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Wargames typically have several systems at play. Common elements where games differentiate themselves include how turns are structured and how units move, attack, and defend.

I'm interested in your thoughts on another key attribute -- objectives, e.g. how victory is achieved. I've mostly played simple skirmish titles, where the most common objective is punch your enemy in the face repeatedly until they are all dead. Other straightforward objectives I'm familiar with include area control, targetted assassination, capture the flag, hold the line, and secret missions. With hundreds of titles out there, I'd love to learn about games with an objective system that stands out among its peers for originality and/or enjoyment.

What'cha got, Dakka?

Dropzone Commander had a terrible combat system for buildings but I loved their mysterious intel/objectives.

Basically a table would have 12-15 buildings and the objectives (I've only played 1.0 and playtested 2.0) would be in different ones. You would have to ferry troops in drop ships to various rooftops or ground floors and have them run in and check

While your opponent could destroy structures that you were looting/checking. The easiest way to kill infantry was to drop the building on them and a viable strat

Lots of fun - loved how they handled objectives in 1.0

That sounds awesome, Steve. Thank you for sharing.

I quite enjoyed the strategy and schemes system in Malifaux.
Strategy is a known goal that both players are doing, while both players secretly choose two of 5 available schemes. You score points when you reveal a scheme and once again after.

Infinity overdid how many ways one could score in many scenarios though, but they overdo their rules in general.

Historical wargames, especially ancients (an umbrella term for games simulating battles before the advent of gunpowder) always have one scenario and that is destroying a portion of your opponent's force (usually half) before losing yours.
I'm often surprised that it doesn't get as stale as you think it would.

My preference is for simpler scenarios and simpler games though. I don't have the time or energy to crunch through rules anymore. The less homework I need to do outside of the game and the less I have to keep track of during the game the better.
Making meaningful decisions and dealing with what my opponent is doing is what should make a game interesting, for my taste anyway. Which makes Kings of War my game of choice.

The objectives are fairly simple: control objectives, control part(s) of the table or grab loot and make off with it. Plus then a twist on most of those.

The Epic: Armageddon tournament scenario had my favourite objective system. It was simple enough to remember, while pleasingly complex.

Because you didn't need to achieve all the goals, it was neutral enough that different strategies could be employed, and it didn't favour any one particular army type. You each set up half the objectives: one on your table edge, one in your table half and one in your opponent's. Setting up the objective took thought and consideration; both in what you were going to do, and what your opponent might do. For example, if you were expecting to face a slow force, you might try to spread the objectives apart, while your opponent might try to cluster them together – but equally he or she might decide to abandon certain goals, and instead concentrate on defending their line and blasting away... so you had to try to make the objectives attractive enough that they committed force to them.

Secondly, some of the goals overlapped – Take and Hold and Blitzkrieg, for example, both involved objectives on the opponent's side of the board, so you could successfully feint or bluff. Lots to get your mental teeth into.

You must check to see if either player has won at the end of the third and fourth game turns. If neither player has won at the end of the fourth turn then the tiebreaker rule is used to determine the winner.

Each player is trying to achieve five things known as goals. You win if you have achieved two of these goals in the end phase of turns three or four, and you have achieved more goals than your opponent. The five goals are: Blitzkrieg, Break Their Spirit, Defend The Flag, Take And Hold, and They Shall Not Pass.

Blitzkrieg – You achieve this goal by capturing the objective that was set up on the opponent’s table edge at the start of the game (i.e., the first objective each player set up).
Break Their Spirit – You achieve this goal by destroying (not breaking) the formation worth the most points in the opposing army. If several formations are tied for the most points, you achieve this goal by destroying any one of them.
Defend To Flag [sic] – You achieve this goal if you control all three objectives in your half of the table.
Take And Hold – You achieve this goal by capturing a total of two objectives in your opponent’s half of the table.
They Shall Not Pass – You achieve this goal if there are no unbroken enemy formations in your half of the table.

If neither player has won at the end of the fourth or any subsequent turn then both players roll a D6 to see if the game carries on another turn or ends in a tiebreak. If both players roll the same number then the game carries on for another turn and the players must roll again at the end of the next turn to see if the game ends or carries on another turn, and so on.

If the players roll different numbers then the game ends in a tiebreak. Each player scores a number of victory points equal to the full points value of any enemy formations that have been completely destroyed, plus the full points value of any enemy formations that are broken and have been reduced to half strength or less, plus half the value of any formation reduced to half strength or less but is not broken, plus half the value of any formation that is broken but is above half strength. Whoever has the higher points score is the winner. For the purpose of this rule, a formation’s strength is equal to the number of units in the formation plus the (remaining) damage capacity of any war engines.

To piggyback Apologist above -

Epic/Warmaster/smaller than 15mm scale games tend to have great objectives. You feel like a general actually commanding troops

Unlike when I play 40k with Tyranids and just toss Swarmlord and 100 models in a direction and watch them get shot.

Dragon Rampant gives you a list of objectives to choose from when designing missions. You can choose them at random or select which ones you want for your particular game. The objectives are worth between 1 and 3 points with the level of difficulty going up as the points go up.

They are mostly centered around actions your units take (or in some cases don't take) and have less to do with capturing a particular spot on the board. It's a loose system but it fits in with the theme and spirit of the game which is very casual.

 Stevefamine wrote:
To piggyback Apologist above -

Epic/Warmaster/smaller than 15mm scale games tend to have great objectives. You feel like a general actually commanding troops

Unlike when I play 40k with Tyranids and just toss Swarmlord and 100 models in a direction and watch them get shot.

Perhaps larger-scale games have an inherent advantage with regard to objective development. It's much easier to feint, bait, and massage one's position on the board with 50 units than 5.

As a fan of smaller-scale skirmish, I might be missing out.

The victory conditions in both Frostgrave and Ghost Archipelago is centered on recovering treasure rather than killing to other player's dudes. As I mellow out in my old age, I find that I enjoy that a lot more.

Deleted.

 Elbows wrote:

In a Skirmish game, I enjoy there being strong penalties to dying - so that players are encouraged not to play their heroes brazenly or suicidal.

A harsh death penalty would generally go both ways, as it incentivizes you to kill your opponent's forces so they suffer the penalty. How would you set up a system that only flows one-way and forces more caution?

Deleted.

I love secret and narrative objectives. After playing Warhammer fantasy, 40k, and Infinity, traditional tournatent-like objectives became so abstract that it burned my joy of the game. And Frostgrave with scenarios, updated exp. table and Ulterior Motives cards rekindled that joy.
Now 4 player free for all with main scenario, ulterior motives cards, and 9 treasures total on the 3x3 board is absolutely insane and hilarious.
But with all the random stuff happening around it's hardly competetive and strategic, so I imagine it's a matter of taste.

Yeah anything but standing on points. Grabbing loot tokens is always fun.

Got to agree with Frostgrave as well. Rangers of Shadow Deep looks interesting for it.

Oh oh oh everybody needs to download Perilous Tales, it's free and has a crazy scenario generator that combines dozens of bad guys, locations and missions.

I've been really impressed with the system for Marvel Crisis Protocol. It's not particularly unique and I like it for much the same reason I like Malifaux.

I think what makes both work is having two elements that overlap to create unique scenario combinations. I think it's also important that the pair provides conflicting gameplay elements to demand a variety of model rolls. Marvel, for example, always has one half that requires holding a fixed position and another based on picking up mobile objectives. Malifaux's schemes and strat work similarly, but a little more varied in the kind of skills they require.

Anyway, I think the static/mobile overlapping mechanics works well. The trick is making sure that each scenario has a pretty even scoring potential so that players have to interact with both to succeed.

Malifaux schemes & strategies are nice. Any objective system with asymmetry, or hidden information. Even better if the objectives have flavor, too.

Relic Knights also had a good system, IIRC each player put down one primary and two secondary objective markers, then drew 1 of 6 primary objectives and 1 of 6 secondary objectives, which included stuff like pick up a token from each secondary and deposit it at the primary, pick up a token at an enemy objective and take it to yours, destroy X objectives, etc. Finally, each faction had its own fixed tertiary ovjective that played on its strengths.

I seem to remember a version of epic that used playing cards to define secret objectives for each side. Stuff like that rewards balanced force composition rather than just squeezing maximum kill efficiency .

Dirtside 2 (you can find it for free download on Ground Zero Games website under downloads) is a 6mm ground combat game that's been around for about 20 years.

The rulebook included lots of counters including objective victory points number 1-3 (I think). These would be placed inverted on the table, depending on the mission, and the game could be called to an end once somebody (in some cases only the attacker) felt they had enough VPs captured to win the scenario.

Wrath of Kings had a great objective system using Motivations.

Depending on what faction you played, you had to chose a Motivation from two of the following types: Duty, Vengeance, Treachery, Greed, or Intrigue.

Each of these had three objectives you could chose.

So if I was playing as Shael Han, I could pick Motivations from Duty or Intrigue. From there I could choose Call to Glory, or Stand Your Ground, or Disrupt Supply Line, etc.

Well breaking them down by system

.classic 40K D3+2 hard fixed objectives 12" or more apart and 6" away from a table edge-he who holds the most on the final turn(with random turn 6&7) it means the game isn't over till the final turn and even loosing on body count still gives you a chance to win by objective

.classic 40K objective #2 central moveable objective. it can move no farther than 6" in a player turn if the unit that grabbed it hops in a transport or is something fast like a bike they auto drop it if they move a combined total of more than 6" in their player turn, the player holding it on the final turn wins.

.Infinity-multiple objectives-some hackable and some liftable with a willpower/physic check at various penalties. with the odd booby trap mixed in-all the objectives are face down so you don't know what they are till a model touches them and flips them over.

.classic battletech-this is as varied as the universe it could be something as simple as destroying an orbital defense battery, killing a certain mech, taking a building with an infantry element. punching through a defense line and so on. since it is more of a skirmish simulator of true combined arms combat it can be pretty in depth.


.DUST core rules for hard objectives are pretty decisive. if a unit touches the objective (and nobody is contesting) and you cannot dislodge them by the end of the turn they win....of course it is alternating activation so alot of stuff is happening in a single turn.


.B5 wars (converted to star wars/star trek/battlestar galactica, etc...) is all about victory conditions. when it is just a straight up fleet engagement sometimes a battle gets to a point where you save the ship and crew and retreat, especially if the damage dealt exceeds the damage taken. Did a clone wars era battle where a munificent banking class cruiser escorted by a commerce guild light destroyer(the destroyer had to carry the fighters since the cruise is a gun boat) was engaged with a venator and its flight wing. Even though the venator took massive damage to the forward hull/hangar, the munificent whille attempting to pump more power to bring it's shield back up rolled a critical system failure and blew out the entire system...so no shields on a mostly undamaged ship VS 50% shields on the other means it was time to withdraw.