I'm not keen of Highly Classified in a tournament setting but in casual games it tends to produce very interesting games in my experience.
I like highly classified a lot, myself. Generally any mission that forces you to be flexible is good.
I got tired of random randomness that does things randomly at random when playing 40K. It was one of the most major issues I had with the ruleset. Highly Classified is also probably the only remaining mission in ITS that doesn't afford armies equal opportunities due to how restrictive certain specialists can be (no, the TAG missions aren't in that boat because running a mission without a TAG doesn't risk you not being able to score) Of course I don't like Highly Classified.
I guess, I can see your point. Thank you for sharing. A mission should be fun to play and as I understand your statement, Highly Classifieds is no fun at all for you. I agree, there can be an obnoxious situation in Highly Classified - but for me it is the point, where you are trying to damage your own remotes by jumping from rooftops in order to put them back together. That's the worst from my point of you. Holding back at shooting is not expected in general, but to avoid wounding the enemy does not mean to avoid killing him. Still - very strange situation (but adds to the fun for me.) Concerning CHA or every other very specialised sectorial as an argument, that they cannot do [everything] and therefor the mission is unfair - well, I have another point of view. Every generic army should be able to compete in every mission. Cherry-picking only parts of it by taking sectorials does not necessarily have to be competitive on every mission. Concerning tournaments - the missions are announced beforehand - pick the right tool (army) and try your best. If every army and sectorial would be capable of achieving everything on an equal level it would definitely reduce the diversity of the individual factions and sectorials. This is - of course - open to controversy, but I prefer diversity over equality. Classified objectives were all about rolling dice - but connecting antennas and so on are about rolling dice, too. I can see no difference here - but that does not mean, that bad luck can't definitely ruin your well-played game. You are right, but I think it is in the nature of the game.
Agree wholeheartedly! You're not playing Highly Classified if you do that, but a custom mission (which is allowed now, I admit).
The last part on its own is probably worth a mention in the context of this thread: If your group doesn’t like something, technically it doesn’t keep you from organizing ITS tournaments
Last time I played HC, I jumped a dude off a roof to mark a corpse on the other side of the battlefield, fall unconcious and be doctored for double scoring. What a garbage fire of a mission
Well, there's more to it than that. I think that Hunting Party, as a mission, has a lot of problems - but it's still usually fun for me. For me it takes away from it. It's also points that, in theory, your opponent can score in their own dz without you able to do anything about it. I really disagree; since players will often play only a sectorial and not an entire faction. Also, players frequently buy into sectorials individually rather than entire factions, since they've started emphasizing each sectorial's unique identity. Some missions (Looting & Sabotaging, for example) are more extreme cases, but in general, I think missions that have strong favoritism towards or against individual factions or sectorials should be discouraged. The issue is there is much *more* randomness - you don't know which Classified objectives you're going to get, and unlike with on-board objectives you can't get the bonus for running the right type of specialist. Infinity will always have *some* randomness, but as I see it Highly Classified has *too much*. The last game of it I played was basically decided by how the rolls shook out, not our tactical decisions.
I can't deny, I enjoy the mission, but still - points taken. I will reconsider my position. Thank you for taking your time to elaborate.
I agree that Highly Classified can be a fun friendly game, but I really don't think it has any business in a tournament.