My groups approach to Maelstrom Missions

My gaming group has been loving 7th and the new maelstrom missions. I tend to just lurk the forums and not post. But I've been reading a lot of negative things and watching a lot of batreps where they are having not awesome games with the new missions. I thought I would share some of the things my gaming group has been doing that have been giving us a positive experience.

I could get behind discarding the "impossible to complete at any point in a game" cards, but we don't. In a normal game for us there's maybe 3-4 of those in the whole deck. Plus the part of me that likes to suffer finds drawing "destroy a building" on my forest board amusing. After ~10 games with maelstrom I've found the biggest impact is setting up the board.

Move the objectives out of the deployment zones. At/near the edges is fine. Placing them near ground level, more towards the middle of the board while keeping them spread well helps a lot. If half the objectives aren't reachable by a player in 1-2 turns it limits their ability to score a big part of that deck.

Place the objectives in vulnerable locations. No cover, good lines of sight overlooking the markers. I think people naturally tend to just place them in good cover. Putting them out in the open with us has made us cap them when we have the card but not just sit on them unless it's actually a tough unit or we think we need a denial unit on it that turn. They are either left unclaimed or the unit is in the open, making it easier for both sides to clear and score obj's not on their side of the table.

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About a year ago we noticed that our games were shifting more toward gun lines. We really liked the 6th ed rules set, but we didn't like that we were moving in that direction. The solution we came up with was to change our tables.

We didn't want to just pack boards with terrain, so we started experimenting with LoS breaking pieces that wouldn't provide cover saves. We made the first floor of all our buildings inaccessible or have no windows. We use a lot of large short hills/rock formations for non urban terrain sets. The idea was to have all LoS at the lowest level be 18-24" with a few long narrow corridors while trying to not make the board look cluttered. Also to limit shooting from one deployment zone to the other as much as possible. High ground while it has better lines of sight, we've tried to reduce the cover there.

This has changed our game dynamic significantly, it forces a lot more movement. We've been seeing a lot more variety in list building. Being tabled has become really rare since neither side starts taking serious casualties until turn 3-4. Adding objectives that change on a turn by turn basis to the way we've been playing has been much better. Maelstrom seems to go well with the move / counter move gameplay this has evolved into for us.

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Another thing I've noticed in batreps is how large the games are for the table size. 1850pts on a 6x4' table seems like it would be really hard for it not to either turn into a gun line or with good terrain, push your lines into one another and roll dice. You remove a lot of the maneuver element when a table is that populated.

We've been playing smaller games on the 6' board, and made an 8' board adding more terrain to existing sets to fill it for the 1500-2k games. I think restricting lines of sight with terrain and playing less points per foot of table are the biggest changes, they encouraged movement and more varied army lists in 7th and maelstrom missions.

I guess I just think reassessing the way you setup a game can have a big impact on how it plays out. This has improved my groups experience a lot. Most of our maelstrom games have been fun and really close games. Hopefully this helps someone else.

The best way we've found to use the maelstrom missions is to draw 3 at the beginning of the game, keep them secret from the opposing player and you get 1 VP (or D3 depending on the mission) for each one you've accomplished at the end of the game.

The ridiculousness of the maelstrom missions is in the fact that your scoring units are playing connect the dots all damn game going between all the objectives like schizophrenic chimpanzees on speed. It totally makes no sense to me.

When you only have three missions, that don't change throughout the battle, it makes it a lot easier to set a goal for the game and try to accomplish it. The fact that you don't know what your opponent is playing for makes it even more fun.

I actually kinda like that, just using 3. Might try it. Though I think like draw 5 keep 3 would be safer. The kill cards would be way too easy tho. Getting the larger point amount would also be easy with the cards that have that option. Would make luck of the draw a way bigger deal. You'd just want as many points as possible available on your cards.

Well now you've got me thinking. Probably worth trying it out. Might try and sort something out with it to make some 6th feeling missions with more to the scoring for some games.

While maestrom makes no sense we've been liking that when we are playing on larger tables it encourages a little more side to side and backward movement. Helps to keep things a little bit more spread out.

Edit: on more thought I could see this idea being much better in larger games, the more points we play it becomes less cat and mouse. Varying objectives don't really change much of your armies movement the more models you play so one card set for the game would be better maybe. Definently going to try this. Thinking more for ~2k or just under.

So far the only variation I have liked is starting the game with no cards whatsoever. At the start of your 2nd Turn, you may draw one card for each objective you hold. At the end of the turn you may discard up to one card. Your hand can never be bigger than the number of objectives you hold, and thus if you lose an objective you must discard a card. In the variation we tested the objectives were kept secret until played. Basically starting on Turn-2 you could draw cards up to the number of objectives you hold, and this repeats each Turn until the end of the game.

What this did was put a premium on holding objectives and denying objectives to your opponent. The fewer cards he/she draws the fewer points they can earn. Moreover, destroying their hand by taking objectives before they can play the cards is also a viable tactic. With these modifications, the Maelstrom Missions were quite playable, although I would still like to see impossible cards removed and more variety in the cards.

If anyone else has ideas, or things they've been doing would love to hear it. We've been working on creating a few more mission sets to give ourselves more options in setting a game up.

Edit: Small changes through mission format, that cater to different army sizes, or play styles would be ideal. Making the missions make us want to field different units is what we are looking for so we see more variation from game to game.

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Originally Posted by Caitsidhe

starting the game with no cards whatsoever. At the start of your 2nd Turn, you may draw one card for each objective you hold. At the end of the turn you may discard up to one card. Your hand can never be bigger than the number of objectives you hold

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I really like this idea as well, changes the dynamic quite a bit, would force moving out and taking obj's hard and denial (it would put a focus on holding ground, instead of cap and move on like we do atm). Seems it would be a little like bunker wars (without bunkers). Gaining the upper hand tho would start putting you ahead a lot. But that would be fun on it's own. I don't really think every game should be really close. I could see this format encouraging more durable units.

Look at that! 1 morning on here and I've gotten ideas for a few more mission sets to start working out the details on for this weekend. Maybe I shouldn't just lurk all the time. Both ideas will make for the game playing out a lot differently.

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Shot in the dark: I've been trying to come up with a 6 mission set that forces the bulk of both sides into reserves and string out how they come in so it's not mass reinforce on turn 2-3. Then bumping the turn limit out. Same sized games but way less models on a table at a time, with slow steady stream of new units entering. We've tried few variations of this and it hasn't been quite what we wanted. I think adding maelstrom cards turn by turn in would keep it obj focused really well, over alpha strike spam. Having a hard time hammering out a smooth way to get all the units on the table. Not random chunks, and not one guy getting lucky and having half his army show up on a turn. If anyone has ideas here I'd appreciate it.

Edit: Think combat patrol, but strung out to 8-10 turns so the game takes 1.5-2hrs. Regular combat patrol games used to take us 30-45min. Loved them but they just felt brief.