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I'm not mistakenly assuming anything. The issue is that some of them appear to be much easier to max than others. If they were all equally hard that'd be fine, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean maybe I'm totally off base here and in fact they are super well balanced in actual play, but it's hard to imagine that's the case looking at how tilted they seem to be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
You may also be mistakenly assuming these were designed for hardcore competative play and not garage hammer.

If there's a whole different set of secondaries in the tournament pack I guess this turns into a valid objection - though then the question becomes, why have the unbalanced set at all, if they have better-balanced ones for tournament play?

yukishiro1 wrote:
I'm not mistakenly assuming anything. The issue is that some of them are much easier to max than others. If they were all equally hard that'd be fine, but that doesn't seem to be the case.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
You may also be mistakenly assuming these were designed for hardcore competative play and not garage hammer.

If there's a whole different set of secondaries in the tournament pack I guess this turns into a valid objection - though then the question becomes, why have the unbalanced set at all, if they have better-balanced ones for tournament play?

"Fun"

MVBrandt wrote:
You may be mistakenly assuming the idea is to routinely max them / select ones you can max, as was previously the case for popular missions of this sort.

One of the play testing groups on youtube has said the idea is they aren't supposed to be easily maxable, the issue is some codex's pretty much regardless of what they do will give maximum points for some.

Not to mention that some are borderline impossible to score 15 for just on the raw maths.
I get they probably needed to put in some easy ones with lower scores but killing a warlord if that's a Iron hands charictor or some such thing protected by 5++, 5+FNP spam or a charictor dreadnaught is going to be brutally abusive.

But it's the matched-play rules, not the narrative rules - and, for that matter, they aren't so obviously fluffy that they are clearly designed to be non-competitive.

I mean I guess we'll see, if there is a totally different set in the tournaments pack, I guess it'll prove you right.

yukishiro1 wrote:
But it's the matched-play rules, not the narrative rules - and, for that matter, they aren't so obviously fluffy that they are clearly designed to be non-competitive.

I mean I guess we'll see, if there is a totally different set in the tournaments pack, I guess it'll prove you right.

I'm sure someone has confirmed their is i think they called them "additional secondarys" in the CA mission pack.
Unfortunately that does make it sound that you can still take the easy auto 15 point ones from the rulebook and mix and match them with the additional ones.

Plus the ones everyone will get when their 9th edition codex is released.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
You may also be mistakenly assuming these were designed for hardcore competative play and not garage hammer.

It will be interesting to see how different CA secondaries will be.

Secondaries are interesting in Crusade missions; you pick an overall mission imperative, and it provides you with 3 specific agendas related to the imperative.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I'm not mistakenly assuming anything. The issue is that some of them appear to be much easier to max than others. If they were all equally hard that'd be fine, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I mean maybe I'm totally off base here and in fact they are super well balanced in actual play, but it's hard to imagine that's the case looking at how tilted they seem to be.

Ah, here's your mistake: in a given match-up, there's probably a Purge the Enemy or Attrition or Thin Their Ranks that is an obviously easier to score than other secondaries. The trick is that you still have to pick two more secondaries that are less obvious. That results in player choice and the formation of strategy, which is exactly what you want in a strategy game.

Even in the case of the obvious secondaries, they are absolutely match-up dependent. You can never set in before-hand what your three you're going to take. As mentioned earlier in the thread, these obvious secondaries have a list-building implication: you want to soften the impact of an opponent picking one of these. This encourages more diverse list building and consequently more diverse gameplay where the scoring systems revolve less around killing.

If I ask you "what secondaries are you going to take for your army?" you will not have a coherent answer unless you know what the opponent and the mission are. That's good game design.

That doesn't address the point I raised. Of course you can't pick them beforehand. Nobody was suggesting you would.

The issue is that some of them just seem to better than others mathematically. The fact that you won't usually be able to find 3 no-brainers to take doesn't change the fact that some of them are much more likely to be no-brainers than others. It doesn't seem like very good design to have a few "usual suspects" that are very easy to max out against any list you'd want to take them against, while others are basically impossible to ever max out even in perfectly ideal conditions.

That said, if these aren't the competitive play secondaries, I don't think it really matters.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
You may also be mistakenly assuming these were designed for hardcore competative play and not garage hammer.

Or both

I think it's interesting that there seems to be a lot more scope for denying your opponent scoring through gameplay, rather than list building. You can make moves to stop them doing stuff.

I really need to see how they play out though, having my first game (with 8th ed points) on Tuesday. My necrons vs his Primaris, pray for me.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The issue is that some of them just seem to better than others mathematically. The fact that you won't usually be able to find 3 no-brainers to take doesn't change the fact that some of them are much more likely to be no-brainers than others. It doesn't seem like very good design to have a few "usual suspects" that are very easy to max out against any list you'd want to take them against, while others are basically impossible to ever max out even in perfectly ideal conditions.

That would be an issue if there was some asymmetry to the secondaries, like if each faction only had their own secondaries (and I'm sure at some point in the future GW will bungle that). As it stands, everyone has equal opportunity to the secondaries.

I think the internal balance of the secondaries is close enough that almost all of them will see some play. Even Slay the Warlord and First Strike, which have a significantly lower reward, are much easier to score at all; they could see play when focusing on the primary objectives to the virtual exclusion of secondaries, for instance in combination with Domination.

If you want to cite specific examples which you think are unbalanced, we could discuss those.

I went back and looked at their PR release, which said this:

The Grand Tournament 2020 Mission pack is … well, packed with new missions, alongside guidance for running and playing in tournaments, special Secondary Objectives[i][u], and loads more.

So it looks like I was mistaken on that point.

 DarkHound wrote:

If you want to cite specific examples which you think are unbalanced, we could discuss those.

I already did earlier in the thread, but at this point, given that they don't seem to be the competitive ones, I don't think it really matters if they're unbalanced.