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 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more.

This isn't true. People are taking the idea that touching obscured makes terrain magically disappear for your whole army. All it does is turn on normal LOS for that unit or units. Everything else in the army not touching that obscuring terrain has no vision through it. ITC allowed vision through the second floor barring the silly magic boxes, so, yes there is more sight blocking.

It is absolutely true with the terrain most people have and use. It is much easier to draw LOS using 9th's terrain rules than 8th's for anything that isn't a solid wall, against anything but very large models. The impact on typical ruins in particular - by far the most common terrain you see on boards - is absolutely massive.

True, if everyone largely ignores 9th's terrain rules and instead just gets big solid walls to use instead, 9th will end up with very slightly better LOS blocking. But that just shows why the 9th edition rule fail at doing what they were intended to do, because literally the entire reason they gave was "it's not cool when people have to board up their ruin windows." And yet "board up your ruin windows" is the only way to get 9th edition terrain rules back to the same level of blocking as the competitive 8th formats used.


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Sunny Side Up wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't care who wrote the missions. Whoever did didn't learn the lessons ITC had learned, because the new missions go in a completely different direction than ITC2020 went.

If it's the same people - which is not true BTW, the main designer is Brandt and he's always been a fan of progressive scoring, which is the fundamental difference between ITC and NOVA, and it's very clear Brandt won out with these missions - they clearly decided to disregard their own experience over the last couple years.

ITC (2020) is all progressive scoring, aside from 4 measly points (out 42) for ground control, if you chose to (below 10% of the max result at best). NOVA (at least 2019, we've not seen 2020 mission) at least had the option to forgo progressive hold, hold-more stuff for end-game scoring that was a much higher % of your total points.

If anything, ITC had a much larger progressive fetish than NOVA.

Maybe we're having a terminology problem here. When I say progressive scoring, I'm referring to scoring at the beginning of the turn. ITC is end-of-turn or end-of-round scoring. Technically they are both progressive scoring, but for whatever reason we seem to call start-of-player-turn scoring progressive in contrast to scoring that happens at the end of the turn or battle round. This is the fundamental difference between ITC and NOVA, and NOVA won out in the 9th missions. Scoring on the start of your turn creates a built-in first turn advantage compared to scoring at the end of the turn, and especially to scoring at the end of the battle round.

The two big differences between 9th edition missions and ITC are (1) scoring at the start of the turn rather than the end of the turn or battle round, and (2) alternate deployments before you know who goes first. Both these things favor going first compared to the ITC alternative.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more.

This isn't true. People are taking the idea that touching obscured makes terrain magically disappear for your whole army. All it does is turn on normal LOS for that unit or units. Everything else in the army not touching that obscuring terrain has no vision through it. ITC allowed vision through the second floor barring the silly magic boxes, so, yes there is more sight blocking.

It is absolutely true with the terrain most people have and use. It is much easier to draw LOS using 9th's terrain rules than 8th's for anything that isn't a solid wall, against anything but very large models. The impact on typical ruins in particular - by far the most common terrain you see on boards - is absolutely massive.

True, if everyone largely ignores 9th's terrain rules and instead just gets big solid walls to use instead, 9th will end up with very slightly better LOS blocking. But that just shows why the 9th edition rule fail at doing what they were intended to do, because literally the entire reason they gave was "it's not cool when people have to board up their ruin windows." And yet "board up your ruin windows" is the only way to get 9th edition terrain rules back to the same level of blocking as the competitive 8th formats used.

True but the ITC terrain really wasn't right either with its rediculous magic boxes of invulnerability.

Also the fact the NLOS spam atleast standa a decent chance of having a -1 to hit is a step in the right direction finally.


Also on the scoring thing I've played so many editions I have dealt with most scoring systems they all tend to favour someone.

Continual scoring - tended to favour faster armies.
End of your turn scoring- First/Neutral
End of Battle Round scoring - Second/Neutral
Start of Battle Round scoring - First
Start of your turn scoring - durability

ITC wasn't perfect by any stretch. But what ITC had finally got right was getting rid of first turn advantage. And it did that by scoring at the end of the turn/battle round and by rolling for going first before deployment, with the person going second deploying second.

The 9th edition missions throw both of these things out the window (along with also allowing stacking secondaries, another odd change that doesn't make any sense to me), which is nearly guaranteed to bring back first turn advantage.

I'd love to be wrong. But it's hard to see how you can make a bunch of changes that increase first turn advantage without, well, increasing first turn advantage.

If it turns out there isn't significant first turn advantage with these missions, I will happily eat a slice of humble pie. I would be very happy to be wrong here.

yukishiro1 wrote:
ITC wasn't perfect by any stretch. But what ITC had finally got right was getting rid of first turn advantage. And it did that by scoring at the end of the turn/battle round and by rolling for going first before deployment, with the person going second deploying second.

The 9th edition missions throw both of these things out the window (along with also allowing stacking secondaries, another odd change that doesn't make any sense to me), which is nearly guaranteed to bring back first turn advantage.

I'd love to be wrong. But it's hard to see how you can make a bunch of changes that increase first turn advantage without, well, increasing first turn advantage.

If it turns out there isn't significant first turn advantage with these missions, I will happily eat a slice of humble pie. I would be very happy to be wrong here.

Oh I agree 9th edition lists get a lot out of go first = score first

I get why GW went for you score in your command phase as it's way easier to remeber and is the same for both players.

However I think end of battle round scoring would have been better for balancing out the advantage of going first with maybe even actually favouring going second.

Love the new missions, seem more exciting and interesting.

Points are absolute gak.

And again, if you deploy to go first, which is a 50/50 chance and you don't get first turn you are in a lot of trouble.

Brian from TT, a competitive player and a playtester of 9th edition for 8 months, said that deploying your army expecting to go second is better than deploying your army expecting to go first.

Seizing, pluses to your roll to choose attack or defend made deploying to go first make more sense.

The big thing with 9th is that moving fast to take objectives early only works if your units can hold. That is why I don't think MSU, at least for obsec units, is very smart. Even 5 Intercessors are going to die fairly easily to a decently kitted out shooting or melee unit.

"Magic box" was stupid. Not sure why TLOS is such an issue. It existed from 2nd edition up to, technically 8th but was houseruled for tournaments.

So what are we expecting to come next? Do we have any timeline of releases?

We've seen points changes from the one CA book, but do we know anything about what's in the other CA book? (Is that where the missions leaked from?)

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:
So what are we expecting to come next? Do we have any timeline of releases?

We've seen points changes from the one CA book, but do we know anything about what's in the other CA book? (Is that where the missions leaked from?)

Yes, that's where the strikeforce missions were leaked from.

I hope they finally get around to the new fw books.

Ice_can wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:

9th edition terrain rules allow EASIER line of sight drawing than the competitive rules everyone used in 8th. Terrain isn't improved, it doesn't obscure more.

This isn't true. People are taking the idea that touching obscured makes terrain magically disappear for your whole army. All it does is turn on normal LOS for that unit or units. Everything else in the army not touching that obscuring terrain has no vision through it. ITC allowed vision through the second floor barring the silly magic boxes, so, yes there is more sight blocking.

That really all depends on the armies in play and the terrain your playing with a lot of events were running large solid terrian that hide even knights at the end if 8th.

Also a lot of people are going back to trying to use GW terrain which tends to have poor TLOS blocking properties.

However 9th is better for limiting the advanatge of NLOS shooting spam lists like guard and later marines with TFC and WW spam.

I don’t know where you get this “A lot of people” no Major tournament organizer is using Mainly GW terrain.. it’s economically unviable. ITC NOVA nor ETC is not tossing out their terrain sorry.

There's an entire section of Dakka dedicated to tournament discussions. Perhaps this discussion of which format sucks more belongs there?

yukishiro1 wrote:


It is absolutely true with the terrain most people have and use. It is much easier to draw LOS using 9th's terrain rules than 8th's for anything that isn't a solid wall, against anything but very large models. The impact on typical ruins in particular - by far the most common terrain you see on boards - is absolutely massive.

True, if everyone largely ignores 9th's terrain rules and instead just gets big solid walls to use instead, 9th will end up with very slightly better LOS blocking. But that just shows why the 9th edition rule fail at doing what they were intended to do, because literally the entire reason they gave was "it's not cool when people have to board up their ruin windows." And yet "board up your ruin windows" is the only way to get 9th edition terrain rules back to the same level of blocking as the competitive 8th formats used.

There's varying degrees.

Something that blocks an infinite column blocks more than ITC did. The only thing ITC gave was first floor block for units inside and there was pretty much no other kind of terrain aside from straight LOS block. So as a technicality, because ITC was bland as gak there was more LOS block. But now we get forests,craters,etc that have a real effect on the game.

A tank that rolls up to the center and touches an obstructed terrain can see and be seen through whatever holes exist. This still leaves the rest of the army behind and exposes whatever you decide to place there. Sure, if you have 3 PBCs that don't mind taking hits then you'll be happy to be there I'm sure, but it isn't always going to be wise.

And when you're playing the long way and there's a second obstructing piece of terrain you'll open yourself to strikes from behind that terrain.

I don't know why points are scored at the start of the turn. Means that the person going second cannot do anything to affect the game's score.

"It applies equally to the person going first though in the first turn!" I've heard people say here.

You can start with objectives in your deployment zone and score them turn 1. The same cannot be said for any objective that the player going second hasn't got in their final turn.

Objectives should be scored at the end of the turn.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't know why points are scored at the start of the turn. Means that the person going second cannot do anything to affect the game's score.

"It applies equally to the person going first though in the first turn!" I've heard people say here.

You can start with objectives in your deployment zone and score them turn 1. The same cannot be said for any objective that the player going second hasn't got in their final turn.

Objectives should be scored at the end of the turn.

This is the score sheet from TTTitans latest game. Tyranids went first. Tyranids still won overall, but the SW we able to force them off a lot of objectives to pick up a 15. Then there were so few units that holding two became difficult for both players.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I don't know why points are scored at the start of the turn. Means that the person going second cannot do anything to affect the game's score.

"It applies equally to the person going first though in the first turn!" I've heard people say here.

You can start with objectives in your deployment zone and score them turn 1. The same cannot be said for any objective that the player going second hasn't got in their final turn.

Objectives should be scored at the end of the turn.

This is the score sheet from TTTitans latest game. Tyranids went first. Tyranids still won overall, but the SW we able to force them off a lot of objectives to pick up a 15. Then there were so few units that holding two became difficult for both players.

Looks like the wolves won, 51-49

But I'm not clear what this sample size of 1 has to do with what he said.

Voss wrote:

Looks like the wolves won, 51-49

But I'm not clear what this sample size of 1 has to do with what he said.

This was a screen before Nids scored While We Stand, which was 15.

It shows that this comment isn't true. At least not always. The SW was able to affect the game score. He just got pretty gimped by an exploding land raider turn 1 and lost as a result of not being able to achieve his secondaries.

Means that the person going second cannot do anything to affect the game's score.

You can't score primary objective turn one.

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
You can't score primary objective turn one.

Depends on the mission.

The sample one, 'Only War,' in the Core rules doesn't seem to have any sort of stipulation to that effect. And the accompanying text, Mission Instructions, (and in the leaked photographs) flatly state the mission determines the victor, so it isn't hiding anywhere else.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
. You know by going second that you will have a single turn where your opponent will have no chance to retaliate. Jump way out and grab those secondaries, there will be no reprisals for doing so, and it may just give you enough points to win the thing.

How so?

If you push out turn 4, your opponent gets turn 5 to retaliate.

If you push out turn 5, there's no command phase in turn 6 to score.

Secondary objectives include options to score due to psychic tests, unit kills, and board control. You can also push to ensure they can't score primary objectives on their last turn by rushing out to either kill them off of objectives or take control from them by simply being close by with objective secured or more models if they aren't obsec themselves.

I play harlequins personally, in every mission I have watched the objectives include several that are center of the table line, but spread apart. So most armies push out to the middle to score and that is exactly what I want them to do. Especially when I always have some line if sight blocking terrain in the center of the table to create asymmetrical firing lines.


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Voss wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
You can't score primary objective turn one.

Depends on the mission.

The sample one, 'Only War,' in the Core rules doesn't seem to have any sort of stipulation to that effect. And the accompanying text, Mission Instructions, (and in the leaked photographs) flatly state the mission determines the victor, so it isn't hiding anywhere else.

Every battle report I've watched has had the "can't score primary turn one" caveat. Since those are the matched play missions that everyone says are basically standard I just figured that was what was being discussed.

I played almost entirely narrative missions last edition, I won't look to them or the campaign system to say whether or not the game is balanced. Balance is the hallmark of marched play, not the core rules open play mission that comes with the core rules.

yukishiro1 wrote:
ITC wasn't perfect by any stretch. But what ITC had finally got right was getting rid of first turn advantage. And it did that by scoring at the end of the turn/battle round and by rolling for going first before deployment, with the person going second deploying second.

The 9th edition missions throw both of these things out the window (along with also allowing stacking secondaries, another odd change that doesn't make any sense to me), which is nearly guaranteed to bring back first turn advantage.

I'd love to be wrong. But it's hard to see how you can make a bunch of changes that increase first turn advantage without, well, increasing first turn advantage.

If it turns out there isn't significant first turn advantage with these missions, I will happily eat a slice of humble pie. I would be very happy to be wrong here.

Remember to apply the context.

You CANNOT use end of round scoring in 9th. In 9th ALL points are scored on objectives and ZERO points are scored on killing.

ITC balanced the first turn advantage on the concept that the first player had the advantage on kills, and the second one had the advantage on objectives. In ITC 50% of points come from killing, 50 % from objectives. This means that you can apply end of round scoring and have good results.

In 9th, 100% of the points come from objectives. If you scored primary at the end of the battle round, going second would be HUGELY advantaged. The player going first would never score his primary points, because the second one just has to decide which units to remove from the enemy points and then just walk a troop on the other ones. BAM! 15-0 on primary! Balance!

Spoletta wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
ITC wasn't perfect by any stretch. But what ITC had finally got right was getting rid of first turn advantage. And it did that by scoring at the end of the turn/battle round and by rolling for going first before deployment, with the person going second deploying second.

The 9th edition missions throw both of these things out the window (along with also allowing stacking secondaries, another odd change that doesn't make any sense to me), which is nearly guaranteed to bring back first turn advantage.

I'd love to be wrong. But it's hard to see how you can make a bunch of changes that increase first turn advantage without, well, increasing first turn advantage.

If it turns out there isn't significant first turn advantage with these missions, I will happily eat a slice of humble pie. I would be very happy to be wrong here.

Remember to apply the context.

You CANNOT use end of round scoring in 9th. In 9th ALL points are scored on objectives and ZERO points are scored on killing.

ITC balanced the first turn advantage on the concept that the first player had the advantage on kills, and the second one had the advantage on objectives. In ITC 50% of points come from killing, 50 % from objectives. This means that you can apply end of round scoring and have good results.

In 9th, 100% of the points come from objectives. If you scored primary at the end of the battle round, going second would be HUGELY advantaged. The player going first would never score his primary points, because the second one just has to decide which units to remove from the enemy points and then just walk a troop on the other ones. BAM! 15-0 on primary! Balance!

Have you actually played 9th edition yet as the probability of actually 15-0 scoring at the end of round 1 is so minimal it's rediculous.

Also people keep sayibg alpha strike isn't a thing because of terrain rules? Seriously how much terrain are you guys using? Yes terrain as reduced the lethality of shooting but your massively missing the scoring alpha strike.

If you can swamp the objectives turn 1, especially with hard to kill obsec bodies the game is often as good as over unless the player going first fluffed their choice of secondary missions.

So far the nastiest list I have seen thrown around is either impulsor obsec spam or infiltrated/deepstike obsec.
They might not last but the design of those lists is to score essentially maximum primary and secondary missions in 3 turns while making maximise score against them a PITA, and they might not be maximum damage dealing lists but they arn't exactlly toothless either.

jivardi wrote:
And again, if you deploy to go first, which is a 50/50 chance and you don't get first turn you are in a lot of trouble.

Brian from TT, a competitive player and a playtester of 9th edition for 8 months, said that deploying your army expecting to go second is better than deploying your army expecting to go first.

Seizing, pluses to your roll to choose attack or defend made deploying to go first make more sense.

The big thing with 9th is that moving fast to take objectives early only works if your units can hold. That is why I don't think MSU, at least for obsec units, is very smart. Even 5 Intercessors are going to die fairly easily to a decently kitted out shooting or melee unit.

"Magic box" was stupid. Not sure why TLOS is such an issue. It existed from 2nd edition up to, technically 8th but was houseruled for tournaments.

Question isn't does 5 intercessor die easy. Its does 2x5 die easier than 1x10. Just because you have 2x5 doesn"t mean they must be far. They just are more flexible and tougher as 2x5 than 1x10

tneva82 wrote:

Question isn't does 5 intercessor die easy. Its does 2x5 die easier than 1x10. Just because you have 2x5 doesn"t mean they must be far. They just are more flexible and tougher as 2x5 than 1x10

Whilst I'm not exactly following all the stuff for 9th, there are a couple of secondaries (at least) which seem to be based on comparing units killled, so running MSU could have a noticeable impact on what points you give up or are able to gain.

Ice_can wrote:

Spoletta wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
ITC wasn't perfect by any stretch. But what ITC had finally got right was getting rid of first turn advantage. And it did that by scoring at the end of the turn/battle round and by rolling for going first before deployment, with the person going second deploying second.

The 9th edition missions throw both of these things out the window (along with also allowing stacking secondaries, another odd change that doesn't make any sense to me), which is nearly guaranteed to bring back first turn advantage.

I'd love to be wrong. But it's hard to see how you can make a bunch of changes that increase first turn advantage without, well, increasing first turn advantage.

If it turns out there isn't significant first turn advantage with these missions, I will happily eat a slice of humble pie. I would be very happy to be wrong here.

Remember to apply the context.

You CANNOT use end of round scoring in 9th. In 9th ALL points are scored on objectives and ZERO points are scored on killing.

ITC balanced the first turn advantage on the concept that the first player had the advantage on kills, and the second one had the advantage on objectives. In ITC 50% of points come from killing, 50 % from objectives. This means that you can apply end of round scoring and have good results.

In 9th, 100% of the points come from objectives. If you scored primary at the end of the battle round, going second would be HUGELY advantaged. The player going first would never score his primary points, because the second one just has to decide which units to remove from the enemy points and then just walk a troop on the other ones. BAM! 15-0 on primary! Balance!

Have you actually played 9th edition yet as the probability of actually 15-0 scoring at the end of round 1 is so minimal it's rediculous.

Also people keep sayibg alpha strike isn't a thing because of terrain rules? Seriously how much terrain are you guys using? Yes terrain as reduced the lethality of shooting but your massively missing the scoring alpha strike.

If you can swamp the objectives turn 1, especially with hard to kill obsec bodies the game is often as good as over unless the player going first fluffed their choice of secondary missions.

So far the nastiest list I have seen thrown around is either impulsor obsec spam or infiltrated/deepstike obsec.
They might not last but the design of those lists is to score essentially maximum primary and secondary missions in 3 turns while making maximise score against them a PITA, and they might not be maximum damage dealing lists but they arn't exactlly toothless either.

That's exactly the point that I'm making, so I guess that you agree with me?

Right now in 9th going 15-0 is really really hard.

But, if the scoring were to be End of Round for it, the second player could snatch all points easily.

No it wouldn't as to you would have to clear your opponent off every objective to hit a 15 to 0 score.

The scoring as it is favours going first as you can dump obsec and a transport to claim the required locations for maximum score.

If your going second you have an almost impossible task in trying to move onto occupied objectives, even if you shoot them off the objectives they have the upper hand turn 2 as they can claim the objectives (uncontested) again while you keep loosing offensive punch turn after turn.

And killing you opponents army always favours going first.

I don't normally worry about the ultra compatitive angle, but I'm not seeing the advantage of going 1st as being as clear cut as some are saying (at least from an objective point of view).

The only scenarios I've seen so far say you can't score primary on 1st turn. I suspect that will be common on all match play scenarios. So charging out and sitting on objectives that you can't score for and giving your opponent easy targets for a turn feels highly risk

Having most objectives may not be that easy, having 2 gives 10 and that may be easy for both players, so rushing may only be giving you a 5 point lead, at a high risk; which if you can't maintain objective parity until the last turn of the game you are not likely gaining much by an early rush which simply puts you into the killing zone for turns 1 and 2 and then the other guy gains back the 5 he lost earlier.

Not all missions may have objectives in no mans land that are easy to rush to, I've only seen 2 missions so far, but I wouldn't be surprised to see 1 or 2 with objectives only inside someones deployment zones ( 1 in each quadrant type of thing). That makes the quick rush turn 1 army a bit moot.

Even if you rush out to the objectives on turn 1 waiting to score in turn 2, the 2nd player can see what he needs to put on them to prevent you scoring, some armies will probably not have too much problem putting more bodies (maybe after shooting or assualting you off) on 1 of the objectives ready for turn 2, neutering the benefit you were looking for.

The issue is you can't move after you shoot going second so you can only claim objectives by assualting.
Not the best idea against some factions.
Also if your opponent is smart with positioning etc they can very much zone you off of objectives 3 throw away scout squads to screen objectives, then 3 12 inch no deepstrike squads in cover within range of the objectives basically screws you from taking those objectives without fly and you have to jump the scouts in your movement phase.

Ice_can wrote:
The issue is you can't move after you shoot going second so you can only claim objectives by assualting.
Not the best idea against some factions.
Also if your opponent is smart with positioning etc they can very much zone you off of objectives 3 throw away scout squads to screen objectives, then 3 12 inch no deepstrike squads in cover within range of the objectives basically screws you from taking those objectives without fly and you have to jump the scouts in your movement phase.

Lots of people are making the mistake of assuming that just because going 1st is advantaged, that doesn’t mean it’s auto-win. This is a 51/100 thing, not an 80/100.

This totally matters, and I think the discussion (in a Tactics or Tournament thread, mind) is super warranted—but let’s not exaggerate the effect this has.

The only advantage of going first is body blocking the 2nd player’s movement phase.
The advantage of going second is being able to selectively target units squatting on objectives.

The second doesn’t totally overcome the former, based on tournament results (which was surprising to me).

Is there any point continuing this discussion in the Rumors thread, though?

I have no doubt you can do those things in specific circumstances, but at that point you are really building to a single strategy, 3 throwaway scout squads, probably with other small units to spread out over many objectives that may only give you a 5 pt lead for 1 turn, whilst giving the enemy an easy attrition based secondary who may still easily gain his 45 pts max anyway. From the 2 missions I've have seen so far you only need 1 turn with 'hold most' which can be turn 4 or 5, so long as you hold 2 on your other turns.

Rushing looks useful if you can stop the other person holding 2 objectives for a while, and not collapse midgame so giving up hold most on turn 4/5, but that feels like a tall order in the generic sense.

That feels a very high risk strategy to me, it may work in some scenarios against some opponents, but different scenarios with objectives that are harder to get to, or against a different opponent it feels like very bad match up.

If we are talking tourney type games then my gut feel at the moment is that no one would go with that with an expectation of being at the top end, where you need something that has a chance in all games. Given you only have a 50% chance of even going first (barring some ability tweaks to that roll) which that strategy depends on ...

I'm sure there will be some list somewhere that can do everything - , gurantee 1st turn, rush out, whilst having the toughness to 'hold most' for a few turns and not give up too many secondaries to make up for the risk of maybe only gaining 5 pts a turn. But it feels far from a generic issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Also worth bearing in mind turn 1 is when both players have a lot of CPs to burn for all sorts of funky stuff. The boosted moves to bypass screens or extra hitting power to clear stuff etc, which again in this context feels like the person going 2nd (just before player 1 scores) will have the edge in being selective.

sieGermans wrote:


The only advantage of going first is body blocking the 2nd player’s movement phase.
The advantage of going second is being able to selectively target units squatting on objectives.

The second doesn’t totally overcome the former, based on tournament results (which was surprising to me).

Given the choice between having a few extra points on the first scoring turn or a target rich alpha strike I know which I'd take in the general sense, there's another 4 turns to come after this one to make up the points, assuming I'm even behind at all after that.

sieGermans wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
The issue is you can't move after you shoot going second so you can only claim objectives by assualting.
Not the best idea against some factions.
Also if your opponent is smart with positioning etc they can very much zone you off of objectives 3 throw away scout squads to screen objectives, then 3 12 inch no deepstrike squads in cover within range of the objectives basically screws you from taking those objectives without fly and you have to jump the scouts in your movement phase.

Lots of people are making the mistake of assuming that just because going 1st is advantaged, that doesn’t mean it’s auto-win. This is a 51/100 thing, not an 80/100.

This totally matters, and I think the discussion (in a Tactics or Tournament thread, mind) is super warranted—but let’s not exaggerate the effect this has.

The only advantage of going first is body blocking the 2nd player’s movement phase.
The advantage of going second is being able to selectively target units squatting on objectives.

The second doesn’t totally overcome the former, based on tournament results (which was surprising to me).

Is there any point continuing this discussion in the Rumors thread, though?

Also you get to kill their stuff before it does anything.

My opinions on the new missions aside... I am thankful that we (e.g. Straight from the book players, ITC players, NOVA players, etc.) can finally be on the same page.

That said, I still have concerns that ITC and NOVA will do what they do and modify / house-rule things.

Lastly, I think it's important to keep in mind that if you do not care for the new mission design; that new, redesigned and refined missions will come. We saw this in 8th with Core to CA:17 to CA:18 to CA:19. If you cannot wait or simply dislike how the new missions pander to the tournament players; 8th edition missions are still perfectly playable.