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 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
Prior to IG nerf with pt increase on plasmaguns, turn 1 deepstrikes and rule of 3 restrictions - army composed of mostly 4x plasma scion CMS embarked in valkyries & deepstriking wiping out my entire army composed mostly of 2W bikes in 1 turn.

Prior to nerf, you could take any number of officer of fleet/commisar to meet the 'one per OFFICER' rule for command squad.

At one point, you didn't even need to have a officer to command them, and just meet your HQ requirements and have a quadrillion plasma scion command squads deep striking in. I faced that one time, and it was pretty silly.

Right, and back then the first turn was almost guaranteed for the player who finished deploying first. And this army had 2-3 drops because all of his scions were starting the game embarked on squadron of valkyries.

 Argive wrote:
Practice game for my first tourney:

My wraithseer ynnari contingent and custom CWE (all the bells and whistles)vs triple KLOS... It was over after just 1 turn of shooting.

Really made me re-evaluate my choice of a hobby lol.

Lol goddam! I love the Lord of Skulls, I can't help it.

Someday. . . someday. . .

We tried a 2v2 game a little while back, the convoy one from Vigilus defiant. The idea was there was an ork caravan being guarded by drukhari for lulz, and they were being attacked by a combination of grey knights and mechanicus. Objective for us is get two of the four trukks across the map, objective for them is kill the trukks. My housemate was playing orks, this was his first game, and he was very excited about his strategy of boyz in trukks. Turn 1, neutron lasers mean 3 trukks gone, turn 2 deep striking grey knights kill the last one.
That was about 10 months ago, the orks have been collecting dust while my housemate works up to asking me to buy them.

Crackedgear wrote:
We tried a 2v2 game a little while back, the convoy one from Vigilus defiant. The idea was there was an ork caravan being guarded by drukhari for lulz, and they were being attacked by a combination of grey knights and mechanicus. Objective for us is get two of the four trukks across the map, objective for them is kill the trukks. My housemate was playing orks, this was his first game, and he was very excited about his strategy of boyz in trukks. Turn 1, neutron lasers mean 3 trukks gone, turn 2 deep striking grey knights kill the last one.
That was about 10 months ago, the orks have been collecting dust while my housemate works up to asking me to buy them.

I think part of it basically all of it may be the game you played. The narrative missions aren't exactly set for fun and fair play, and if you give an stupidly easy victory condition like "kill these 4 fairly fragile vehicles", then the result is going to be one sided and probably un-fun for at least one person involved if not everybody was there to tell a story with the toys.

I would definitely not recommend such a game for somebody's first game.


See if you can get them to play another game, play a matched scenario and go easy because new players rarely have a full mastery of the mechanics or a collection complete enough to build a good list. If you make enough "mistakes" they can capitalize on and feel good about themselves, (you don't have to throw the game, just enough that they feel accomplished like they succeeded something but also have room to grow), and they'll be much more likely to stick around.

Agree, the convoy mission is just terrible.

The whole mission is created around the assumption that it's difficult to destroy 500-700 points of vehicles before they move across the entire board.

Unless you generate armies at random or take some other measures to severely reduce firepower, even the most casual army should easily be able to do that. Anyone who build their army with handling tanks in mind will just win the convoy turn one.

It's been a while so I don't quite remember all of the units involved. In a tournament game hot on the heels of the Space Marine supplements, my Dark Angels took first turn, and considered going after objectives right away, because I wouldn't have been able to get in shooting range yet, but decided to hide instead, and basically give my opponent the middle of the table straight away. His Raven Guard were then pretty much able to jump on what felt like all of the objectives. He was also able to take out quite a few of my tacticals with some unit that could shoot without line-of-sight, I think Eliminators or something? Turn two I decided I had to get out and fight for some of those objectives. My deep striking terminators took out one unit and minced some wounds from an Invictor war suit; the rest of my shooting hit notihing but shadows and air. He then proceeded to shoot all but a captain and librarian from the board, which he then charged and wiped. Turn 2 tabling.

 Jidmah wrote:
Agree, the convoy mission is just terrible.

The whole mission is created around the assumption that it's difficult to destroy 500-700 points of vehicles before they move across the entire board.

Unless you generate armies at random or take some other measures to severely reduce firepower, even the most casual army should easily be able to do that. Anyone who build their army with handling tanks in mind will just win the convoy turn one.

Considering vehicles with that pricetag even need to be generally acounted for and killed efficently i find the convoy mission extremely , blind, in the sense that when there are vehicles now somwhat semi common that are in that points bracket alone how high is the chance that a convoy of lesser vehicles is going to survive it.

My worst game was Tau against my Slaanesh Daemons.

I'd brought a fun and fluffy list including Zarakynel (the super daemon, which is bad, I know), a keeper or two, some 'nettes, dp, all that jazz.

My opponent brought triptide Tau.

I got the first turn. Zarakynel died in overwatch, everyone else failed their charges or charged and killed something pointless like breacher teams or kroot that were screening.

So, being down to 1334 points in a 2000 point game after my own first turn, my opponent took his first turn...

and the rest is history.

earlier in 8th, practice for an event, event was 2k, practice was 1k, I bought the Kraken genestealer half of my list.

opponent conceded turn two after two of his baby knights were subjected to omnomnom... he had brought them forwards not realising just how flipping fast genestealers could get

he could probably have still won to be honest, he had killed quite a few of them but only had light infantry left and didn't fancy trying to shoot me down as I piled in

had another, objectives one where you win if you claim the enemy objective at the end of your turn. Custards v Death Guard, I got the objective on my first turn with some lucky rolls. that was that

I tend to either win very quickly.. or be wiped out

like deciding to see what Oooohesabadunhim could do in close combat.. it turns out he can do quite a bit, sadly I had no survivors to report back to HQ


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
Agree, the convoy mission is just terrible.

The whole mission is created around the assumption that it's difficult to destroy 500-700 points of vehicles before they move across the entire board.

Unless you generate armies at random or take some other measures to severely reduce firepower, even the most casual army should easily be able to do that. Anyone who build their army with handling tanks in mind will just win the convoy turn one.

I disagree under specific circumstances, such turkey shoot missions are very useful when teaching someone to play, you take the turkeys and let them shoot the ever living poo out of them

Yeah, but that was clearly not the intent when releasing a narrative mission as part of a campaign book, right?

I can't help wondering if this thread isn't an indirect response to the "Are most games over by turn 2?" thread having so many people insisting games aren't really decided until turn 4.

It's really hard to know. But I still say the answer is "too many are".

The Newman wrote:
I can't help wondering if this thread isn't an indirect response to the "Are most games over by turn 2?" thread having so many people insisting games aren't really decided until turn 4.

They're very different questions though.

This is asking for the extrema of our negative experiences, which of course we love to share.

The other one is asking if most of our games are severely negative experiences, which is not true.

I've had a couple of games that have gone really lopsided really fast, but the vast majority of my games do not do so.


I think the people saying T4 are probably pretty accurate, at least for the current ITC and Eternal War mission packs. It's structural to the missions and the way they're run and scored, not really to any sort of issues with army balance I think:
Under the current progressive scoring scheme, the late turns of the game are increasingly irrelevant as a lead can be built up from showing early aggression and board control that if you haven't come back/taken the lead already, a turn 6 comeback is unlikely to change the score, there aren't enough points on the table to score.
By the end of turn 3, all assets are on the board, so there's no dark horse from reserves to suddenly change the tide. If you're not able to assume the advantage with your reserves by then end of turn 4, you're unlikely to do so on turn 5 or 6; your force on-board is only going to get weaker.

Thus turn 4 is really your last opportunity to make a decisive play from behind. Turn 5 and 6 really just exist for said play to "pay off" and show whether your turn 4 play was actually enough to turn the game around.

I think if anything it highlights the difference between scenario play and straight kill-em-all games, and what a well designed tournament pack can add.

We threw a couple of events with a carefully designed scenario pack and afterward "tournament practice" meant trying to not win a game before turn 3, because you'd win the game but lose out on tournament points if you won too quickly.

A straight kill-em-all can be decided before either army is even deployed, tournament play can change what constitutes a win by enough to make the game worth playing anyway.

Not counting games when the fickle hand of the Open War deck produced something truly one-sided, my most one-sided defeat in competitive play was with my Dark Angels against Orks after their Codex dropped. He mobbed up two full mobs of Lootas into one, and by the end of turn 1 my Hellblasters and Black Knights were dead (pretty much half my army). I tried to scrape a couple of VPs, but the game was done.

On the other hand, I wiped out a Knight and Magnus on Turn 1 at a different tourney with pretty much the same list. He still tried to get some VPs, but he couldn't dig out of the hole.

In both cases we were banking on our Invul saves, and in both cases we paid for it!

The Newman wrote:
I think if anything it highlights the difference between scenario play and straight kill-em-all games, and what a well designed tournament pack can add.

We threw a couple of events with a carefully designed scenario pack and afterward "tournament practice" meant trying to not win a game before turn 3, because you'd win the game but lose out on tournament points if you won too quickly.

A straight kill-em-all can be decided before either army is even deployed, tournament play can change what constitutes a win by enough to make the game worth playing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's why most tournament rules have clauses in the event of tabling/concession that the remaining player gets the full points possible. Sometimes this is more granular and stipulates they play the remaining turns out by themselves so that models actually have to move to objectives/deployment zones within the game time limit.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I can't help wondering if this thread isn't an indirect response to the "Are most games over by turn 2?" thread having so many people insisting games aren't really decided until turn 4.

They're very different questions though.

This is asking for the extrema of our negative experiences, which of course we love to share.

The other one is asking if most of our games are severely negative experiences, which is not true.

I've had a couple of games that have gone really lopsided really fast, but the vast majority of my games do not do so.


I think the people saying T4 are probably pretty accurate, at least for the current ITC and Eternal War mission packs. It's structural to the missions and the way they're run and scored, not really to any sort of issues with army balance I think:
Under the current progressive scoring scheme, the late turns of the game are increasingly irrelevant as a lead can be built up from showing early aggression and board control that if you haven't come back/taken the lead already, a turn 6 comeback is unlikely to change the score, there aren't enough points on the table to score.
By the end of turn 3, all assets are on the board, so there's no dark horse from reserves to suddenly change the tide. If you're not able to assume the advantage with your reserves by then end of turn 4, you're unlikely to do so on turn 5 or 6; your force on-board is only going to get weaker.

Thus turn 4 is really your last opportunity to make a decisive play from behind. Turn 5 and 6 really just exist for said play to "pay off" and show whether your turn 4 play was actually enough to turn the game around.

And that's why i only play oldschool style objectives when we are not doing kill each other(which tends to be 90% of games for quick play). it doesn't matter until the last turn, then you see who is holding the objectives. and random turn 6 or 7 could change the entire outcome. making playing beyond turn 2, 3, or 4 vital. so even an army that got mauled in an earlier turn still has a chance to pull off a win.

Mi most mismatched game was my friend's Death Guard vs. my Imperial Knights. I shredded him from range, and played keep away. The only things that could catch me couldn't put me down quickly enough and got roasted.

Really a boring game.

 DarkHound wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I think if anything it highlights the difference between scenario play and straight kill-em-all games, and what a well designed tournament pack can add.

We threw a couple of events with a carefully designed scenario pack and afterward "tournament practice" meant trying to not win a game before turn 3, because you'd win the game but lose out on tournament points if you won too quickly.

A straight kill-em-all can be decided before either army is even deployed, tournament play can change what constitutes a win by enough to make the game worth playing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's why most tournament rules have clauses in the event of tabling/concession that the remaining player gets the full points possible. Sometimes this is more granular and stipulates they play the remaining turns out by themselves so that models actually have to move to objectives/deployment zones within the game time limit.

You missed the point, we specifically avoided doing that exact thing to discourage super-tuned/heavy alpha-strike lists. Table someone in the first couple of turns or shred them so badly they don't see a point in continuing and you only get 5-10 tournament points. Go the full five turns and you could wind up with 20+. It strongly encouraged building and playing more defensively instead of trying to walk out of turn one with an insurmountable advantage.

The Newman wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I think if anything it highlights the difference between scenario play and straight kill-em-all games, and what a well designed tournament pack can add.

We threw a couple of events with a carefully designed scenario pack and afterward "tournament practice" meant trying to not win a game before turn 3, because you'd win the game but lose out on tournament points if you won too quickly.

A straight kill-em-all can be decided before either army is even deployed, tournament play can change what constitutes a win by enough to make the game worth playing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's why most tournament rules have clauses in the event of tabling/concession that the remaining player gets the full points possible. Sometimes this is more granular and stipulates they play the remaining turns out by themselves so that models actually have to move to objectives/deployment zones within the game time limit.

You missed the point, we specifically avoided doing that exact thing to discourage super-tuned/heavy alpha-strike lists. Table someone in the first couple of turns or shred them so badly they don't see a point in continuing and you only get 5-10 tournament points. Go the full five turns and you could wind up with 20+. It strongly encouraged building and playing more defensively instead of trying to walk out of turn one with an insurmountable advantage.

No.

We did something similar for a narrative campaign and all it encouraged was people conceding before the game started if they knew they were going to lose because the opponent got less points than if they'd fought a proper battle, meaning that the territory was taken over less quickly (we had points ratchet up per side until one side got a certain superiority level). It became common to duck games by surrendering over the discord before the game was even played, because that meant the opponent got fewer points.

The Newman wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I think if anything it highlights the difference between scenario play and straight kill-em-all games, and what a well designed tournament pack can add.

We threw a couple of events with a carefully designed scenario pack and afterward "tournament practice" meant trying to not win a game before turn 3, because you'd win the game but lose out on tournament points if you won too quickly.

A straight kill-em-all can be decided before either army is even deployed, tournament play can change what constitutes a win by enough to make the game worth playing anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's why most tournament rules have clauses in the event of tabling/concession that the remaining player gets the full points possible. Sometimes this is more granular and stipulates they play the remaining turns out by themselves so that models actually have to move to objectives/deployment zones within the game time limit.

You missed the point, we specifically avoided doing that exact thing to discourage super-tuned/heavy alpha-strike lists. Table someone in the first couple of turns or shred them so badly they don't see a point in continuing and you only get 5-10 tournament points. Go the full five turns and you could wind up with 20+. It strongly encouraged building and playing more defensively instead of trying to walk out of turn one with an insurmountable advantage.

So what you're saying is you purposely dragged the game out to 4+ turns. This doesn't show that typical games AREN'T decided by turn 2. You simply decided not to decide the battle by turn 2 by pulling your punches.

 aphyon wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

The Newman wrote:
I can't help wondering if this thread isn't an indirect response to the "Are most games over by turn 2?" thread having so many people insisting games aren't really decided until turn 4.

They're very different questions though.

This is asking for the extrema of our negative experiences, which of course we love to share.

The other one is asking if most of our games are severely negative experiences, which is not true.

I've had a couple of games that have gone really lopsided really fast, but the vast majority of my games do not do so.


I think the people saying T4 are probably pretty accurate, at least for the current ITC and Eternal War mission packs. It's structural to the missions and the way they're run and scored, not really to any sort of issues with army balance I think:
Under the current progressive scoring scheme, the late turns of the game are increasingly irrelevant as a lead can be built up from showing early aggression and board control that if you haven't come back/taken the lead already, a turn 6 comeback is unlikely to change the score, there aren't enough points on the table to score.
By the end of turn 3, all assets are on the board, so there's no dark horse from reserves to suddenly change the tide. If you're not able to assume the advantage with your reserves by then end of turn 4, you're unlikely to do so on turn 5 or 6; your force on-board is only going to get weaker.

Thus turn 4 is really your last opportunity to make a decisive play from behind. Turn 5 and 6 really just exist for said play to "pay off" and show whether your turn 4 play was actually enough to turn the game around.

And that's why i only play oldschool style objectives when we are not doing kill each other(which tends to be 90% of games for quick play). it doesn't matter until the last turn, then you see who is holding the objectives. and random turn 6 or 7 could change the entire outcome. making playing beyond turn 2, 3, or 4 vital. so even an army that got mauled in an earlier turn still has a chance to pull off a win.

Yeah, I'm increasingly less of a fan of the progressive scoring and more of a fan of "who holds the objectives at the end of the game" for this reason.

Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.


If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Martel732 wrote:
Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.

If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Yeah, that's why it was moved to progressive. I'm aware of that.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the trying to invent scoring systems that disincentiveizes destruction of enemy forces is a lost cause. First off, destruction of enemy forces is the fundamentally most critical aim of a wargame that allows objectives to be accomplished, and second off, if there's a problem with firepower being too cheap, then problem is that firepower is too cheap, not the scoring system.

Martel732 wrote:
Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.


If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Which is why many of us promote healthier coverage of terrain as the solution. What this game desperately needs are cases where one would ask "what good is all this firepower if I won't be able to shoot at anything?"

When there are sufficient terrain to maneuver through, it can potentially change the dynamics in list building where you are forced to bring in multiple tactical elements into your list (forwards, mid field & back field elements), instead of focusing purely on heavy hitters.

Gunline works because they essentially have board wide presence (within their operating range of course) due to the sparsely placed terrain. You limit this ranged offense by populating the board enough so that they have limited 'corridors' they can effectively hold. Conversely, melee doesn't work precisely because of the magnitude of influence a single unit can exert in a given area. In short, there should be more places to hide than there are open areas for shoot outs.

Also, densely packed board gives you the opportunity to block out certain areas/force you to break formation for certain unit types. Our house rule is that terrains (other than scatter terrains) cannot be placed within 6" of another. This gives enough room for large oval based models to pass through in single-file, limiting the offensive output compared to if the said models all walked up side by side.

Of course, terrain isn't a panacea - all non-LOS 'artilleries' need some sort of penalty for shooting blind (i.e. this weapon can target enemies that are not visible to it. When targeting enemy that are not visible, this weapon suffers -1 to hit rolls.), but it's been working pretty well so far in our house games.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.

If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Yeah, that's why it was moved to progressive. I'm aware of that.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the trying to invent scoring systems that disincentiveizes destruction of enemy forces is a lost cause. First off, destruction of enemy forces is the fundamentally most critical aim of a wargame that allows objectives to be accomplished, and second off, if there's a problem with firepower being too cheap, then problem is that firepower is too cheap, not the scoring system.

Dead units can't score in any system. ITC made a workaround with the ruin thing, but not all battles take place in ruins.

 skchsan wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.


If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Which is why many of us promote healthier coverage of terrain as the solution. What this game desperately needs are cases where one would ask "what good is all this firepower if I won't be able to shoot at anything?"

When there are sufficient terrain to maneuver through, it can potentially change the dynamics in list building where you are forced to bring in multiple tactical elements into your list (forwards, mid field & back field elements), instead of focusing purely on heavy hitters.

Gunline works because they essentially have board wide presence (within their operating range of course) due to the sparsely placed terrain. You limit this ranged offense by populating the board enough so that they have limited 'corridors' they can effectively hold. Conversely, melee doesn't work precisely because of the magnitude of influence a single unit can exert in a given area. In short, there should be more places to hide than there are open areas for shoot outs.

Also, densely packed board gives you the opportunity to block out certain areas/force you to break formation for certain unit types. Our house rule is that terrains (other than scatter terrains) cannot be placed within 6" of another. This gives enough room for large oval based models to pass through in single-file, limiting the offensive output compared to if the said models all walked up side by side.

Of course, terrain isn't a panacea - all non-LOS 'artilleries' need some sort of penalty for shooting blind (i.e. this weapon can target enemies that are not visible to it. When targeting enemy that are not visible, this weapon suffers -1 to hit rolls.), but it's been working pretty well so far in our house games.

We found that too. Put enough terrain on the board and playing the game starts to get tactical.

Martel732 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Both systems have tons of problems. Killing power can dominate either system.

If scoring is at the end, I have all game to table you.

Yeah, that's why it was moved to progressive. I'm aware of that.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that the trying to invent scoring systems that disincentiveizes destruction of enemy forces is a lost cause. First off, destruction of enemy forces is the fundamentally most critical aim of a wargame that allows objectives to be accomplished, and second off, if there's a problem with firepower being too cheap, then problem is that firepower is too cheap, not the scoring system.

Dead units can't score in any system. ITC made a workaround with the ruin thing, but not all battles take place in ruins.

Yeah, uh, that's how wargames work. That's kind of the point. Blow enough of the enemy to bits to let you claim more objectives than them.

The question is whether you build to be able to move to and claim objectives at all, and that basically comes down to whether you can expect to completely eliminate them.


I'm also just increasingly not seeing a problem. By and large, most gunlines cannot table an enemy, period, this edition. Characters and LoS get in the way, and shooting units have poor board control. It's high mobility or fast aggressive forces that can table the enemy, which are coincidentally also the ones that would expect to win on either form of objective scoring.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Argive wrote:
Practice game for my first tourney:

My wraithseer ynnari contingent and custom CWE (all the bells and whistles)vs triple KLOS... It was over after just 1 turn of shooting.

Really made me re-evaluate my choice of a hobby lol.

Lol goddam! I love the Lord of Skulls, I can't help it.

Someday. . . someday. . .

1 isin't so much of a problem I think... But 3? with a disco lord? And an MOP? And a demon prince for further buffs? yieks...

Never degrades BS... can very easily have bs2+ with 2+ /4++/6+++ T8 26 wounds.. And pumps out all of the shots all re-rollable with deamon forge at 48".
And of course its soo bloody big it sees all around the battlefield and forms a physcial wall so the disco lord can just sit behind it.

Like they just delete whatever you point it at and then takes a whole armies firepower and as long as it has 1 wound it just does it all again. The pinnacle of unintended rules interaction IMO.
If you get dawn of war deployment like I did its just like over..

There was that time I didn’t turn up because anxiety took a run up at my Nads?

That was a one sided outcome. And I don’t begrudge it!