{"id":3475,"date":"2015-10-22T01:16:44","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T05:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/?p=3475"},"modified":"2022-07-01T09:24:56","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T13:24:56","slug":"alternate-maelstrom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocketshipgames.com\/blogs\/tjkopena\/2015\/10\/alternate-maelstrom\/","title":{"rendered":"40k: Alternate Maelstrom"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the big changes to\u00a0Warhammer 40,000<\/a><\/em>\u00a0with 7th edition was\u00a0of course the new class\u00a0of official missions: Maelstrom. Upon first hearing rumors of it I was really excited, enough to pre-order the associated cards. They’ve been underutilized though because I found the final\u00a0release so lackluster compared to its\u00a0potential.\u00a0In the tournaments and events<\/a> I’ve run this\u00a0year we’ve used an alternate set of Maelstrom-style tactical objectives and\u00a0mission rules.\u00a0They\u00a0seem to work really well, addressing some of the big issues while preserving the positive aspects and adding some interesting innovations, so I thought I’d finally get around to sharing.<\/p>\n

\"Into<\/a>

Into the maelstrom.<\/p><\/div>\n

Just Roll Some Dice!<\/h2>\n

The heart of Maelstrom is randomized missions. In traditional 40k, players essentially compete\u00a0for control over\u00a0a set of\u00a0objective markers\u00a0placed on the board, or simply to kill all the opposing units. Maelstrom has players randomly determine smaller scoped objectives throughout the game. By drawing cards or rolling on a table, they’re directed to control\u00a0specific objective markers, kill a stipulated type of unit, or even\u00a0make particular\u00a0actions in order to score points.<\/p>\n

Official Maelstrom has many\u00a0shortcomings. Some are easily rectified or mitigated. One such common house rule is to immediately discard impossible tactical objectives, e.g., if your opponent has no units of a necessary type. That this is so obvious an improvement only highlights how little effort GW put into their rules. It’s worth noting though what seems\u00a0to be\u00a0a frequently\u00a0overlooked subtlety: Should tactical objectives be discarded only if they were never possible, or even if they’re impossible\u00a0when drawn?\u00a0The “Kill a psyker” goal\u00a0highlights the difference: Can it be discarded immediately only if the opponent never had a psyker in their army, or can it also be discarded if all their psykers are merely\u00a0already slain? I don’t have strong feelings either way and the two probably don’t offer vastly different experiences in practice, but\u00a0this\u00a0is a design decision\u00a0to be made consciously.<\/p>\n

Beyond a few such\u00a0smaller problems, there are two design patterns\u00a0throughout the stock Maelstrom that really gall me. Most obvious and frequently addressed in tournaments are random results.\u00a0It’s absolutely deleterious to strategic play\u00a0to have tactical objectives yield random amounts of victory points once achieved<\/em>. A variety of reasonable house rules could address that and are frequently applied, e.g., always claim\u00a0the maximum, or roll for the value\u00a0when the objective is drawn. The latter actually imposes\u00a0an interesting strategic evaluation of\u00a0effort versus reward while maintaining the basic Maelstrom philosophy of unknown and variable objectives. That it’s such a small tweak\u00a0but vastly\u00a0better again highlights just how little design effort\u00a0GW expends. In any event, a variety of hotfixes\u00a0are possible for these objectives,\u00a0but at some point you may as well just replace them.<\/p>\n

Most upsetting to me though are the forced play tactical objectives, that\u00a0award victory points simply for executing game mechanics.\u00a0Instead of presenting\u00a0a goal to work toward, they merely give away free points or, worse, dictate play. Many are actions you may be\u00a0trivially doing anyway, such as Daemons and\u00a0the “Cast a psychic power” condition. Others force you to make micro-level \u00a0moves that may not fit your army or macro-level situation at all—may the Greater Good shine on\u00a0Tau that draw the “Make an assault”\u00a0card! Scoring\u00a0should be based on game conditions to be achieved, not making the\u00a0player a puppet enacting\u00a0pre-scripted\u00a0actions.<\/p>\n

Random results and forced play goals\u00a0come from the same\u00a0“Just roll dice & push models around!” mentality of\u00a0Games Workshop that\u00a0gave us random<\/span>\u00a0psychic powers and warlord traits. Otherwise\u00a0stock Maelstrom could be\u00a0solid with just\u00a0a\u00a0house\u00a0rule or two and some card tweaks, but those aspects warrant substantial reworking.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A Games Workshop game designer shambles in to work.<\/p><\/div>\n

Flexibility & Deathstars<\/h2>\n

At this point it’s worth noting what is in fact appealing about Maelstrom. The surface level attraction\u00a0is just the variability of it. Sooner or later most everybody wants to play something different from the Eternal War missions that have been carried through editions under one name or another for\u00a0literally decades now.<\/p>\n

As an event organizer and game designer though, what really calls\u00a0to me about that variability is the flexibility it requires of the players and their armies.\u00a0To really capitalize on the Maelstrom tactical objectives, you need to be able to move all about the table, and to easily\u00a0switch back and forth between killing specific units\u00a0versus claiming objectives. The downside of this is that it\u00a0encourages\u00a0armies built around—and perhaps even spamming—small, highly mobile units. Arguably the format is\u00a0imbalanced toward factions\u00a0with more or better\u00a0units of that style. However, given that many of the recent balance\u00a0problems in 40k have revolved around deathstar units or even\u00a0unstoppable single models,\u00a0tipping the scales the other way is not necessarily unwelcome. In my events we mitigate\u00a0the chance of going too far that way by generally also including other missions for which more “grind-em-out” style armies are perhaps better suited.<\/p>\n

\"These<\/a>

These guys are definitely here for the Maelstrom party.<\/p><\/div>\n

Logistics<\/h2>\n

In developing a revised Maelstrom mission as an event organizer rather than an individual player, I also had to keep in mind some\u00a0logistics.\u00a0If you don’t buy GW’s cards, stock Maelstrom missions are kind of a hassle to execute. Tracking which tactical objectives are in play, discarded, and achieved isn’t a huge deal, but it’s not nothing\u00a0either. Without the cards you’re left just scribbling things down. In order to keep my events on time while enabling games to play\u00a0out fully, and to\u00a0alleviate the burden on our more casual, less frequent players, I really wanted to\u00a0structure and streamline the bookkeeping. At the same time,\u00a0this alternate\u00a0format\u00a0was developed for and used within small, monthly shop tournaments. In that context it’s not practical for me to print and\/or make and give out whole new Maelstrom card decks as some bigger events like Adepticon have done<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A New Maelstrom<\/h2>\n

The core\u00a0of my revised Maelstrom\u00a0is this table\u00a0of tactical objectives:<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_2015-10-21_23-37-21\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[ Download as a PDF ]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Our mission packets include two copies of this for each Maelstrom mission. The players rip\u00a0them\u00a0out\u00a0and each mark\u00a0one up throughout the game for their bookkeeping.\u00a0Mechanics are as follows:<\/p>\n