Fighting to the Death

[KingJoe88]

I'm not all that new to 40k, but I don't live very near a FLGS, so I play almost all of my games against one of my friends. We love the game, but we don't use the rules for missions and game length; we just fight until one of us gets wiped out. Does anybody else play like that? The missions seem interesting, but it just doesn't make much sense to either of us to end the game when we both still have troops on the board. Are we missing out?

[scadugenga]

Many of the games w/my group of friends end up like this.

Apparently, it's more cathartic to have a knock down drag out slug fest. :)

And, you know what? I can't deny that it's fun.

But then, so are missions--and particularly the battle missions book.

[eldargal]

Yep, missions add a whole new layer of complexity to the game, making different lists and tactics viable etcetera.

Nothing wrong with an out and out slaughter though.

[JxKxR]

My pals and I usually play through the missions going by the turns and when the game "ends" we see who would have won then we keep going until there is a clear victor. We usually add up kill points, objectives held, objectives held each turn, and how many points you killed and how many points you still had left. It's nice to see who was the winner of the actual game, but it's also nice to see who would really win.

[Arch_Bishop]

I use to play like this, but I feel that the game is not designed to be played in such a way, so the outcome is not fair.

I don't think that the armies / units are designed to play for an indefinite period, therefore favoring certain units.

For example, DE are fragile but hard hitting, so they would not stand up well in a prolonged fight.

That said, every mission objective favors certain builds and units, just in a different way.

I am not suggesting for a second that the way you play is 'wrong', but give the missions a try (just standard objective holding ones) and see what the outcome is like. I guess it will depend on your armies and such, but I think you will find that it plays very differently.

I found when I switched from prolonged combats, to straight objective hold scenarios I actually enjoyed the game more, as I had something to focus on, other than just killing the enemy (this is always part of the game); it added a new layer.

[DarkLink]

I'm not the biggest fan of how the missions are laid out. I prefer the objective of "kill stuff" over the idea of holding an arbitrary point. There are cases where a military unit will have to hold a specific location for some reason, but most of the time warfare comes down to killing the other guy. Holding the hill isn't what wins you the fight. Holding the hill so you can kill all the other dudes is.

It's always nice to have a game that you win through a superbly clever little maneuver, though, and that is more easily facilitated by objective missions.


More variety of missions would be nice, unfortunately it's kinda tricky to make well-balanced missions.

[steelmage99]

There are cases where a military unit will have to hold a specific location for some reason, but most of the time warfare comes down to killing the other guy.


The days of meeting on a field and putting the enemy to the sword are long gone.

All modern military actions are about taking and/or holding objectives.

[gcsmith]

However, the main objective is to kill. Yes you may need intel, but in the end, you kill the other guy.
I am yet to see a war over a hill, maybe oil supply. But you need to kill them for it.

[eldargal]

Actually war has never particularly been about killing, the focus has always been on specific objectives. Controlling roads leading to a population centre, controlling the population centre, slowing an enemy advance, defending a population centre etcetera. Of course lots of killing is often involved, but that has seldom been the point. Generally battles were ought until one side achieved their objective or it became apparent that one side was outmatched at which point they retreated (or fled) to preserve what manpower they could. The kind of killing field style battles we think of today really only began in the Napoleonic Wars (Leipzig springs to mind) and later in the US Civil War and then achieving their apogee in the Great War.

When killing was the main objective, it was generally civilian populations that were targetted not the military.

[HsojVvad]

What you are doing is playing "house rules" by saying what the end victory objective is, and there is NOTHING WRONG with this at all. If it gives you more fun, that is great. Good for you guys. Don't let anyone else tell you.

Sometimes I like an all round slug fest, other times I like to play with objectives for something different than lets go kill everyone. But that is me. If you like to go out and kill everyone, go right ahead, that is pefectly fine. Your games, yoiu do what is FUN.

[SotonShades]

I love playing until everything is wiped out. Admittedly it is almost always my stuff that gets wiped out but still!

That said, I find the missions help focus the fun you are having. If you are just trying to destroy your opponant you can set yourself up in a good position and try to stop them getting to you, or just get in amongst their army. Great, you can have a fnatastic time doing that. But add a mission to that; suddenly you can be much more restricted as to where you can deploy, you may have to move out of your comfort zone to claim an objective (either putting you directly in front of your opponants guns or reducing your own lines of fire) and you have a limited amount of time in which to do it. All of these things help add to the tension and drama of what you are doing, wracking up the excitment massively and forcing you to try out different tactics such as sacrificing one unit to allow another to do something more important.

Ok, not every game is going to be like that, but I tend to find more are than if its just a straight up fight. I also like the slightly unbalanced scenarios such as a few of those in the battle missions book. Giving one side the advantages can put a real spin on the game, especially when the disadvantaged side manages to win, whether it is through having a better army build, superior tactics or just bucket loads of luck.

I would deffinitely say give the missions in the main rulebook a go. Three missions and 3 deployment types gives you a quite a bit of play, especially if you tweak your lists between games based on your experiences. A lot of people seem to be down on the battlemissions book, and I wouldn't advise buying it until you have played a lot of the main missions, but i think its a goldmine of tactical challanges. Try playing the missions that areen't for either of your armies, forcing you to come up with new tactics on the fly (never know, you might find something that works well for your normal games as well!)

If all else fails, once you've completed the game with 5/6/7 turns and worked out who's won, then grind each other's armies to dust!

[Lerra]

It's sometimes fun to play games to the last man standing, but with some armies the game can drag on. Plague marines, 150 guardsmen on foot, 90 kroot in forest with a 3+ cover save . . .

[DarkLink]

One of the things I liked about planetstrike was that it was pretty much inevitable that it would result in someone getting tabled.

Next edition, I'd like to see a wider variety of missions, some of which draw from the expansions. Planetstrike will end up with a brutal, everyone's dead sort of game, the current missions will play like they do now, and the other variants based on the other expansions will force you to design an army that can handle itself in a wider range of circumstances.