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elites outta be having board control issues vs hoards so they should be struggling to out score hoards on objectives. that SHOULD be the balance there

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

While I agree on the not having secondaries, I much prefer the old mission style, they are in the game now and having an anti-elite army one would be nice. Whenever I play my friend's SM now I always feel there are no good secondaries against him whereas his are easy choices.

Quasistellar wrote:

 Eihnlazer wrote:
There is one that gives VP for wounds worth of models killed, however to max it out you have to kill 150 infantry wounds or 15 10 wound vehicles.

This is not easy at all. It needs to be about 20% less.

Change it so that instead of dividing by 10 on the tally its divided by 8. Also count total wounds dealt to monsters and vehicles, not just a flat 10 on the tally for any vehicle over 10 wounds.

It's not just "not easy". It's nearly impossible unless it's an army of aggressors fighting an army of grots. Even then the grots would probably win if they went first.

That secondary is really, really bad.

Quite a few of the secondaries are bad. Its quite possible to pick secondaries that you can achieve but still make it mathematically unlikely you can win (unless you're clubbing inexperienced baby seals)

Some of them can even potentially be gamed due to the order of things. 'I pick X, Y and 'Cut off the Head' for my secondaries.' Opponent: Well, my warlord is going in reserve. Even if I bring it on turn 2, you're down 5 VP (and you start down 2, just for picking that one...)

I think GW needs to decide how hard secondaries should be to achieve.

FWIW my solutions:

Abhor the Witch should move to the Purge the Enemy Secondary Objectives pool. Then it can't stack with assassinate or bring it down (probably the easiest secondaries depending on your opponents list.)

GW should then probably delete all the Purge the Enemy Secondary Objectives Pool - but if they won't do that, it should probably include a guaranteed secondary versus MEQ. Everyone can then take one objective from this pool, and its a near guaranteed 15 points unless they get tabled.

Then change thin their ranks to wounds.

Then see how it shakes out. Some of the other secondaries should probably be buffed - but that can take more testing. All the psychic abilities for instance seem rooted in "forge the narrative" rather than something you'd actually accomplish in a competitive game.

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

Sounds like you haven’t played much. Our group is loving Secondaries and the new missions in general.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

Sounds like you haven’t played much. Our group is loving Secondaries and the new missions in general.

New missions and 9th generic mechanics are a massive improvement from 8th edition, indeed.

Secondaries are iffy imo, on one hand they can be, if done correctly, a massive boon for the health of the game, strengthening balance and a "healthy" list, otoh they can be extremely oppresive torwards certain types of armies, and depending on the faction , auto includes which might become an issue.

Abhor the witch f.e.

overall it is imo an improvement, but personally i feel factions and the games parameters should be built upon encouraging themselves a balanced list first and foremost.

I don't think Abhor the Witch is intrinsically bad, i just think it shouldn't be a core secondary objective. AFAIK the plan from GW is to introduce faction specific secondaries when the 9th ed codexes get released. Abhor the Witch seems like it would be an appropriate faction secondary for non-psyker factions like Black templars, Necrons, Tau and DE. Possibly available to SOB or an Imperial force where the warlord is an Inquisitor from Ordo Hereticus.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

Sounds like you haven’t played much. Our group is loving Secondaries and the new missions in general.

all secondaries do is make it more gamey, which is a terrible thing. I like the missions but dont forsee ever playing w the secondary objectives.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

Sounds like you haven’t played much. Our group is loving Secondaries and the new missions in general.

all secondaries do is make it more gamey, which is a terrible thing. I like the missions but dont forsee ever playing w the secondary objectives.

I'm not sure in what sense you're using 'gamey,' beyond that 'yes, it is a game.'
Tactical objectives beyond 'kill everything' are generally good for wargames. Especially ones that play to different army strengths and encourage more diverse composition. I've seen people take things considered 'horrible and unusable' because the objectives let them play to different strengths beyond 'damage per round.'

Faction Secondaries (why not sub faction secondaries) seems like something GW will do, but will likely be horrible for balance.

I really think a core pool of secondaries available for everyone and balanced around that is better for the game. Its just these shouldn't have "autotakes if possible" and "lol never getting 15 points this way" options, that potentially put hard skews list creation, or at a put invalidate entire factions as a competitive choice.

I dont play kill em all. we generally pick an objective that both armies need to go for and boom, no stupid oooh I picked this one cuz you're GK or Orks.
it removes some of the ability to GAME the system, no giving up points just cuz of the army you play.

But the way we play is about as far from competitive play as you can get....and we praise The Emperor for it.

Any mechanic that can punish you for the army you bring is fething stupid. "Balance" shouldnt need to be enforced thru means other than datasheet/points.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tyel wrote:
Faction Secondaries (why not sub faction secondaries) seems like something GW will do, but will likely be horrible for balance.

I really think a core pool of secondaries available for everyone and balanced around that is better for the game. Its just these shouldn't have "autotakes if possible" and "lol never getting 15 points this way" options, that potentially put hard skews list creation, or at a put invalidate entire factions as a competitive choice.

this is a direction that could be a good one, but knowing GW the magic 8ball says chances unlikely.

Competitive 40k almost certainly won't be using the faction secondaries, so I wouldn't worry about those too much. There's just no way I can see it not being a disaster if they try, given how problematic the base secondaries are already in terms of balance.

I like the missions and I like the idea of secondaries. But secondaries should be a choice. Creating a sitatation where someone playing vs a psyker army, always takes the same 3 secondaries, and worse the psyker army player can not do anything about stopping their opponents fullfiling them, then we have bad design. Any time there is a no brainer option, to take or not to take, or there is just one way to play efficient, when technicaly there are multiple options, then someone droped the ball durning desing.

The anti elite secondary based around wounds or msu units would be just that.
One could as well ask for secondary for psyker heavy armies, when they play vs non psyker armies. Or melee armies vs shoting ones etc.

What about one for "Excessive Show of Force":
score 4VP if you reduced a unit from its starting strength to nothing in this turn. units split up or combined amend their starting strength accordingly, etc etc. Basically, wipe a unit out from full strength in one turn and get points.

Probably add a power level caveat or something to stop people scoring this for killing 10 gretchin, though... don't know power level well enough to say it myself though. I'd say 4VP for X power level, and 6VP for over Y power level. In points, I'd say 4VP for over 150 points in one unit, and 6VP for over 250 points in one unit, all in one go.

Score points based on "points eliminated".

Why not more secondaries based on objectives?

Score 3 VP if you hold and objective that your opponent held in his turn with an ob sec unit. Score 4 instead if you had no models within 12" of this objective at the start of your turn.

or

Score 5 VP if you completely control 1 half of the table at the end of your turn (cannot score this on turn 1). You must have at least 2 entire units wholly within 2 quarters of the table and no enemy models can be in either.

 Eihnlazer wrote:
Why not more secondaries based on objectives?

Score 3 VP if you hold and objective that your opponent held in his turn with an ob sec unit. Score 4 instead if you had no models within 12" of this objective at the start of your turn.

or

Score 5 VP if you completely control 1 half of the table at the end of your turn (cannot score this on turn 1). You must have at least 2 entire units wholly within 2 quarters of the table and no enemy models can be in either.

I like the idea of more aggressive objectives (not killing aggressive but take and hold types like this). I would still want a Kill secondary to help against elite armies though.

Insectum7 wrote:Score points based on "points eliminated".

this is probably the best suggestion in the entire thread and the one that makes the most sense.

doesnt punish you for taking something you like, doesnt punish you for your army choice, etc...


AND IT'S COMPLETELY BALANCED!!!! Ha imagine that.




but not to drag PL into this but they've been doing this in the open war deck since 8th dropped.

Voss wrote:
I'm not sure in what sense you're using 'gamey,' beyond that 'yes, it is a game.'

Secondaries are the sort of thing that seem contrived to balance a game. Where primary objectives generally concern things like holding key locations, which has a strong real-world basis, the idea of a fighting force choosing what criteria are relevant to operational success seems a little silly. Historical or otherwise realistic wargames will typically award victory points for accomplishing scenario objectives, plus sometimes secondary points for attrition to the enemy (eg points killed).

I am a fan of secondary objectives that represent tactically-relevant actions like reconnaissance, but the kill-focused ones are very 'gamey' in that they are specifically rewards for fighting skew lists. Which is a decent enough justification, except that a particular kind of skew currently has no corresponding secondary, and not all secondaries are equally achievable even against comparable skew lists.

The idea of having a scoring mechanic that works against heavily skewed lists wasn't a terrible one on its face, but trying to blanket apply the same kill secondaries across all forces based on number of units killed was never going to work given the vast gulf between the number of units that appear between the most and least hordey armies.


A few possibilities:

1) Back in 3rd/4th, lots of arguments about what made a 'fluffy' list vs. not was what percentage of your army was Troops, Heavy Support, Vehicles, or the like. That seems to no longer be a thing, but what if secondary kill VP was based on destroying a certain percentage of the army that was vehicle/infantry/mauve/sous-chefs rather than number of units or models that were Heavy Support/furries/epileptic/currently cheating at backgammon?

Say, half the enemy army consisted of vehicles/monsters and you took a secondary that said that for every 10% out of the total points of the enemy army you took out that consisted of vehicles/monsters, that was 3VP, up to 15 if the enemy army was half or more vehicles/monsters or infantry or whatever.

You could instead do it by force organization type. If the enemy army is more than half HQ, Heavy Support, or Lords of War, or Discount Furniture, then taking out that half of the army would net you the VP with the given secondary.

These are mathematically awkward compared to 9th scoring, to be sure, but VP used to be based on points value of kills anyway with several minutes of points totalling at the end. If you removed all the existing kill secondaries, then a force could never give away more than one complete kill secondary unless it consisted of exactly 50% between Troops and HQ.

It would encourage broad spectrum selection from the force organization chart; YMMV on whether or not that's a good thing.

2) On the more elegant end, perhaps stating a rule like: "You can only have one kill secondary per game." It's a quick band-aid fix to the mechanic, but it'd prevent some armies from being extra screwed by constantly giving up multiple kill secondaries (e.g. Knights, Daemons, IG)

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

I see no problems with the core. Or is your definition of "core" synonymous with "marines are too strong"? There were secondaries in the old missions (StW, LB, FB). The mission scoring just make them an insignificant footnote. The total possible points was not uniform and considerably low for a tournament scoring system.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
how about not having secondary objectives in the first place. it's a stupid mechanic and yet another way for GW to feth up. if anything they need to reduce the gamey bs and stop adding it in before they get a handle on the core functionality.

I see no problems with the core. Or is your definition of "core" synonymous with "marines are too strong"? There were secondaries in the old missions (StW, LB, FB). The mission scoring just make them an insignificant footnote. The total possible points was not uniform and considerably low for a tournament scoring system.

good thing 40k isnt a tourney system then!

GW seems to disagree. There is also just one category of kill secondaries, other secondaries like teleport homers or the ritual the very opposite of "gamey".

There are always people who will hate on any kind of change.

 Super Ready wrote:
Oh, they exist already. They're called beatstick psykers. Mephiston says hi.
...oops, didn't realise we were talking Secondary Mission objectives in particular.

Don't feel bad, I had no idea what this was about either. I was trying to figure out who "we" were.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 CEO Kasen wrote:
The idea of having a scoring mechanic that works against heavily skewed lists wasn't a terrible one on its face, but trying to blanket apply the same kill secondaries across all forces based on number of units killed was never going to work given the vast gulf between the number of units that appear between the most and least hordey armies.

This has long been a blindspot for GW. Way before these secondaries We buy armies in points, but score in models (or rarely wounds) while a 10 point Intercessor wound and a 5 point Gretchin wound let alone a 20 point Intercessor and a 5 point Gretchin model are not created equal.

 Jidmah wrote:
GW seems to disagree. There is also just one category of kill secondaries, other secondaries like teleport homers or the ritual the very opposite of "gamey".

There are always people who will hate on any kind of change.

Who is gonna pick those when the others exist??? Just cuz a couple are not auto includes does not make the rest any less gamey.

I have no problem with change, I like 9th, just not the crap they're trying to shove down the throats of those who have ZERO interest in the style of gameplay they foment.

If they would have just made them an addition to the game, rather than baking it in as another balancing mechanism(for them to feth up) just to make the game SEEM more competitive oriented.

 CEO Kasen wrote:
The idea of having a scoring mechanic that works against heavily skewed lists wasn't a terrible one on its face, but trying to blanket apply the same kill secondaries across all forces based on number of units killed was never going to work given the vast gulf between the number of units that appear between the most and least hordey armies.


A few possibilities:

1) Back in 3rd/4th, lots of arguments about what made a 'fluffy' list vs. not was what percentage of your army was Troops, Heavy Support, Vehicles, or the like. That seems to no longer be a thing, but what if secondary kill VP was based on destroying a certain percentage of the army that was vehicle/infantry/mauve/sous-chefs rather than number of units or models that were Heavy Support/furries/epileptic/currently cheating at backgammon?

That was a leftover from second. In second instead of FOC slots, and Dets, you made a list that had to be at least 25% troops/squads/etc that varied in name only based on army flavor - and could be up to 50% characters and 50% Support while support were allies, tanks etc. Devastators etc were squads not Support. Getting 25% squads was pretty easy when Marine Squads pretty much started out at 15% of a 2,000 point list.

Say, half the enemy army consisted of vehicles/monsters and you took a secondary that said that for every 10% out of the total points of the enemy army you took out that consisted of vehicles/monsters, that was 3VP, up to 15 if the enemy army was half or more vehicles/monsters or infantry or whatever.

You could instead do it by force organization type. If the enemy army is more than half HQ, Heavy Support, or Lords of War, or Discount Furniture, then taking out that half of the army would net you the VP with the given secondary.

These are mathematically awkward compared to 9th scoring, to be sure, but VP used to be based on points value of kills anyway with several minutes of points totalling at the end. If you removed all the existing kill secondaries, then a force could never give away more than one complete kill secondary unless it consisted of exactly 50% between Troops and HQ.

In 2nd Ed - you set up the battle and drew missions at random after the fact, there were some universal secondaries that were ratio based, frequently on two points tiers. Realize Points were WAY different so the tier cutoff isn't really relevant.
If the squad/vehicle was under/over 100 points cost, you got VP for destroying half/all of a squad/vehicle You got 0 for damaging/half under 100, 1VP for over 100, 1VP for destorying all. So destroying a 325ish point tactical squad would get you two.
So making secondaries that work on a ratio basis is possible. The main missions (and I wish I knew which box in which closet I stashed them in) were usually 1VP for a partial success, 5VP for total sucess - Kill the Commander, Kill the most powerful psyker, hand to hand victories, etc. General combat damage universal secondaries tended to add up to more than the the mission. The Mission Accomplished could swing an otherwise loss to a victory, which isn't a bad thing.

It would encourage broad spectrum selection from the force organization chart; YMMV on whether or not that's a good thing.

2) On the more elegant end, perhaps stating a rule like: "You can only have one kill secondary per game." It's a quick band-aid fix to the mechanic, but it'd prevent some armies from being extra screwed by constantly giving up multiple kill secondaries (e.g. Knights, Daemons, IG)

I think getting rid of the objective cards was a mistake. I think they were flawed, but I think they had the far more potential to be outstanding than being able to select. They didn't always allow for being accomplished before you drew them - i.e. kill three tanks starting now after you already killed all three - and cycling ones that just plain didn't apply because of your opposition army comp. While it's realistic to occaisionally be told by the guy in the rear with the gear to kill that tank when there is no tank, this game has a lot more realism issues to work on before that one. I think objective cards were the mechanic to tame skew lists, not FoC/Dets/CP etc.

 Ordana wrote:
How about having no kill secondaries instead...

This

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
GW seems to disagree. There is also just one category of kill secondaries, other secondaries like teleport homers or the ritual the very opposite of "gamey".

There are always people who will hate on any kind of change.

Who is gonna pick those when the others exist??? Just cuz a couple are not auto includes does not make the rest any less gamey.

Did you actually play any game 9th edition games? Shadow operations and battlefield supremacy are the go-to categories for most players and armies, and neither is particularly gamey, especially compared to the secondaries of old editions. Teleport homers is a secondary many armies consider to be one of their top options.

The gamey kill stratagems you are freaking out about are almost exclusively limited to a single category and I think everyone agrees that abhor the witch is badly implemented.

A less "gamey" experience could be picking the secondaries in a totally random way, not by choosing them, like objective cards in 7th edition. I never tried, and I'm not even interested in doing that since I consider the game mechanics great, but it could be interesting for people who don't like picking secondaries to counter specific armies.