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I think the issue is you can create competitiveness through list building, but then have a game where the game as it is actually played (once lists are selected) be a series of straight-forward actions that are similar every game because everything's been theorycrafted to the ideal situation.

Or, if you had less predictability at the list-building stage as to what you needed to accomplish, that could create a greater level of skill and competitiveness involved in actually playing the game - because you'd have to adapt to changed circumstances and make choices on the fly, i.e. exercise your skill in real-time, not primarily before the match. It'd also make it harder to do well by just taking the netlist someone else has theorycrafted, as it'd tilt the balance of competitive success away from list-building and towards what you do once you get into the game.

(It might also actually lead to more skill involved in list-building too, because you'd have to build more balanced lists that can be more flexible in-game as required, rather than just theorycrafting the best combination of units and secondaries to maximize your chances of victory executing essentially the same battle plan every time).

 Mezmorki wrote:
Maelstrom is a bad example of randomness supporting competitiveness IMHO - because it's affecting players disproportionately. One player can draw cards that just happen to align well with their specific board situation, while the opposite happens for the other player and it's gg.

Having variable objectives up front before deployment, and which both players are equally beholding to, is a much much different situation.

I think what some of us are arguing for this is:

More variability in the base types of missions that intrinsically come with a few ways to score points (eg primary objective plus mission specific secondaries), and ditch the secondary objectives entirely. More base mission variety should, ideally, incentivize brining more balanced non-skew lists, which would, in theory, reduce the power differentials between potential match ups and this make the game a bit more about table play and tactics rather than pre-game objective shenanigans.

Maelstrom but with a shared deck for both players, and no faction-specific objectives would be perfect IMO, you could even add a pregame "objective banning phase". You would have to build your army with the objective deck in mind but it wouldnt be as dumbed down as "i'll pick recon and load up on fast units"

In ProHammer we have a deck of cards for the deployment map, the primary objective (ie the mission specific secondary), and a deck for the arrangement of control points.

Three of each are drawn, and players alternate banning one draw until there is just one left. Works pretty well!

yukishiro1 wrote:

Spoiler:

I think the issue is you can create competitiveness through list building, but then have a game where the game as it is actually played (once lists are selected) be a series of straight-forward actions that are similar every game because everything's been theorycrafted to the ideal situation.

Or, if you had less predictability at the list-building stage as to what you needed to accomplish, that could create a greater level of skill and competitiveness involved in actually playing the game - because you'd have to adapt to changed circumstances and make choices on the fly, i.e. exercise your skill in real-time, not primarily before the match. It'd also make it harder to do well by just taking the netlist someone else has theorycrafted, as it'd tilt the balance of competitive success away from list-building and towards what you do once you get into the game.

(It might also actually lead to more skill involved in list-building too, because you'd have to build more balanced lists that can be more flexible in-game as required, rather than just theorycrafting the best combination of units and secondaries to maximize your chances of victory executing essentially the same battle plan every time).

If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.

 vipoid wrote:

ccs wrote:
I'd prefer Secondary Objectives to be determined randomly.
High command has issued you orders. It doesn't matter if you like them, agree with them, understand why, or are even the most capable force to carry them out. Hell, sometimes the orders might even be based on faulty intel (in the case of drawing one that's actually impossible for you to achieve - say killing psykers when the opponent isn't fielding any).

This just sounds like garbage game design.

It works in Infinity; there are 20 classified objectives and you might have to complete any of them on any given mission. You get to draw 2 and pick one for each choice, however. And 1 of them per mission can be completed by "securing the HVT" (controlling a civilian placed onto the battlefield in deployment).

 alextroy wrote:
If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.

Yes, exactly.

Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.

Yes, exactly.

Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.

Both posts hit it out if the park.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.

Yes, exactly.

Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.

How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Mezmorki wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
If I am reading you correctly, you don't want randomness as much as uncertainty? You don't want the player to know exactly what his objectives are before the game so that he has to plan for several contingencies and then execute on the one(s) that are presented at game time.

Yes, exactly.

Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.

How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.

Well it still would curb the most Skew excesses which are Meta relevant.
F.e. Knights would automatically due to their skew nature fall out of competition rather hard, which whilest unfortunate for the owners of knights is STILL an improvement due to lowering AT which would make formerly tough but out-dealt vehicles an intersting choice again.

However, it is still imo a bandaid, as in the fact that you require the missions to be anti skew via an uncertainity element rather then the core mechanics actually enforcing an anti-skew list building. The later is sadly an unfortunate fact that the core rules don't help this, at all. Hence why the go to lever is the mission goals.

Umbros wrote:
There's definitely some issues.

The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.

There are a few that you do by virtue of just playing the game, which I think is problematic. Oath of Moment (name maybe wrong - I don't own the SM codex) is a no-brainer.

Overall I think they make for really interesting games and are a net positive to the game.

I pull Psychic Ritual off every game with my nids, because ATM the trend is to not have many psychers. I agree with you though that against a few armies (TS, harlequins, tyranids, CSM, GK) it is impossible to pull off. But I don't see any army aside from nids wanting this secondary, because nids have neurothropes:
- 3++
- 5 wounds
- thougness 4
- reroll 1s so the ritual statistically cannot fail
- costs under 100 points

You can also use swamorld to pull that neuro back to safety in the shooting phase, but I don't even need to use that (the dimachaerons get prioritised so bad as THE threat to bring down).

Now lets see for the other armies out there:
- Astra militarum don't want one of their squishy psychers 6' from the center of the board for 3 turns.
- Perhaps an inquisitor in terminator armour or something can't be allied into imperial armies but i doubt it is worth the CP investment.
- SM psychers don't really fit that much, if they do (Tigerius) you need them for other stuff
- Same goes for grey knights
- harlequin psychers could do it but they are a bit squishy i think. I'd need the imput form a Harly player here.
- Demons I don't know, perhaps they can do it ?
- Craftworld eldar psychers won't last in the center of the board either.
- ork weirdboys even less so

So aside from nids i don't see it. but for nids, I can testify from personal experience, it is very doable with a neurothrope.

Sumilidon wrote:
Hi all,

Anyone else finding these secondary objectives are just very poorly thought out? Sure they give you the chance to score how you wish - but they are designed in such a way that certain armies are at a huge disadvantage by default.

As an example, armies that have squishy units combined with tanks and monsters (Drukhari, Tyranids and Guard come to mind) - you can easily take 2 secondaries to score points for killing the squishy units (eg, Kabalites, Gaunts, Infantry) and to kill vehicles (Venom, Sentinels, Carnifex).

Armies that are more elite-based on the other hand have a huge advantage in this respect. Custodes for example offer very little opportunities for these objectives .

Obviously the primaries are where the real points are, but with armies like Space Marines getting their historic buffs to shots, attacks, doctrines etc - they can quickly make short of those same armies as mentioned earlier so that even if they make it to the objective - they don’t get to stay on it.

Unless the new Codexes do something to change this, then I can’t see how those armies would be able to overcome such an obvious disadvantage from a gameplay mechanic. Assuming that wasn’t the plan to get us all buying space marines......

Speaking for tyranids the general consensus is that secondaries are very easy for us. Bring 2 lictors, 2 ripper swarms and you are scoring a lot of points for around 130 points. Alternatively some bring mawlocks and some bring Pyrovores. What ever you desire you bring. Perhaps the other armies have problems but Nids, nah. They are doing fine in secondaries. Primaries are more difficult because the codex is currently not the best of the best, but it is servisable.

A good thing if the secondaries are bad we might get new once in 2021. Remember they are not part of the core rules but rather in grand tournaments 2020. :-)

The problem with Ritual is it has to be the same psyker that takes the action each time. Combined with being within 6" of the centre that means very few characters will survive long enough to do it and after a certain point the window of opportunity to complete the ritual closes completely.

The other major problem is if you take a psyker it's likely to accomplish a given task. Harlequins, for example, usually have 2 psykers but they can't afford to have one of them do nothing but attempt the Ritual since they're needed to buff the army. The same goes for things like Librarians. Do you want your character doing nothing for most of the game, instead of what you actually paid for them to do? In that case you'd be much better off taking a cheap Techmarine or Apothecary and doing one of the other action-based secondaries that are much less dangerous and more reliable.

If my units count as psykers for abhore the witch, then they should very much be able to do ritual too. Otherwise it becomes a version of LoW being shot from behind terrain, because they are the wound threshold, and not being able to fire back at anything else then another knight or similar thing.

Karol wrote:
If my units count as psykers for abhore the witch, then they should very much be able to do ritual too. Otherwise it becomes a version of LoW being shot from behind terrain, because they are the wound threshold, and not being able to fire back at anything else then another knight or similar thing.

You're missing the point. The problem isn't that you can't do Psychic Ritual, it's that you shouldn't. It's just a bad secondary. That problem is then exacerbated by the fact there's a secondary in the same category that's an absolute no-brainer for anyone facing a psyker-heavy army to take if they can. As with may elements of GW games, the problem is with the imbalance between the two things.

Well I don't have my hopes for the should changing, because it is an area of wishing. Something I seem to be bad ad judging. Can't on the other hand is a simple thing to fix. If you something is something, then it should be treated as it in all situations. The split makes no sense. Either they are psykers and count for both ritual and AtW, or they do not count as psykers for either one. The argument how ritual objectives should be changed, I leave to people smarter then me.

 alextroy wrote:
Seems to me the problem with Abor the Witch isn't that it exist. The problem is that it isn't in Purge the Enemy. That would prevent both doubling it up with Assassinate and getting triple kill secondaries by using Abor the Witch along with a No Mercy, No Respite and a Purge the Enemy secondaries.

Heck, it would probably be a good thing if Warpcraft as a category was removed and all those secondaries were distributed into the other 4 categories.

Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.

I think you are on to something there. Perhaps there is no need to brin the categories down to 4, but I really like your idea of the opponent disarding you of one of the 4 sec objectives. It is not too disruptive (we keep playing with 3 sec objectives). It needs more thinking done on it but I would try it (if I did not play with a very comp crowd who will never want any rulechange aside from a TO or GW making it)

 Canadian 5th wrote:

 Mezmorki wrote:
Having to plan for several contingencies means your list needs to be not be skewed in such a way that you're not going to be able to be successful in certain types of missions. You need a more flexible list (not so min-maxed) in order to cover all the bases. You're opponent does the same - and then the game becomes (relatively) more about the tactics and table play again.

How does this actually change anything though? You'll still see a series of optimized lists, they'll just be optimized for the new meta rather than the current one. The top players with access to whatever models they need for their strategy will still have an advantage over those playing on a budget and a small subset of those top players will continue to place highly at events and prove that 40k does in fact require skill to play well; even if that skill cap is lower than in other games.

I guess the test would be the whether or not the change to the mission structure and secondaries does any of the following:

(1) make it so that certain armies aren't handing points to their opponents (ie kill secondaries hurting many armies)

(2) make it so that competitive lists more resemble a TAC list

(3) narrow the variance between win % of different armies and list types

I don't honesty know if just changing the secondaries and missions is enough. I do wonder about whether using a standard FOC would help. It seems that a lot of competitive lists go to great lengths to minimize how many troop choices need to be taken - and that's a problem in and of itself.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.

That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.

Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.

I must say I don't think these two ideas work (at all):
- having the opponent choose one of the secondaries will result in your opponent giving you an impossible mission (or nearly impossible) so it comes down to the same thing as only having 2 sec objectives total
- mission-specific secondary mandatory: same issue, you are stuck with something tied to the mission structure, so if you list can't do it then too bad for you.

Imho all the secondaries should be available only in the core book (or GT pack if you play tournaments), and only there.
Faction-specific secondaries don't bother me too much and could offer some flavour, but they should all be in the same publication and balanced periodically and accordingly.

 Aenar wrote:
be in the same publication and balanced periodically and accordingly.

Oh, hahahaha.... umm, yeah

I feel having random objectives just makes the result of games more random. Which could be desirable - but I don't see it myself.

I mean we had modified maelstrom in 8th - and obviously it did have an effect on the meta. You can compare lists in ITC to lists in ETC to see it. It encouraged armies that had greater speed, sustainability and therefore board control - as against castling in a corner before nuking the enemy in a turn or two (while trying to avoid being nuked yourself).

But at the same time, even with the limitations so you don't get *totally* screwed - you can still be significantly screwed, if someone draws their cards in a better order, while yours are all out of sequence.

Really the Primary already serves to make board control more important than its been in many editions (maybe ever). I don't think you need a random secondary to do it too.

What we want to avoid is the current situation where someone looks at an opponents list and says "unless I'm tabled turn 2 I'm getting 35+ points, probably 40+ if things go well" versus "maybe I can scrape together 25 points if everything goes well." Which is the lament today.

Tyel wrote:
I feel having random objectives just makes the result of games more random. Which could be desirable - but I don't see it myself.

I mean we had modified maelstrom in 8th - and obviously it did have an effect on the meta. You can compare lists in ITC to lists in ETC to see it. It encouraged armies that had greater speed, sustainability and therefore board control - as against castling in a corner before nuking the enemy in a turn or two (while trying to avoid being nuked yourself).

But at the same time, even with the limitations so you don't get *totally* screwed - you can still be significantly screwed, if someone draws their cards in a better order, while yours are all out of sequence.

Really the Primary already serves to make board control more important than its been in many editions (maybe ever). I don't think you need a random secondary to do it too.

What we want to avoid is the current situation where someone looks at an opponents list and says "unless I'm tabled turn 2 I'm getting 35+ points, probably 40+ if things go well" versus "maybe I can scrape together 25 points if everything goes well." Which is the lament today.

The maelstrom we had at the end of 8th was perfect IMO, the odds of you getting shafted was very low because you got to pick which secondaries you wanted from a hand you could manipulate (mulligan, replace cards) which reduced the feel bad moments a lot. Adding onto that the fact that you could remove most of the secondaries that were hard for your army to get was also a nice touch.

The thing is that Maelstrom sucked if you were bringing skew lists because you could just get secondaries that you can't easily achieve with your list. Maelstrom inherently asks players to run TAC lists.

This isnt only feelings or my opinion, its a fact that this type of missions helps fight skew. Infinity works similarly, where objectives are drawn from a deck that is the same for every player and this forces lists to have multiple elements (hacker, specialist, remotes, etc) and punishes people that go all-in on a single unit type.

The fundamental problem is one of on-the-table decision vs. pregame decisions making the choice.

The goal should be to emphasize on-the-table decisions (such as maneuver) rather than pre-battle decisions (such as unit composition / objective choice).

Randomness is a way to FORCE choice, because it takes things like unit composition or objective choice away from the player. If another solution could be found to de-emphasize pregame decisions in favor of ingame decisions, then use that instead. Randomness isn't really relevant to the discussion save as a possible means to achieve the desired end.

It's worth noting that this can be seen in Tabletop Titans videos, even. Competitive play exists not in making hard choices (those don't come up super often), but rather in identifying the clearly best route to execute.

There usually is a clearly best route. The issue in identifying it lies in the fact that 40k's rules cause all sorts of unintuitive weirdness and it is behind that smokescreen where the discussion lies.

An example lies with the employment of Fiends. If you fight an enemy squad with, say, Daemonettes and Fiends, you can tie up the squad with the Daemonettes to keep them from moving into base-2-base with the fiend. If the fiend stays .75" away from the closest model and more than 1" from other enemy models, only that model can ever hit it, even if the entire rest of the unit is within .5" of said model.

That is the best way to employ fiends. It simply is. Players may not be able to identify all the elements of the rules working together, so the skill comes in parsing the complex interactions of fiddly, tiny rules, but there's clearly ONE BEST OPTION and a whole slew of sub-par options. That's not choice, that's obfuscation.

Thanks to ITC donkey-caves, look at where is gotten us.

Yes. Leaving out of course, the fact that GW deliberately left out the part of the system that would have made all this work (but that targets the sacred cash cow), and also added things ITC doesn't use at all, but yes. Let's call them names.

Seems to me the problem with Abor the Witch isn't that it exist. The problem is that it isn't in Purge the Enemy. That would prevent both doubling it up with Assassinate and getting triple kill secondaries by using Abor the Witch along with a No Mercy, No Respite and a Purge the Enemy secondaries.

Heck, it would probably be a good thing if Warpcraft as a category was removed and all those secondaries were distributed into the other 4 categories.

Makes me think of an interesting idea for doing Secondaries. 4 Categories of secondaries. You pick one from each category. Your opponent then decides which one you don't use. So while all the secondaries are of your choosing, it isn't the most optimal three.

So you have part of the problem accurately called out, but there's even more to it. It's bad because an army like Tsons literally can't not take a psyker character. All of the HQs are psyker characters so they are fethed by simply existing. Add to that the fact that these secondaries require absolutely no opportunity cost. You were going to try and kill these characters anyway so in exchange for doing something you were already going to do, you get 8 points. Then compare that to Psychic ritual where you have to take a psyker, put him in harm's way (actually increasing his chance of giving up 8 points because you make it easier for the opponent to kill him), and you have to have him essentially not contribute to the fight at all for three turns. How is that balanced?

How do I only get 1 point for raise the banners (an act which requires my unit to get to an objective, hold the objective, and then literally give up doing anything for a turn), but I can get 2 or 3 points for firing an anti-tank gun at a .... tank ....? If this system makes sense to you, seek help ...


We have Spolleta claiming the kill secondaries are about controlling "skew" but that doesn't really work either unless we think GW considers a normal TSons list with three psykers (because they literally only have Psyker HQs) as "skew", or an IG list with 3 or 4 tanks as "Skew". On top of that, we would have to believe that GW thinks Ahriman is worth the same as a 20 point Astra Militarum character because they both net "5" for "assassinate". This makes zero sense.

On top of that, I think the 9th Ed rules have generally done a decent job of fixing at least some of that. Think about Bring It Down or Titan Slayer - they're meant for those players who bring an all Knight army. Yet, "all Knight armies" are pretty weak this edition without piling this on. Psyker heavy armies like Grey Knights and Tsons have been nerfed by both the Force Org changes and the Smite nerf. Was it also necessary to penalize their armies simply for existing?

I like the idea of secondaries in the game, but I think they need rebalanced. All of them should come with some level of decision making/opportunity cost (i.e. - "I get points for shooting my anit-tank gun at a tank" should not be a thing), none of them should "double up" like Abhor/Assassinate, and they should not specifically target a faction just because that faction exists.

I read nostalgia about Maelstrom cards... I honestly thought we all hated these (Worst thing is I acyually bought those crappy things for orks and nids...)
Well I for one am so happy they are gone, I can't even describe it. They were fine for casual games (then again for casual games one might as well set up a thematic home made mission and have more fun) but they were unwieldy AF and such a pain to play along with.

I want to say that for all their shortcomings, since 4th edition, the current mission system is by far the best system 40k has ever had. They give armies like Nids or Orks, with a totally out of date codex, a good chance to win against the new shiny books. You don't have to roll a single dice, it is fast you just choose them, you can base a strategy on accomplishing them (instead of only tabling), and never in 40K history was that even remotely a thing. And please if the very TS players could just... be less vocal... We get it, you can't currently win, so just wait for your codex to be redone. Your turn will come soon.

Tycho wrote:
On top of that, I think the 9th Ed rules have generally done a decent job of fixing at least some of that. Think about Bring It Down or Titan Slayer - they're meant for those players who bring an all Knight army.

My experience so far has been that, in practice, I can take a balanced Tyranid list up against all-Knights and we're just going to max out Bring It Down against one another. The hard cap on the kill secondaries prevents them from really punishing skew, and their value being tied to model count rather than points value disproportionately punishes cheaper models for a given type.

Like you said they're supposed to control skew but really don't, so at the moment I don't see much value in player-selected secondaries. It benefits the skew player (by letting them choose objectives relevant to their list) much more than it allows a non-skew player to counter them.

I'd much rather, as others have said, see a variety of mission types and objectives, putting skew lists that lack the flexibility to handle them at a disadvantage.

And please if the very TS players could just... be less vocal... We get it, you can't currently win, so just wait for your codex to be redone. Your turn will come soon.

"If the half dozen armies that are needlessly targeted by these, and will continue to be needlessly targeted by these (because the problems won't be fixed with a new codex) could just stop wanting to participate equally in the game because it's working fine for my army ...."

That's probably the biggest issue with the current kill secondaries. A new codex won't fix the fact that IG must bring a bunch of somewhat squishy tanks because that's how their army functions, Tsons/Grey Knights must bring Psyker Characters because that's how they function - if the issue were one that could be fixed with a new 'dex it would be different. People would just "wait and see", but this problem is endemic to the nature of the armies it targets, and will be a problem until the secondaries themselves are addressed.

 addnid wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
I'm not sure randomness is needed, but something to shake up the extreme degree to which lists are engineered to just do one thing.

That's why I like the idea of having the opponent choose one of the secondaries (obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked). It's not random, but it does mean you can't just engineer a list to within an inch of its life and not have to ever worry about having to do something different.

Another option is making the mission-specific secondary mandatory, but with how terrible GW is at balancing those, I fear that will just end up by total "coincidence" benefitting certain factions *cough cough* over others, just like the core secondary system does.

I must say I don't think these two ideas work (at all):
- having the opponent choose one of the secondaries will result in your opponent giving you an impossible mission (or nearly impossible) so it comes down to the same thing as only having 2 sec objectives total
- mission-specific secondary mandatory: same issue, you are stuck with something tied to the mission structure, so if you list can't do it then too bad for you.

I don't think you really read what I wrote. See the parenthical - "(obviously with the list reworked so that they aren't keyword-locked)." The secondaries would obviously have to be reworked so that they aren't flat-out impossible. I went into this in more detail in previous posts.

However, the broader point - that your opponent could choose objectives that are difficult for your list to do if you choose a very specialized list - is the whole point. The purpose of such a system is to encourage people not to bring hyper-specialized lists that only have to do one thing in every mission and against every opponent because they always have the same win conditions. "If your list can't do it, too bad for you" is a feature, not a bug - the purpose is to make people not bring those sorts of inflexible lists.

There are broadly two problems with the current secondaries:

1. They arbitrarily punish some factions over others. (And no, "don't complain that your faction can't win because it's totally hosed by this arbitrary punishment, just wait and see for your codex and quit complaining in the meantime!" is not an argument for why this isn't a problem).

2. They encourage super-specialization in list-building, because you have complete freedom over your own win conditions. This is the opposite of what a good secondary system should do. Secondary objectives should be things that create hard, tactical choices between pursuing the plan you'd otherwise pursue and deviating from that plan to succeed at the secondary, not something to just tick off in the list-building phase and then execute the same plan on every game.

I'm not saying "opponent chooses" is the only way to accomplish what the system should accomplish, but what we've got now does precisely the opposite of what it's supposed to.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Well it still would curb the most Skew excesses which are Meta relevant.
F.e. Knights would automatically due to their skew nature fall out of competition rather hard, which whilest unfortunate for the owners of knights is STILL an improvement due to lowering AT which would make formerly tough but out-dealt vehicles an intersting choice again.

However, it is still imo a bandaid, as in the fact that you require the missions to be anti skew via an uncertainity element rather then the core mechanics actually enforcing an anti-skew list building. The later is sadly an unfortunate fact that the core rules don't help this, at all. Hence why the go to lever is the mission goals.

Doesn't that sound like the current state of 9th edition? Knights are bad, we've seen multiple flavors of list take top four positions in the only tournaments running, there aren't any skew armor or horde lists taking up a large percentage of tournament entries. If we're already here why make drastic changes in the name of achieving exactly this?

 addnid wrote:
I read nostalgia about Maelstrom cards... I honestly thought we all hated these (Worst thing is I acyually bought those crappy things for orks and nids...)
Well I for one am so happy they are gone, I can't even describe it. They were fine for casual games (then again for casual games one might as well set up a thematic home made mission and have more fun) but they were unwieldy AF and such a pain to play along with.

Well I didn't You're right homebrew missions were better - but they still are of course and the best way to play any tabletop. Maelstrom was/ is nice when you are bored of eternal war (which I basically was in every edition after the first 3 test games ). For a large part of 7th Maelstrom was also the only way for half the armies to have a chance to win at all, aside from more narrative missions of course.