Per that rule, tabling your opponent does not instantly end the game unless he already had a turn in which he was in Retreat! If I table my opponent on the top of turn one, he has start his turn and get to the phase where retreat is calculated before the game ends.
It's pretty simple - you just have the victory points be based on interacting with the scenario objectives. Then you have two ways to play the mission, loosely - directly attack the scenario objective, or disrupt the opponent's ability to complete it by attacking them (probably in practice a bit of both). I won a game at a tournament this past weekend with 79 points remaining while my opponent had well over 200; I won it by completing the scenario objectives while killing his specialists. This is fine, I don't need the benefit of Retreat! potentially making him miss an entire turn to make this happen.
Fairly sure, being aware of that bias you can mitigate it somewhat if you wanted to. Even just collecting some data would provide a better basis for this discussion. My hypothesis is: Removing retreat would disproportionately reward killing and also further disincentivise specialists. The theory being, a list which brings specialists to complete the main objective, secondary and tertiary (classified) will be massively outgunned by a list which brings only just enough specialists to complete one of the above. The latter list then just aims for a turn 2 retreat. Giving them an entire turn to complete the objective, essentially giving that player first turn alpha and 2nd turn objective grab advantages. As this meta develops, both players bring very kill-centric lists. and games boil down to winning fire fights, and then sneaking one or two objectives. I think defensive fire teams would become even more favoured and the game could become polarised between defensive and offensive lists.
@Alphz Transmission Matrix uses the core Retreat! rules, and doesn't have the problem you mentioned. Most lists can defend themselves well enough to avoid being blown out. Players shouldn't be rewarded for failing to defend themselves. Bringing 9001 infiltrating camo state specialists should not be required to complete ITS missions, since not all factions can do that.
You should also stop implying that the player forced into retreat is always either; A) deficient in skill at the game B) benefitting from a retreat scenario I was put into retreat on the weekend against an Avatar list in Decapitation. My opponent had secured every objective bar killing my Lt, and only by virtue of being Morats did I have enough orders to scrape 2 OP by suiciding a Rodok to kill the Designated Target during the turn I was in retreat. If the game had ended that turn (decap doesn't have special Retreat clauses) i would still have been looking at a defeat, and my opponent a Major Victory - i would have gained no advantage over my opponent.
Cool - but I'm calling out your implication that being in Retreat! will always be a boon to the retreating player. Which is objectively wrong. A player who is already losing and behind in OP does not receive any boost by losing by a slightly smaller margin. The player who forced retreat does, generally speaking but again not in 100% of cases, lose out on opportunity to gain OP. You keep swinging around your opinions as though the game is 100% always the same way and the same circumstances, and that the player who lost their stuff is either a poor player or is maliciously gaming the system. It is tiresome.
Being in Retreat! isn't, but the game ending early almost always is. I have no problem with the Retreat! rules as presented in the core rules. If we're calling fielding a 74 point army and making it so the opponent doesn't get an active turn poor sportsmanship, I don't have much trouble calling people who put themselves into retreat or who run away with the game on their retreat turn the same thing. Retreat should exist so that a game where there is a clear winner doesn't have to continue, not to allow a player to run away with the game because they're failing to defend themselves.
Cool - so you're denying that the player who forced retreat has any ownership of having created the problem in the first place. And that tells me all I need to know about your approach to, and opinion on, this matter.
If you think that it's a "problem" for a deniable-ops force to attack another deniable-ops force, then you are promoting a fundamentally unfun style of game. It's not like the people involved have diplomatic immunity (except for possibly the HVT). It should basically never be a problem for a player to wipe out the enemy - it's a life and death struggle, they're the *enemy*. None of this "You're too violent, -50 carebear points" crap.
So I just played in a 3 round tournament. I sent all three of my opponents into retreat and won the tourney. The scenarios where button pushing of tic-tac-toe(he retreated bottom of second), kill and push buttons of frostbyte (he retreated at bottom of third turn here) and pure buttons of highly classified (he declared retreat on top of three). The defining feature in all of them was they lost enough to go into retreat the same time that I scored what I needed to, to win. In 2 of them they missed going into retreat on a turn earlier by several points and so they could do very little with 76-80 points ish remaining. On my turn I killed the remaining forces and finished pushing buttons to get as many points as i could. To say you sent someone in retreat accidently and lost is to make a mistake and deserve the loss. You could have spent orders going into suppressive fire or moving people for next turn. Again, if you are not on third turn there is another turn. I feel like this isn't stated enough, even to myself. If it isn't third turn, there is another turn. Being in a good spot and let your opponent make bad moves is an option. (For instance, minelayer does nothing for you if you always rambo on his side of the table, if he comes to you he can die to the mine. This is something I need to improve on and sounds like a mistake you made in your game as well) Stop killing and move people, push buttons, or go suppressive fire. Killing in a scenario mission is fun, but retreat just means you have to accept that there is a limit to kill things and just to kill the models that actually matter instead of everything.
@kinginyellow You're not supposed to know the points of enemy troopers, so it can't just be a matter of a play mistake.
2 parts about that. The first is that point cost is public on models death. And shock rounds against ariadna is effective at that. This is allowed by this rule under the private and open information: "Private Information about a trooper becomes Open Information when that trooper falls Dead and is removed from play as a casualty." The other is he volunteered the information so i could give him a hand with the answer of if he was in retreat or not. He was at 76 points left alive so that is pretty freaking close. He could have not used my help if he wanted but he decided to allow me to help as it's not like the point values would do me much good at this point. Either he is in retreat and has a long bomb attempt (and if so, gratz to him, I did put some significant aro pieces in his path) or he wasnt and I got another turn to completely wipe him out.
@kinginyellow First of all, troops in a null state still count for Retreat! so that information isn't available in the way you state. Second of all, if your opponent volunteered it that's a gimme. My point stands.
If they are unconscious I agree with you. The particular game in mind that I referred to was against caledonia (sp?) and so my shock weapons because assisted fire hmgs were my weapons of choice that game didnt leave anyone unconscious. Once they are shocked off the table, they become dead and do reveal their point value. But yea, didn't matter much from the gimmie in the end as we double checked if in retreat or not.
Transmission matrix also brings an inherent defensive net for the most effective Alpha strike units.... So yeah, I'd expect alpha to be less of an issue. If a list can defend itself fine, then why are there any issues with retreat, this is a contradictory statement. If you think retreat is an issue now, with people balancing between killing and specialists, the logical conclusion is further investment of one list into killing will introduce retreat more often. And if putting a list into retreat rewards you with a full turn to do the mission - a trivial task on many missions, people will continue to minimise specialists and maximize killing power. As for rewards... We've already had 6 pages to determine that's a completely subjective interpretation of what should be rewarded and who retreat is punishing. I don't think the current ITS requires a ton of specialists, and many of the changes to missions and the ITS deck have reduced it from last season.
A lot of people don't bring hackers, and there's plenty of unhackable rambo units. Why aren't we seeing a spat of blowouts in this mission? Of people being put into retreat and complaining about it? Could it be that the "Special ITS" retreat rules create more of an NPE than the core ones? I think so. Because some people game it, refusing to interact with their opponent and instead doing their best to play solitaire with the objective. And then if you try to stop them from doing it, and succeed well, they try to houdini their way out of giving you enough time to win the game. Disagree. You'll still have to protect your specialists from being scalpeled out (spec fire, Van Zant, etc), you need that ability to guarantee delivering specialists to the objective, and the best way to do that is redundancy. In terms of gameplay, however, more face to face rolls vs. the opponent and less normal rolls against consoles seem like a good thing; players enjoy interaction (bar Euro-style board games, which honestly should not be on people's minds when designing a miniatures wargame). It's changed somewhat, now that Datatrackers can complete missions, but in ITS 8 and 9 I was frequently looking at my Onyx and realizing that durability didn't matter unless it was on a specialist.
