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Yoyoyo wrote:
...rather than forcing a player to take a flexible force because they need to play potentially 4/6 missions.

The more unpredictable the mission, the less you can overspecialize. That's arguably a good thing within reason. Though I'm of course interested in the counter-argument.

In an RTS factions have the ability to play in a different fashion to adapt to the map. In 40k if you take the wrong list build, or in extreme cases the wrong faction, when you started buying and painting expensive toy soldiers months or years before the event, and then get screwed over by the mission, there's very little you can do.

The ease and lack of cost of switching factions in an RTS makes this feel like a screwey comparison to me.

You do have a certain ability in 40k to adapt. Imperial Assassins for example, or Daemon summoning, or tailoring your psychic powers, WLTs and relics.

Nonetheless, that's not an argument against how effective it is to choose faction + force tailored to the mission format. And the less diverse the mission format, the less diverse the amount of factions and forces that are optimized for it. That's the real point so don't get lost in the analogy.

BTW "it's too expensive" is a tangent. There's zero reason tourneys can't drop to 1500pts to make the barrier to entry easier. Good point but probably fodder for another thread as this is a discussion about mission formats, not the price of filling out a 2000pt army or chasing the tournament meta.

Yoyoyo wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I would say they should be balanced for every faction, or at least almost all the factions and every major faction. Especially for competitive play.

In most RTS games, you have a map pool. Certain maps favor certain factions, due to how difficult it is to fast-expand (for example).

I really, really doubt you can get a set of missions -- or even a single mission -- to be an even playing field for most of the 40k factions. As soon as you have a static mission, people will choose the army and composition which favors it. For example, IH Leviathan with wound passing in the ITC format.

This is the downside of being static and plannable -- you're loading the challenge to list-building, rather than forcing a player to take a flexible force because they need to play potentially 4/6 missions.

The more unpredictable the mission, the less you can overspecialize. That's arguably a good thing within reason. Though I'm of course interested in the counter-argument.

With so many factions, it's almost certainly impossible to balance for all of them. But balancing for the most significant ones is doable. And even in RTS's, most of the maps are fairly close to being balanced for all factions, and are highly symmetric.

A fundamental aspect of the game is having a strategy. A plan on how you're going to achieve the victory conditions. When constructing your list, each unit should be selected to perform a role that contributes towards your strategic aims, or makes it difficult for the enemy to achieve theirs. If victory conditions are random and unpredictable, then that reduces the significance of not only the strategic planning for the game, it also reduces the significance of tactically opposing your opponent. You shouldn't ever be fighting the mission, conditions should be symmetric, static, simple, and known to ensure a deep & fair competition between the parties engaged in the game.

And as for overspecialization, I don't see what you mean. At an army scale, it's missions like Lockdown and Maelstrom of War that encourage overspecialization into completing arbitrary and artificial victory conditions. Crusade should encourage the least overspecialization, since it's literally the most fundamental objective of warfare: capture and hold ground. At a unit scale, specialization is good to have and encourage; units are brought to perform a function, not just because pew-pew-laser-guns-are-awesome. Bringing specialized units is the product of a developed strategy and counter-strategy to neutralize your opponent's efforts.

Yoyoyo wrote:
...BTW "it's too expensive" is a tangent. There's zero reason tourneys can't drop to 1500pts to make the barrier to entry easier. Good point but probably fodder for another thread as this is a discussion about mission formats, not the price of filling out a 2000pt army or chasing the tournament meta.

It's also a reason "but you can adapt to different maps in an RTS..." is an unhelpful comparison.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:Missions don't need to be balanced for every single faction in the game, there just needs to be a way for players to avoid obviously one-sided matchups.

I would say they should be balanced for every faction, or at least almost all the factions and every major faction. Especially for competitive play.

That's my one real complaint with ITC, the missions favor certain armies and disadvantage others pretty severely, mostly though the killmore and secondaries. Otherwise, I like ITC because it's static & plannable, which are important for competitive play.

dhallnet wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I've played it a few times now, and I definitely think that it's worth pretending there are 5 missions in the mission pack and ignoring this one. It's so bad. I won one game on turn 2 by porting up Interceptors and Strikes with Gates to score 6-1, and by dropping in my deepstrikers and porting up more strikes to do it again turn 2 for another 6-0, and from that point onward it was actually just impossible for my opponent to recover the deficit in victory points before the end of the game. I wasn't even putting my guys in favorable engagements, just rushing the points, and took massive casualties compared to him but scored all the victory points, and with diminishing numbers of objectives he had no chance to come back. The other games I played with this mission were less ridiculously one-sided, but the games were still decided very early by just rushing points. I imagine that this mission is probably free in the bag for Space Marines, though I never played as or faced marines while playing it. Armies without infiltrate/vanguard or some other way to cheat a unit up the board turn 1 basically didn't have a chance.

I'm kinda curious, considering each player places 3 objectives on the board, how did your opponent allowed you to be able to deepstrike/infiltrate (gate is once per turn right ?) into most of them ?
Anyway, rushing objectives kinda is the point of this mission and is one of those that force you to make balanced lists because you'll need fast units to tackle it. But I would agree that it might be a bit imbalanced since you score at the end of your own turn.

Objectives are places in alternating sequence 6" in and 12" apart before determining deployment zones. It's not too difficult to force objectives in places that are bad for them. In that game, there were 2 in his zone, one further back but with no cover protecting it, and one at the front but sheltered behind a building [a pretty standard spread of objectives]. He chose #6 to be the one in cover and garrisoned it with cultists and some Havocks above it, and unfortunately for him the one in his back field came up #2. I took #6 with strikes charging the cultists and grabbed the midfield ones with interceptors and by walking to them. Another charge on the part of interceptors meant he wasn't able to push up into the midfield objectives on his turn, since I wasn't dead yet as of the movement phase, and he wasn't able to get anybody with obsec over to steal #6 back from the strikes. Turn 2 I brought in my deep strikers, basically repeating turn 1 except now with strikes and paladins [and re-rolls for the charge, so more successful charges]. Once again, he couldn't reach the objectives and couldn't move past my models. He wasn't able to leave his zone until turn 3. If on his turn 3 he took all the mid-fields and took back #6 [there was basically no chance for him to take away #1] he would be able to recover a total of 6 points to the 14 point lead I was already sitting on at the end of my/beginning of his turn 3. There just wasn't a chance for him to win, and no point in still playing.

So this player was outsmarted in placing the objectives and utterly lacked any board control or ability to take back board control once it was lost? Seems like they were outplayed or their army had deficiencies to me and if that's the reason they lost then things are working as they should. I've played Lockdown a few times now and I think it's a very dynamic mission that pushes players to change their plans on the fly and often requires a lot more thought during deployment than the other missions. I agree it can have problems with a runaway leader as the points available decrease over time but that's part of the challenge for each player, IMO.

It's also worth noting that you can be tabled and still win by a handy margin.

This is great for pushing the focus away from lists that simply deal the most damage. Exactly what the meta needs.

Except when you can generate enough vp's just by sitting back at shooting enemy to bits. Like ITC

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
...rather than forcing a player to take a flexible force because they need to play potentially 4/6 missions.

The more unpredictable the mission, the less you can overspecialize. That's arguably a good thing within reason. Though I'm of course interested in the counter-argument.

In an RTS factions have the ability to play in a different fashion to adapt to the map. In 40k if you take the wrong list build, or in extreme cases the wrong faction, when you started buying and painting expensive toy soldiers months or years before the event, and then get screwed over by the mission, there's very little you can do.

The ease and lack of cost of switching factions in an RTS makes this feel like a screwey comparison to me.

We have been randomly determining our missions after bringing finished lists to our gaming group since a few months into 8th. Not once has a single player been screwed over by any of the eternal war or maelstrom missions because of his faction or because of his collection.
The only times this happens is when people bring an army that can't adapt to the mission - like one-trick combos, static gun castles or lists heavily skewed towards one aspect. Or armies that wouldn't work in any mission, obviously.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
A mission needs several things to be good:
Static: the mission will play the same no matter who plays it or when. If you can play the mission twice and it'll be different each time, that's a problem
Plannable: similar to the above, but you should be able to see and prepare a strategy towards victory from when you build your list to the end.
Counterplayable: players should be forced to engage with their opponent, rather than be an independent race to the top to see who gets highest. Being able to deny through play the enemy their points is as important a part of a game as scoring your own.
Competitive: any point in the game should have the potential to be decisive with good play.
Balanced: assuming players of equal skill, either should have a equal chance of winning independent of faction selection. Exactly what's in your army is important, but whether you're Space Marines or Imperial Guard should still give equal odds.
Sane: Winning the mission should not incentivize what would otherwise be considered bad play and poor decisions. Actions of desperation like sending troops squads on suicide missions to take a point for just the end of your turn and then die might be a valid choice on the back foot and trying to stay close to turn it around, but it shouldn't be the optimal play when you're winning.

This is why Maelstrom is bad, and this is why Lockdown is bad. They fail basically all of these. This is also why Crusade is good, since it passes most of these.

Yikes. See those first two points I think the opposite is true. A mission that plays the same no matter who plays it or when, and one that you can prepare a strategy before you ever go to the table is IMHO the issue with ITC missions as a whole. It's TOO predictable. There should be some element of surprise that prevents you from just knowing everything in advance and being able to build a specific army before you know what you are getting into or, worse, be able to set up two armies on a table with a reasonable facsimile of terrain and play out an entire game by yourself such that you know every turn what you may need to do.

Having some stuff you can't plan for should encourage building well-rounded armies over skew/spam that are designed to do one thing and only one thing because you know in advance that you can build it to handle the mission.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:
...rather than forcing a player to take a flexible force because they need to play potentially 4/6 missions.

The more unpredictable the mission, the less you can overspecialize. That's arguably a good thing within reason. Though I'm of course interested in the counter-argument.

In an RTS factions have the ability to play in a different fashion to adapt to the map. In 40k if you take the wrong list build, or in extreme cases the wrong faction, when you started buying and painting expensive toy soldiers months or years before the event, and then get screwed over by the mission, there's very little you can do.

The ease and lack of cost of switching factions in an RTS makes this feel like a screwey comparison to me.

In the competitive RTSes I used to play, players tended to focus on one faction. You wouldn't take a different faction based on the map, you would adopt a different strategy.

In a tabletop context, a well-designed mission pack can have variety while still giving a well-balanced army a reasonable shot at any of them. If a player leans hard into a skew castle gunline list and then runs into a mission where the only way to score is to take and hold terrain, well... play a sad song on the world's tiniest violin?

I also agree with the idea of reducing the common points level to 1500. More hard decisions as far as what to bring, easier to buy into.

Rts you can scout your foe and counterbuild. Changes everything.

And less bags to carry! It is becoming increasingly difficult to carry around 2000 points of nids!

Yeah, as 8th goes on, starcraft looks better and better lol.

Spoletta wrote:
And less bags to carry! It is becoming increasingly difficult to carry around 2000 points of nids!

Abandon foam trays, magnets are the way to transport hordes. Especially for nid models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Rts you can scout your foe and counterbuild. Changes everything.

Doesn't change the fact that every faction has the proper tools to beat any opponent, does it?

This is a tabletop wargame, not an RTS video game.

Starcraft has far less units and only 3 factions so there's only so much comparison you can make. Also, in 40k you don't build up the armies during the game so the system of competition is fundamentally different.

 Ishagu wrote:
This is a tabletop wargame, not an RTS video game.

Starcraft has far less units and only 3 factions so there's only so much comparison you can make. Also, in 40k you don't build up the armies during the game so the system of competition is fundamentally different.

Note that not all RTS are about base-building and managing economics like StarCraft is.
As someone who already played those first RTS which could toggle between RTS and turn-based, I can tell you that turn-based tabletop wargame is just an RTS with a lot less complexity.
There is no reason why it's not possible to balance WH40k to the same degree as StarCraft I+II, WarCraft3, AoE2, C&C Generals, Red Alert 2, Grey Goo or many others.

Actually I'd say it has more complexity than any of the games you mentioned, which are pretty simplistic.

But if you want to compare 40k to a game at all, I 'd compare it to the Wargame/Steel Division series, by Eugen, not to starcrapped, warcrapped, age of empires, command and conquer, etc.

 Jidmah wrote:
Doesn't change the fact that every faction has the proper tools to beat any opponent, does it?

Three factions are easier to balance than twenty. Still nothing as OP as ih should be running around. The spring faq better do something. The new missions help but it's still an uphill fight against some sm chapters.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoletta wrote:
And less bags to carry! It is becoming increasingly difficult to carry around 2000 points of nids!

Abandon foam trays, magnets are the way to transport hordes. Especially for nid models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Martel732 wrote:
Rts you can scout your foe and counterbuild. Changes everything.

Doesn't change the fact that every faction has the proper tools to beat any opponent, does it?

Not at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Starcraft also has the power of metadata and map design. Its just more uniform.

Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:A fundamental aspect of the game is having a strategy. A plan on how you're going to achieve the victory conditions. When constructing your list, each unit should be selected to perform a role that contributes towards your strategic aims, or makes it difficult for the enemy to achieve theirs. If victory conditions are random and unpredictable, then that reduces the significance of not only the strategic planning for the game, it also reduces the significance of tactically opposing your opponent.

I don't really see how Maelstrom of War reduces the significance of strategic planning. The tactical objective cards are a variable but not an unknown element, you can plan for them in your list and in your gameplay.

 Melissia wrote:
...But if you want to compare 40k to a game at all, I 'd compare it to the Wargame/Steel Division series, by Eugen...

...I wonder how hard it would be to build a Warhammer total conversion mod for Wargame?

Jidmah wrote:
We have been randomly determining our missions after bringing finished lists to our gaming group since a few months into 8th. Not once has a single player been screwed over by any of the eternal war or maelstrom missions because of his faction or because of his collection.
The only times this happens is when people bring an army that can't adapt to the mission - like one-trick combos, static gun castles or lists heavily skewed towards one aspect. Or armies that wouldn't work in any mission, obviously.

I can think of a great many maelstrom games that have been won or lost by the mission. Maelstrom missions are literally the worst kind of mission, they're a race to the top with a fixed number of available points that appear randomly. Score points the turn they're generated, or lose. Games used to come down to one player having seen "Demolitions" [almost always outright impossible] while another saw "Kill an enemy unit, kill 3 for d3, kill 6 for 3+d3 VP" [basically trivial].

There were some factions that just couldn't score some objectives, like Harness the Warp. Some objectives are essentially impossible, like the one to hold every objective on the board [which is only possible at a point where your enemy is probably tabled].

In theory, you have an equal odds of seeing an impossible card as your opponent, but in practice that's terrible for a competitive best-of-one game, because it's a sentiment that's only applicable when averaged over a large number of games.

Slipspace wrote:

Spoiler:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:Missions don't need to be balanced for every single faction in the game, there just needs to be a way for players to avoid obviously one-sided matchups.

I would say they should be balanced for every faction, or at least almost all the factions and every major faction. Especially for competitive play.

That's my one real complaint with ITC, the missions favor certain armies and disadvantage others pretty severely, mostly though the killmore and secondaries. Otherwise, I like ITC because it's static & plannable, which are important for competitive play.

dhallnet wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

I've played it a few times now, and I definitely think that it's worth pretending there are 5 missions in the mission pack and ignoring this one. It's so bad. I won one game on turn 2 by porting up Interceptors and Strikes with Gates to score 6-1, and by dropping in my deepstrikers and porting up more strikes to do it again turn 2 for another 6-0, and from that point onward it was actually just impossible for my opponent to recover the deficit in victory points before the end of the game. I wasn't even putting my guys in favorable engagements, just rushing the points, and took massive casualties compared to him but scored all the victory points, and with diminishing numbers of objectives he had no chance to come back. The other games I played with this mission were less ridiculously one-sided, but the games were still decided very early by just rushing points. I imagine that this mission is probably free in the bag for Space Marines, though I never played as or faced marines while playing it. Armies without infiltrate/vanguard or some other way to cheat a unit up the board turn 1 basically didn't have a chance.

I'm kinda curious, considering each player places 3 objectives on the board, how did your opponent allowed you to be able to deepstrike/infiltrate (gate is once per turn right ?) into most of them ?
Anyway, rushing objectives kinda is the point of this mission and is one of those that force you to make balanced lists because you'll need fast units to tackle it. But I would agree that it might be a bit imbalanced since you score at the end of your own turn.

Objectives are places in alternating sequence 6" in and 12" apart before determining deployment zones. It's not too difficult to force objectives in places that are bad for them. In that game, there were 2 in his zone, one further back but with no cover protecting it, and one at the front but sheltered behind a building [a pretty standard spread of objectives]. He chose #6 to be the one in cover and garrisoned it with cultists and some Havocks above it, and unfortunately for him the one in his back field came up #2. I took #6 with strikes charging the cultists and grabbed the midfield ones with interceptors and by walking to them. Another charge on the part of interceptors meant he wasn't able to push up into the midfield objectives on his turn, since I wasn't dead yet as of the movement phase, and he wasn't able to get anybody with obsec over to steal #6 back from the strikes. Turn 2 I brought in my deep strikers, basically repeating turn 1 except now with strikes and paladins [and re-rolls for the charge, so more successful charges]. Once again, he couldn't reach the objectives and couldn't move past my models. He wasn't able to leave his zone until turn 3. If on his turn 3 he took all the mid-fields and took back #6 [there was basically no chance for him to take away #1] he would be able to recover a total of 6 points to the 14 point lead I was already sitting on at the end of my/beginning of his turn 3. There just wasn't a chance for him to win, and no point in still playing.

So this player was outsmarted in placing the objectives and utterly lacked any board control or ability to take back board control once it was lost? Seems like they were outplayed or their army had deficiencies to me and if that's the reason they lost then things are working as they should. I've played Lockdown a few times now and I think it's a very dynamic mission that pushes players to change their plans on the fly and often requires a lot more thought during deployment than the other missions. I agree it can have problems with a runaway leader as the points available decrease over time but that's part of the challenge for each player, IMO.

I wouldn't say any of those things. He was given no opportunity to regain board control: I had strung out the unit that charged in a line basically across enough of the front of his deploy such that it prevented him from moving through it. Even 5 interceptors on 32mm bases can create a 16" long line through which the opponent can't move through. By the time they get an opportunity to kill them off it's too late to move through them to an objective. He could not pass that unit in time for it to matter, because on turn 2 I replaced it and turn 3 it was over.

I also wouldn't say he was outsmarted on objectives. He definitely picked the better deployment zone, which had good multi-level buildings, los-blocking shelter, and basically a symmetric layout on objectives to mine. I wouldn't have picked the #6 he did, but his rationale for doing so was sound: it was out of LoS from most of the board, the tower it was underneath was a very commanding building that he expected to always have men in. Once he got a turn, he could have surged forward with his army and it would have been out of reach, but I made 2 9" charges and boxed him in before he had a chance to even take an action of any kind.

Would he have lost on a different mission? Would he have lost if he had turn the turn? Would he have lost if a randomly generated objective number generated after he picked his zone had been 5 instead of 2? Maybe. I've been playing for 9 years and play in local competitive events, he's been playing for 9 months and his army represented his entire collection. Odds were in my favor from the get go, I won't deny that. But that game was sad. It was not only a blow out, he didn't even have an opportunity to respond or do something different or react to me.

From what you tell us it looks like he didn't have the firepower to create a gap to go through, he didn't have anything that could fly and he didn't have any bubble wrap to protect his objectives (he might have thought that T1 charges would be unlikely though, which isn't much of a stretch).
I dunno, I think you were just way more prepared to win than he was even though I don't think the mission is perfect.

Martel732 wrote:
Starcraft also has the power of metadata and map design. Its just more uniform.

Yeah, too bad you couldn't just collect all that data by providing digital suit that combines tools like bestcoast pairings, battlescribe and a dice app for free.

GW is technologically backwards for sure.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Jidmah wrote:
We have been randomly determining our missions after bringing finished lists to our gaming group since a few months into 8th. Not once has a single player been screwed over by any of the eternal war or maelstrom missions because of his faction or because of his collection.
The only times this happens is when people bring an army that can't adapt to the mission - like one-trick combos, static gun castles or lists heavily skewed towards one aspect. Or armies that wouldn't work in any mission, obviously.

I can think of a great many maelstrom games that have been won or lost by the mission. Maelstrom missions are literally the worst kind of mission, they're a race to the top with a fixed number of available points that appear randomly. Score points the turn they're generated, or lose. Games used to come down to one player having seen "Demolitions" [almost always outright impossible] while another saw "Kill an enemy unit, kill 3 for d3, kill 6 for 3+d3 VP" [basically trivial].

There were some factions that just couldn't score some objectives, like Harness the Warp. Some objectives are essentially impossible, like the one to hold every objective on the board [which is only possible at a point where your enemy is probably tabled].

In theory, you have an equal odds of seeing an impossible card as your opponent, but in practice that's terrible for a competitive best-of-one game, because it's a sentiment that's only applicable when averaged over a large number of games.

Not to be nitpicky, but that was a problem of the maelstrom game mode and not by the specific mission you rolled. There is no army that was terrible one maelstrom mission but not at others.
Have you tried the new maelstrom? I feel like it eliminates almost all your complaints, as you get to eliminate half of the objectives and you usually go through most or all of the cards you selected over the course of a game. Getting unlucky also happens a lot less often as you draw 5 cards and pick 3 of those.

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoiler:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Jidmah wrote:
We have been randomly determining our missions after bringing finished lists to our gaming group since a few months into 8th. Not once has a single player been screwed over by any of the eternal war or maelstrom missions because of his faction or because of his collection.
The only times this happens is when people bring an army that can't adapt to the mission - like one-trick combos, static gun castles or lists heavily skewed towards one aspect. Or armies that wouldn't work in any mission, obviously.

I can think of a great many maelstrom games that have been won or lost by the mission. Maelstrom missions are literally the worst kind of mission, they're a race to the top with a fixed number of available points that appear randomly. Score points the turn they're generated, or lose. Games used to come down to one player having seen "Demolitions" [almost always outright impossible] while another saw "Kill an enemy unit, kill 3 for d3, kill 6 for 3+d3 VP" [basically trivial].

There were some factions that just couldn't score some objectives, like Harness the Warp. Some objectives are essentially impossible, like the one to hold every objective on the board [which is only possible at a point where your enemy is probably tabled].

In theory, you have an equal odds of seeing an impossible card as your opponent, but in practice that's terrible for a competitive best-of-one game, because it's a sentiment that's only applicable when averaged over a large number of games.

Not to be nitpicky, but that was a problem of the maelstrom game mode and not by the specific mission you rolled. There is no army that was terrible one maelstrom mission but not at others.
Have you tried the new maelstrom? I feel like it eliminates almost all your complaints, as you get to eliminate half of the objectives and you usually go through most or all of the cards you selected over the course of a game. Getting unlucky also happens a lot less often as you draw 5 cards and pick 3 of those.

To be fair, Maelstrom missions are as much "one mission" as the ITC pack is "one mission". They're not actually different from each other.

I haven't played Maelstrom since the option not to returned with 8e. I'm willing to give the new ones a try, since I have the deck of cards sitting around. My expectations are pretty low.

Removing impossibles is good, though it's still fundamentally the same. You get 3 random tasks to do each turn. If you do all of them, the one or two super-objectives define the game, if you miss one, you probably lose. Reducing the chances of getting an impossible one in an improvement towards balance, but at the end of the day it's a goose chase across the board doing random tasks as they arrive with no real greater strategy from turn to turn.

You get 5 cards and pick 3 out of those.
You can eliminate pretty much all that are difficult or highly improbably to do, plus you get to keep the cards you don't play for later turns, so you can set up some that take a bit more work over multiple turns.
On top of that, one of the three objectives is face down, so you can bait your opponent into giving it to you through his own actions.
In addition, there are three new stratagems that help you out when you hit a dry spell.

From experience, you usually miss no more than one or two objectives across the game(usually during T1), meaning that you usually draw 15 of your 18 cards in a 5 turn game. If it goes to turn six, you'll have drawn all of the cards you picked, meaning both players have had a chance to score all the easy vp and the "super-objectives".

 Jidmah wrote:
You get 5 cards and pick 3 out of those.
You can eliminate pretty much all that are difficult or highly improbably to do, plus you get to keep the cards you don't play for later turns, so you can set up some that take a bit more work over multiple turns.
On top of that, one of the three objectives is face down, so you can bait your opponent into giving it to you through his own actions.
In addition, there are three new stratagems that help you out when you hit a dry spell.

From experience, you usually miss no more than one or two objectives across the game(usually during T1), meaning that you usually draw 15 of your 18 cards in a 5 turn game. If it goes to turn six, you'll have drawn all of the cards you picked, meaning both players have had a chance to score all the easy vp and the "super-objectives".

I really like the idea of this, never looked at Malestrom before, but as a Necron player, we've got no "super objective", and I feel like most of ours aren't even that thematic.

 Blndmage wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
You get 5 cards and pick 3 out of those.
You can eliminate pretty much all that are difficult or highly improbably to do, plus you get to keep the cards you don't play for later turns, so you can set up some that take a bit more work over multiple turns.
On top of that, one of the three objectives is face down, so you can bait your opponent into giving it to you through his own actions.
In addition, there are three new stratagems that help you out when you hit a dry spell.

From experience, you usually miss no more than one or two objectives across the game(usually during T1), meaning that you usually draw 15 of your 18 cards in a 5 turn game. If it goes to turn six, you'll have drawn all of the cards you picked, meaning both players have had a chance to score all the easy vp and the "super-objectives".

I really like the idea of this, never looked at Malestrom before, but as a Necron player, we've got no "super objective", and I feel like most of ours aren't even that thematic.

I'd argue that age of the machine is very much a super objective

I've played against the fabled eldar objective combo twice, and it's really not that powerful. Dead psykers don't cast spells and CP finite.