Scenarios and Victory Conditions

[jollyork]

As I posted in the Tyranid thread, I've really been impressed with the evolution of White Dwarf Battle Reports such that GW is really walking the walk when it comes to Forging a Narrative. The report scenarios area always unique and usually custom to armies and table setup, unless they are deliberately showing off a book scenario. 

 

(minor spoilers if you haven't read this month's report)

In this month's report the two armies not only have no Troops selections, but also have completely different Victory Conditions. The Tau have to kill the 3 Hive Tyrants, while the Tyranids have to destroy 3 "Generators" that are terrain markers the Tau army has. This created a really compelling game as the Tau needed to be offensive against the HTs, but also protective of the Generators. Meanwhile, the bugs needed to go after the Generators, while protecting their HTs. The Tau could sacrifice everything to get their job done, while the bugs had to protect 3 of their most killy units (including the Swarmlord). Also, the bugs got a free random reinforcement each time they destroyed a Generator, so the Tau couldn't just protect one and sacrifice the others. 

 

Okay, with all the description out of the way, it seems to me this sort of scenario is much better way to create a fun and level-set tournament experience than using Comp restrictions. Imagine a scenario where you simply couldn't field any Elite choices (or whatever)? And imagine having all the scenarios to study before the tournament, but not knowing which Victory Condition you will need to accomplish until the game setup for that round?

 

Another interesting scenario setup I've been reading recently is the way Malifaux 2.0 works. Each side gets a unique overall objective, which you can keep secret or tell your opponent during setup to receive more VPs at the end for accomplishing it. Each player can also select a number of "schemes" that are essentially like 40K's Secondary Objectives, that can also be kept secret or announced for more VPs. Imagine if before each game you could choose to take First Blood, Slay the Warlord, or whatever. More fun, of course, would be ditching those standard options and having a selection to choose from that was army specific. For example, the tournament could publish a set of 6 Secondary Objectives for each army (Tau, SMs, Eldar, etc.) and before each game, a player can choose a number of them, say 3. This way the player could choose ones that mitigate army list weaknesses for the particular scenario (like not being able to use his Elites!). Perhaps a player could even volunteer to sideboard a unit to gain an additional Objective. He could put an HQ out of the game and gain an Objective worth +2 VPs, or something like that. 

 

I believe that creating scenarios and VCs like this benefits all types of players. Competitive players can enjoy the challenge of crafting a list to master all those variables, while other players can simply enjoy Forging a Narrative. 

 

TL; DR:

There are a lot of exciting options for scenarios and objectives that could help balance "comp" much better and more interestingly than blanket restrictions. 

 

 

[jollyork]

It would be pretty cool OFCC swag to have a set of 6 (or even 12) Objective cards. Each round you can select 3 or 4 (or whatever) of them to  use in your game. Keep them facedown for X VPs, or reveal them to double the VPs. 

[Munkie]

I'm glad you enjoyed it, personally I find it annoying. Should "forge the narrative" be synonymous with "disregard the rules of the game"? More and more it seems like they're putting a lot of effort into undermining the enjoyability of the game and the fluff they've built. Whacky scenarios are fun once in a while, but it's hard to take the game seriously when they clearly no longer do.

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

I disagree. I know how to play the game give me ideas how to play it different. I am reallying enjoying the direction of the nw white dwarf. I have to say this is the best one yet. Jervis had some fun ideas about random tables, which I like. The paint articles ranged from 8 layers to 3. Great tips, practical and easy to follow.

 

The battle report was crap scenario but a good attempt. I like the creativity. 6 riptides is amazing, but fellow mcs just shrug it off without the markerlight support.

[generalripphook]

Having wacky scenarios makes the game more random on one hand, which can make it unbalanced if you involve too much luck of the dice but can allow for each game to be different, which IMO what they are trying to do with all the random things in 6th edition, so that each game isnt exactly the same.

 

On the other hand wacky scenareos and lots of rolls slow the game down, make it harder to learn and make it harder to rely on unit y to do x duty in a battle. Makes it harder to write a list that can effectivly do a variety of missions if each mission is so different.

[Munkie]

I disagree. I know how to play the game give me ideas how to play it different. I am reallying enjoying the direction of the nw white dwarf. I have to say this is the best one yet. Jervis had some fun ideas about random tables, which I like. The paint articles ranged from 8 layers to 3. Great tips, practical and easy to follow.

 

The battle report was crap scenario but a good attempt. I like the creativity. 6 riptides is amazing, but fellow mcs just shrug it off without the markerlight support.

 

I'm all for different and whacky scenarios, but everything is different and whacky now, is it really necessary to continue tumbling down the rabbit hole? I haven't even read the battle report so take this for what it is, but do we really need a battle report showing us that riptides struggle against other MCs without markerlights? Isn't that kinda obvious? Is anyone wondering if riptides are better with markerlights? And if they do feel compelled to illustrate that, do we need the lesson x6??

 

First it was the basic Tau riptide. Then the Farsight riptide IC. Then the Forge World riptide. Then the riptide data slate. Now, "Let's change the rules of the game to get MOAR riptides!" Gimme a [big bad swear word]in' break, already! That book is more than a page long!

[Guest Mr. Bigglesworth]

They didn't even try for an foc. They threw cation to the win in this battle report. It is field what you want at 3k. Almost a watered down apoc.

 

Edit: should not post while asleep.

[jollyork]

I think my point was more about different and compelling victory conditions than any commentary of Riptides. 

[galahad911]

A mission that completely removes one of the FOC? Really? If I read through a mission packet and saw that in there I wouldn't play. That's more that stupid. You could put players down half their army with a given slot. This sounds like a good time to you?

[Chappy]

I liked the VICTORY CONDITIONS just as JollyOrk pointed to in the above post. It was really cool for the Tyranids to have to try and knock out shield generators. Something other than "get mah troops over dere, and over dere, hur hur hur." It was neat to see GW go with something different. Oh and the Tau? Just had to kill the Swarmlord with Tyrant guard. And they almost succeeded. With 1 wound left of the Swarmlord, the Tau fired his last shot, and rolled a 1 to wound. Game ends in a draw. Pretty snazzy if you ask me.

 

 

As for the Force Org stuff, I will let more empassioned and learned gamers make all the noise they like. No need for an opinion when everyone else is moar right than you on their internet. :)

[VonVilkee]

Btw the Malifaux reference. The main objective is flipped for randomly and both players know it, you then randomly generate 4 (plus a fixed scheme) to generate the pool of possible secret schemes, then pick crews, declare crews, pick schemes, deploy, declare schemes.

 

It is important to note that the secret schemes thing needs to be a large list with some random selections. Version one was just a decent sized list and it devolved down to people writing lists to best do certain schemes. More experienced players knew it while it created a larger barrier of entry.

 

This whole forging the narrative feels like GW is driving people back to the garage. The big clubs we have developed will suffer if this trend continues. Also it is hard to build community when the definition of an army keeps changing. Tricky gw increasing the collection to take into Account these narrative styles... Tricky indeed!

[tombking]

Jollyork you should note that they play those battles for the battle reports multiple times and use the best one there could have been some very cringeworthy outcomes and those don't make it to print. I do like the here lets make something up and play it as it throws back to v1.0 which was meant to be more on that level. Make up your scenario, what the forces should look like, etc and usually have a referee/game master.

 

Not sure how something like that would work for a tournament. Oh I can't use Elites/Troops/Heavy in this scenario... I don't have a replacement 500 points elsewhere with me, or if you do then how big a kit box full of toys are you having to lug around and then the time required to change up the list every round. Malifaux makes it easier with the much lower model count but I can't see it working logistically as well for 40k.

 

That said some custom missions with random secondary mission/objectives for battle points should be very doable. You may want to play test them a bit with various armies.