Maelstrom in Tournaments

[WestRider]

I've been thinking about Maelstrom a lot, because I've really been enjoying it, but I know a lot of people don't. One realization I had is that when you do Objective Placement seems to make quite a difference. In my one-off Games, we've been placing Objectives before knowing the Deployment Type, or even the specific Scenario, which tends to push them much more toward midfield. Even if you don't know which side you're going to be on, the fact that a Tournament Scenario will tell you whether it's Vanguard, Hammer, or Dawn before anything starts will lead to biases in placement.

 

I have also been thinking about Maelstrom as a Secondary Objective. One idea I came up with was this:

 

Before Deployment, each player generates 8 Maelstrom Objectives. Discard and re-generate any that will be completely impossible at any point in the Game (i.e. your Opponent has no Flyers or FMCs, discard and re-generate Scour the Skies). At the start of each of your Turns, select one of these Objectives. If you accomplish it at the end of that Turn, score it. Otherwise, discard it. At the end of the Game, whoever has the most Maelstrom Points wins the Secondary and gets however many Battle Points that's been assigned.

 

This could interact with the Primary in a couple of ways. You could just use the same Objective Markers for both, numbering them and discarding any MOs that go with a number higher than what the Primary uses, or you could lay down a separate set of 6 Objectives for the Secondary.

 

This gives the Players some control over when they go for which Objectives, letting them plan ahead, but still allows for the incredible variety of goals that Maelstrom brings. Each Player generates 8 Objectives even after removing the completely impossible ones because that's guaranteed to be more than one per Turn, giving them some flexibility to effectively an Objective or two that are, perhaps not impossible, but very difficult for their Army to achieve.

 

Also, because all the randomization and looking things up on the chart takes place at one point, it works much more smoothly than any of the regular Maelstrom Missions for people who don't have a deck of Tactical Objective Cards.

[fluger]

Interesting.  I would also combo this with the Adepticon Maelstrom Mission Deck.  It's much better. 

[Lord Hanaur]

Maelstrom is fun so I'm not really looking for improvements but if one was, I suppose it would be easy to just make up new missions that handle the cards differently.  creativity is cool.

 

as long as this solution is for creativity, Im for it.  I find most of the complaining about Maelstrom centers on what?  That someone won and you didin't like it?  I'd like to count the games where you lost because of cards and then see if the game had been a normal mission whether you'd have had a chance anyways. 

 

Anyways just rambling I spose.  Best way to try it out is to try it out.

[WestRider]

@Fluger: Yeah, the Adepticon deck does make everything better :)

 

@Lord Hanaur: This wasn't so much about a variant as an additional use for them. I do think the Objective Placement issue is a serious flaw for their use in competitive settings, tho. And, in general, I agree. I've only played one game of Maelstrom where the winner wouldn't have also won an Eternal War mission. The one exception, I still would have won any Mission that involved progressive scoring, because I kept his entire Army penned up in half of his Deployment Zone until Turn 5, while I had free reign over the rest of the table.

[Guest]

Finding a way to incorporate a twister spinner seems like a good idea...

[pretre]

Finding a way to incorporate a twister spinner seems like a good idea...

Not sure if serious...

[Guest]

Not sure if serious...

This time it was a joke. I have seriously considered, many times, replacing the scatter die with a spinner.

 

Anyway, not a fan of maelstrom objectives if playing compeditively. I like them for fun games, but I don't think they are reliable enough for satisfying competitive play. A player should feel they lost because the opponent was superior, not because of a completely random set of objectives.

 

I will note that a few armies (at least GK) have access to alternate maelstrom objectives, which does mean that a maelstrom mission with GK vs anything else, presents a different potential victory condition. I can certainly see potential for abuse if certain objectives were easier to obtain than the ones they replace.

 

In the case of the GK, they replace objectives 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.

[WestRider]

All the Armies that have alternate Maelstrom Objectives (All the 7th Ed Dexes, plus White Scars) replace the first 6. So they're always swapping out a set of "Hold Objective 1-6" for Faction-specific. Some of those do become problematic here, like the SW one that requires them to hold the same Objective for two Turns in a row. That one would have to be a discard and re-draw.

 

Also, I think I remember reading an analysis somewhere years ago that tried a few different spinners and found they all had greater bias or ease of cheating than scatter dice.

[winterman]

The European Team Challenge and most of the UK events this year have maelstrom as their secondary.  Seems like it works pretty well.  They do a couple of tweaks

 

1. They reduced the deck to 18 (6 objectives, and 12 of the others -- removing gimmies like cast a spell and such)

2. They changed the d3 VPs into 2 VPs

3.  Added the fairly common houserule of auto-discard when opponent army doesn't have flyer, etc

4. Limiting the number of cards you can achieve per turn to 2.

 

They also add together VPs for Eternal War mission + Maelstrom + Linebreaker/SlayWarlord/FirstStrike (kill unit in first turn obtainable by both players).  Then win is based on comparison of VPs between players (so win by 1 VP, get 11 battlepoints, win by 19+ VPs get 20 battlepoints).

[fluger]

That First Strike change is Gold.  Much better mechanic than First Blood.   

[AbusePuppy]

With the way that is set up, some missions (like Relic and Emperor's Will) become essentially irrelevant as the "primary", since you'll be earning so many more VP from Maelstrom that it basically won't even matter. I much prefer the Frontline system and similar ones where you have multiple distinct missions that you each win or lose individually.

[fluger]

Well, I prefer YOUR FACE to Frontline or similar ones.  

[Guest]

That First Strike change is Gold.  Much better mechanic than First Blood.   

Way harder to get than first blood in some of my games. Had a game of AV14 spam vs Seperent spam. First blood was turn 4...

[fluger]

That's fine.  What is dumb about First Blood compared to all the other secondaries is that it's the only one that can be achieved solely by one player.  

[Guest]

That's fine.  What is dumb about First Blood compared to all the other secondaries is that it's the only one that can be achieved solely by one player.  

As opposed to Celestine and "slay the warlord"?

[fluger]

Difficult=/=impossible

[Guest]

Difficult=/=impossible

I suppose. I do feel that only the first time you slay the enemy warlord should meet the requirement for the objective.

 

That first strike alternative is impossible for either player to obtain on the second game turn. A pod list going second would be pretty mean, as they can't yield first strike unless the opponent has interceptor weapons.

[fluger]

In the same vein, that same list would almost always get First Blood anyway, so it's really no different.  

[WestRider]

I actually like that there's a victory point that only one side can score. It doesn't matter so much in some scenarios, but in others, it can be key to breaking ties.

[AbusePuppy]

Yeah, it's probably intentional that only one player can get First Blood- it makes ties a lot less likely (although not impossible.)

 

The fact that going second is so strong in a lot of scenarios (and for a lot of armies) makes the complaints about First Blood ring pretty hollow to me. I've seen it happen on the 2nd/3rd turn in plenty of games with competitive armies, I've seen the second player get it but not the first, etc, etc. It's just one more part of the game- some armies are better at it, some are worse.

[fluger]

FINE

[winterman]

With the way that is set up, some missions (like Relic and Emperor's Will) become essentially irrelevant as the "primary", since you'll be earning so many more VP from Maelstrom that it basically won't even matter. I much prefer the Frontline system and similar ones where you have multiple distinct missions that you each win or lose individually.

They are apples and oranges though.  LVO is win/loss/draw event.  ETC and the UK tend to run battle points for various reasons.  And the LVO system without tweaks doesn't work so well in battle points.  Also I believe the euros usually tweak relic (6 vp relic and/or multiple relic) and remove emperors will entirely.  It's interesting format either way, not advocating or dissing either.

 

The fact that going second is so strong in a lot of scenarios (and for a lot of armies) makes the complaints about First Blood ring pretty hollow to me. I've seen it happen on the 2nd/3rd turn in plenty of games with competitive armies, I've seen the second player get it but not the first, etc, etc. It's just one more part of the game- some armies are better at it, some are worse.

 

I generally agree with this.  Overall I don't have an issue with first blood if it can be drowned out by other VPs and/or isn't an easily drawn mission.  So it is only really problematic in relic, emp will and to some degree the LVO format -- would rather something else be used to break ties then something that favors a particular playstyle and a dice roll.  I do however like variety in secondaries and tend to mix in First blood with first strike and similar concepts.

 

I actually like that there's a victory point that only one side can score. It doesn't matter so much in some scenarios, but in others, it can be key to breaking ties.

 

Agreed.  Whenever I remove first blood from a mission I try to replace it with another zero-sum secondary.  One example would be kill warlord but keep yours alive.  Its not quite FB (because FB will almost always be scored by someone) but it has a similar affect.  Couple other ways to do the same thing.

[fluger]

Quit bludgeoning me with logic and reason.

[AbusePuppy]

ETC and the UK tend to run battle points for various reasons. 

I would argue that, for a tournament, battle points are inferior to win/loss/draw systems because the latter emphasizes bludgeoning a weak opponent as hard as you can, whereas the former ranks all victories pretty much equally. But if you really want that sort of thing, there's no reason the ITC missions couldn't be scoring a "battle points" fashion as well.

[winterman]

I would argue that, for a tournament, battle points are inferior to win/loss/draw systems because the latter emphasizes bludgeoning a weak opponent as hard as you can, whereas the former ranks all victories pretty much equally. But if you really want that sort of thing, there's no reason the ITC missions couldn't be scoring a "battle points" fashion as well.

I'm personally not a fan of massacre style BPs either.  But sometimes ranking every win equally is not adequate.  Most commonly when there's not enough rounds to determine the clear winner (the reason you see it a lot in the UK -- they don't run 6-8 round events over there).  There's also format reasons, like ETC format hinges on unequal win rankings and in fact it encourages skillfull play and matchups by NOT ranking victories equally.  

 

Also many people like BPs because they can claw their way back into contention after a loss -- which is the reason NoVa went with supporting both win/loss and battle points.

 

LVO missions (I won't use ITC mission as naming because ITC events don't have to run them) out of the box are kinda poor battle point missions.  Quite easy to win 3-2 and get less battlepoints then someone who lost 6-5.  There's also the fact that tying a primary/secondary is 0 'battlepoints' in the format.  It takes a bit of extra rules to make it work for battlepoints.