Saab's Mission Highlight of the Week: Mission #3

Greg here, I hope people are finding the missions I've put up enjoyable, and thank you for the feedback so far.

So what I have today for you all is a mission from the last Brs Grim Tournament that was a nice change from the normal Kill Points mission. I never really liked Kill Points much since I always felt the concept was intended for gade-school kids who fell asleep in math class and didn't own a calculator. I can add up Victory Points just fine, as can most 10 year olds(probably the recommended age for 40K). On a side note, I got slaughtered by an 8 yr old in my FLGS back when I witnessed 4th ed. Genestealers for the first time, so who knows what the recommended age REALLY is.

Anyways, the internet has debated VP Vs. KP over and over with good points on both sides. However, I don't know anyone locally that likes Kill Points, so we usually avoid playing it if we can. Granted, I can't tell the TO in a tournament I don't want to play a mission. . . so Kill Points it is!
The day I played this mission is a little hazy, but I DO know that I played against my good friend Sean from Ordo Ineptus out of Danbury, CT who drove a couple hours with his buddies to Long Island. The game was extremely close, many laughs were had, high fives shared, dice were thrown, drinks were consumed, and we both walked away from the game liking this version of Kill Points.

So instead of getting wrapped up in 40K debates on the forums, grab a friend and PLAY the mission I posted HERE

or at
https://docs.google.com /fileview?id=0B3ESh4I4VF2aMzQ4NmEzMGYtMzczNS00OTkyLWE0YjItZWFhZDM3NGYyYjBl&hl=en

Happy Gaming!
Greg(Saab)

Saab's Mission Highlight of the Week - Mission #2

First off, sorry for skipping a week. I was working on my progress report for my thesis committee, and it took more of my time than expected. However, now that it’s over, I have some extra free time to concentrate on “important things” like 40K.

I’m lucky enough that my local game store runs 10-week-long 40K leagues that are pretty much set list so you can’t “list tailor” when you find out who your opponent is. Best of all, the missions that the league organizer, Scott Wilson, writes are never the boring snooze-fests from the back of the book. Some of my favorite and most memorable games of 40K have been while using his missions, so expect to see them on the site from time to time. Also, if anyone travels to one of our Brs Grim Tournaments, this is the type of stuff to expect, since our Tournament Organizer also writes missions in a similar style.

Enough Talk
Let’s Play!

Download the Mission HERE
OR
https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B3ESh4I4VF2aYTA4MjAwZmYtOThiZC00ZTVkLWExOWUtYTQ0NGU1NDM3YzU2&hl=en

The second mission I’m posting up is an exciting twist on deployment that is not played very often. In this mission you’ll be deploying from the short sides of the table, you know, the one that’s only 48 inches wide. To compensate for the length of the playing field, there are Special Rules for incorporating “Gate of Infinity-like” teleportation each turn. It all depends on how jawa-ballsy you want to get (wow, that was an awful pun). We’ve all done 5 objective games, so there’s nothing foreign there, but don’t forget that it must go to Turn 6 and Turn 7 is a 4+. There’s a great deal of tricks you can pull off with the Warp Field; things that Eldar would be proud of. So give it a shot and let me know how the games turned out!

-Greg(Saab)

Saab's Mission Highlight of the Week: Mission #1

Mission # 1 Dawn of Confusion

This past October (2009), I attended the Da Boyz GT in Rochester, NY. Let me tell you; the decision to attend this October 16th, 2010 was agreed upon before we even started the 8+ hour car ride back home. Da Boyz hosted a wonderful event with top tier people, both in gaming skill and attitude. I was quite pleased by the willingness of the players to share ideas and great booze with those they’ve just recently met. Usually, when you start drinking rum at 10 AM things take a turn for the worse, but the day only got better. Tables were well constructed, missions were well written, and other than listing our club as The Wrecking Crew (we can ruin our OWN reputation, thank you very much j/k ) the whole event ran extremely smooth.

I want to examine one of their specific missions since I remember doing a double-take the first time I read it. Never had I played a mission where both players could complete the first objective! You can find a link to download the mission as a PDF. HERE.

Did you print it out yet? “Yes”

Good!

This is a prime example of how to present a mission correctly (in my opinion). It has a small fluff section, a section for mission special rules and game length, and an outline for the specific deployment. Note the picture of the deployment on the bottom right. This picture is absolutely necessary when you use different deployments such as the 3rd Ed(?) “triangles” , or if you alter a 5th Ed deployment like they did here. Also, it helps those like me who can’t remember what “pitched battle” means by game three cause your friends busted out the Jager early.

The Objectives are split into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sections, which I like. What stood out for me were the headings in parentheses. You knew the goal of the objective without having to really fish through a couple lines of text. The Objectives themselves aren’t too far fetched. We’ve all played victory points and objective markers.

I love interesting missions, but sometimes they can get too far outside the realm of 40K, and then you have an instance where The Mission defeated you, not The Opponent(I’ll expand on this in another post). However, this mission gave an interesting twist on target priority. You could spend time trying to kill your opponent’s two units, but at the same time you can’t neglect his other ones due to the fact the 2nd and 3rd Objectives are VPs and objective markers.

Having both players able to complete the Primary Objective was a new thing for me. At first glance, I was worried people would feed each other their two primary objective units, but in practice this was avoided due to Victory points. In my case my two units were a LR Crusader and Assault Termies. I wasn’t about to march those out to be killed; they were almost 500 points! The ability of both players to complete the primary objective also mitigated some differences between army power. Just because you had soft units didn’t mean you couldn’t put the boot to your opponent even though he squashed two of yours. You get 40 pts; he gets 20, everyone’s a winner! *kinda*.

Also notice that the secondary and tertiary objectives together are worth as much as the primary objective. I love this aspect of the mission. You can sometimes go up against an army that is an extreme “one-trick pony” who gets lucky with the primary mission objective being tailored to his strengths. Instead of going, “I’m boned!”, you can go and beat him on the secondary and tertiary objectives and still walk away on top. I ran into a 7 KP army with KPs as the primary objective (mine has about 15+ KP). Instead of panicking, I focused on winning the secondary and tertiary objectives when it became clear I couldn’t table him.

So all and all, I really enjoyed this mission and the Da Boyz GT, and I hope you do to. Even better, I hope to see some of you attend their GT in October 2010.

Cheers,
Greg (Saab)

Not the Same Ol' Song and Dance

I would like to welcome Greg Sabino to my blog! I first met Greg at the Baltimore GT in 2008 when I wound up playing against him, and we were both fairly new at 40k. I gave him a sound thumping, handed him my army list with my blog URL, and we became friends! He later bought one of my painting videos and I would like to claim full responsibility for his fantastic looking space marines! :) Just joking Greg. In truth, he puts many many hours into his hobby. He is a true student of his passion and it shows in his work. I am bringing Greg on because of his love for what he does. I personally can't think of any better reason! I am looking forward to seeing what he adds to the table. Jawaballs


My name is Greg S.(Saab) and I play out at Brothers Grim which is on the eastern end of Long Island. I have absolutely no desire to give tactical or list building advice because there are plenty of people on the internet who think they can provide such a service. Instead, I will hopefully provide a resource concerning missions, objectives, and new ways to enjoy the game of 40K.

If you play enough like me, I am sure you frown when you and a buddy roll “That Same Damn Mission“ from the back of the book. So each week, I will be building a database here at Jawaballs: The Blood Angels and Warhammer 40K Blog with various missions I’ve either played in tournaments, leagues, or wrote at 4am on the back of a napkin. A sort of “Mission of the Week!”. From time to time, I will also post up missions from various GTs around the country and highlight any new and interesting takes on the game of 40K.

What I want from YOU, the reader, is to give your feedback on these missions. Ask yourself, “Was their loop-holes? Did it favor one type of army? Was it fun?” etc. We work so hard on building and tweaking our armies that we deserve to use them in more than 3 types of “scenarios”. Will all of these missions, be amazing or life-changing experiences? No, but anything is better than rolling “Dawn of War / Annihilation “.

Now before I start posting up missions, I want to examine a key feature that affects all of us who play the game of 40K, “Mission Objectives”. In my time playing in tournaments, I have experienced two main systems; a Primary/Secondary/Tertiary format with Bonus Pts, and a Primary Only with Bonus Pts. I’ve always stated that I prefer the three mission objectives over one primary mission objective. One of my reasons is that I feel you get a better “spread” of scores. I believe this to be important because we use the Swiss Ranking System and it gets the best players playing each other instead of someone who just got lucky. However, I’ve never really sat down and looked at the scores before, which makes the researcher in me cringe (I’m in the last year of my Immunology PhD). If I am going to talk, it shouldn’t be out of my *ss. So I decided to graph up some scores from past GTs I’ve attended.


These data are from 5 game GTs, but the sample size is small because it was the only two GT numbers I had access to while in lab. These score all include bonus points received in addition to mission objective points.

Upon first glance I notice two things right away. First, in the 1 Objective (black) scores appear to be in three clusters. Secondly, the spread/slope of the Top 10 in the 3 Objective (red) is much steeper when compared to 1 Objective. When I look at the 1 Objective (black) graph, I feel like there was no clear winner. Anyone in that top group of 6 people could have received “Top Battle Points” that weekend due to how close it was. However, when looking at 3 Objective (red), there’s a clear 1st 2nd and 3rd. When you’re dealing with 3 objective missions, you really need to beat your opponent into submission to maximize your points. Where as with 1 objective, you can get lucky and still win the game with 15pts even though you only have 1 model left of the board at turn 5(this did happen that weekend). I ran the numbers in Excel and the slope of the lower scores from the 3 Objective graph is still steeper than the slope of the 1 Objective graph. Also, I’d guess that the three clusters in the 1 Objective (black) are derived from the ridged scoring system used.


So what am I getting at? Well, the vast majority of the missions I will be posting will use the 3 Objective system, and the graphs above are a partial reaffirmation of my gut-feeling concerning the topic. However, I’m not about to proclaim the superiority of 3 Objectives throughout the land. The 3 Objective system has its draw backs too, (You can forget about them until turn 4, they can get over complicated and lead to scoring errors, etc.), but overall, I find them to be more entertaining; and I hope you do too.

I have alot of work to do for my committee meeting, but I hope to have my first mission post up in a couple of days

-Greg (Saab)