Maelstrom mission sucks :(

[Brother Bahram]

Play an 2000p game against my fellow with Space Wolves today. We rolled for mission 4 (Maelstrom).
I fielded my 2000p Mech Deathwing (Based on Mech's 1850 list).

I had no chance. If it was me, my army or anything else - I don't know.
Usually I have some chance to score some points, but I managed to get 2 (he got 9)

Those pesky cards (41 to 66) are totally useless!
When I got "Secure Obective 6) my troops was on the other side of the board.

No, I'm not bitter - I'm pissed of.

 

Next time we will play the usual missions or RoE.

[RayJ]

Maelstrom of War is all about mobility and planning ahead. Deathwing are a slow army. When setting up the objectives, you want them to be as close together towards the middle of the table as possible, so your slow units can have a better chance at getting to them.

 

Also, don't forget you are able to discard one objective each turn, so get rid of the ones that are being troublesome. Maelstrom plays very different. Slow, mostly static armies will struggle greatly. Mobility will be rewarded.

[[TA]Typher]

I won a game vs Dark Elder the other day using the cards. I basically ignored the cards until I had broken his army and then scored all my points late in the game. I'm not a fan of the cards either.. it makes me feel that my General is bi-polar and can't decide what he wants. Go there, go there, move to that.. um.. shoot 1 unit.. oh uhh wash my back, date my sister...  ACK the voices! It's just too random. You can't make a game plan as you have to stay flexible, leave units to die and sometimes piecemealing your army. This punishes smaller unit armies, as they can't sacrifice units. Don't get me wrong having things change on the battle field is ok, take the scouring for example. Not knowing the value of the objectives until the game starts can make you change your strategy, but you can still have one.

 

A Deathwing army can't sacrifice units just to score points. They can still win but you need to do certain things. Try to bunch up the objectives if you can. My game with the DE had 5 of the 6 objectives in a 12-18" ball. The Deathwing will own the board until attrition takes it's toll. It you can bunch up the objectives and hammer the enemies ability to harm you they you should be ok. You can't hold all the objectives possible. Sometimes you have to wait until late game to start scoring points.

[thepowerofwar]

The best way to use the cards is to agree with your opponent be for the game that if the card Cannot be scored as of the start of the game then you can immediately discard it for a new one.  

 

Example - Draw the kill a Flier card and your Opponent didn't bring any.  

 

By doing this it has balanced it quite a bit for my gamming group.

[Prot]

Just playing devil's advocate here:

 

If Malestrom misssions suck, and you both had marine armies, why was he so successful? What did he do that you didn't or could not?

 

I will be honest with you, there are two ways to play Malestrom and this comes from my heartfelt advice for you to consider: 1) you overwhelm, deny where you can, and destroy. (I think this playstyle suits IG, Necrons, and Tau as examples). Or 2) you use speed, and miss matches to quickly, and decisively dominate the Objectives.  You could argue there is a third option I suppose, and that would be to play mid field and try some speed/harassment tactics, but I'm not fond of the idea right now.

 

The reason I say the above is because I actually think Dark Angels are fairly decent (not awesome, but decent) at playstyle #2. This means using some HQ choices to unlock super scoring units that most opponents simply don't have.... This is actually one of the few benefits of being a Dark Angel. 

 

I'm not gonna sugar coat it but Malestrom requires extreme tactical play. If your pref is to just bash it out head to head and see who has more stuff left at the end, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that either. Maybe Malestrom isn't your cup of tea, but after your anger subsides, I'd just ask you to re-consider your playstyle in Malestrom vs. 'Regular missions'. Because you gotta be fair to yourself... there IS a learning curve there so be patient.

 

On a side note, I've tried the dual landraider type lists and find them extremely unforgiving and a Necron game away from an instant loss... (vehicles may last longer, but it's still a game of glancing armour to bits) Be fair to yourself and give yourself the tools to have a shot. 

 

By all means if you love that kind of list keep at it, but consider ammending it for Malestrom.... I know that a 30-ish model list at 2K is going to have some challenges out of the gate on Malestrom.

 

And just so you know many of my Malestrom opponent's just went with 6th edition lists thinking they'd still blow me out of the water. And every single one of them has had to change their (formerly successful) lists, considerably so.

[march10k]

The best way to use the cards is to agree with your opponent be for the game that if the card Cannot be scored as of the start of the game then you can immediately discard it for a new one.  

 

Example - Draw the kill a Flier card and your Opponent didn't bring any.  

 

By doing this it has balanced it quite a bit for my gamming group.

 

This is key.  In general, the maelstrom mission set seems like it's there to keep you from playing deathstar versus deathstar.  On the one hand, it favors super-scorer spam by allowing such players to blanket the six numbered objectives, but at the same time, it spreads them out, so whatever numbered objective card you happen to draw, you have no problem blowing ~150 points off of that objective and taking it yourself...if you have enough mobility.  It also contains a few cards that really hose MSU players, like the one that gives you D3 points for three kills and D6+6 points for six kills.  Then there are the "kill a character" (like an IG sergeant), kill a psycher, kill the enemy warlord, etc, cards.  Even Deathwing should be able to get by on the strength of holding 2 objectives uncontested combined with pure killiness.  It's certainly no harder than it was playing with five objectives in the past!  The only thing easier (less balanced) than maelstrom is purge the alien.  Maelstrom at least rewards both objective-holding and killing...but, yeah, drawing the "kill a psycher card" when your opponent doesn't have one, or the "manifest a psychic power" card when you don't have a psycher...that kind of stuff should be discarded, and a new card drawn, that's how we play.   On the other hand, if my IG draw "kill some stuff in melee," that's not impossible, just incredibly hard, so I'm stuck with that card (I drew that AND "slay a psycher" against fateweaver the other day...grr!)

[[TA]Typher]

I kinda agree March. However I think that if the card said "hold objective X for a turn" then it would make more sense. As it stands now you can't respond to the enemies actions. Giving up several VPs just due to the fact that he drew the right cards and NOTHING to due to generalship is hard to swallow. Having a turn to respond would be a whole lot funnier I believe and more balanced. As would instantly discarding irrelevant/unattainable cards.

 

I just get the feeling that this new mode was made so GW doesn't have to balance armies as much. Sure this can be a psuedo-equalizer for OP lists/armies, as enough random events can defeat anything. But, the more random events you add the less generalship comes into play, which IS a problem. The first game I played I had 5 points on turn one and he wasn't able to score any until turn 2. I won the game with very little effort all due to bad cards for him and good ones for me.

 

I think there is hope for them, but they need some fine tuning.

[march10k]

~shrug~  It does kinda stink that you can't react to the cards that an opponent draws, since he scores them at the end of his own turn.  The solution (not really available to DW) is to blanket all of the objectives with super-scorers.  As I said, though, that strings you out, and gives the opponent every opportunity to focus his efforts against just the objective card that he's drawn, and if you're preemptively holding an objective with 150 points worth of super-scorers, surely his 1850 points can take if from you, if he has the mobility to get there in the first place.  At the same time, barely more than half of the objective cards are related to the numbered objectives, and only two that I can think of (hold more objectives than your opponent, and hold ALL of the objectives) give more than a single point.  The other half give you maneuver tasks or killing tasks, and many of them award D3 or more points.  I really think maelstrom combines objectives-based play and kill-based play very nicely.  In my last game, I owned four or five objectives the entire game, and I lost.  My opponent was able to score a lot of D3 killing cards, exactly enough to force a draw on the cards, and he won on the strength of linebreaker and slay the warlord (to my first blood, if I'd had linebreaker, it would have been a 15-15 tie!).  I know that it's an uphill struggle playing DW when there are six numbered objectives on the table, but I play both extremes, IG and DW, and I'm telling you that maelstrom is balanced no matter which mission you get.  Under the old mission set, DW auto-wins purge, has a better chance than most people of winning the relic and the two-objective mission, and just sucks at the missions with a random number of scattered objectives.  Maelstrom is predictable.  Around 20 of 36 cards are related to the six objectives, and that is offset by most of the other 16 being worth more than 1 point.  I think it puts elite armies and swarm armies on an equal footing because it combines purge the alien with a 6-objective game.

 

One thing that it does do is force you to react.  You can't survey the board before turn one and say "I'm gonna have my assault squad jetpack over to objective four on turn five, that should secure me the win."  Instead, you're thinking "my opponent has a hard lock on objectives 3 and 6, and he can't take objective 2 from me, although he could maybe get at objective 5, since I'm only holding it with a dreadnought and a landspeeder.  If I place forces here, they can react to objectives 1 and 6 if I draw that card, and I have to remember to get linebreaker on turn five, keep LOS to his librarian warlord in case I have to shoot him, and be prepared to get three units into his deployment zone if that card comes up."  There should be no surprises, you just have to be prepared to react to the objectives that you think you can cap, as well as about eight special cards, like the "kill the warlord" card, the "1 point for linebreaker, D3 points if you bet three units into his deployment zone" card, etc.  It's not luck, it's being prepared for a fixed number of possible cards beyond the six different objectives.