Does "Malestrom" Save 40K for you? How about Dark Angels?

[ValourousHeart]

@Master Avoghai & Iansturrock,

 

I'm sorry if either of you feel that I am avoiding your questions, I just don't always follow your analogies.

 

Now I could be wrong but 1:81 seems to only account for the odds of 4 dice rolling two 5-6s and two 1-2s. My point was that it doesn't account for the chance of drawing that card, let alone both players drawing that card. Or even both successfully accomplishing the task that grants the roll.

 

About the unsatisfactory part... You mentioned that both players would be unhappy with the random results. I don't think that is possible, let alone probable. In this example the options are 1, 2 or 3. You are happy with a 3 and unhappy with a 1 and your opponent is the opposite. And rolling a 2 won't make both players upset, quite the opposite. You're going to be happy you didn't roll a 1 and your opponent is going to be happy you didn't roll a 3.

 

But I believe that you guys are focusing on the wrong point. Look at how everyone lost their cool about the idea of unbound armies. How many 10 riptide lists have you faced? My guess is about zero between the two of you.

 

If you go for the push goal you will most likely score more vp than if you don't. (You have a 67% chance of not rolling a 1). And more importantly you will have eliminated more of your opponent's army making it harder for them to score more points.

 

Now I could be wrong, but I feel that you both are more in favor of a system that rewards players for wiping out units than you are for a system that rewards players for moving models. But the more you push for that system the more you end up with the 3rd Ed chaos cav DP and rhino rush, 4th Ed leaf blower, 5th Ed SW JOTWW and GK grenade belts, and 6th Ed Taudar and ScreamerStar.

 

That is the unsatisfactory situation that I feel will come about with the removal of random and move to focus on just killing troops.

 

Is that the utopian future that you want?

[Master Avoghai]

1k I would say yes for the most part but anything below that I would be hard pressed to.  But for me playing below 1k is brutal hard to do anyway:pinch:  .

Yeah indeed, I didn't mean below 1000pts though. I asked that because my club partners would like to play Maelstrom and half of the games played are with 1000pts armies. Even in Eternity of war scenarios, I feel that 1000pts is tough because 40k. Is made more for 1750-2000pts games. Below 1500, it really looks like stone/paper/scissor games.

And since 2 of our main features are costly (RW and DW) it makes them hard to play at this game size.

 

About the unsatisfactory part... You mentioned that both players would be unhappy with the random results. I don't think that is possible, let alone probable. In this example the options are 1, 2 or 3. You are happy with a 3 and unhappy with a 1 and your opponent is the opposite. And rolling a 2 won't make both players upset, quite the opposite. You're going to be happy you didn't roll a 1 and your opponent is going to be happy you didn't roll a 3.

Nope, I'm not happy if I win that way.... And same thing for most of my opponents

 

And again, no matter the odds if it happens, like we say in medecine : when it happens, it's 100% of the bad things are for you. The fact is it may happen. And with the unrandom solution it won't.

 

Don't forget also that 30% of the cards are based on random results. Most of them are "get one VP if killing one units, get d3/d6 if killing more". So I guess it may occur more often.

 

But I believe that you guys are focusing on the wrong point. Look at how everyone lost their cool about the idea of unbound armies. How many 10 riptide lists have you faced? My guess is about zero between the two of you.

I didn't, simply because it is not a question of probability, it's a question of players will... Nobody want to buy 10 riptides and even if it happens, nobody will want to play against

And actually the unbound system will die before having ever existed for this reason.

 

I don't want the card system dying because I find it fun. I want it to improve to give MOAR fun.

 

rewards players for wiping out units than you are for a system that rewards players for moving models. But the more you push for that system the more you end up with the 3rd Ed chaos cav DP and rhino rush, 4th Ed leaf blower, 5th Ed SW JOTWW and GK grenade belts, and 6th Ed Taudar and ScreamerStar

All are codex specific... That's the thing creating a disbalance : the fact that one codex has a unrandom powerful thing that the others don't have. (Or the weapon they have to counter this is totally random and Unpredictable).

 

Here it's a scenario feature : everybody starts with the same rule and every codex may profit from it with the same probability.

[Polythemus]

If people are having so much trouble with the cards and random victory point objectives don't use use them. Instead just use more pure dice roll and instead of using a d66 use a d36 or d4 and d6. Write down what you get. These are simple solutions. Personally I've only played one game of seventh so far but it was really fun and dynamic which I thought was pretty great and added a lot to the game.

[SvenONE]

If people are having so much trouble with the cards and random victory point objectives don't use use them. Instead just use more pure dice roll and instead of using a d66 use a d36 or d4 and d6. Write down what you get. These are simple solutions. Personally I've only played one game of seventh so far but it was really fun and dynamic which I thought was pretty great and added a lot to the game.

 

While this is easy enough to do, I think the issue is that people don't want to, or shouldn't feel they have to change the rules to make them better.  We're supposed to have faith in GW as a company and a game developer.  I think when we use the blanket "if you don't like it, don't use it" it undermines the point of a rulebook.  In the modern era of games GW is bafflingly quiet on why they change things to what they are, and when they do it is in the form of PR-approved youtube videos (a la Jervis's description of the reason we have Unbound in the game).

 

I'm certainly not saying you, or anyone else who suggests it, are wrong to write your own rules; but there should be a concrete enough standard that we can get in to a quick game with whoever is willing to play.  Let's face it, this isn't the most popular of hobbies and playing a game might be a lot harder to come by for some people than others.  Who wants to show up in a shop they've never been to and then try and convince someone who they have never met to play by their version of the rules...

[Polythemus]

We'll your probably gonna need to house rule stuff anyway and gw does say make the game fun as the number one rule. While I take your point reality says that waiting for gw to change stuff usually means being unhappy. I say make the changes that your opponent and you can agree on and then move forward. Let's not pretend that friendly pick up games are the same as tournaments which have a different vibe and generally are means to cause maximum equal suffering as evenly distributed as possible. I mean using half the rules is probably how tourneys are gonna do anyway. In an imperfect world we use imperfect data to come up with imperfect solutions, the quicker we all recognize this the happier we shall all be.

[GlauG]

Late to the party, but I have to say that my first game with the Malestrom missions yesterday evening was tremendously fun. Far moreso in practice than on paper, at least. 

[Prot]

I was going to post this elsewhere.....

 

Frankly although I started the topic I don't have much more to say than this:

 

 

You have never lost a game to bad dice? 

 

I have been down several points in the opening turns.... I've been up several points in the opening turns. Malestrom IS generalship.  Bringing the one trick pony doesn't work anymore. Did having an army that sat in a corner and rolled dice, conducting 'generalship' the same way every game, regardless of opponent's moves require any tactical thinking at all? 

 

GW removed concerns of 'balance' by making Unbound armies and allies, not by creating Malestrom.

 

I have beat opponents that were up on me early in the game, and I had unnatainable tactical cards (my last game which is documented here is a perfect example of that). This is no different than me rolling my typical fist full of 1's for a few turns every now and then. Bad luck is bad luck.

 

I really think too many people simply aren't playing Malestrom. They're still playing 6th edition.... the lists are the same, and their tactics don't change.... 

 

Let me set this straight. This is a game of luck still. No matter what variant of it you play. And I'm no great player, but I do play the odds. I play what most consider a mediocre army at best.... yet here I am whopping people who are still deploying a castle style thinking they are going to 'pew pew' me into packing my gear up by turn 3. Malestrom does not work that way. (correction: the only way it works like that is if you go unbound, abuse the crud out of every God of War type unit and wipe your opponent.)

 

The only thing I fear is when people in general start to understand actually how to play Malestrom. Then I'm screwed. Until then you guys keep trying those 6th edition lists. Keep trying to kill as many units as you can. Do your deathstars, and everyhting else that falls in that category. 

 

Keep ignoring speed, and survivability. Keep blaming those bad card pickups. Keep ignoring Super Scoring units.... and eventually simply stop playing Malestrom. 

 

As a side note - no, I don't think it's perfect, but I think it's about 400% better than dying to the same deathstar, crappy ally rules with repetitive tactics week after week. Malestrom did nothing but help make our codex work better on a few different levels.  I think it did the same for a few other similar codexes too... like Chaos for instance. 

 

Personally I have no desire to go back to what was dominating the game in 6th. It was boring as heck and nearly thoughtless pew-pew derived from units, not tactics.

[Master Avoghai]

it's funny because you seem to argue against 2 points I've never reaaly seen appear in the topic

 

- maelstrom missions would be disbalanced

- some people may want maelstrom mission to disappear...

 

On the second point, I think nobody here wants maelstrom missions to disappear. what would be the point? if people are unhappy with them then I'd recommend them to use the eternity of war missions...

 

On the first point, I don't think it's a problem of balance we were talking about. stone/paper/scissor is a balanced game since it's all based on luck. :lol:

Actually what I'm worried with is warhammer becoming a stone/paper/scissor game, where descisions are no more important... We're not here yet but I just want to warn against this "random = balance" spirit.They are many way to balance a game without using randomness. Chess are balanced and do not use randomness at all!.

Added to that, there are lots of codex hiding behind a randomness status that are unbalanced. The best example is the deamons codex. At first glance, you think it's random but it's not... And you end up with an OP codex...

 

 

Maelstrom is a nice concept. The cards ar nice and bring a lot of flavour. We MUST keep this system alive. But to keep it alive we need to keep fixing and correcting all the little bugs that may appear. For example, I propose to replace the "successful psy power card" by a "distrustful allies" in the next version. Casting a spell is not that challenging. Destroyin an allied unit is more challenging AND still goes in the "no deathstar" direction you seem to appreciate.

[SnakeChisler]

Maelstrom is no more random than anything else in 40k as I've mentioned before a lot of people really hate random and move heaven and earth to get rid of it.

 

For anyone who hates random I suggest they go play a codex that allows them to ignore the USR's

 

I'm with Prot on this one our gaming group was getting into a rut with power builds like the Farsight bomb and the Tigarius mock alliance with the Buff commander and Centurion Grav spam to the point where the games were quite frankly awful.

 

Maelstrom + 7th has been great and a number of units and builds I couldn't take before are coming back into play and the Maelstrom warlord trait won me the last match up my opponent wanted his same old same old from the Tau codex I got the one that lets you re-roll the D3 objective points

 

I just don't see how the odd downside like getting unusable cards (which can be pre-agreed to recycle) is a slight on the whole system whats not to like about objectives you place before deployment sides are chosen

[MontyBob]

Before I start:

I never played a lot of 6th ed.  It was ok.  But I didn't ever go ZOMG! this is brilliant.

The people I play with have a house rule that if you pull an objective that you can't fulfill (manifest a psychic power when you have no psykers etc) you can redraw.

 

It produces games that reward a bit more thought than the usual 'And now my gun line of Doom will obliterate that unit'.  I was playing DA v DE and IG.  Sliscis managed to sit next to his ruined raider and made my life hell trying to shift him off so I could get something onto the objective to keep it capped. 

 

Personally I think that DW/RW lists could be absolutely foul, but Mechanised Greenwing certainly has a place.  All in all I'm in favour.  The one thing I would say is that I'm actually less inclined to take greenwing land raiders - I want the metal boxes that are scoring.