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I was generally very impressed with the Hard Boy missions this year, thinking they were generally well written, and impressive tactical challenges, reasonably balanced for the most part with one exception.

Round 2 Semifinal mission for 6 mystery objectives.

Did anyone else not like this mission?

For the uninformed, the mission was a Dawn of War battle for 6 objectives, 3 of which were real, on turns 2, 4 and 6 a D6 roll was made, (reroll already nominated objs) to determine which objs were 'real' and also, nigthfight all game!

I didn't like this mission for a variety of reasons:

Nightfight all game? Really changes the game, and also makes the turns take longer with sight rolls for EVERY shot!
Dawn of War: some armies are at a significant disadvantage in DOW, when they have to hoof the length of the table (and with nightfight, no shots anyway)
Rolling for 3 OBJs, on turn 6 even? Feels like a roll to see who won game at the end, on the last turn.

I'll admit, I played an incredibly slanted game that round against a 3 Landraider marine army with Lysander and Marneus, my opponent barely got any shots and didnt have a chance to even get to 3 of the objs, all on my side, and of course, they were the objs we rolled as valid as well. Complete mission kill.

What were your experiences? Did you hate it, love it?

I thought it was fair. I've written up 6 turn nightfights before; why wouldn't two forces fight at night? (why wouldn't the eldar have brought a flashlight?) It changes the dynamic of the tournament knowing a 6 turn nightfight is in there. Some lists were brought to optimize that scenario, but then suffered in the daylight missions a little.

I think the 6 turn nightfight mission makes you really try and diversify your army list and make it a more balanced force. One which a real army might take into battle. I changed up my list, took out about 300pts of shooting and added in about 300pts of close combat ability just for the second mission. I figured I couldn't afford to sit back and outshoot in that round and that something I didn't like was going to get in my lines so I needed a counter.

I found this mission to be a lot of fun.... really gave me a new way to use rhinos (as spotters).

Yeah... I thought it was a fun mission. However, I think the objectives should have been rolled earlier in the game to give you time to adjust. Even still, it was a fun scenario.

Under the circumstances, I feel the mission was relatively fair. Knowing the scenarios ahead of time was a big part of it. Had this been a "surprise, your shooting army just got nerfed" occurrence that wasn't discovered until lists were finalized, then people would have room to gripe. As it was, the mission forced you to get close to do damage, and either wait in locations where you could reach multiple objectives, or guess and commit to objectives and hope for the best.

The mission also forced me to spread out my intial deployment. I could not afford tocastle up with half the objectives to far away for me to get to late in the game. A usual tenant of the game is not to spread your forces out to thin, but this scenario made me do the opposite.

I liked it. It forced me to do some things I'd normally never do (like shoot a stormbolter from a rhino at a dreadnought to get the dread searchlighted so the multimeltas land speeder storm behind the dread could see it without nightfight issues). The random objectives were not an issue either as I just kept some troop units mobile and did my best to pack the objectives as close together as possible.

Wow, I'm surprised to see people mostly liked it.

Interesting.

Perhaps because the objectives were more fairly distributed in those games?

I can see that different could be good.

No matter what you got to place 3 of the objectives. I just placed them as close together as possible to one of the objectives the other player put down. So in the end 4 of them where in a 12" by 12 " square meaning I knew where at least 1 objective would be with a good chance that another one would be in the square. Turns out, all 3 were, but even if 1 was outside the square then I still could have gotten to it with the Land Speeder Storm that I kept out of the heavy fight but within 24 inches of the other 2 objectives.

I did something similar for the heavy 4 side, 2 of these were real objectives in my game as well.

Maybe it felt unfair to me (well for my opponent) because I had 11 Eldar tanks, and there really wasn't a chance he could take even one obj I couldn't easily contest in the end game with night fight.

Other armies might be more fair. Or maybe that's just the way it goes.

Hmm

Plus he had options. Eldar don't have a counter for night fight, he does. Searchlights.

Takes 2-3 turns to get his stuff over to your side? Deepstrike the terminators instead. Then you are forced to pick if you are dealing with terminators or land raiders. He could of focused evenything on the 1 objective that was known on turn 2 and kept something mobile to contest the other objective or two. ( 12 inch land raider move, 2.5 inch deployment, and prob a 6 inch assault against a wave serpent means he would have some good range on the final turn.) While facing a list like yours would mean it is very hard to get a massacre I still think he could have tried for a major or minor victory with his stuff.

I thought elves had Low-light vision standard?

I enjoyed the hell out of that mission, even though I came through with a minor loss. It was easily the most challenging fight of the day.

I enjoyed the mission as well, even though I definately run a more shooting orientated army.

Searchlights are definately nice. Drop pods are awesome, though my opponent dropping them right in the short range line of fire of a gunline with no backup close by really helped. Half his troops dead in short order made the capture and control part easier. But mech builds benefited from the increased mobility and close combat armies benefitted from the reduced firepower they faced to reach the target. Was the first real scenario I think that gave Tau and Space Wolves the upper hand in any shooting.

I personally avoided clumping the objectives and counted on having more scoing units to be able to go after every counter, while concentrating on eliminating his scoring units.


All 3 years though I think I've liked the missions for 'Ard Boyz. Gives something different then the usual slug it out game. Anyone remember the one from the first 'ard boyz semi finals, "A hard days night"? That one had both players taking turns placing their entire army (no reserves- period), anywhere on the table more then 6" from an enemy unit and no first turn assualt.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:I thought elves had Low-light vision standard?

Only Maugan Ra has acute senses.

Eldar are one of the oldest races but apparently no one has developed LIGHTS

Well just be glad its not like epic. Where they have EVERYTHING! Much better at...everything then the other armies. They are a dying race and should be nasty. Works fluff wise but not game wise. Still silly they don't have them.

The eldar did have lights once, but Eldredd was the only one who knew how to replace the spiritstone in the clapper.........