Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I am just getting round to reading Blood of Baal and I am utterly baffled by the rules for the new 'Delaying Action' mission. I feel like I must have overlooked something because it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

In the mission's defence, it will never get used. One player needs a Blood Angels force that is split evenly between phobos troops and jump pack guys. The other player needs a Tyranid force that is 1.5 times as large. Those requirements are so absurdly specific that no one will even attempt to play this.

From what I can tell, the idea is that the Tyranid army starts on the right side of the table. The Blood Angels are supposed to put their phobos troops in a deployment zone in the middle of the table, with the jump pack troops in reserve. They are not allowed to bring in their reserves until turn four, unless they can control an astropathic beacon that is situated on the left side of the table. Whoever has the most power level on the table at the end of the random-length game wins. The intended premise of the mission would therefore seem to be that the Blood Angels player needs to rush their units from the middle of the table to the left side to allow them to call in the rest of their army. The Tyranids need to stop them from doing that, or at least to soften them up enough that the jump troops can't make a difference.

However, I see several glaring problems with this:

1: The Blood Angels player begins the game with phobos units, which typically don't need to start in the deployment zone. They can just deploy them on top of the beacon, allowing the Blood Angels to bring in all their troops right away.
2: The Tyranids get to deploy their entire army at the start of the game. The mission has rules for bringing in Tyranid reserves, and even a special stratagem that allows their reserves to come on from the top and bottom table edges. However, the rules for deployment say nothing that compels the Tyranid player to place units in reserve. Indeed, they couldn't place anything in reserve even if they wanted to, because 8th edition does not allow reserves by default and the mission rules say nothing to contradict this.
3: The Blood Angels start with 0.5 of an army on the board. The Tyranids start with 1.5 of an army on the board. If we house rule that the phobos cannot deploy on top of the beacon then they have no chance.
4: Even if the Blood Angels cheat by deploying their whole army on the first turn they are still at a 1:1.5 disadvantage and are very likely to lose.

It seems to me that the only mission in this book is completely broken, with the only saving grace being that most people will never have an appropriate collection of models to even try it. Or am I missing something here?

It’s a narrative scenario. It’s not Matched Play.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s a narrative scenario. It’s not Matched Play.

Yep. Whenever a scenario calls for specific factions and models (and doesn't require the armies to be Battle-forged) it should be pretty obvious that it is a Narrative scenario.

I was trying to run through a narrative campaign before this crisis hit, and have been getting used to playing Narrative missions. The thing to remember is; they are NOT balanced. They are honestly not supposed to be balanced. And they are meant to be played with players making choices that are "cool" rather than "effective".

In this scenario, it sounds like the Nids are favoured to win, that the Blood Angels should hold back command points to use Descent of Angels, that the Tyranids should take units that can deploy not on the table (like Genestealers with Infestation Nodes), or that players should make special exception to allow some Tyranids to deploy in a status that's like Reserves.

The point is to sit back and both laugh at whatever the heck happens on the table. It's fun, so long as both players understand that they are NOT playing a competitive game, and just playing for the spectacle of it.

The mission has stratagems and talks about battleforged armies. In my mind I associate those things with matched play, so I had forgotten they are valid for narrative play as well. Fair point.

Still, the mission as printed makes no sense. I think the major problem was that they were supposed to force part of the Tyranid army into reserves at the start and they forgot to do so. The outflanking stratagem wouldn't work for genestealers since their nodes would still have to go in the regular deployment zone.

I guess the house rule fixes are:

1. Blood Angels must deploy their phobos units in their deployment zone, even if they have abilities that would normally allow them to do otherwise.
2. Tyranids can only start with half their army on the table, with the rest going into reserves.

I would say that those changes make the mission more fair were it not for the fact that it is inherently unfair in favour of the Tyranids...

Sadly the Blood Angels plot armour doesn't translate to the tabletop.