A few questions about tournament play

Got a play test game in last at my gaming club in prep for an ITC event this weekend. I must say, I am really loving the change of pace of playing Dark Eldar! It was against a necron decurion with canoptek harvest. I pulled out a tie by scoring all the objectives on the final turn. I feel pretty good about that for my first hardcore game with DE.

The game war really close, but it came down to a few things I couldn't really control. I just couldn't kill his wraiths and destroyer lord with lychguard (no suprise there), but I did lure him to attack my unit of talos in middle of table where he finally killed me after 6 rounds of combat. The talos were my distraction unit and they worked to a tee, and his units got out of position and couldn't do anything after finally killing me. (BTW, I didn't get a single wound through! a 3++ with 4+ RP is tough for DE).

My problem was I couldn't hold objectives. In ITC you only score them if you hold them until the top of your NEXT turn and he prevented me from getting 3 points that way, which would have won me the game since I would have scored secondary then. I also rolled kill points on at least one malestrom for each turn, which meant I didn't get it for 2 turns (to be expected against decurion).

To the questions:
- Does anyone have any tips on being able to hold objectives through an opponents turn? Or is this an auto-lose? I'm good with end game grabs, but ITC scoring is a drag for DE.
Do we have anything to manipulate reserves (if Death from the Skies isn't played), I failed 6/8 reserve rolls on turn 2 ( I null deployed with scapel formation)? I can't find it, but maybe I'm missing something.
What percentage of armies are things you really can't take on that well and you just wind up playing monkey-in-the-middle/keep-away for 5 turns? This will help with my list building.

I've had good results in ITC formats.

Holding objectives is damn near impossible if the opponent tries to contest. (You can try to maximize cover, minimize exposure, or screen your units if you're just worried about getting shot off.) I haven't found a great solution, though.

Your reserves sounds like a very unlikely bad luck result. I wouldn't sweat it. Although after games I like to ask myself if each unit NEEDED to be reserved, to improve my judgment as I go.

Walkers and GMC/SH are kind of a problem for me, but not insurmountable.

You need to concentrate onto destroying the enemy's ability to hold the objectives for first rounds. Your enemies will expect you to try and hold objectives and play accordingly. Don't. Choose objectives with favourable positions that will allow you to keep your army together and concentrated and play eradication, where he plays for holding objectives. He will score the objectives in first turns. Your time is in the last turns. Bait him with putting cheap units, damaged vehicles and remnants of units onto objectives within his reach. His decision to spend his force to remove the unit from the objective has to be equally bad as leaving it to hold it.

As aurynn pointed out its important to not get too involoved in scoring for at least the first 2 game turns, instead destroy the units that he will be using to either score or contest you, like fast moving units.

I've made the mistake time and time again of trying to pick up Maelstrom pts (either ITC or tactical cards) in the early game turns and for Dark Eldar it doest really work. You are better off attacking aggressively for the first 2 game turns whilst still planning your T3 scoring moves.

There are at least 5 game turns, if you spend 2 of them weakening your opponent then you will have 3 of them to score, and potentially overtake what he scored during T1 and T2

This seems like a harsh rule- hold onto an objective until the start of your next turn. It is not something we do in NZ. Come play here!

Seriously though, what is the point of this rule?

I'd agree with those before me though. Preserving units until Feel No Pain is kicking in and destroying vanguard units would appear to be the go.

The only problem with that is you will get behind on objectives and then have to really work hard to pull out a tie,especially considering the last turn won't score. I'll try it though. For the event tomorrow I'm dropping the scapel formation to make reavers, they were my all star.

It's really hard to pull a Maelstrom win from behind from the beginning of the game. Sometimes the dice will determine whether you win or lose mealstrom honestly. Especially because a lot of games end before turn 5. (like every game it seems)

The reason the ITC scores at the start of your next turn is because it allows more player interaction by giving the opponent a possibility to stop you from scoring. I like giving players more in game choices and player interaction. It is true that this makes it super hard for us to score. Such is the life of an archon.

It also means Maelstrom is irrelevant in the final turn (since there is no next turn to score on).

Jimsolo wrote:

It also means Maelstrom is irrelevant in the final turn (since there is no next turn to score on).

Exactly.

Which means, if you end a game on turn 4, you only have 3 turns of scoring maelstrom. So if your opponent gets a 2-0 lead in maelstrom on turn one, you are going to have to do a lot of work or get lucky with the dice rolls to turn that around. That's been my experience.

A mod should probably move this to tactics but anyway...

Watch the latest Skared cast on youtube, it's ITC and very informative.

You want to go second,
be able to do null deploy if you have to,
try to score all objs every turn,
have lots of obsec,
keep your army alive to score objs at end of the game
and kill his fast obj takers.

Add your own tips to this list.

Fair enough, for these ITC peeps to make that call about holding objectives but it does screw over certain armies.
Generally you win maelstrom missions by being everywhere the objectives are. Do they mix eternal war missions too, so that there are primary, secondary and tertiary ways to topple an opponent?

Yes.

So there are 6 missions. (You can take a look at the scenario papers here if you want a first hand account: https://www.frontlinegaming.org/community/frontline-gamings-independent-tournament-circuit/itc-2015-season-40k-tournament-format/
The season ends in February, so these might change slightly in the new season. )

Each mission has an eternal war mission aspect of it (the primary mission) and a maelstrom aspect of it (the secondary mission). And each mission has 3 different tertiary points as well, usually stuff like slay the warlord, linebreaker, and first blood; but there are different tertiaries mixed in like first strike (both players have a chance to earn the "first blood" point) and table quarters (have most units in a table quarter at end of game) and big gamehunter (destroy the largest point unit).

The primary is worth 4 points, the secondary is worth 4 points, and the tertiaries are worth 1 each. So a complete win would yeild you 11 points. If you get say 6 points and your opponent gets 5, then you still get a win.

I enjoy it because if you play the mission Purge the Alien and play against an elite army with only a few units, its not an auto lose because you can still try to score more maelstrom points than them to pull out a win. It still might be very hard to win, but the chance is there.

I hope I've made sense here

Like Yukon said, the ITC doesn't use straight Maelstrom. They call it 'modified maelstrom' since it includes aspects of both. I like it because it favors neither fast, super mobile armies nor resilient gunline armies.

Cool, then that is the way we do it here in NZ, too. Except for the fact that you can score maelstrom points in your own player turns. I guess this ITC ruling would probably steer me toward selecting coven elements for the extra resilience and jet bikes for higher toughness coupled with speed.

I play ITC almost exclusively and what I have great success with is ob sec venoms with barebones warriors inside. Unless it is deep in their territory, opponents have a hard time taking out the vehicle and the passengers (especially if you have other threats on the table that they're more concerned with). You get get to choose 2 out of the 3 maelstrom objectives you rolled too so it's not often that you have to take one where a sacrifice is required. My dark eldar lists typically have 25ish units though so I just expect I'll be feeding a couple of them to enemies and accept the small loss in points.

Hi,

I use the Real Space Raiders detachment for the fast attack attack slots, but if I played ITC I would play double CAD MSU. You need the small sacrificial units to prevent the opponent getting objectives and help you get objectives because the opponent has to kill you or contest with an objective secured unit of their own. Empty objective secured transports are great for this. Small 3 model reaver squads are also good for turbo-ing to far off objective. This will allow you to stay in the game early game while you whittle down the enemy units you need to, either key enemy threats or in the case of tough deathstars the rest of the army to make scoring maelstrom points easy later.

Also +1 to the earlier suggestion to check out Skared Cast on youtube. The battle reports on this forum are also good reading.

Rathstar

I'll be honest, I use a list that has three different factions (Eldar, DE, Corsairs) just with Dark Eldar as the primary detachment. (Which in the ITC is just the one with the most points.)