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I think the LVO finals nicely showed the issue with scoring points by killing in ITC.

An army could completely give up all board control for 3 turns and still win because killing gives enough points.

 Ordana wrote:
I think the LVO finals nicely showed the issue with scoring points by killing in ITC.

An army could completely give up all board control for 3 turns and still win because killing gives enough points.

I think the semi-final with Sean Nayden really summed up the problem with the ITC mission to me.

Sean knew that he could not compete with the kill/kill more and killing secondaries so he basically declined to engage. He sat everything out of sight scoring hold and engineers each turn - keeping the scores very low so that a turn 6 grab would be decisive unless his opponent gambled by actually coming out of hiding.

Richard won but honestly the odds of his intercessor Sargent killing 4 shining spears like that were vanishingly small - 0.6% by my reckoning. Even killing 3 had a less than 7% chance.

The kill points are routinely claimed to encourage players to engage actively rather than camp on objectives but when you combine it with ITC terrain rules then it often has exactly the opposite effect. Most armies have no reason at all to engage an IH gunline if they can possibly avoid it because it gives up so few kill points and secondaries while having more than enough firepower to claim them in return.

Honestly how much fun is the mission when any smart player will realise that the only way to play is to hide out of line of sight until turn 6 and then jump out onto the objectives?

Note : i am not complaining about the way Sean Nayden played at all. Given the mission and the way an IH list can just rack up points by killing things it was the only rational way for him to play - the problem is that the missions skew things so much that effectively refusing to engage with your opponent can be the only route to victory. The kill points for primary and secondaries force a negative play style in this situation.

I just came back from the LVO, and outside of the massive cock-up that was the third round (I almost took a zero to go enjoy the rest of my Friday night....and I for sure just rolled dice in that game with little care) I had a good time.
However, for sure you are playing one single mission the entire tournament, the differences just don't mean much. ITC took a step last year to incorporate the deployment rules in 1/2 of the missions, perhaps they will be open to changing the missions in those 3 games to 3 of the GW ones. yes, it means a little more thinking, but it might be a step in the right direction.

 vict0988 wrote:
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.

Okay, I'll bite: Randomly selected missions are not 'adding randomness', per se. You are not rolling a die to see who wins before the game even starts or to give one player an un-mitigable advantage, you are rolling a die to determine which of a set of curated, balanced missions you will be playing.

The central conceit is that a balanced list should be equally capable regardless of what the actual mission is, so a player is only negatively impacted by that randomness if they've chosen to overspecialize.

The difference is that you are given all the tools you need to completely mitigate random objectives. If you decide to bring an army that can only do half of the mission types, that's all on you. Whereas the in-game dice rolls could, through the vagaries of probability, end up favoring one player over the other and disrupting an otherwise skill-based outcome.

Counter-example: If you had missions that blatantly favored one player over another, like Mission 1 is 'Player A gets 500 extra points' and Mission 6 is 'Player B gets to recycle units infinitely', then it would be adding randomness and detracting from the skill involved in the game. The random mission selection at the start would have a non-negligible chance of screwing a player over with nothing to mitigate it. But if the missions are all putting both players on even footing, then that isn't the case.

 catbarf wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:
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.

Okay, I'll bite: Randomly selected missions are not 'adding randomness', per se. You are not rolling a die to see who wins before the game even starts or to give one player an un-mitigable advantage, you are rolling a die to determine which of a set of curated, balanced missions you will be playing.

The central conceit is that a balanced list should be equally capable regardless of what the actual mission is, so a player is only negatively impacted by that randomness if they've chosen to overspecialize.

The difference is that you are given all the tools you need to completely mitigate random objectives. If you decide to bring an army that can only do half of the mission types, that's all on you. Whereas the in-game dice rolls could, through the vagaries of probability, end up favoring one player over the other and disrupting an otherwise skill-based outcome.

Counter-example: If you had missions that blatantly favored one player over another, like Mission 1 is 'Player A gets 500 extra points' and Mission 6 is 'Player B gets to recycle units infinitely', then it would be adding randomness and detracting from the skill involved in the game. The random mission selection at the start would have a non-negligible chance of screwing a player over with nothing to mitigate it. But if the missions are all putting both players on even footing, then that isn't the case.

the thing is not all armies are balanced and able to achive all objectives. Under ITC rules you can tailor your list to do specific things. Better or worse then other lists, but you will have a clear way to win. If the missions are random, then only the most flexible armies and the ones with simplest way to play are going to benefit, because it is just going to be easier to play them. there won't be any opponent got this mission and I drew this cards, and that lost me the game, because GW decided to write our army rules in a specific way.

There is also stuff that is hard to put points on. How many points is it worth, to be able to stable mobile without losing fire power or relocating from one objective to another with ease? Because GW does not point proper points costs on armies and units that can do that. All they do is to hike price on melee units, that most often work only in perfect conditions, or mixed armed units that get hit by hikes for both being shoty and melee.

Yoyoyo wrote:
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.

Doesn't this kind of prove the OP's point?

Karol wrote:


the thing is not all armies are balanced and able to achive all objectives. Under ITC rules you can tailor your list to do specific things. Better or worse then other lists, but you will have a clear way to win. If the missions are random, then only the most flexible armies and the ones with simplest way to play are going to benefit, because it is just going to be easier to play them. there won't be any opponent got this mission and I drew this cards, and that lost me the game, because GW decided to write our army rules in a specific way.

We all know that was the design intent of the ITC mission and what their supporters claim they do. Look at the LVO results and try to tell anyone that they actually do that while keeping a straight face. Now go back over the ITC mission GTs for the rest of January and keep trying to say it. Wind back the clock to the height of the Castellan meta and do the same. Whatever the meta is it is consistently more extreme in the ITC mission format than it is outside it.

As for drawing cards, only people throwing distractions into the thread are mentioning cards. The OP was about eternal war missions that are no more random than ITC - just more varied.

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

Not at all. Foot Custodians would be top teir if the object of the game was to control a central objective in the middle of the table. So would a lot of horde armies. That is what is great about CA rolling for random mission types and deployment types. Certain armies are stronger for certain missions so you will have more army variety. ITC has some good ideas but it is sad how the game at the top levels basically revolves around not engaging and shooting with ILOS weapons and characters that are untargetable. I can't imagine a less fun game than that.

Karol wrote:
the thing is not all armies are balanced and able to achive all objectives. Under ITC rules you can tailor your list to do specific things. Better or worse then other lists, but you will have a clear way to win. If the missions are random, then only the most flexible armies and the ones with simplest way to play are going to benefit, because it is just going to be easier to play them. there won't be any opponent got this mission and I drew this cards, and that lost me the game, because GW decided to write our army rules in a specific way.

Can you give some examples of objectives that certain armies simply can't perform? I mean, yeah, mech Eldar will have an easier time in mobility-oriented missions and a harder time in take-and-hold, but that's a tradeoff, and they can still do both.

Armies can perform all objectives, but not to an equally strong extent. That's why missions with variation that tests different aspects of an army create an effect of balance.

 bullyboy wrote:
I just came back from the LVO, and outside of the massive cock-up that was the third round (I almost took a zero to go enjoy the rest of my Friday night....and I for sure just rolled dice in that game with little care) I had a good time.
However, for sure you are playing one single mission the entire tournament, the differences just don't mean much. ITC took a step last year to incorporate the deployment rules in 1/2 of the missions, perhaps they will be open to changing the missions in those 3 games to 3 of the GW ones. yes, it means a little more thinking, but it might be a step in the right direction.

I didn’t get a chance to keep up with the LVO, what happened in round 3?

There was a 5-1 foot custode list (Bridger Hann) at LVO so that's pretty top tier to me.

TheAvengingKnee wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
I just came back from the LVO, and outside of the massive cock-up that was the third round (I almost took a zero to go enjoy the rest of my Friday night....and I for sure just rolled dice in that game with little care) I had a good time.
However, for sure you are playing one single mission the entire tournament, the differences just don't mean much. ITC took a step last year to incorporate the deployment rules in 1/2 of the missions, perhaps they will be open to changing the missions in those 3 games to 3 of the GW ones. yes, it means a little more thinking, but it might be a step in the right direction.

I didn’t get a chance to keep up with the LVO, what happened in round 3?

Not sure about round 3, but I know BCP committed seppeku after round 1, so round 2 was late starting by well over an hour.

As an ITC apologist this post from reddit caused me to re-examine my support. (https://old.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/eup3fo/state_of_tyranids_after_lvo/)

"Sorry but there is no way I can agree that ITC doesn't have abusive format elements. Secondaries heavily influence list building and what units are viable or not. "It gives up to many secondaries" is a common thing you can see when discussing units. Let me copy what I said in the LVO winner thread about the winning list

Marked for Death: Bad because there are only 2 10m Intercessor squads (not to bad to kill) and 4 Dreadnoughts, 3 of which are characters and all of them nigh impossible to kill.

Gang Busters, Titan Slayer, Reaper: No viable target

Big Game Hunter: 4 unkillable dreadnoughts, 3 of which are characters.

Pick your Poison: only 1 possible.

Kingslayer: The Levi is possible but it only gives up 3 points base (so it needs to be healed to get all 4 points) and its nigh impossible to kill.

Headhunter: 2 non-dread Characters in the army. GL with that.

So your left with Butchers Bill. Which is possible but not easy to do for 4 turns while an IH army is tearing you a new one. Your likely to run out of firepower to kill 2 units in 1 turn.

Now compare that to the list that came second at the Caladonian Open which uses ETC rules.

Nids

Broodlord

Prime

2x10 Termgants

10 Warriors

6 Hiveguard

GSC

2x Patriarch

Primus

Jackal Alphus

3x10 Neophytes

2x15 Acolytes with saws

20 Acolytes with Hand Flamers

Clamavus

Compared to the LVO winner this has 8 units possible for Marked for Death, 5 of which are not characters, 3 of which are extremely squishy (the Acolytes)

The warrior unit alone is 5 Gang Buster points, the Hive Guard are another 3 The Prime (who was warlord) gives up full King Slayer points.

Headhunter: 3 pretty squishy GSC characters and the Broodlord and Patriarchs are going to have to come forward to do work.

Butchers Bill: Plenty of squishy units of guardsmen and equiv to kill 2 per turn.

So you have a Marine list that has almost no viable kill secondary targets forcing you to pick objective based ones that then force you to come out into the open to claim them where the Marines can kill you VS a Tyranid list that 5 'easy' kill secondaries to pick against it so the opponent can castle up on 1 objective for Hold every turn and just win by outscoring on secondaries.

The Nid list isn't very viable in ITC "because it gives up to many secondaries"."

Seems a pretty bullet-proof case how ITC mission design warps the game even if I don't want to admit it...

bananathug wrote:
Seems a pretty bullet-proof case how ITC mission design warps the game even if I don't want to admit it...

Don't feel too bad. Most people have nothing but respect for those who can admit being mistaken about something. Some people will never change their mind about something, no matter what logic or evidence gets thrown their way.

I don't disagree with some of this, but there are a couple problems with the analysis:

1) It is a narrow view for when you're facing pretty much Iron Hands and it would be the exception rather than the norm were it not for IH
2) None of the analysis discussed taking non-killing secondaries, which Nayden did and had relative success until Siegler baited him out and scored a significant number of hits and wounds with a TH

These things don't necessarily refute the points, but is it important to discuss them in context.

TBH I've never understood why secondary objectives, especially kill-oriented ones, are necessary to begin with.

I've seen very, very few army builds over the lifetime of this game that could reliably accomplish mission objectives while simultaneously being killed to a man. And being able to leaf-blower the enemy list off the table is inherently a great way to stop the enemy from accomplishing their objectives, and accomplish your own without resistance.

When the main objectives already involve killing the enemy, adding secondary objectives that specifically reward killing seems gratuitous, and non-killing secondaries on top of that just seem like trying (unsuccessfully, I would argue) to walk it back.

 catbarf wrote:
TBH I've never understood why secondary objectives, especially kill-oriented ones, are necessary to begin with.

I've seen very, very few army builds over the lifetime of this game that could reliably accomplish mission objectives while simultaneously being killed to a man. And being able to leaf-blower the enemy list off the table is inherently a great way to stop the enemy from accomplishing their objectives, and accomplish your own without resistance.

When the main objectives already involve killing the enemy, adding secondary objectives that specifically reward killing seems gratuitous, and non-killing secondaries on top of that just seem like trying (unsuccessfully, I would argue) to walk it back.

part of the reason for secondary in my understanding is more to avoid the paper rock scissor issue in lists. A person could bring 250 ork boyz for 1750 points, leaving room for HQs most take all comers lists would struggle there btu it would give away a lot of secondaries. same for if you bring a take all comers list that has to somehow deal with that ork green tide list AND somehow be ready for a pure knights list.

now how effective it is vs just making a system where people build armies for secondaries over the normal missions may need looking into.

Since talking about the LVO scoring here, can someone please explain to me the scoring in round 6 of the final? I saw they started 17-17 and then IH won I think 21-20? Where did his points come from?

RG had 2 objectives and fired everything at the Levi, failing to kill it, but it looked IH pulled an entire squad with Martyrdom, so isn’t that still a RG kill?

IH then walked the Levi on to an objective to hold 2 and then it was unclear whether he killed the RG scouts or not, but I thought not.

If they both got hold, no one had hold more, and RG killed a unit, how did the IH get 4pts to win?

The amount of work the FLG guys have put into the ITC secondaries shouldn't be down played at all.

I almost feel like they are GW in the sense that they put together a good framework that the players went out and broke.

The ITC missions are trying soooo hard to balance the game instead of making GW do it. There should be game balance reasons why hordes of fearless troops are not a huge advantage and can exists in the same game as a couple t8 24 wound models. Trying to make secondaries that "punish" high wound model units (gang busters) or are specifically tailored to deal with knights (titan slayer) to curb the meta warping of those units has put us in a weird place where there is a second layer of "balancing" going on over GW piss poor attempts at it to make a game where orks and knights can be reasonable opponents vs. the same army.

More objective based secondaries should be a thing. But then how do you create a game state to deal with fearless hordes? The game then just becomes warped around army creation that can hold more for x # of turns.

I strongly feel the criteria for who holds the objective should go to points on the objective tie-breaker for obsec troops instead of bodies.

There has to be a downside to just swamping the board with bodies and getting a lead too big at the beginning of the game.

It is such a delicate balancing act that you think a multi-million dollar company would try harder than a group of guys from a game store but that's the situation we find ourselves in.

bananathug wrote:
The amount of work the FLG guys have put into the ITC secondaries shouldn't be down played at all.

I almost feel like they are GW in the sense that they put together a good framework that the players went out and broke.

The ITC missions are trying soooo hard to balance the game instead of making GW do it. There should be game balance reasons why hordes of fearless troops are not a huge advantage and can exists in the same game as a couple t8 24 wound models. Trying to make secondaries that "punish" high wound model units (gang busters) or are specifically tailored to deal with knights (titan slayer) to curb the meta warping of those units has put us in a weird place where there is a second layer of "balancing" going on over GW piss poor attempts at it to make a game where orks and knights can be reasonable opponents vs. the same army.

More objective based secondaries should be a thing. But then how do you create a game state to deal with fearless hordes? The game then just becomes warped around army creation that can hold more for x # of turns.

I strongly feel the criteria for who holds the objective should go to points on the objective tie-breaker for obsec troops instead of bodies.

There has to be a downside to just swamping the board with bodies and getting a lead too big at the beginning of the game.

It is such a delicate balancing act that you think a multi-million dollar company would try harder than a group of guys from a game store but that's the situation we find ourselves in.

What makes you think that fearless hordes are actually a problem in missions other than ITC? The GW GT series has been using pure chapter approved missions for years now and this supposed domination by fearless hordes has never happened.

This seems to be something that people theory-hammer outside of actually playing those missions in competitive games. Yes some people have tried to take fearless horde armies to GT events, no they did not win or even do particularly well. The downside appears to be that it does not work very well, that other armies have the tools to counter it.

 Dysartes wrote:

TheAvengingKnee wrote:

 bullyboy wrote:
I just came back from the LVO, and outside of the massive cock-up that was the third round (I almost took a zero to go enjoy the rest of my Friday night....and I for sure just rolled dice in that game with little care) I had a good time.
However, for sure you are playing one single mission the entire tournament, the differences just don't mean much. ITC took a step last year to incorporate the deployment rules in 1/2 of the missions, perhaps they will be open to changing the missions in those 3 games to 3 of the GW ones. yes, it means a little more thinking, but it might be a step in the right direction.

I didn’t get a chance to keep up with the LVO, what happened in round 3?

Not sure about round 3, but I know BCP committed seppeku after round 1, so round 2 was late starting by well over an hour.

Sorry, yes, it was after round one. However. It pushed the 3rd round so late that it wasn't getting started until after 8pm.
No communication, people just hanging around waiting.
They should have made a decision to delay the rounds and allow people to go rest/relax while getting it fixed.

happy_inquisitor wrote:

bananathug wrote:
The amount of work the FLG guys have put into the ITC secondaries shouldn't be down played at all.

I almost feel like they are GW in the sense that they put together a good framework that the players went out and broke.

The ITC missions are trying soooo hard to balance the game instead of making GW do it. There should be game balance reasons why hordes of fearless troops are not a huge advantage and can exists in the same game as a couple t8 24 wound models. Trying to make secondaries that "punish" high wound model units (gang busters) or are specifically tailored to deal with knights (titan slayer) to curb the meta warping of those units has put us in a weird place where there is a second layer of "balancing" going on over GW piss poor attempts at it to make a game where orks and knights can be reasonable opponents vs. the same army.

More objective based secondaries should be a thing. But then how do you create a game state to deal with fearless hordes? The game then just becomes warped around army creation that can hold more for x # of turns.

I strongly feel the criteria for who holds the objective should go to points on the objective tie-breaker for obsec troops instead of bodies.

There has to be a downside to just swamping the board with bodies and getting a lead too big at the beginning of the game.

It is such a delicate balancing act that you think a multi-million dollar company would try harder than a group of guys from a game store but that's the situation we find ourselves in.

What makes you think that fearless hordes are actually a problem in missions other than ITC? The GW GT series has been using pure chapter approved missions for years now and this supposed domination by fearless hordes has never happened.

This seems to be something that people theory-hammer outside of actually playing those missions in competitive games. Yes some people have tried to take fearless horde armies to GT events, no they did not win or even do particularly well. The downside appears to be that it does not work very well, that other armies have the tools to counter it.

Speaking as a Nid player I've never had any real luck bringing hordes in CA2019. They die in droves. They're useful as a roadblock but they also evaporate and can't kill much of anything. If a Marine even glances in their direction they fall over and they can't do a lot of damage in return. Objective sitting is literally their only use but its not a good long term gameplan. If someone swamps the board then they might dominate the scoring early game but after turn 3 the scoring swings back to the opponent.

It's pretty clear that this LVO has really showcased the shortcomings of the ITC mission design.
It's really fascinating how so many players have absolutely no play experience using the official GW missions, and many refuse to entertain the possibility they might be better.
Funny enough a lot of the ITC top players will likely fall into this category as chasing a top position in the ITC leaves no room for playing often using the CA missions.

Also, the truth is that GW cannot be held to account for any meta that is built around 3rd party, homebrew rules. Hard to accept but it is what it is.
If the same volumes of data show the same problems in CA missions then we have more ground to complain. The recent events they've held have not suffered from faction dominance the same was as the ITC have, and that is also a fact.

bananathug wrote:

Spoiler:

As an ITC apologist this post from reddit caused me to re-examine my support. (https://old.reddit.com/r/WarhammerCompetitive/comments/eup3fo/state_of_tyranids_after_lvo/)

"Sorry but there is no way I can agree that ITC doesn't have abusive format elements. Secondaries heavily influence list building and what units are viable or not. "It gives up to many secondaries" is a common thing you can see when discussing units. Let me copy what I said in the LVO winner thread about the winning list

Marked for Death: Bad because there are only 2 10m Intercessor squads (not to bad to kill) and 4 Dreadnoughts, 3 of which are characters and all of them nigh impossible to kill.

Gang Busters, Titan Slayer, Reaper: No viable target

Big Game Hunter: 4 unkillable dreadnoughts, 3 of which are characters.

Pick your Poison: only 1 possible.

Kingslayer: The Levi is possible but it only gives up 3 points base (so it needs to be healed to get all 4 points) and its nigh impossible to kill.

Headhunter: 2 non-dread Characters in the army. GL with that.

So your left with Butchers Bill. Which is possible but not easy to do for 4 turns while an IH army is tearing you a new one. Your likely to run out of firepower to kill 2 units in 1 turn.

Now compare that to the list that came second at the Caladonian Open which uses ETC rules.

Nids

Broodlord

Prime

2x10 Termgants

10 Warriors

6 Hiveguard

GSC

2x Patriarch

Primus

Jackal Alphus

3x10 Neophytes

2x15 Acolytes with saws

20 Acolytes with Hand Flamers

Clamavus

Compared to the LVO winner this has 8 units possible for Marked for Death, 5 of which are not characters, 3 of which are extremely squishy (the Acolytes)

The warrior unit alone is 5 Gang Buster points, the Hive Guard are another 3 The Prime (who was warlord) gives up full King Slayer points.

Headhunter: 3 pretty squishy GSC characters and the Broodlord and Patriarchs are going to have to come forward to do work.

Butchers Bill: Plenty of squishy units of guardsmen and equiv to kill 2 per turn.

So you have a Marine list that has almost no viable kill secondary targets forcing you to pick objective based ones that then force you to come out into the open to claim them where the Marines can kill you VS a Tyranid list that 5 'easy' kill secondaries to pick against it so the opponent can castle up on 1 objective for Hold every turn and just win by outscoring on secondaries.

The Nid list isn't very viable in ITC "because it gives up to many secondaries"."

Seems a pretty bullet-proof case how ITC mission design warps the game even if I don't want to admit it...

That's a great set of observations..

And yeah, on the rare occasions when I've played ITC the ramifications of secondaries have always rubbed me the wrong way.

vict0988 wrote:

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.

sounds like you've never been shot at, luck has a significant impact on the battlefield. it's making the most of a given situation(positive or negative), with which tools you have, where those tools are in relation to the threat & how good ol' Murphy is feeling that day/time.

I've just never understood why you'd try to make a game like 40k into something the designers obviously dont(otherwise they would).

Fearless Hordes are always brough up as the reason for needing ITC secondaries and yet I don't think a Fearless Horde list has been dominant outside of ITC since the days of Malific Lord spam?

If it was a problem then GW's own tournaments or the ETC would be suffering from it. Look at the results and see they are not.

 Ordana wrote:
Fearless Hordes are always brough up as the reason for needing ITC secondaries and yet I don't think a Fearless Horde list has been dominant outside of ITC since the days of Malific Lord spam?

If it was a problem then GW's own tournaments or the ETC would be suffering from it. Look at the results and see they are not.

Wasn't conscript spam a big problem in early 8th? Or was it just when paired with knights? Because again that speaks to me that it was a problem with being able to win a game without leaving your deployment zone.

You are talking about an age where we played with BRB missions. That is a completely different game compared to what we have now.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
Fearless Hordes are always brough up as the reason for needing ITC secondaries and yet I don't think a Fearless Horde list has been dominant outside of ITC since the days of Malific Lord spam?

If it was a problem then GW's own tournaments or the ETC would be suffering from it. Look at the results and see they are not.

Wasn't conscript spam a big problem in early 8th? Or was it just when paired with knights? Because again that speaks to me that it was a problem with being able to win a game without leaving your deployment zone.

since the days of Malific Lord spam

That was before, back when BRB missions and indexes were the game.