Thursday, January 28, 2010

Secret Goals - Spicing up the Standard Missions

A while back I thought about a way to help spice up the standard missions (Capture and Control, Seize Ground, Annihilation), and thought I'd share it here too. 

Secret Goals

- Takes the standard mission objectives with a twist - you don't know what the other guy's goals are!

* Take counters/slips of paper with Annihilation, Capture&Control, and Seize Ground indicated on them. Best if have full set for each player. Each player secretly pulls one goal blindly. Keep the marker face down somewhere, to be revealed at the end of the game.

* Roll for deployment type/table sides. Then place 2+d3 objectives on the table. One must be in each deployment zone (players should start by placing these two) and can be within 12" of the table edge, otherwise follow the Seize Ground placement rules.

* Play game!

* At end of game, each player reveals their goal. To determine victory, compare results.
*Seize Ground - use all objectives to determine
*Capture&Control - use only the objectives in the DZs to determine
*Annihilation - use Kill Points to determine

*Does player achieve their goal? (More KP, objectives)
*Player 1 Yes, Player 2 No = Player 1 Victory
*Player 1 No, Player 2 Yes = Player 2 Victory
*Player 1 Yes, Player 2 Yes = Draw
(For these purposes, consider a draw for individual goals to be "no")

Example: Player 1 has Annihilation as his goal and gets 8KP to Player 2's 6. Player 2 has Capture&Control but each player controls one of the objective, resulting in a draw for that goal. End result - Victory for Player 1.

I think this would also work well in a tournament setting.  Each player gets a card with each goal type, and can choose which one to use for each game, but can only use each one once. Turn in your goal card with results sheet after each round.

I haven't had a chance to try it out myself, but think it would add an extra level to the game, as you don't know what the other player is going for, so have to watch out for all options.  You could also do a lot of faking-out, looking like you're going for objectives in order to draw the enemy out so you can kill them for your Annihilation goal, etc.  In a tournament setting, at least in the first couple of rounds you'll be able to choose the mission you think you'll have the best shot at against the opposing army - but so will the other player!

What do you think?  If you use it, please come back and let me know how it goes!

6 comments:

  1. Interesting... sounds like a much less crazy version of Rules of Engagement. Would be VERY interesting if mixed with the Dice Like Thunder mission set...

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  2. Hadn't actually looked at the DLT missions before - interesting, thanks for pointing them out!

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  3. The DLT book is excellent but I'll be giving your suggestions ago next time I meet up with one of my gaming buddies who likes alternative missions and rules.

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  4. Yeah, most of them are pretty good. The Assassination mission and the Crossed Lines deployments are pretty dumb, but the former might be viable in mixed objective play.

    But, if you haven't checked it out yet, go look on GWs website for Rules of Engagement (it should be free somewhere). Makes the normal 5th edition mission look like a piece of cake.

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  5. I did something similar with a tournament I ran a couple of weeks ago. They weren't secret, but players did have conflicting goals that were randomly rolled.

    I was excited to see how it would work out, but inevitably both players rolled the same mission with disturbing frequency.

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  6. That's too bad Rush!

    Maybe a way around it if you do it again would be to make a little table they roll on. Decide who is "Player 1" and who is "Player 2". P1 is player one, M1 is mission one, etc.

    1 - P1 M1 / P2 M2
    2 - P1 M1 / P2 M3
    3 - P1 M2 / P2 M1
    4 - P1 M2 / P2 M3
    5 - P1 M3 / P2 M1
    6 - P1 M3 / P2 M2

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