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I think people are wondering what tournament missions will look like in 5th Edition. I can't wait to see what the big tournaments decide to do

Here are 5 quickly designed missions using the V5 Rulebook objectives and deployments mixed with the classics. They are listed as Primary objective, deployment zone, and Secondary objective. Tertiary objectives usually seem like an after thought or don't really tie into the mission concept at all. At times you will see missions at big tournaments where if you get the Primary, you get the 2nd and 3rd objectives almost automatically. I did my best to avoid that by making the Secondary in a different vein than the Primary.
I'm not sure if Tertiary objectives are necessary, perhaps just a series of bonus points would be better.

Some of my opinions on what constitutes solid mission design are:


Objectives shouldn't be used more than once in any one objective level.

Any two objectives shouldn't be used together in more than one mission.

Every mission should seem Unique.

All V5 deployment rules should be used. That means one roll for deployment, set up and who goes first with Seize the Initiative to make people think. Always allowing voluntary Reserves seems fine and I don't mind always Deep Strike and Infiltrate but I can see why people would argue against that.




Here are 4 simple missions that are similiar to the rulebook missions.


Kill Points / 12 Inches / Control Most Terrain Features
Quarters / Triangle / VPs
Loot / Dawn of War / Destroy Enemy HQ
Take the Center / Quarters / Most scoring units in Opp's D Zone


Please list missions you would like to see and your thoughts on what you would like to see on the circuit.

Control most terrain features isn't fair to all armies.
Same with most scoring units.

Same with Kill Points :S

At least my GK come out on top of that one.

Achieving balance in anything is very difficult and often overrated. Every army has advantages and disadvantages, if people are so competitive that they don't want to "get screwed" by the mission they should choose an army that does well in most missions. And sometimes you should have to overcome adverse situations. I think you can make the same argument about Quarters or Take the Center especially with only troops being scoring units.

Nope sorry, that doesn't wash.

Escalation made that argument for years.

You need to make missions for the PLAYER to play, not force people to run specific armies to run or risk losing to a scenario.

Stelek wrote:Nope sorry, that doesn't wash.

.

Of course it doenst wash...the vast majority of armies that you post here feature 2 troops choices and the rest in 'candy'.

It's not fair that you should need troops to win a game.

I don't know if you're trying to make a point, or just trying to mess with Stelek, but Escalation was pretty poorly thought it. It didn't hurt broken armies, it hurt any army that wasn't entirely infantry or entirely non-infnatry. It also screwed any army relying on the following troop selections:
Anything in a transport
BA Assault Squads
Ravenwing Squads
Bikes with BSATW
deffDreads bought with a big mek
etc.

My point is that using missions to "balance out" what people consider broken armies generally has the effect of also hurting builds that aren't broken. In many ways, it's similar to most comp schemes that have been created: they mean well, but tend to do as much harm as good.

Preventative Mod mode on:
Stelek / Deadshane others that pop up, please stick to discussing the thread’s points.
EDIT-removed posts which occurred while I was typing.
Mod mode off
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Having made scenarios in the past for 40K and BFG tourneys, its quite difficult. On the one hand you have the theory that every mission should be equally balanced. On the other hand there is the theory that the missions will balance out (one tends to help assaulters vs another more in line with a shooter list).

I always liked the old standby mission that wouldn’t reveal objectives until turn three. It kept you guessing and reacting. That would still be appropriate in V5.

Objective games are still reasonable if there are multiple objectives. The one objective in the middle of the board mission tended to weight in favor of assault lists. Missions requiring getting across the board also favored high speed or drop lists.

jfrazell, what I did in my last tournament was force each side to randomly roll up their primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives from a list.

Every so often, teams would have totally divergent objectives...and often a tertiary (normally unimportant compared to a primary) was the opponents primary...and that really changed things up.

I think it was an excellent idea, I was sorry I hadn't thought of it earlier.

I never thought much of not revealing objectives till turn three. You just shot the other guy to death, then went...oh, kill 2 troops. Well nifty...

Polonius. I think GW included infiltrate/deepstrike/reserves as always on because of how many armies were screwed by escalations poor rules.

They realized it made for both bad friendly games and bad tournaments.

It's not like it's overpowering. Well, my last chancers are versus basic MEQ's...but that's about it. Everything else in the game you can pretty much deal with fairly.

My point WAS that with armies that contain only 2 troops choices (regardless whether they're maximised OR minimised) have a disadvantage in 2/3 of the rulebook missions played.

Only armies with SOLID troops selections, not a HUGE 2 selections OR minimised 6 selections, are going to be really competetive in the new game. A game that features missions that 5e presents.

Maybe GW IS steering people that way, but personally, I think it makes for a better game.

MOD deleted as off topic

I've been playing 5E for a year.

You are incorrect in your assumptions about the game.

Mod Mode
Posts edited. Lets keep it impersonal or warnings will be given.
Mod Mode

Another factor. I've only perused the real book. Unless I am incorrect the HQ and two squads deploying mission really is the same as escalation-it slammed my nids in test gaming. I'm supposing GW is happy enough with the concept that it will continue.

It's different than the old escalation.

You get your whole army in immediately as soon as you get a turn.

And you don't have to deploy anything if you don't want to.

So it's nothing like escalation, bud. Really, it isn't.

Stelek wrote:I've been playing 5E for a year.

...and here I am with only 4 months under MY belt and I've already got a better grasp on the dynamics of Troops choices and Missions than you.


Some of the best armylists in years feature 'troops stout' army lists, there will be no difference in tournement missions for 5th edition, and no real complaints from top teir players at these events. Not when their armies feature the versatility and resiliance that a solid troops contingent will give you.

Stelek wrote:It's different than the old escalation.

You get your whole army in immediately as soon as you get a turn.

And you don't have to deploy anything if you don't want to.

So it's nothing like escalation, bud. Really, it isn't.

Really, thats a good deal different then how we were playing. Excellent.

Stelek wrote:I've been playing 5E for a year.

You are incorrect in your assumptions about the game.

Honestly, how ridiculous is that statement? The rumors have barely been out a year, and the real rules changes weren't solidified before 2-3 months ago.

Some peeps have access to the newer books a bit early, due to whatever connections they might have. It's not so inconcievable.

Uhh you can go to your local store and look at the rules there, yes?

It's not like the missions have changed a whole hell of a lot in the last year.

GW likes something, it stays. No matter how poor it might be (cough escalation at every major GT for how many horrible years?). Playtesters have very little actual say in the rules as they form up.

Does it work? Yes, but it's crap.

GW hears "yes".

One thing I've been thinking about is that, in a single "game mission" you can have a primary mission that has an objective (or objectives) that are captured exactly as in the 5th edition rulebook: captured by a scoring unit (non-vehicle/non-swarm troops choice) and contested by any unit.

Then as a secondary mission you can have an objective (or objectives) that can be captured by any type of unit (as long as it isn't a unit that can "never score" in its own rules). This mission type obviously favors armies that have many, many units.

Finally, as a third mission you use Kill Points, which favors armies that have few large units.

If you have a "game mission" that mixes all three types of mission objectives I think you end up with a pretty balanced system that rewards play instead of army type.

Which, now that I go back and look at it is pretty much exactly what the OP was advocating (I think).

The use of Kill Points can be mitigated by also including an objective in the same mission that rewards an army that has lots of units. I wholeheartedly agree with this concept.



I was also thinking a lot about Kill Points. I like the idea of simplified Victory Points but as they stand now they are horribly imbalanced.

But what about if you took the total number of Kill Points your army lost and then divided it by the total number of Kill Points you had available to give?

So if my army had 14 Kill Points available and I gave up 6 at the end of the game my ratio would be:

6/14 = .43


If my opponent only had 8 Kill Points but lost 4 of them his ratio would be:

4/8 = .50


Since he gave up a higher ratio of Kill Points he would lose, even though technically he got more 'Kill Points' then I did.

What would you think of a system like this in a tournament?

I don't see what's wrong with taking the initial proposal at face value.

I think there is some kind of implicit assumption that an army that is known to be good at one thing (e.g. scoring & denying VPs) should necessarily be good at all other things (e.g. taking objectives).

Perhaps, not all army builds should have the same chances at each mission / deployment / whatever. But notionally, if a given army which is particularly advantaged in one scenario would be similarly disadvantaged in another scenario, then the scenarios are fair.

So getting back to the OP's suggestion, if all of the scenarios are uniformly generated from the rulebook, as opposed to concentrating on a particular option, then by default, I think one can assume the mix of scenarios to be fair.

And if that mix can be presumed to be fair, then the ideal course of action would be to select an army that can compete regardless of the particular scenario options.

____


With respect to Kill Points, I think they are very different from VPs, but much better. I don't see any balance issues per se, just a change from what we currently have. I'd simplify KPs to count against the entire FOC slot, as in most cases 1 unit = 1 FOC slot. So if you wipe a FOC slot, you get 1 KP. If any sub-elements of a FOC slot are active, you get 0 KPs. This simple "all or nothing" business is very clear and straightforward, compared to calculating ratios.

What would you think of a system like this in a tournament?

I like it enough to use it in the next tournament I run. Seems to fix much the imbalance found in the standard KP rule. Could call it Kill Ratio or something like that.

Just have to make sure I have a couple calculators on hand.

what I did in my last tournament was force each side to randomly roll up their primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives from a list.

How did that work out? Could a player potentially roll up the same objective in the three slots? Would you post it?

In the last tourney that I ran, we had each table (instead of game round) roll for scenario out of a possible 10 with repeat missions being re-rolled until a new mission was generated. This way, each player walked away from the tournament with a unique experience. On top of that, mission special rules were in play with a 4+ roll for each one listed on the mission sheet.....I limited escalation to 5 scenarios....players just striked all the special rules that weren't in play.

The next progression of the tournament we were preparing for was the random objective generation. I can see adding in a few more deployments with 5E tournaments to challenge players more.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
With respect to Kill Points, I think they are very different from VPs, but much better. I don't see any balance issues per se, just a change from what we currently have. I'd simplify KPs to count against the entire FOC slot, as in most cases 1 unit = 1 FOC slot. So if you wipe a FOC slot, you get 1 KP. If any sub-elements of a FOC slot are active, you get 0 KPs. This simple "all or nothing" business is very clear and straightforward, compared to calculating ratios.

The problem with Kill Points as they stand is they are calculated per unit, not per FOC. You've suggested a change, which is fine (I did too) but it isn't the way that Kill Points work 'out of the book'.

When I was mulling over Kill Points for tournaments I came up with the same idea you did: assign Kill Points per FOC instead of per unit.

But I ultimately decided that wasn't an idea that can work in a tournament because any FOC that is made up of separate units (like a transport or multiple IG squads) just has to 'hide' one of those units during the game and they are then able to run around suiciding with the rest of that FOC knowing they won't be penalized for it's loss.

I think the only way to make Kill Points as close to balanced as they can be is to compare the total number of Kill Points a force can possibly give up against how many it actually did.

Actually, that Kill points ratio thing sound pretty good to me. I am thinking about situations where it might yield a different result than the actual Kill Points rule. Have an example in mind? (I will try to think of one too.)

Yak, I don't see any problem with the notion of suicide units backed by hiding units. In fact, I see it as a major positive improvement.

What sorts of FOC slots have multiple units?
- SM Combat Squads
- IG Platoon Squads
- Transports

For SM and IG, it encourages more aggressive play compared to the default hide-and-stand-and-shoot boring business. In the SM case, the SM player is not using up to half of his force for the privilege of preserving a few KPs - probably not a good strategic tradeoff. In the IG case, they finally have some ability move out of cover and go after objectives, something that is sorely needed, given that IG have very little ability to hold objectives with their terrible T3 Sv5+ default stats.

In the case of Transports, arguably, they're not part of the FOC per se. But this doesn't matter because they're invariably Vehicles which are never Scoring.

The only other oddity where units don't match FOC slots are generic Daemons. Given how people dislike them for their "blandness" and restrictions (icons, etc), giving them the strategic ability to be used as purely aggressive throwaway / suicide units is also a good thing, and a very characterful disctinction compared to valuable CSM or Daemonic Legion forces.

Given the naturalness and simplicity of treating KPs as "all or nothing" along with the increased differentiation between how SM Combat Squads / CSM & Daemons / IG Platoons would play on the battlefield, I think this kind of change can only be a positive thing.


And the notion that this can't work in a tournament is kind of strange. As long as the rule is published prior to the tournament, players can and will adapt. Besides, it's not like the rules don't already bias for or against particular armies already. This is no different, aside from making IG more playable.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Yak, I don't see any problem with the notion of suicide units backed by hiding units. In fact, I see it as a major positive improvement.

What sorts of FOC slots have multiple units?
- SM Combat Squads
- IG Platoon Squads
- Transports

There are lots more, but some I can think of off the top of my head are: Zoanthropes, Biovores, Lictors (I think), Ravenwing squads.

For SM and IG, it encourages more aggressive play compared to the default hide-and-stand-and-shoot boring business. In the SM case, the SM player is not using up to half of his force for the privilege of preserving a few KPs - probably not a good strategic tradeoff. In the IG case, they finally have some ability move out of cover and go after objectives, something that is sorely needed, given that IG have very little ability to hold objectives with their terrible T3 Sv5+ default stats.

In the case of Transports, arguably, they're not part of the FOC per se. But this doesn't matter because they're invariably Vehicles which are never Scoring.

And the notion that this can't work in a tournament is kind of strange. As long as the rule is published prior to the tournament, players can and will adapt. Besides, it's not like the rules don't already bias for or against particular armies already. This is no different, aside from making IG more playable.

All I can say is that I strongly, strongly disagree with your assesment. A Space Marine player can split his unit into combat squads, leave one in the back providing cover fire with a heavy weapon and if the front squad gets wiped out, or if the back squad gets reduced down to one-man remaining then he moves that one-man or remainder of the squad out of LOS.

Or if both combat squads are getting whittled down he can go hide the Rhino somewhere. The point is, the player isn't losing part of his army in order to take advantage of this rule, he takes advantage of the rule when it is profitable for him to do so.

Having an opponent wipe out an entire IG platoon only to score absolutely no kill points because one guy is left hiding somewhere isn't fun for anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Changing the rule so that the entire FOC must be wiped out to score a single KP is a sure-fire way to create frustrating games.

And I strongly disagree with the very notion that players should be able to score KPs off of full SM Combat Squads or especially IG Platoons in the first place.

Quite frankly, an IG player who only takes Platoons shouldn't ever give up a single KP. This is the benefit for giving up access to the cool, sexy non-Troops stuff, not to mention the pain of having to build and paint 100+ Guardsmen.

And in any sort of mirror match, all it means is that the battle ends in a hard-fought draw. How is that such a bad thing?

yakface wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Yak, I don't see any problem with the notion of suicide units backed by hiding units. In fact, I see it as a major positive improvement.

What sorts of FOC slots have multiple units?
- SM Combat Squads
- IG Platoon Squads
- Transports

There are lots more, but some I can think of off the top of my head are: Zoanthropes, Biovores, Lictors (I think), Ravenwing squads.

For SM and IG, it encourages more aggressive play compared to the default hide-and-stand-and-shoot boring business. In the SM case, the SM player is not using up to half of his force for the privilege of preserving a few KPs - probably not a good strategic tradeoff. In the IG case, they finally have some ability move out of cover and go after objectives, something that is sorely needed, given that IG have very little ability to hold objectives with their terrible T3 Sv5+ default stats.

In the case of Transports, arguably, they're not part of the FOC per se. But this doesn't matter because they're invariably Vehicles which are never Scoring.

And the notion that this can't work in a tournament is kind of strange. As long as the rule is published prior to the tournament, players can and will adapt. Besides, it's not like the rules don't already bias for or against particular armies already. This is no different, aside from making IG more playable.

All I can say is that I strongly, strongly disagree with your assesment. A Space Marine player can split his unit into combat squads, leave one in the back providing cover fire with a heavy weapon and if the front squad gets wiped out, or if the back squad gets reduced down to one-man remaining then he moves that one-man or remainder of the squad out of LOS.

Or if both combat squads are getting whittled down he can go hide the Rhino somewhere. The point is, the player isn't losing part of his army in order to take advantage of this rule, he takes advantage of the rule when it is profitable for him to do so.

Having an opponent wipe out an entire IG platoon only to score absolutely no kill points because one guy is left hiding somewhere isn't fun for anybody, anywhere, anytime.

Changing the rule so that the entire FOC must be wiped out to score a single KP is a sure-fire way to create frustrating games.

Amen.

If you use kill points, certain units shouldn't be worth kill points at all (I'm primarily thinking of spore mines).