We delayed updating the missions a bit as we were getting a lot of good feedback and wanted to allow a little more time. Here’s where we stand at present with updates and any more critical feedback is welcome.
Here are the missions for your reference.
So, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is great. Thanks for that! The critical critiques have been pointed, and regarding a few issues to address. Here is the previous discussion on updates we were looking at for those of you interested in the progression of ideas.
Basically the key points were overlapping secondaries on a single unit to potentially give up a lot of points, thereby making those units less appealing. Totally fair point and we are taking action to prevent that, especially with units that are both Titanic and a Character as they can bleed off a boat load of points.
Also, we had tested some new secondary missions and altered some of the current missions:
- Gang Busters: the idea is to give a tool for taking on units of tough, multi-wound models like Kastellan Robots or Plague Toads/Drones, Bullgryn, etc. which at present don’t give up anything more than a kill. Currently we’ve been playing it as you choose the mission, pick an enemy unit of multi-wound models to target. Each mode in that unit with 4 or more wounds give up a point per model killed, and for units with 2-3 wounds, 1 point for every 2 models in the unit destroyed. This has been a nice balance for us, so far. The reason why is that the max points can only be achieved when their opponent takes a very large unit. If you have say, 5 Terminators, it isn’t worth choosing. But if your opponent takes 8+ as with the Terminator Bomb, then it is a viable choice. Thoughts?
- Old School: First Strike, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker. A bonus point if you get all 3 for 4 points total. We found this is a great mission to pick for not only familiarity, but also if your opponent doesn’t have an army that presents a lot of other opportunities for scoring points.
- Behind Enemy Lines: We are altering this one to give a point for each turn you have 2 or more units within 12″ of your opponent’s deployment edge to a maximum of 4. This will make it much easier to score and probably very appealing. The only concern here is that it may be too easy to overlap with Recon, however, that may not be a bad thing as it presents more opportunities for socring points regardless of how your opponent builds there army.
- Death by 1,000 Cuts: We are altering this mission to award a point for every 3 units you destroy in a Battle Round (both player turns). So, if you destroyed 6 units in a Battle Round, you’d get 2 points. If you got 5 kills, it would be 1. The counter resets every Battle Round. This allows you to counter MSU builds but not be limited in points if you have a very successful first turn or two leaving less opportunities to score again later in the game.
- King Slayer/Titan Slayer: Will not overlap with one another. We’re still debating whether or not to limit this with overlapping with other secondary missions or not. Limiting it to no other secondary points causes opportunities to game the system in reverse and is confusing, too. We’re not certain it is the right call to make. And, we still use units that can trigger multiple secondaries in testing, it has not been an adequate discouragement to alter our list building. However, we’re open to hearing opinions on this one as some folks feel it may be.
We feel these changes help a lot to make the missions well rounded, more balanced and more fun.
Also, thanks to community member Winterman who developed a very cool new scoring sheet which we feel are an improvement and help make it easier to score the missions.
Alternate Scoring Sheet.
For Primary Missions, we are looking to modify Mission 5 to require that you hold your opponent’s and the middle objective to make the bonus point more difficult to earn as currently it is the easiest bonus point to achieve, particularly for armies with very good board control capabilities.
Anything else you’d like to bring to light on the missions? Speak now or hold your peace until after LVO!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
>Gang Busters
Interesting idea. Does this count across all such units, or is it a “pick a single unit” one? It feels a little bit on the harsh side for stuff like Piranhas, Dreadnoughts, and other “light” vehicles, since squads of those sorts of things are not particularly cheap but also not that hard to kill.
>Old School
Feels a little bit easy for 4pts compared to most others- maybe change it to First Blood to make it a bit harder to max out?
>Behind Enemy Lines
I like it. Feels a lot more like where missions should be at, I think, and interacts well with reserve armies.
>1K Cuts
Seems fine. Avoids the “I can’t kill your army now, I need to get more points!” problem.
>Kingslayer/Titanslayer
Maybe just make it so that you can’t take both of them at once? That makes it so that no unit can ever give up more than 5pts total (if it was a charcter/titanic unit and you took headhunter/BGH for one of your other missions.)
>The Reaper
Can we make this 11+ for 1pt and 21+ for 2pts? It feels like punishing people for max-sized squads is the wrong way to go about things.
I’d like to see more position-based (rather than kill-based) objectives available, but they end up being hard to design overall. Maybe a King of the Hill that gives you 1pt for having the most models within 6″ of the center of the board?
I agree gang busters is too harsh. Killing like a lone Piranha or a venom gives up a point just like killing a vehicle with 10+ wounds? Eh; this needs work.
You pick one unit to trigger the rule, it is not board wide.
This makes more sense then.
Indeed. Yeah, I wrote it poorly at first and it was confusing. Sorry about that.
First Blood doesn’t work as you don’t know if you are going first or second when you pick it, therefore making it too risky to choose.
Yeah, we are prohibiting people from overlapping Kingslayer and Titan Slayer missions for sure. However, you have to be able to choose both if playing an army of nothing but big guys such as Magnus with Knights, etc.
The reaper is not punishing folks for taking full sized units. That is not the point, and people don’t typically take full sized units, anyway except when trying to leverage a stratagem/psychic power/buff, etc. And in that case, you typically don’t have a lot of 10 man units, anyway.
The board control secondaries are necessary to give options when the opponent’s list denies many scoring options, but the primary missions all favor board control so we didn’t want to overload that too much.
Yeah, I think Reaper has issues still. It’s already difficult to justify taking non-minimum squad sizes on units due to morale becoming a thing as they scale up. Further punishing folks by making them give up points for larger units definitely doesn’t feel right. Going back to what I was saying about Guardians yesterday, they’re dumpster fodder in these missions, as storm guardians can run 8-9 man squads, giving up nothing. That’s why I’m saying the missions screw up points values for way too many things.
Gang Busters helps fill the gap. Warlock conclaves will never be seen again though. I think there will be other side effects.
The Kingslayer/Titanslayer conundrum remains a serious problem. Taking them together is way too good in many cases, resulting in points surging for killing a unit like a hive tyrant, resulting in that unit becoming garbage. But on the flip side if someone has an army that’s just basically just knights or baneblades, those things need to be able to be taken together. I wish I had a solution.
So there are secondary “kill a unit of this type” tough units, very tough units, and numerous model units. The thing being left out is units of 1-9 models that are 1W. Some of these might be able to exploit the system by still being fairly hard to kill and not give up points.
Why would Warlock Conclaves not be taken? You’d have to have a unit of 8 to provide max points.
And if you have a few units of 10+ models it isn’t a big deal. If I give my opponent even 3 10 man units, they’re unlikely to take Reaper. What we’ve found is that folks move past the idea of gaming the missions as they float back to taking units that perform well. Our local Tyranid guys went to 19 man units to try and game things a bit then went back to 30 strong as they’re just better in almost every case (Genestealers withstanding).
My Dark Reapers already feel too good for their points…. and it looks like in this system they will not give up any secondaries. But my Guardians will?
You might want to look at this, Reece. 🙂
Yes, a big unit can give up points where a smaller unit may not, that is explicitly the point =)
And Dark Reapers are amazing, no doubt, but if you have a bunch of them it may make sense to take Death by a 1,000 cuts, or consider that they will give up KP, etc.
There are tools to deal with any build.
Not really though, Dark Reapers + in cover = 2+ save. Folks are having a ton of success (lazy easy-mode 40k success, aka Scatpacks 2.0) running units of up to 8. Larger units can be protected by a warlock or Farseer as well. They’re durable for their points…. I really don’t see them as being vulnerable to racking up 1000 Cuts points.
Perhaps not. And, if time and experience bears out your concern, we can adapt.
But, I mean, yeah, Dark Reapers will be everywhere. They’re a bit too efficient.
Dark Reapers has dominated me in these missions in every game I’ve played against them so far. I just can’t find points to score against the eldar list, and Dark Reapers are consistently killing big things or even liquidating large squads of small stuff.
I’m sure eventually I’ll find a solution to Dark Reapers, but right now they feel like kings of the ITC champ missions.
They’re just crazy good in general.
What about these missions specifically makes them so good, do you think over any other mission? I don’t see anything in ours that makes them significantly better than they are in other missions?
It may not be something fixable about the missions. Dark Reapers are exceptionally good at killing things that give up points in the missions, while not giving up points themselves. They also do well with LOS blocking terrain because they are more mobile than most long range shooting.
Fair enough. But that would apply to any mobile, hard hitting unit, you know? I mean, if Eldar featuring reapers start to dominate we can do something about it but that is more of a Dark Reaper issue I think than a mission issue.
The point where it becomes a mission issue is if the missions focus too much on Killing specific things, and Eldar are able to avoid taking those things in their armies.
As I said, I’ve struggled to find points to score against the Eldar lists I’ve been playing. None of the Secondaries can possibly yield me more than 2 points beside Recon and Linebreaker, and realistically to score more than 2 on linebreaker I’ve practically got to table them.
Nids have a rougher time avoiding scoring units. Most infantry giver up reaper points, most MC’s give up Big Game Hunter points. Middle bugs have huge mobility problems if facing Eldar, and get demolished by Dark Reapers.
So in a Matchup of Nids vs Eldar it feels like Eldar are starting with a 4 point advantage.
Death by 1,000 cuts is quite good against most Eldar lists I have found, but YMMV.
However, yes, my Eldar give up like none of the secondaries to max. Head Hunter often but not always as I have been playing a lot with the Warlock Conclave and most of my HQs are hard to kill. That’s not just an Eldar thing though, my Space Marine army does the same thing. It’s really any MSU infantry army issue. However, is that a problem? Time will tell.
These changes don’t address the feedback presented in the previous article.
Characters like hive tyrants, which can be killed relatively easily, give up way too many points with kingslayer.
They should not be lumped together with or give up the same number of points as a unit like Mortarion, Magnus, or Bobby G, which are going to take the entire game to kill. These units are in a completely different class.
They don’t address all of YOUR feedback, maybe, haha, but there is no assurance that we take all the feedback we get, although it is all considered and appreciated.
And while I see what you’re saying, we aren’t going to have a list of characters that trigger the mission. I still use my Flyrant despite the potential to give up points on Kingslayer.
@Reece – Chapter Approved shaved some points off my Dark Eldar Sslyths, making them playable now, woohoo!
Unfortunately though they’re rendered basically unplayable under these missions. Aside from giving up primary, killing just one Sslyth is going to give opponents an easy ticket to Gang Buster as well as putting them on their way to Death by 1,000 Cuts.
Also Windriders, DE Jetbikes, and Harlequin Jetbikes, all of which are just plain bad, overcosted, and never seen in competitive 40k lists will be never be seen on a table again. They’re all easy to kill, and if they come with the liability of not only being a huge points sink but serving up victory points to an opponent, they’re officially gone.
I most definitely appreciate what you’re trying to do here. But “if you kill something with X wounds” is always going to be a poorly designed objective once you factor in the vast differences in quality and durability between units with the same-ish number of wounds.
The more I dig into these missions and objectives, the better appreciation I get for what your goal is and that’s terrific. But the more I dig, the more I see how unit diversity is going to evaporate, which is the opposite of your stated objective.
I know the clock is ticking before the LVO and missions need to get finalized, but I think you’re on the wrong track here. You guys are trying to cope with too many negative unintended consequences – and then the actions to take to counter those consequences produce their own set of unintended consequences.
My advice would be to consider backing up and simplifying some stuff. My assessment is that the current state of these missions will wallop unit diversity, something everyone is fearing.
Sorry, Gang Busters isn’t board wide, I thought I had made that clear but obviously I didn’t. You pick a single unit of multi-wound models for the objective.
And again, the fear of making units “unplayable” has not held up to experience in our many dozens of test games with a wide variety of players. You can opt for board control style secondaries if your opponent doesn’t present a lot of options to you and many of the kill stuff missions cover a wide variety of army types.
Plus, personally, I have found that I don’t try to optimize unit size or whatever for the missions in most cases. I find it doesn’t net enough of a benefit to do so.
Haha, I overlooked that big time, my bad! It’s perfectly clear. That makes it much more palatable. I was thinking it was basically just gunning down any multi-wound models you wanted lol…
That was my fault, I added in the single unit selection. I forgot to add it in first time, sorry. It was confusing.
But yeah, it is just 1 unit.
Addendum them I’m done 🙂
You will be up to your eyeballs in Dark Reaper spam lists at the LVO if you go with these missions – they’re already becoming the new scatpacks and if the new missions cater to that even more since Reapers don’t really give up points (while killing everything that gives up points), these missions encourage spamming the same few units. Buh-bye diversity.
We will end up with Dark Reaper spam in any format.
And they do give up points, I don’t understand why you keep saying they don’t? They are a KP, you can go after them with Death by a Thousand cuts, etc. I mean, if someone takes a bunch of 9 man units, then morale is an issue, etc.
And again, each person is different, but trying to totally change your list to point deny your opponent is often a net negative in performance. You end up shooting yourself in the foot. The hardcore tournament guys are going to take the most efficient units regardless.
They give up points for primary and possibly 1,000 cuts, but they’re pretty resistant to that. Everyone sticks their Reapers in cover somewhere and laughs with 2+ armor save, possibly with conceal or fortune shenanigans.
While 200 points of Reapers gives up barely any secondary kill points (basically none), 200 points of Windriders/Reaver jetbikes will give up potential Gangbuster points.
The fundamental underlying issue here is that Reapers are criminally undercosted while jetbikes are overcosted and that’s not something the ITC missions are responsible for addressing. It just seems like the missions make the gap wider.
Well, Gangbusters on a unit of Jetbikes would only be worthwhile on a unit of 8+. I never see that many. And if you did have a unit of say, 9 Jetbikes, you are probably going to be layering every buff on it that you can and relying on it to be your hammer unit, or one of them.
And yeah, Reapers are probably a bit too cheap for what you get. But missions aren’t going to stop that, unfortunately. We just have to deal with it until the next points update.
I totally get the point on the missions influencing unit choices but honestly, we’ve found that that goes away after a little bit. It is more beneficial to just build the best list you can, and not worry too much about how it sheds points as your opponent will be able to max the secondary regardless.
“Only worthwhile” I think is taking it a bit far. “Just” six Jetbikes will still get you three points, which is what I typically aim for with secondaries- four is nice, but not always realistic to expect.
It will definitely need some testing, but overall it feels okay.
Tyranids have a strategem that takes away the cover bonus real easy. Also thier are a few armies that count that as well. Dark reapers are good very good. But not unbeatable by any means.
Yeah, that is my experience, too. They’re damn good, probably a bit too cheap, but not unbeatable by any means.
Hey Reece, been playing these a lot, so far I really like em. We used them up here in Canada at a 32 player tournament, they worked out really well. The only negative feedback from the player group was the amount of bookkeeping, but you already have addressed that.
I am gonna chime in about gangbusters, I think it may be a bit too punitive for some armies that rely on the big models in units (Tyranids and admech come to mind). I’d think about capping it to some value (maybe 5?) but beyond that they seem great!
Thanks for the feedback and yeah, I wasn’t clear enough in my description of the Gangbusters mission. You pick a single unit for it, not board wide.
I like the proposed changes.
I really like the addition of the old three for one (warlord, linebreaker, first strike).
For kingslayer, I would add that if the character is the warlord, if killed, add one point. Most characters are 4-5 wounds so only give 2 points, adding a bonus point for warlord would bring it to at least 3. Any way you can make it to maximize as close as you can to four points is good IMO.
Thanks for the feedback, buddy!
I really like almost all these changes. I totally agree with the above poster that GW really shit the bed with reducing rather than increasing the price for dark reapers and that they are one of the most frustrating things in the game, but I don’t know that this is an issue ITC can fix with missions. Might just be what it is.
My only criticism of these changes is gangbusters. I agree it is a needed change, but I think 1 point per 4 wound model is too much. I agree plague drones shouldn’t be 0 secondaries for a 3 man unit, but it also shouldn’t be 3 points just for killing 102 points worth of drones! It also doesn’t line up…it is a lot easier to kill 1 plague drone than two Blightlord Terminators.
Maybe 1 secondary for the first 4+ -wound model killed, with an additional secondary for every other such model killed? Not stacking with any other secondaries? So killing one MSU squad of plague drones is 2 points, killing 6 plague drones is max 4/4 points. Seems much better to me…otherwise certain multi-wound models that are balanced fairly in terms of points will be suicidal to bring to an ITC event.
Good feedback, Nick. We;re going to bump it up to 5 wound models, as that elevates it above swarms and such.
With the limitation on unit size though, it makes it unappealing as you only choose 1 unit for the secondary, so if they have small units you likely wouldn’t want to use it.
I still feel Gang Buster should incorporate a Power Level or Points requirement instead of wounds. A 4-man Plague Drone squad shouldn’t give up as many points as a 6-man Kastellan squad.
Like the other missions though. Good work!
What PL do you think would be a good starting point?
That is the hard part to determine, haha. I’d say “pick a unit with a starting Power Level of 15 or more, gain one VP for every 4 wounds you deal to it.” Kastellans with a squad size of 3 models or more would be eligible, as would max sized squads of plague drones, flesh hounds (which maybe we will see come back with the new codex??), etc. 15 PL is roughly 300pts which seems a good place to draw the line. Up to you though!
I’ll also add that I’ve played in 2 tourneys so far with the new missions and everyone really likes them, except one issue that keeps coming up is how whoever gets first turn seems to win way more than the player going second. This may not be a problem with the missions though, and more of a problem with the meta of 8th in general. I wish there was some way to alleviate this. Getting first turn is especially important in mission 5 where there are only 3 objectives, as whoever moves onto the center objective first will easily score 2 more VPs per turn than their opponent, because of the bonus point.
Anyway, the missions are great as is, just a little more fine tuning and I think they’ll be perfect! Great work, and thanks for listening to feedback. Keep it up!
Hey, thanks for the suggestions, appreciate it.
And that is so interesting on the going first thing. Right now, since we started tracking it in store (playing like, 6-10 games each weekend with a wide variety of armies and players) the player going second is winning at almost a 2:1 ratio. I wonder what is causing you to have the opposite outcome? I almost always go second on purpose in our missions.
For what it is worth, it seems that frequently the lists you feature in your batreps are assaulty / limited shooty lists. So it might be the case that your testing meta is low on alpha striking power and / or heavier on screening / null deployment style armies.
We do use some hardcore alpha strike armies but find that they just aren’t that good in our format with our terrain. They lose board control and lose the mission.
As you noted, we find that that screening/mobile/null deploy armies function better.
I love the missions, but its a lot of bookkeeping…
It is, yeah. That is the biggest downside, but to get the complexity we wanted, it was unavoidable. Try the new score sheet, it helps a lot.
Still not feeling gang buster. Titan slayer requires 8 wounds per point and big game hunter and reaper requires 10 wounds but gangbusters requires 4? That seems imbalanced to me. Most units with multiple wounds are easier to kill than titans and monsters and such so making them give up points easier doesn’t make sense. I think a point per 8 wounds to keep it inline with the other unit kill secondaries is warranted. And maybe some extra clause like units of 2 or more models or certain T or save or something.
Alternately instead of gang busters maybe consider a power level or match point based kill secondary. I mean the idea with gang busters is so certain powerful units don’t get a pass. Might be the way to do just that.
Glad you guys are running with Old School. My thought with it was something any army should be capable of pulling off so there isn’t feel bads when facing armies built to not give up points. It does overlap a bit with others but that may not be a bad thing. Makes picking kingslayer on the warlord worth it even if he’s 4 wound and while linebreaker and behind enemy lines are similar now that one is endgame and other is progressive which requires different plays.
One thing I have been thinking about suggesting is maybe categorizing the secondaries and limiting taking multiples in that category. Haven t thought through exactly what that looks like but the goal is limiting the stackability in a clear way rather than trying to add caveats to the rules themselves. I think it would also make adding a power level based secondary from above more palatable. I know this is pretty rough sketch maybe I can workup a writeup on specifics.
Not mentioned here are any changes to how primary works. Like mission 5 bonus. I think it was suggested that you hold center and opponents which works but thought it might be an option to keep it just the center but require more than just holding it with a single unit. Maybe the warlord being in 3″ or a Power Level based requirement.
The only issue with limiting it to 8 wounds is that most big units won’t have 32 wounds in them in total and as such, you can’t get the full amount of points. That was the big limitation, you wanted to be able to make the mission capable of yielding max points or it wouldn’t be chosen. It’s a tough balance to strike.
On the positive side, if you do take a unit of Robots or whatever, might as well go big as you are shedding the points regardless and there is no further detriment.
Can you elaborate on the secondary thing? I am not fully following you.
We did change mission 5, thanks for bringing that up, I had forgotten to include it.
Well I missed that it’s marking a single unit not board wide for gang buster. Makes a bit more sense but still worth a tweak. I mean a knight gives up 3 titan hunter but 10 man termie gives up 4. But it’s a balancing act between easy to explain and track versus more fair.
So rough sketch let’s say you put all the non character related kill secondaries into a group. All the character related kills into another group. All the board control into another. Then make it so you can have no more than 1 or 2 from a group, there by limiting stacking.
Ah, I see what you’re saying on the secondary thing. That would be an easy to understand way to limit stacking. I will have to play with it to see if that works as that is an easy implementation.
I have played these missions a ton now here is my feedback;
1) all the missions feel exactly the same. There needs to be more variety rather than one less objective. Maybe a mission with one attacker and one defender. Look at other game systems such as Flames of War for inspiration.
2) The I go first and shoot all your stuff to Death before you can react still Is a massive problem. It is before you can get your buffs up and the person with first turn almost always seems to win from our games. I would recommend all missions start during dusk for the first player’s first turn. This would add a +1 to all shooting hit rolls and balance out the everything shoots you to death before you have a chance to do anything.
Thanks for the feedback, but unfortunately no, we’re not going to have attacker/defender scenarios for the Champion’s missions. That is fun, I agree, but provides a lot of inequities and doesn’t provide a balanced competitive play experience in my experience. That would be great for narrative play, though.
And, actually, we’ve been gathering data on the missions and we’re finding the player going second in this mission set wins 71% more often. We still need to gather more data for a statistically significant statement, but so far going second is generally better than gong first.
Going first is exceptionally powerful for certain armies though.
Wait until the Tau codex drops, bud. 😉
I’m hoping the Dark Eldar and Harlequin codexes have something like night fighting to protect them at the top of turn one, as they’re basically forced to run MSU and usually go second. It goes heavily against the fluff for the slow-witted Mon’Keigh and Orks to constantly get the drop on them, plus it makes them *really* hard to play when they go second against a shooty army. They’re handed catastrophic losses before they even get a turn.
@ Reece – your data may be skewed by the fact that the armies that suck at going second aren’t being played right now, yes?
We’re using a very wide variety of armies and builds but we also use excellent terrain coverage, too That impacts things a lot.
But yeah, we’re finding that over and over the player that goes second has the advantage. YMMV of course, each person has a unique experience, but I am growing more convinced of it. I always opt to go second unless there is something dictating that I go first to get good board position, block enemy movement, pounce on a deployment error, etc.
Yes good point I doubt they are play testing dark eldar and ahrlequins sitting there getting their pants blasted off turn one. At least not as much as other armies.
We do test with every army available to us, including Drukhari, etc.
True, but there really isn’t anything we can do about that. The best bet is to build defense into your list against alpha strikes and to have adequate terrain.
And in our test games where we’ve been tracking the data, we have a lot of hardcore shooty armies, too. It really depends on the specific situation you find yourself in in each game, but the trend is pretty heavily in favor of going second.
I have played these missions a ton now here is my feedback;
1) all the missions feel exactly the same. There needs to be more variety rather than one less objective. Maybe a mission with one attacker and one defender. Look at other game systems such as Flames of War for inspiration.
2) The I go first and shoot all your stuff to Death before you can react still Is a massive problem. It is before you can get your buffs up and the person with first turn almost always seems to win from our games. I would recommend all missions start during dusk for the first player’s first turn. This would add a +1 to all shooting hit rolls and balance out the everything shoots you to death before you have a chance to do anything.
Crazy that second is winning. We have EXACTLY opposite feedback in our games. Out of 20 games I think only a few times (Maybe 3-5) did the first player not go first. This is especially true when facing armies such as AM and IG shooty lists.
Interesting. I would love to see your terrain as it just isn’t hapenning here, even with artillery heavy AM lists and such.
I’ve just run a couple of tournaments in the UK with the new missions, and people are really loving them. One bit of feedback that I got was that it could be frustrating when an opponent’s army gives up next to no secondaries, so I’m really pleased to see Old School and the changes to Behind Enemy Lines (which people get wrong all the time anyway), so that there always ways to score.
Glad to hear it and yeah, we wanted to remove incentives to try and game the system through list design.
Should swarms award points for gangbusters? Seems like it was intended to capture killing tough models…not things like ripper swarms, canoptek scarabs, and the like.
Ahh….just saw the comments that gangbustas is limited to one unit. That makes more sense.
Originally it didn’t specify one unit I think he edited the article.
I did, as I stated.
Yeah, good point, buddy. It shouldn’t target on swarms at all unless it is a big unit of them.
Thought on Gang Busters:
Allow it to be applied to every unit on the board. Still only units that have 4+ wounds per model in them, but when you kill those units, you get an extra point per 5 Power their unit is.
For example, Killing a min sized unit of Warriors would net you 2 points, while a unit of Cataphractii Terminators would be worth 3.
Thanks for the feedback but as you may see from other comments, it’s not a popular idea to run it that way and I actually agree. It isn’t meant to punish multi-wound units unless they are beefed up big time.
Just want to point out something silly about the missions…
The way the missions are written, you only get credit for destroying a unit if you destroy something on your own *player* turn but you count however many units you destroy in either player turn to determine who has the most units destroyed for the purposes of that bonus point.
This leads to a potentially odd scenario in that you do not get a point for destroying a unit during your player turn but you can get a bonus point for destroying more units than your opponent.
For example, you may fail to destroy any units in your player turn but charge a bunch of units and block them so they cannot escape, then in a combat in the other player’s turn, you can potentially destroy multiple units (which may end up causing you to destroy more units than your opponent) and gain the bonus point for having destroyed more units while missing out on the point for destroying a unit on your player turn.
This scenario can also result when scoring objectives. I’ve had this happen a few times at the Socal Open and it was an odd but amusing result.
Other than that, the proposed changes are welcome and they were fun missions.
Yeah, that is a bit odd, but not bad. It’s just a strange situation that can come up, it doesn’t break the missions or anything. It is another benefit to going second.
Thanks for pointing it out, though and gla dyou are enjoying them!
My biggest concern about this is that it’s too much stuff to mentally keep track of both on my opponents turn and my own.
There is. But that is the price we pay for the complexity we wanted. The score sheet helps a ton, though.
Also I think maybe the missions will all end up feeling the same with all this focus on customized secondary objectives. Just a suspicion, I havent played them yet.
I like all the changes but feel that Gang buster should have some other cap. Currently a unit of nurglings is 54 points and gives up 3 points and their job is to screen deep strike so they will always give it up. Seems like a very harsh punishment when other screens don’t give up any points, scouts , sentinels email c.
Ah, good catch. Swarms should not give up full points. We can look at bumping it up to 5 wounds.
Same with Razorwing flocks, they’re 4W and there just to catch bullets. 5W would be worth considering.
Indeed, that is a good call.
I think the “kill specific unit type” secondarys is a bit flawed. A good list would preferably avoid as many of the mission specific unit types as possible to make it hard for the opponent to score.
Like no units of 10 or more models, no character with 8 or more wounds, no titans etc.
Is this the intent? Because it’s certainly the effect it has.
It doesn’t happen as often as you may think. We’ run hundreds of games now in the missions and it actually doesn’t impact unit choices as much as you may think. And, you can max secondary scores regardless of what your opponent takes so it is not that relevant. It does have some impact but not as much as you may think.
Reece,
Gang busters maybe should be limited to a certain toughness and above? Maybe you can’t pick a unit with the swarm special rule? Currently one squad of nurglings (54 points) or one squad of rippers (42 points) both give up 3 secondaries because they both have 4 wounds. That secondary is a good idea but seems like it is going to be hard to execute without stepping on too many units.
I think that those two units are the cheapest 3 points you can get in the ITC and that will make them unuseable. Add a swarm restriction/toughness minumum and I think that you will be closer to honing in on the right direction for that secondary
I’m also thinking about other units that have cheap 2w models that would be almost untakeable in 6 man squads or above. Renegade heavy weapons squads, seeker of slaanesh squads, fleshhounds, screamers, rough riders, eldar jetbikes, etc… It puts a huge target on their back and seems unreasonably easy to get those secondaries against those units versus other units
I like all of these changes but I believe that gang busters would need the most work. Gang busters is a good idea but completely eliminates cheap, multi-wound units from competitive play, which i believe is the wrong decision to take a competitive tournament format.
Good points. And yeah, swarms was a miss. We are bumping it up to 5 wounds to avoid that.
Also, I see the problem on things like Rough Riders and Seekers, that is a very good point. We don’t want to punish those units. They struggle a bit anyway.
It may make more sense to limit it to 3 wound+ models.
Gang Busters -> I really, really like this. It’s creative and awesome.
Old School -> I like the idea, but would recommend that you add “Big Game Hunter” or “Last Blood” or something similar in place of the bonus for getting all 3. I’m not thrilled with making the 3rd one you accomplish essentially worth 2 points. It makes it impossible to score 3 points in this mission.
Behind Enemy Lines -> Excellent fix to this. I also worry a bit that it might overlap with recon, but I need to try it in a few games to be sure.
Death by 1,000 Cuts -> In my dozen or so games practicing these missions this is by far the least picked secondary, and when it does get picked, typically the player who picks it only scores 1 or rarely 2 points. The simple fact is killing 12 units in most armies typically means that army is nearly tabled. Maybe I’m just not seeing enough MSU in my Meta to justify it.
King Slayer/Titan Slayer -> The problem with King slayer is the Hive Tyrant / Tank Commander problem. It is just too easy to take 12 wounds off of one of those models. I recommend that you change the Monster / Vehicle to 4 wounds to get a point. The more times I’ve played these missions, the more I’ve felt compelled to get rid of Hive Tyrants from my list because they are such a points boon for my opponent. An IG friend and I were speaking yesterday, and he expressed a similar sentiment about tank commanders. If we surrendered 3 points instead of 4 for taking a character with limited durability, it would lift the pressure on our list design choices. Meanwhile it is still possible to get 4 off of mortarian or Magnus who are much more survivable.
The Reaper -> You’ve got to change this one. It is too easy to game for IG infantry squads, and generally easy to game by most armies. I propose you do multiples of 9. So 9 models or more gets you 1, 18 or more gets you 2, 27 or more gets you 3. Sure you might see armies running 26 cultists or termagants, but that is more of a sacrifice than running 29. I guess I feel like this one puts a thumb on list design that I don’t care for.
Overall these missions are a major advancement in mission design for the ITC, and really, really well done. I’m excited to see where they take us.
First of all, thanks for the kind words, appreciated! And the feedback is solid.
Behind Enemy lines was just not getting taken, so that was a solid change. It is still less popular than Recon but is now a great second choice against an opponent that has an army that doesn’t give up a lot of points.
My fear with King Slayer is that if you go to every 4 for vehicles/monsters, then it becomes unappealing for people as you often cannot max it out. And Bobby G then has to be killed twice pretty much all the way to get it but, perhaps not the end of the world. We will discuss it, though, as it is not a bad idea.
See, we don’t mind the Reaper being gameable as it is so far. I mean, if you find yourself facing 6 squads of AM infantry that are all 9 strong, that isn’t that big of a deal as the other way around, they get screwed by it as they can’t take any troops less than 10 unless we want folks to default to Scions. We haven’t found it to be a problem, honestly. AM give up so many points in our missions anyway, this is not so bad, in our opinions. But, we remain open to being persuaded.
I think the feedback for all the other rules and the ideas you have put forward yourself have been excellent and am very much looking forward to playing them in upcoming tournaments. However I feel a rule trying to accomplish what gangbusters is is very difficult to get right.
I feel like for Gangbusters this would be an approach that covers the bases of really tough units and swarms while still keeping the points for killing them about what they should be without meta a squad size meta evolving further:
have the amount of points earned based off of the amount of toughness killed of a unit name keyword.i.e. , rather than one specific unit, as this will apply well to combating spam armies that rely on using these elite low point giving units.
I have given some thought to the value and maybe have it at 1 point for 8+ toughness killed and 2 for 14+ killed per round. Limiting this to max 2 per round reduces the easy points from killing swarms yet still keeps with about as many terminators and wraithguard you would usually kill a round
Examples:
nurglings: 3 for 1p, 5 for 2p as 3 * T3 is 9, 5 * T3 is 15
terminators: 2 for 1p, 4 for 2p as 2 * T4 is 8 etc…
wraithguard: 2 for 1p, 3 for 2p
castellens: 2 for 1p, 2 for 2cp
my only concern with this is I don’t think the keywords might be clear enough to the reader. however selecting one unit in the opponent’s for this type of rule is a mistake in my eyes as units such as terminators with low model count and low wounds but insane armour saves will get ignored.
The points could be adjusted as T6 works out the same as T5 currently but I find this works perfectly well for T3,4,5 and 7 which encompasses all of the problem units of terminators, castellans and swarms.
That is a very interesting suggestion, we will give it due consideration. Might be tough to track as it is so different but certainly worth considering.
I also forgot to include that this should only apply to units with at least one multiwound model and only counts multiwound models towards the tally.
This is very important to not ruin almost every single wound model in the game. But still gives some options towards big scary models within some for basic infantry units, and also prevents the little follower guys of some units to not be cheap points.
I am satisfied with the balance of this rule, but I am still unsure about it being a good implementation due to the length. However I do feel that once it is read and understood it makes sense and doesn’t require too much bookkeeping.
Gangbusters seems insanely punishing for multiwound but relatively fragile throw-away units like Chaos Spawn and Plague Drones. If the goal is to punish big units of Kastellan robots and huge units of terminators, maybe it should be reworked a bit so that a 150 point unit of Spawn isn’t just giving your opponent a free 4 points?