Hello everyone, Frankie here to talk about the BAO missions.
So the way our missions work are we have a primary mission worth 4 points. The primary missions are Emperors Will, the Relic, the Scouring, Crusade, Big guns, and Purge the Alien. Remember Big Guns and Scouring points go towards the primary mission.
We then have a secondary mission worth 3 points. The secondary is a modified Maelstrom Mission which you will roll for at the beginning of each game turn. Each player rolls for their two missions separately and will possibly be playing different missions than their opponent each turn. Its also important to remember that Lord of War points accumulated by destroying super heavies goes towards the secondary.
Lastly we have tertiary missions which are the normal bonus points: First blood, Slay the warlord, and Line breaker; straight forward.
Now let’s go over how to win games playing our missions since that’s what the greatest 40k player in the world tends to do (and that is me, just in case anyone was wondering!). List building is extremely important for these missions. You will need some fast units to grab objectives in your opponent’s deployment and also to grab line breaker points. You will need some fire power in order to kill light armored units for kill points and because many of them will be objective secured Rhinos and Droppods that will be on the field scoring points. Lots of units will be more beneficial in these missions since objectives will be really important but MSU will also hurt you on the kill point missions. A close combat unit or two will be important so that you can beat people off of those objectives they are trying to score for the missions. Lastly a deep striking unit or two will be nice to drop onto objectives and get to places where the rest of your army will not be able to go. Basically a balanced list will excel at our missions more than a specialized army, most of the time.
Now that you have the list ready to win these missions, let’s talk about actually playing the mission. First, always remember what the primary mission is. It will get a little confusing since you are playing two different secondary’s every turn. First blood is just as important as it was last edition but if you cannot get it make sure you are going to win the secondary. The secondaries will be a little different than what you are used to and always remember sometimes it’s better to deny your opponent points than it is to score your own. You don’t want them to get too large of a lead. Don’t forget everything is scoring so that you can grab those objectives without moving your troops back from the fight. The tertiary’s are incredibly important as they will quickly add up and take a win to a loss. Each one is essentially 10% of your total points, so make sure to go for them.
Don’t forget all of the minor changes that have been done due to the edition change and remember to always play to the missions. If you do that you might even be able to win this thing ;P.
I’ve found them to be great! Only annoying part is that you basically need to print out the mission sheets so as long as you guys are either prepared OR your shop doesn’t mind printing things out it is great. Bit of book keeping but it makes for a much more dynamic game.
Yeah the downside is keeping track of everything but at least it keeps things clear so there are no questions at the end of the game.
…do I really want to “beat people off” objectives????? Sounds sketchy.
Good quick article. This is one thing that is a huge shift in winning games now. You HAVE to have the ability to score points from turn one. It makes static gun lines and all reserve armies a much bigger gamble. I like the Modified Maelstrom as it makes the games more dynamic. Adding the Tertiary points to the win/loss of the secondary is a good idea as it makes it possible to win the Secondary and lose the Primary, but still win the game.
Who doesnt want to beat people off? of objectives of course lol.
I love beating dudes off! Objectives, of course.
The tertiary points are not added to the secondary, but to the total.
Each mission has 10 pts total
4 from Primary (there can be only one winner)
3 from Secondary (there can be only one winner)
3 from Tertiary (of which both players can score 2 but only 1 player can score 3)
That came out wrong ;). I meant I liked how you can win the secondary and the points from tertiary can have you still win even if you lost the primary
Out of my last 8 games. I have noticed that going second is a huge advantage if you can’t get a great alpha strike off.
Yeah if you have an army that cant pick up first blood very easy then it is more beneficial to go second.
That is true of book missions in general.
I’ve found these missions to be a ton of fun and really challenging.
Just about every turn in my last game I was forced to a decision, do I go get that secondary objective or do I need to make a move towards the primary mission.
It really takes away the auto pilot I was playing games on and adds a level of complexity that I haven’t encountered in 40K before.
Must say I agree with Julio though, going second is a huge advantage for the secondary objectives. Having said that though, I’m pretty sure even if you win the roll to go first you can then decide to go second after all models are deployed now with 7th ed.
They ain’t doin that rule yo. Deploy first, go first. Deploy second,
go second.
Unless you seize haha
So- wait. Primary is 4 points, secondary(maelstrom) is 3, and the tertiaries are 1 each?
that does make them hugely important.
tl;dr: Current implementation pushing mobility meta, going second is best, impossible to make up lost ground, a bit more variety would be nice.
First: I really like them. It’s great to be playing the entire game rather than positioning myself for Turn 5. I would like to see at least one mission where the Tactical Objectives are the Primary (dump the Relic, that PoS mission, or else make it the Secondary).
Regarding the Tactical Objectives: So far (~10 games), the first player to ‘win’ a turn (i.e. to earn more points toward the secondary during a single turn) wins the Secondary. Once you fall behind, it is impossible (in practice, not in theory) to overtake your opponent. This has been the case in Eldar vs. Tau, Space Marines, and Imperial Guard (the armies I’ve played against using BAO missions).
As for going second, it is definitely more advantageous (waaaaaay more), particularly with a high-mobility army/list. In particular, denying your opponent the opportunity to destroy a unit by putting a lot of units in reserves and contesting objectives give you very good chances to ‘win’ the secondary.
Also: Would, ‘earn a kill point’ change the way that Tactical Objective plays? I ask because in one game I lost the Spirit Seer from a unit of Wraith Guard. But when an IC joins a unit it is considered to be a part of that unit, which I think would mean ‘destroy a unit’ is unfulfilled whereas ‘earn a kill point’ would be fulfilled….
As for the list-building necessary to maximize your chances to win the Secondary, I am concerned that every list has to go to a ‘maximum mobility’ theme. If the goal of BAO secondaries is to invalidate gun lines (castles/slow lists), then it’s well on its way to doing so. If the goal is to promote list variety, then the current implementation of the secondaries does not promote that. Activating the secondary starting Game Turn 2 would balance this out–not entirely, but perhaps enough to allow slow/static lists a chance to be competitive (with regard to the secondary).
Finally: A couple of the missions need more variety in the secondaries. One of them has 3, ‘destroy a unit’ objectives. Also, perhaps ‘Control or Deny objective X’ could be added as an objective.
Yeah, I definitely think that going second is just too huge with the current implementation of the BAO rules. Going second not only means you can deny people the secondary objective, but also the primary! I think if you scored at the end of your turn, like it’s done in standard Maelstrom, the player who goes first can try to get some points without being totally boned. When you play real Malestrom, after the first turn, you typically know what objectives your opponent will be going for, so can try to out-think them in advance, instead of the second player just being able to react with no problem, and the first player not being able to score anything without the second player’s permission.
So far going second has not been that big of a deal in our games. If you can Alpha trike, first it still better. But going second has always been good in objective missions.
I’ve been playing the missions and I don’t agree with these conclusions.
Your missions encourage death stars plain and simple. To win your tournament, I need to be able to win KP and Relic missions, not just objectives. If I run MSU transport or drop pod spam, I will probably lose both of those missions to a death star.
I will use Seer Council Eldar as my primary example since it’s fast and damn near impossible to dent.
If I have a big unkillable blob, I am very likely to be able to take and hold the relic and there isn’t much you can do about it if you’re my opponent. Likewise, I can easily win a KP mission when I have 3+ cover Wave Serpents and an invisibile death star.
On objectives, I am not at any kind of disadvantage because I have at least for Serpents with Dire Avengers inside, and the DA’s are totally expendable vis-a-vis the Serpents, so I have 8 OS units.
The secondary mission barely matters. Primary is everything. If you win Primary, you’re probably going to get linebreaker. So five points are guaranteed. For the other guy to tie, he needs to win secondary and need either first blood or Slay the Warlord.
A death star player almost always avoids STW by putting him the Warlord in a death star. The death star army is also exceedingly durable, and quite likely to get first blood against an MSU army.
So if I’m building an army for your tournament, I am building it to get first blood and win primary on all six missions, so that I can get linebreaker and am guaranteed a six point victory in every mission. That I need an ultra-durable death star to most-reliably accomplish this in all six of your missions inarguable.
I suggest reversing primary and secondary in terms of weighting, dropping the relic as it is simply an awful mission.
Rather than say I don’t agree with your conclusions, I would change my statement to say that I partially agree, and conclude that what you’re doing encourages a badass CC unit to hold the center, and speedy stuff for the periphery. Ergo, deathstars.
I would have to disagree with a seer council dominating in this edition especially with our missions. The psychic phase is actually not as easy to get off powers as everyone thinks. Ive seen two seer council list fail all psychic powers on a turn now and get demolished off the table. As for the rest of the seer councils army it is usually light on tough to kill troops and can be dealt with quite easily while ignoring the 800-900 point council in mid field. Your troops will deny the seer council objectives while the rest of your army kills there troops.
I agree that the seer council still works and is a top tier army but I do not think they will dominate these missions as one bad turn on dice and the whole army falls apart. A key power or two not going off and the unit dies.
But I do agree that first blood and the primary are your main goals its like John Madden would say, to win the game you just need to score more points than your opponent.
I don’t see how Invis or Fortune could be unreliable with like 14+D6 warp charge dice. You throw 6-8 dice at the crucial power and keep one to burn for Perils. I was testing one yesterday and never failed to get invis, though Prescience failed all the time when I ran out of dice.
There is a risk you don’t get the right powers, I’ll give you that.
Lately, we have been seeing people throwing 6-7 ice at a power and not getting it at least a few turns in a game. That happens once with a Deathstar and they’re toast.
Well sometime shit just don’t go your way…
Lol, true =) I think you are right that a Deathstar can be brutal this edition, but game after game we’re seeing them not win nearly as much as they did.
That’s funny because in our test games we’ve come to the exact opposite conclusion. Seercouncil have only won like, 1 or 2 games out of a good 6-8 games we’ve played so far. They aren’t winning and their powers are way less reliable.
What we have found to be winning the missions most consistently is MSU ObSec spam armies like Drop Pod Marines and Rhino Rush.
Really? You’re telling me that MSU transports beat Seer Council in a relic or KP match? How?
I beat the crap out of GTA’s Seer-council with my Scout Army in the relic a few weeks ago. I simply clogged him up with units, put pressure on his backfield, and ran away with the Relic, passing it to Scout units and then bubble wrapping them with other Scout units (all combat squadded) so that the unit holding the relic couldn’t get assaulted. I did that all game, falling back, and won by a large margin, having taken the secondary by a mile and also winning primary.
I know this was unintentional, but that’s a damn good narrative you just forged. Seriously cinematic.
Here at Frontline Gaming we go out of our way to forge the hardest narratives the world has ever seen.
Slaede I disagree. Deathstars don’t help in capturing objectives unless its an OS troop unit. MSU can easily ignore them and focus on killing their OS units. First blood is huge in deciding which mission you should try and achieve. A deathstar army is not going to win the BAO. A OS MSU will. And 8 OS units is not enough.
We have found the same thing, Julio. MSU ObSec are consistently winning these missions.
So far I’ve actually thought the Malestrom missions in the BAO format weren’t nearly as interesting as those in the BRB, sorry Reece! Mostly though in Mission 4, having 1/2 of the objectives to kill an enemy unit? Boooooooooring! The fun of the Maelstrom missions is to encourage people to do something besides simply wiping out the enemy, which is what they’re generally trying to do anyhow! I think that since you’re running an Eternal War mission primary, there is already a ton of incentive to kill enemy units, so why further encourage the same play style? If you’re going to have a very limited D6 chart, I think that you need more interesting objectives, Scenario 2 is the only one that doesn’t have at least 1/3 of the objectives wasted on just killing enemy units.
That said, I think that this format is a step in the right direction, though I think it would be much more interesting to use full Maelstrom secondaries (allowing discarding impossible cards), than a very limited and pretty repetitive set. Still looking forward to the BAO and also looking forward to the changes you make after it! 🙂
Geez, everybody’s a critic!
Everybody is! I didn’t, nor would I ever expect anyone to get everything perfectly right the first time around. I’m positive the BAO will be fun, but I’m looking forward to seeing what you learn from it and applying that to improving the format. 🙂
Appreciate the vote of confidence, buddy! It will be a blast.
The Format is perfect the way it is Adam leave us alone you mean man. lol
It appears to me that some people are trying to argue with the best 40K player in the world, the godlike Frankie, and that is just ignorant. I mean he’s obviously the best player in the world, we should probably listen to him.
I wasn’t gonna run my beastar unit for BAO, but then I didn’t wanna paint more venoms and warriors, so alas, I’ll bring da star. I’m a lot more interested in getting Misfortunate and Doom with my Jetseer and throwing him in with my DE Jetbikes…talk about an alpha strike! =]
Also, I think a fairly limited chart for the maelstrom missions is actually a good idea. Too much variety and it could get imbalanced and incredibly frustrating. So, I think Reece and the best 40k player in the world have nailed it, at least for now!
Thanks! And yeah, who can argue with Frankie? Pshh, the Greatest 40K Player int he World beats you in a game and then you thank him! haha
To have the honor of playing against the greatest 40k player in the world would be enough, and then if he let you kill a single wych you would be obligated to thank him with beer. A lot of beer.
I Agree with all these points carry on
Just to make one thing clear Frankie. If you are the greatest 40k player in the world, then I must be the most interesting 40k player in the world.” I don’t always play 40k, but when I do I play nurgle.”
Haha, too true! Unless you choose to play Rape Whistle Eldar! lol
Lmfao too true.
Haha, that shit was funny, though!
Reece that comment was fucking hilarious. I owe you a beer.
That rape whistle was so funny.
Sadly Frankie and Reece I will not be blowing the rape whistle this year at the BAO. Too many commitments on that weekend make my chance of attending less than 2%. I will be sure to send Forest and Doug with the rape whistle so they can carry on the tradition for me!!!
One thing that kind of bugs me is how these missions are designed to encourage MSU and mobility. Seeing more things moving around the table is always good and playing mech style is what I love to do, but I think a better goal to aim for is list variety which is why I like how Mike Brandt and the Nova Open boys are taking their approach towards how they would do a tournament game. If you want to play gunline style, there’s a mission for you. If you want to run a deathstar, there’s a mission for that too. The trick is to try to get both styles to be as close to power levels as much as possible and encourage many fun lists over one specific build. What we’ve been doing in the local area is taking BAO’s Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary format, and changing the Eternal War missions to Asymetrical missions. That way you have the fun randomness of the tactical objectives as well as the flexibility for army themes of asymetrical missions. What are your thoughts?