NH2020 - 40K Missions

[Primarch]

Here are the provisional missions for the 40K day at NagoyaHammer. I'd like to thank Karantu for writing them up. I've given them a once over, but I'll let people have a play about with them before making them official.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dny7wczfppo9k ... 0.pdf?dl=0

Addendum:
In mission 3, if a solo player has 2 detachments, they can declare one as being a Vanguard option and the other as a Sternguard option. If they only have 1 detachment, they may choose to be either Vanguard or Sternguard on a turn by turn basis.

Just to recap the army building rules:
Regardless of keywords, factions, strategems or any other rules, in Doubles games, each army functions completely independently of it's partner. You may not target your partner's units, you do not gain any benefit from your partner's special rules and abilities, you may not share CP, etc. Enemy units may not be affected by the same effects twice unless those effects would normally be allowed to stack.

Army Building Rules
Required
-Doubles List-
650 Points maximum.
1 Detachment maximum.
Rule of Two is in effect.
No Titans, Super Heavies or Lords of War.

Recommended
-Solo List-
1300 Points maximum.
2 Detachments maximum.
Rule of Three is in effect.
No Titans, Super Heavies or Lords of War.

From what I can see the pros and cons of solo vs. tag team are:
Solo
+More integrated army list.
+More efficient ways to use CP.
+More VP from Slay the Warlord and First Strike.

Tag Team
+More CP
+Extra Warlord trait.
+Extra Relic option.
-More compulsory units.
+More VP from Linebreaker.

If people would like to try out the missions both as teams and solo before the event, any necessary feedback can be incorporated. I think mission 1 is the most tactically interesting as players have to weigh up scoring VP and losing units. I think it would also be the easiest to rig the outcome with the correct army build, so I'm interested in what everyone makes of it.

[Jye Nicolson]

Looks awesome, I'm excited already.

One point on a quick look though - not sure when you actually score the VP for spice?

Edit: also in lockdown I assume home objectives are not numbered, and only numbered objectives are removed?

[Primarch]

Looks awesome, I'm excited already.

One point on a quick look though - not sure when you actually score the VP for spice?

Based on the other missions, at the end of your turn.

Edit: also in lockdown I assume home objectives are not numbered, and only numbered objectives are removed?

That's correct. 6 Objectives, 2 assigned as home objectives and the others numbered 1-4 and removed in sequence.

[job]

Thank you for formatting and posting it all up. And thank your to Karantu for writing it all up. It looks like good fun. (And any Dune references are always much appreciated.)

[Karantu]

I had fun writing the missions as you can probably tell.
Regarding scoring for The Spice Melange, I was thinking at the end of the battle round, after which Shai-Hulud would reset the scoring area.
In Lockdown the home objectives are not numbered and thus aren't removed.

I'll probably go back and clarify things like that and fix some mistakes and re-upload it sometime "soon". Might as well throw in the list building rules too while I'm at it.

Also I need to do the entire thing in Japanese too to make it easier for any potential Japanese players.

[me_in_japan]

well, I'm glad that particular set of scenarios got posted today, rather than later. Earlier this week I realised I didn't have much time left to plan and paint an army, so I sat down and spent a few hours re-learning the eldar codex and writing up some lists. I had decided to do a kinda funky, low model-count list I'd never tried before, and had even started painting minis for it. But looking at that first scenario, where you get eaten if you dont move? yeah, that heavy support list full of dark reapers and rangers ain't happening. I'll go back to the drawing board and start again, shall I?

(In all seriousness, thank you to Karantu and Prim for organising this. I realise that my list being screwed is a bit of a freak event, and outwith the bounds of what one might reasonably expect you guys to predict, so please don't feel I'm complaining at you guys. I just wish 40k made list building just a teensy bit easier. I mean, why in gawd's name are the points values and rules on different frickin pages? Sooooooo much flicking back and forth for everything from "what formation should I use" to "what guns are worth picking for my tanks?" A guy could play a couple games of Underworlds in the time it takes to write a 650pt list for this game. And don't even get me started on the painting )

[Jye Nicolson]

List building without Battlescribe is not worth doing.

Not least because the points in the books are not necessarily right, you'd need to be looking at CA2019 and hoping nothing got errata'd

(As I understand it they actually do this properly for AoS with an app, so hopefully one day 40K will get in on the love)

[Jye Nicolson]

Regarding scoring for The Spice Melange, I was thinking at the end of the battle round, after which Shai-Hulud would reset the scoring area.

I think this is more interesting but it's really, really good for the team going second, right? The team going first needs to make a bet about how many people to put on. The team going second can:

- Just put on one more
- Kill people on the hill
- Ignore everyone on the hill, kill as many other people as possible to prevent future scoring, take the loss this round but swing into subsequent ones with a big advantage

I really like this mission but I don't want to go first in it ^_^

[Karantu]

Regarding scoring for The Spice Melange, I was thinking at the end of the battle round, after which Shai-Hulud would reset the scoring area.

I think this is more interesting but it's really, really good for the team going second, right? The team going first needs to make a bet about how many people to put on. The team going second can:

- Just put on one more
- Kill people on the hill
- Ignore everyone on the hill, kill as many other people as possible to prevent future scoring, take the loss this round but swing into subsequent ones with a big advantage

I really like this mission but I don't want to go first in it ^_^

The alternative would be scoring at end of your turn and resolving Shai-Hulud for each team separately. That way your units can score and defend the objective during your opponent's turn, and then at the start of your next turn they'd get eaten. This should eliminate the advantage from going second.

Anyway, I'd love to hear some feedback if people are willing to try it out at the next gameday.

[Jye Nicolson]

Not the feedback you were looking for but, I played a couple of the missions solo (and it turns out I won!). Can't really give anything useful for the competitiveness (my favourites, Space Wolves and Sisters, beat an Imperial Fist team weighed down by "The Chaos half of Shadowspear and Blackstone Fortress mashed together with a poor understanding of the rules ", what a shock!), but:

- Lockdown seemed straightforward but worked well (reviewing it, totally forgot about the Dominance rule, but it wouldn't have made much difference). I assumed "take turns placing 6 objectives" is 3 objectives each.
- Play Both Ends felt like a lot more setup to end up effectively very similar to Lockdown. The unusual deployment order and placing objectives after deployment is where the depth comes in (it allowed me to outwit myself?), but the Sternguard/Vanguard split feels a bit like mandating what you were going to do anyway. I also feel like the d3 VP for controlling your home objective could make otherwise close games hinge too much on that roll, while if the Vanguard manages to score their condition it's probably just winning harder.
- Iffy on the d3 VP rolls in general, it's OK if you want to lean into having unpredictable results from the games but I'd prefer a flat 2 so that if you make a tactical compromise in order to hit the objective you definitely get a reward.
- LOS blocking terrain is a must. Other than the Obliterators my Chaos team didn't achieve much*, but the Imperial Fists were an absolute terror. In Lockdown, I moved the castle up onto an objective, and they killed everything they could see, but thankfully that wasn't much because I used tournament style blocking ruins in the centre, and they were exposed to Space Wolf and Bloody Rose charges. In Play Both Ends I naturally made them Sternguard and parked them on the home objective, but they had poor LOS to the rest of the objectives, so while they actually had the best of combat with the melee units that broke through Chaos, they couldn't do much about the Sisters and Intercessors sitting uncontested on objectives racking up points while they were being harassed by transports and things.

That last point is important, I honestly think at 650 points Imperial Fists are incredibly strong, even post nerf, they just castle so very efficiently. Getting them to move by preventing them castling in place with LOS, or tempting them out onto an objective where you can then conceivably get multiple units successfully charging them and stopping their overwatch from shredding their only threats is super important. This is particularly true if they have Centurions, which are ridiculous but even slower than Aggressors.



*Cheap cultists sitting on objectives have a pretty good VP earned/Points ratio, but I don't really have the units to take advantage of getting more points into the fight. Obliterators are so good though, I definitely learned from @job shredding me with them


Edit: I planned to play Shai-Hulud but it turns out there's limits to how long I can play on the floor of the tatami room, I'll give it a crack this weekend I think.