This may change with the next season of ITS missions, but currently in N4 we have the 4 missions in the rulebook. The rulebook contains the Retreat! rules which appear to apply to all games. So if you fall below the Retreat! threshold, you suffer the consequences e.g. LoL and your units not being able to fight. The rulebook also says that in a Standard game, the game ends at the end of a turn where a player started in Retreat! However, a Standard game means a game that doesn't use a Scenario. Annihliation and Firefight say that the game ends if one player has no models left. However, it doesn't say that Retreat! doesn't apply. So it would appear that if I can kill enough to put my opponent into Retreat! on their first turn, then the game will still last 3 rounds and I get to spend two turns hunting down the stragglers while they helplessly run away. Domination and Supplies say that the game ends if one player goes below the Retreat! threshold. It also doesn't say that Retreat! doesn't apply. So this would seem to be the same rule as Ends on Retreat from N3, just re-worded. Am I right that, in Annihilation and Firefight, the Retreat! state applies but doesn't end the game, so a player can potentially spend up to three turns in Retreat! ?
My understanding : - Restreat state is one thing. - Ending the game after a turn where a player started in Retreat! is another. In standard game (i.e custom mission, or no specific mission, just kill everything without turn limit) both apply. In some missions only the first thing will apply.
I don't recall any. There were plenty of missions with the "Ends on Retreat" wording, which seems identical to the N4 Domination and Supplies. There were also plenty of missions which didn't have Ends on Retreat but did have the "no retreat" rule. So when you dropped below 75 points you didn't go into retreat at all. I'm pretty sure there weren't any missions where, if you dropped below 75, you would go into retreat but the game would not end. I.e., missions that had neither the "Ends on Retreat" rule nor the "No Retreat" rule. Yeah, I think we're on the same page here. So in Annihilation and Firefight, if a player drops below the threshold, they'll start their next turn in the retreat state (LoL, models can't attack unless Religious, etc.), but the game won't end at the end of that turn.
On that note, I hope the N4 ITS missions handle retreat and end of game in a more consistent manner. It’s unnecessarily convoluted to have to double check termination conditions for every mission.
They have always been 3. 1) No Retreat. 3 full turns. 2) Retreat. 3 full turns. 3) Retreat. End in Retreat. You just need to check the Scenario rule No Quarter (that is "Retreat is not applied" that is in the first lines of the page) and then the Ending condition (that is in the last lines of the page). It should not be so difficult, once you understand there are multiple possibilities. Disclaimer. We played it wrong for a couple of years too, be assured. But not since we noticed...
I think there were only 2 or 3 missions in the past few seasons that played by the rulebook's handling of Retreat. The majority had Retreat ends Game.
CB kind of needs to decide what the retreat mechanic is supposed to accomplish and then make it uniform across all, or almost all, scenarios. As it stands it seems to be an attempt at a rubberbanding mechanic thst can be exploited.
I agree and I also think they have done so now. Kill too much (for some that's "play too well") and you risk losing out on points.
It accomplishes that goal in missions with EoR (Ends on Retreat). (The debate about whether that's a good goal, and whether EoR is a good way to accomplish it, has already been had elsewhere.) It doesn't accomplish that goal in missions that have Retreat but no EoR (which I hadn't, until now, realized existed). In the old Frontline or the new Annihilation and Firefight, Retreat doesn't penalize you for killing too much, it rewards you. As soon as you kill 225 points, your opponent becomes helpless and now you can keep scoring even more easily. It may accomplish other goals (realism, giving Veteran troops an additional raison d'etre, rewarding command token conservation, making some games go faster), but it doesn't punish a player for killing too much, just the opposite.
Still remains a tool for the winning player to exploit/fuck up. As long as you can guesstimate safely how many surviving points the other guy has, just leave 80ish points alive if you're not ready to close the game. I screwed that up like twice in all of N3 and only one of these ended in a tie as a result. If this was supposed to be a comeback mechanic it should give the party in Retreat a second wind injection of something like 3 Regular Orders to one of their Combat groups.
Right, in missions with EoR. In the missions with retreat but no EoR, you just kill as much as you can with no qualifications. If you get them down below 75, you get a nice bonus. They go into Retreat, the game doesn't end, you spend all your remaining turns mopping them up. Not saying that's good or bad, just that the conversation around Retreat/EoR as a check on mindless aggression doesn't apply to those missions.
I'm saying even EoR doesn't do anything for the losing Player and works against him. Retreat as mechanic makes winning easier while you're ahead.
Yeah, it doesn't work that well any more. Used to start at 66% losses instead of at 75%, which I'm not sure was better or worse, but I feel like retreat for a while hasn't been working as intended outside of games between new players.
Ah, fair enough then. Sounds like you and I are on the same side of the EoR debate. Anyway, my point in reply to @Mahtamori was that regardless of where you fall of the EoR debate, it doesn't apply to those missions that don't have it. We have three kinds of missions: 1. No Quarter: nobody is complaining about these. The goal is to kill as much as possible, there is no penalty for doing so, retreat doesn't exist. 2. Retreat + EoR: the purpose of this mechanic is to force players to focus on the mission rather than just killing, then doing the mission. There's a longstanding debate regarding whether the mechanic accomplishes that goal. (I was trying to avoid reopening that debate, but this is the Internet, so I suppose the thread will probably head down that road now.) 3. Retreat, but no EoR: the type of mission this thread is about. Turns out they existed in N3 but I didn't know. In N4, two of the four currently existing missions are in this category. Retreat in these missions does not force players to focus on the mission rather than just killing, rather, it provides an extra incentive to kill first and then do the mission. But in N4, the two missions in this category are all about killing anyway. Anyway, the purpose of the OP was just to point out that category 3 exists, and to confirm it was intentional and not a typo. Seems that it is intentional, since such missions already existed previously.
I've never seen EOR work in favour of the winning player. It's difficult to exploit for the losing player, particularly now that Fall Damage has been removed. @QueensGambit Ends On Retreat is standard in N4. Missions that do not end in Retreat needs to explicitly call this out now. That's what I mean with that CB has decided what they want to do with the rule. I realize my response to Hecaton was a bit vague on reading it again, but it's primarily a response to the first part of Hecaton's post.
I hope you're right, but I don't see that in the rules. The Retreat! rule itself doesn't include EoR. The rules for a Standard Game _do_ include EoR. However, a Standard Game seems to mean a game that doesn't use a Mission or Scenario. ("In a Standard Game, the players meet on the battlefield... There is no specific objective, except destroying the enemy...") The general description of "Mission or Scenario" doesn't include EoR. The specific rules for Supplies and Domination explicitly include EoR. The specific rules for Annihilation and Firefight instead state that the game will end at the end of a turn in which a player has NO troops left alive (which would be redundant if EoR was also in effect). Hence my conclusion in the OP that EoR doesn't apply in Annihilation and Firefight. I would like to be proved wrong, so please point out what I'm missing!
Oh right, yeah yeah. Standard Game isn't the same as a standard game. Standard Game is a game without scenario, to just set up and shoot at each other. Confusing nomenclature, I wouldn't ever consider a game without objectives to be "standard". Heh. Seems the missions in the book has disentangled EOR from the Retreat! state for objective-focused missions by setting a minimum amount of VP you have to have alive and kicking, while killing missions you simply check if there's anyone left alive to command.
