The fundamental thing to understand about Maelstrom is that kill points don't matter. Indeed, killing things other than priority targets is basically redundant. What matters is scoring those VP cards. If you spend your first three turns deleting enemy units while stationary, you might find yourself 9 points down and unable to recover. There is one exception, which is the mission where you draw one card per game turn (i.e. 1 card on turn 1, 2 cards on turn 2 etc). This mission gives you a little bit of leeway to take out priority threats before you start scoring. But don't count on that mission. It's 1 in 6 and there is another mission where you draw in reverse and the game comes down to who can stay ahead of their hand.
The main thing is to build a list that can score as many of the cards as possible and makes as many cards as possible redundant for your opponent. So what are the key things you need to be able to do to score cards? If I were to rank them in order of priority, they would be:
1. Score distant objectives
2. Kill tanks
3. wipe out units in assault
4. wipe out units with shooting
5. Cast psychic powers
6. slay the warlord (preferably in a challenge)
7. score first blood
8. score line-breaker
9. Issue (and win) challenges
10. Win challenges
11. kill flyers
12. rapidly re-deploy (for things like D6+6 VP for securing all objectives)
13. Score objectives in your backfield
14. destroy buildings/high AV targets
* It's also nice to have a Warlord who can roll on the Maelstrom related Warlord traits table with a re-re-roll.
And don't forget that you want to stop your opponent from doing these things whenever possible. Let's start with a sample list. This army, piloted by our best player, won our annual tourney this year.
Imperial fists tactics, 1500 points
Chapter master with bike, storm shield, thunder hammer, artificer armour
Librarian with bike, force axe, meltabombs
Bikes (5) with 2 flamer, 1 combi-flamer
Bikes (5) with 2 plasma, 1 combi-plasma
Bikes (4) with 2 melta-gun, 1 combi-melta, attack bike with multi-melta
Sternguard with 5 combi-melta in drop pod
5 tactical terminators with one assault cannon
Devastator Squad with 2 lascannons, 2 rocket launcher with flakk missiles
Thunderfire cannon
Now keep in mind that our tournament uses a janky weighting system to give slight bonuses for winning with extra crappy lists. I think the terminators resulted from that. So if I were to do this list over slightly I might swap the terminators for a command squad with grav-guns on bikes (and swap to scars), a storm Raven, or some devastator centurions (potentially with lascannon, missile launcher given the fist tactics and no way to move them). I imagine he used the terminators as a kind of rock and to deepstrike onto distant objectives where necessary.
Leaving that to one side, note that this list can score all the objectives and makes a lot of your opponent's cards redundant. The bikes can score distant objectives with ease and race back to your side of the board to score 'three units within 12 of your board edge'. The Chapter master will score you the assault card by blowing up tanks with his fist. The bikes can do a similar job with krak grenades and melta bombs in a pinch. The melta guns and devastator squad kill tanks at range. The thunderfire does the same for infantry (and provides some much needed crowd control, along with the flamers). The librarian casts powers (would be curious what he rolls on). The Chapter master can go toe-to-toe with any other IC in a challenge and prevail. He is likely to get you all the challenge related points without giving up slay the warlord. First blood comes courtesy of the Sternguard, linebreaker from the multitude of bikes and the drop pod (your only vehicle). Killing flyers is a little tough, but the flakk missiles and/or a skyfire nexus mysterious objectives (all the Maelstrom missions use these, which makes flyers a lot weaker) can get the job done, and who plays flyers anyway? Bikes and melta guns account for objectives 12 and 13.
Meanwhile the list doesn't give away any points. The bikes obviously aren't meant to engage (no scout, small size, no assault) so they just run away at the first sign of trouble. The CM is tough. The devastators hide in bolstered cover with the cannon. The terminators have 2+/5++ and are comfortable in assault. You deny first blood with the Sternguard and your backfield has big guns for countering linebreaker. You have no flyers or buildings and only one tank (the pod, which your opponent might be dumb enough to kill before they draw the appropriate card, and even then has 12 all round and 3HP).
When playing Maelstrom missions with an appropriate army, focus on scoring the cards and secondary objectives With appropriate armies, this will usually mean placing objectives outside of area terrain but behind some LoS cover so you can easily swing by when necessary and dislodge OB-Sec units that might be guarding them (they won't get a cover save). Refrain from casualties and wars of attrition and plan instead to be able to score cards as you draw them. For example, if there is a drop pod sitting in your deployment zone, don't pop it until you draw big game hunter. Prioritising killing stuff rather than scoring is only appropriate if your opponent has a unit that will absolutely ruin your day, like a Chapter Master, thunderfire cannon, farseer, Wraithknight, Riptide, Centurion star etc. If you're playing marines these are the targets you send your Sternguard at when going for first blood.
Be attentive to first blood. If you don't have some obvious way to score it, like scouting black knights or pod-born Sternguard, try to identify something you can kill on the cheap in your opponent's army, like a Rhino, assassin, infiltrators, or some infantry on foot, and wipe it out pronto. Unlike the cards, the secondary objectives are a double swing because if you get them your opponent can't, which means it's really worth 2 points not 1.
Note that some builds just don't work in Maelstrom or are significantly hampered. Anything that relies on late game objective grabbing - most death stars, daemon flying circus, turtle guard etc - won't work. Really durably armies with low damage output and few scoring bodies, like Deathwing, won't work. Scouting your entire army forward (as I did in the tournament) is not as great because you will likely have a backfield objective to stay close to. Keep all these things in mind when list building and you should be fine.
I'm planning to run something like this once I get it painted. It's a summoning list with a rush core. If you roll 4+ on the psychic dice table you can summon 2 units in a turn. If it comes off turn 1 bring two squads of horrors onto the board, then spam Daemonettes, hounds and letters (I don't have that many models so I can't just put demonettes down) through the middle of the game before bringing up a handful of screamers on the last turn to boost onto distant objectives if necessary.
Demon Prince of Nurgle with wings, ML3, spell familiar
Sorcerer on bike with ML3, spell familiar, force axe, melta-bombs
5 CSM in Rhino with meltagun, combi-melta, meltabombs
5 CSM in Rhino with meltagun, combi-melta, meltabombs
5 spawn with MoN
helldrake with baleflamer
helldrake with baleflamer
maulerfiend with tendrils
maulerfiend with tendrils
Can score all the objectives, but does give your opponent a shot at scour the skies and purge the witch, and will have a hard time scoring first blood before your opponent does. Still, Drakes are pretty resilient (and the best AA for Chaos) and the Sorcerer is T5 and embedded with the Spawn.
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