission where only characters can hold objectives, or where models with FLY get super objective secured even over troops (CA18 had a mission like this), now all of a sudden you need to prepare for that happening. Your list needs to be more diverse to handle those things which might happen, since they are unknowns and you can't fully prepare for them beforehand.

Champions missions each come with a twist, not to mention that half the missions use alternating while the other half uses all at once deployment. Unlike what some would have you believe, choosing your own secondaries quite often shakes up games. The bonus objective is just a relatively small part of the game and the you're never forced to play kill points against Knights or something equally silly. Champions format is pretty complicated, it has its own learning curve, but it's fun and often gives me a feeling that I could improve and potentially win games I lost.

so all those dice rolls aren't earned? man, I must be playing the game wrong. Kinda weird thing to say in a game that's pretty much dependant on said die rolls.

Nope, youhave not earned your dice rolls and to the degree they decided the game instead of your choices the game is more luck and less skill-based. Having different missions for different goals makes sense. The less obfuscated by luck, the best list and general is at a competitive event the better. The more obfuscated the easier it is to bring less powerful lists and the more forgivibg of mistakes the game will be. Tic tac toe is a solved game, if you want to test who has solved the game and who hasnn't then randomizing every other move is a bad idea, if you are playing it casually it might be fun to add more randomness.

 Ishagu wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I havent bothered reading 8 pages of ishagus ramblings and repetetive circular arguments.

But in a nutshell, is he basicaly claiming marines with their ninja centurions centurion, milliond of re-rollable dice and character dreads abusing the poor targeting mechanic etc
Are only busted in itc and gw has done no wrong and everyone is wrong about GW being terrible at balancing the game?

Lol maybe you should read through the topic. I've actually posted very little, and I'm not claiming GW is balancing anything perfectly.

And guess what, particular unit discussion has nothing to do with this topic.

And guess what.. In your OP you claiming that certain lists(therefore UNITS) only work in ITC and are spammed because ITC. Therefore the data provided from ITC is useless to determine if things are balance..
You are claiming that if only everyone would play CA 2019 missions the meta would magically sort itself out because reasons..
You are claiming certain factions/lists (therefore UNITS) would not be spammed or be as OP under CA2019 .. Does CA 2019 suddenly take away layers of rules from the main offended the SM faction ?

Its ridiculous. But you keep peddling your "SM are fine really.. honest data is wrong.. nothing to see here". You do you bro.

For the record I don't play ITC at all and only play CA2018/19 missions.
However, suggesting that ITC data is irrelevant to gauge meta is down right crazy!

It's not what I said at all. I pointed out that the ITC mission style has not helped in creating a perfectly balanced meta, and that CA missions wouldn't cause additional damage. I also point out that the ITC missions have significantly less variation, and by allowing you to chose what scores you points they reward the spam of units because you chose objectives they can get in every game.

There is this magical thing called neance. Not everything is black or white.

There is no instant solution that creates a perfectly balanced experience. If you're looking for that the closest you'll get is chess. Go play it instead.
Or now about you actually try all of the CA missions at a tournament and actually experience how positive they are?

Is it really controversial to say different armies are stronger in different formats?

Yoyoyo wrote:
Is it really controversial to say different armies are stronger in different formats?

No it's not, but unfortunately a lot of people on the forum are dismissive and ignorant of things and refuse to accept something new unless it's some sort of magical, perfect fix to every problem that exists.

Yoyoyo wrote:
Is it really controversial to say different armies are stronger in different formats?

It's not exactly controversial, but it would be controversial to imply things are somehow so much more balanced in differing formats, simply because of terrible core rules and codex writing. Ishahu always implies the latter when saying CA19 missions > ITC missions. Yes more variation is good, but it honestly does not fix the game whatsoever.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
Is it really controversial to say different armies are stronger in different formats?

It's not exactly controversial, but it would be controversial to imply things are somehow so much more balanced in differing formats, simply because of terrible core rules and codex writing. Ishahu always implies the latter when saying CA19 missions > ITC missions. Yes more variation is good, but it honestly does not fix the game whatsoever.

True. Loyalist marines are broken in either format.

So you have absolutely no interest in more mission variation?

You basically just confirmed my statement about certain individuals being dismissive unless something is a magical fix that creates perfect balance. BTW perfect balance would be bad for 40k. This game needs a shifting meta to keep things exciting.

 Ishagu wrote:
So you have absolutely no interest in more mission variation?

You basically just confirmed my statement about bring dismissive unless something is a magical fix that creates perfect balance. BTW perfect balance would be bad for 40k. This game needs a shifting meta to keep things exciting.

You know what actually creates excitement? New balanced units, missions, and campaigns. A shifting meta that turns entire swathes of models you put together and paints into useless pieces of junk is NOT exciting.

If your number one priority for a game is perfect balance you're in the wrong hobby.
Warhammer 40k has literally never had a strong balance as a defining feature, in literally any edition in the past 25 years.

Can it be more balanced? Sure.

 Ishagu wrote:
If your number one priority for a game is perfect balance you're in the wrong hobby.
Warhammer 40k has literally never had a strong balance as a defining feature, in literally any edition in the past 25 years.

Can it be more balanced? Sure.

I agree that perfect balance would detract from the game and that mission variety increases the level of enjoyment but massive imbalance, such as we currently have with certain marine chapters greatly detracts from the experience.

What fun is it if you have little chance of winning? Or for the loyalist marine player in having little chance of losing?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
So you have absolutely no interest in more mission variation?

You basically just confirmed my statement about bring dismissive unless something is a magical fix that creates perfect balance. BTW perfect balance would be bad for 40k. This game needs a shifting meta to keep things exciting.

You know what actually creates excitement? New balanced units, missions, and campaigns. A shifting meta that turns entire swathes of models you put together and paints into useless pieces of junk is NOT exciting.

If the meta isn't shifting that means something is a stable auto-pick top of the pack choice and "the best" options are found.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You know what actually creates excitement? New... units, missions, and campaigns. A shifting meta...

Aside from your complaints about balancing, this is exactly what GW has done since index releases.

I disagree that containing random elements reduces skill. Sure, having only random elements means players have no agency. 40k isn’t at that point yet. There are still important decisions to make.

Informing decision making, having some random elements introduces the skills of estimating probability distributions and contingency planning. Someone mentioned the sheer weight of rerolls space marines get. These rerolls greatly increase the probability of success and as such reduce the need to plan for failure. Using such a force means it is easier for a player to do well, not that the player is ‘better’ at 40k (beyond being competent at the ‘choose an army’ stage). I’m unsure how this talk of randomness relates to EW 2019 missions though, which are mostly about board control.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

You know what actually creates excitement? New... units, missions, and campaigns. A shifting meta...

Aside from your complaints about balancing, this is exactly what GW has done since index releases.

Except it doesn't matter if the the latter three points are some because point #1 is not. GW could release 10 units for each army tomorrow, but how is that exciting if 95% of those units ended up being worse than Conscripts, already a terrible unit now?

Gadzilla666 wrote:

True. Loyalist marines are broken in either format.

Very strong yes, broken no.

I have played marines in CA19 missions - leafblower IH followed by RG successor in my last tournament. I handily beat them with a list that was built to play the missions - as a challenge to myself I was playing T'au with no riptides or shield drones.

Similarly, if you look at the GT finals at Nottingham, sure the marines did good but nothing like the boring dominance they showed at LVO or the succession of other ITC mission tournaments leading up to it.

Of all those GTs showing up on BCP recently, only one was not dominated by marines - that was Caledonian Uprising which did not use the ITC missions.

The evidence that they are "broken" in other formats is simply not there, to the extent that we have enough data to call it evidence it is to the contrary. They are good but not ridiculously good.

Marines are really good right now. Iron Hands are arguably a bit too good in a couple of aspects that might want fixing. They only look ridiculous because the ITC format exaggerates how good the "best" army is at any point in time due to its lack of variety and the ability of players to effectively choose the mission that suits whatever is most good about that "best" army.

The recent tournaments at GW show the same outcome.

Marines do not dominate to the same extent in non ITC formats.

Had a quick read of the missions.

They look for the most part fairly good, Mostly very similar to what we use already it seems.

But i think for here, it just seems no one thinks that GW will put anything good in the missions anyway. So have not bother giving them a look at all.

Not sure they would be much improvement to the game on there own.

Strong ranged offense that can de facto prevent the midfield objectives from being accessible solves "Hold one, hold more".

Really strong defense solves "kill more". If can you remove 1-2 units a turn while the opponent doesn't, you've won the primary mission.

As far as secondaries go, clever list construction probably means your opponent can't score max points easily on the secondaries. SM troops have a big advantage here as they won't give up either Reaper or Gangbusters, and you can't designate the PL7+ units as Marked for Death either and not have it interfere with other secondaries like Big Game Hunter.

So against a list with 40x Intercessors (2x10 and 4x5), an unkillable Leviathan Warlord, 3x untargetable Chaplain Dreads, and 3x3 Eliminators, what do you pick? Butcher's Bill I guess, but then you run into issues with "Kill More" in the later stages of the game once the easy targets are gone.

So tailoring a list to deny scoring against both the primary and secondary mission is something that can be done very effectively in ITC. Whereas I imagine it's harder in CA.