Ok, so it's not a "perfect guide" and I'm a little disappointed in that it's not really written with a tournament in mind. Unless GW is actually suggesting that you could potentially re-write your list, at different points levels, for each game throughout a tourney. I mean it's great that the missions are supposed be play tested with a balanced tournament environment in mind, but wasn't the whole idea of the book to lay out how a tournament should be played? Instead you get a sequence of 16 steps that outlines how to play a single battle starting from select battle size through placing objectives, choosing secondaries, deploying armies, and determining the winner. In a tournament, you don't do steps 1 or 2, and usually step 3 and 6 are already done as well.
In the end, TOs will still have to come up with tounament packs outlining all things that GW has overlooked when creating their Tournament Pack. Unless they bring out an FAQ, which just seems messy.
I would like to bring your attention to one fairly important line in step 6 after the battlefield size chart. It says that terrain features cannot be set up on top of objective markers (cause objectives are placed before the terrain is). Which means one of 2 things, TO's will have to find terrain patterns that don't cover any of the places where objectives are located, or that players will have to move the terrain if it happens to be in the way.
Lets get to the Primary Objectives as there are only 2 of them and they are pretty much the same. They are progressive style meaning that you earn points throughout the game, similar to the ITC primary objectives. Points are earned, starting on the second battle round, at the end of each players Commend Phase. Take and Hold sees a player earn 5 points if they hold one objective, 5 more points if they hold 2 or more objectives, and 5 more points if they hold more objectives than the opponent. Domination is nearly the same except it's hold 2 objectives, 3 or more objectives, and hold more objectives than your opponent. This is for a total of 15 points per turn, and it caps at 45 points per battle.
This is going to turn the game on it's head. It puts an emphasis on unit mobility and even more importantly durability. Since points are scored at the end of your Command Phase and your Command Phase happens at the start of your turn, you have to make it to the objective then weather an entire turn of your opponent's shooting to score. Objective Secured is also a thing, making Troops valuable, so durable Troops are extra valuable.
So now we get to try to figure out what is better, taking the first turn or the second turn and this is not an easy question. If you have the first turn you will get to move out first, claim the board, and strike first. However, as I mentioned, terrain features cannot be placed on objectives, and leaving them out in the open gives Player 2 a really good opportunity for a counter punch by either shooting the units out in the open or assaulting the ones that moved up to grab objectives and taking the objectives for themselves. Taking the first turn does give you an advantage at the end of the game as you will have the last crack at removing enemy units from objectives in turn 5, without really have to worry about consequences. You would have scored all your points and the only thing to need to worry about is if your opponent has a secondary focused on killing something. All in all, for the progressive scoring primary mission, I think it's probably a little better off to take the first turn.
On to the Secondary Objectives, and this is going to take us a while cause there are quite a few. First off, there are 5 different categories, each one having 3 or 4 objectives. You must pick 3, none of which can be from the same category, and each earning you a maximum of 15 points for a total of 45 points. Right off the bat I can see that it is going to be extremely difficult to score max points for all of these so you will really have to "hedge your bets" and pick the ones you can score the most on.
First up we have Battlefield Supremacy category which has 3 objectives in it, Engage on all Fronts, Linebreaker, and Domination. Each of these are pretty straight forward "control the table" progressive objectives and are scored at the end of your turn. Scoring them at the end of your turn is pretty big as it means you're opponent can't really stop you from scoring these.
Engage on all Fronts is table quarters, you get 2 points if you have units wholly within 3 table quarters and 3 points if they are wholly within 4 table quarters. Your units also have to be more than 6" from the table centre. Since games are set at 5 battle rounds, this means you have to achieve this mission to it't full potential every turn in order to score max points, which is very unlikely. Although this mission is pretty good for certain fast moving armies with tons of little sacrificial units, Dark Eldar and Genestealer Cults come to mind. With the new Strategic Reserves rules you can put unimportant unit in reserve and bring them in mid game.
Linebreaker has you scoring 4 points if you have 2 or more units wholly in the enemy deployment zone. This one gets you full points after 4 turns, and honestly isn't that hard against some armies, yet is down right near impossible against others. If you have a bunch of fairly durable units that can deep strike on their own, then this might be the mission for you, getting them in deep and in cover on turn 2 and get them stuck in, hopefully staying alive for the duration.
Domination earns you 3 points if you control MORE than half of the objectives on the table at the end of your turn. Now this one seems like it would be really hard to accomplish, but with the right objective placement, and enough sacrificial units, and if your opponent is content with sitting back for a couple turns, you could score pretty high with this one, particularly on missions with an odd number of objectives like The Scouring or Sweep and Clear.
The No Mercy, No Respite category has 3 objectives, Thin Their Ranks, Grind Them Down, and While We Stand, We Fight. Each of which you need to be focused on throughout the battle despite 2 of them having end game objectives.
Thin Their Ranks involves killing vast numbers of models or monsters. Keep a tally of the number of enemy models killed (adding 10 to the tally for models with 10 or more wounds). At the end of the battle take the tally and divide it by 10 and round DOWN, thats how many points you earned. It becomes pretty obvious what armies this becomes good against as you have to kill 150 models, 15 models with 10+ wounds, or a combination of both. Orks, Tyranids, and Guard are examples of armies to take this one against. Because this one has an end game objective, taking second turn is not too bad. Your opponent will possibly make some aggressive moves on his last turn to try and push you off objectives, hopefully thinning his already thinned ranks, making picking off straggling models all the more easier.
Grind Them Down earns you 3 points at the end of each battle round that you kill more units than your opponent. This one could actually come back to bite you in the ass if you happen to kill too many things too early on. You need to score this one every battle round to score max points, so going second and being able to know just how many units you need to kill is going to be very important. Then being able to restrain yourself to killing only the units you need to max out the points is going to be a challenge.
Finally, While We Stand, We Fight is basically keeping your 3 most points-expensive models alive till the end of the game, for each one that lives you earn 5 points. I don't like this one as I'll be throwing my expensive models at the enemy hoping to kill stuff. I'm not even too sure which army this one would be good for in general as all large models tend to bite the dust eventually. However, I have a suspicion that offensive tactics are going to take a bit of a back seat to durability in this edition, so perhaps there will be some armies that can take advantage of this. I could see some Chaos armies with Deamon Princes making this one work as Princes can benefit from Look Out Sir, but they would likely be Thousand Sons style armies with little assault offence. Again, being an end game objective means if you can push them out in to compromising positions at the end of the game and not worry about them getting killed, and if you can hide them well in deployment thats two turns you don't have to worry about them.
Purge The Enemy is a category that straight up requires you to kill shit which means they are all end game objectives.
Titan Hunter requires you to kill Titanic models. 10 points for killing one, 12 points for killing 2, 15 points for killing 3. Now if you are up against knights, you will likely want to take first turn, even more so if you have an army that can kill knights pretty well. This one isn't even all that bad if your opponent only has one knight as 10 points is not a small number of points. Keep in mind, it not a good choice if your army is built around surviving, and not killing. That seems obvious but I have seen players make the mistake of taking titan slayer in ITC against a knight army when they couldn't easily kill knights just because that's what everyone did when you played against Knights.
Bring It Down earns you 2 points for each Monster or Vehicle with 10 or fewer wounds killed and 3 points for each Monster or Vehicle with 11 or more wounds killed. This one is brutal for Dark Eldar as they seem to have tons of vehicles and monsters, all of which are not overly difficult to kill.
Cut Off The Head is scored by only killing a single model, the warlord. However what turn you do it in determines how many points you get, 13 for turn one down to 1point if you kill him in turn 5. You saw that right, you cannot score the max points in this one, but if you get first turn and your opponent has a big model as a warlord, like a single Knight or Magnus, and you can kill it, then it's a no brainer. But they can put their warlord in Strategic Reserves now, they might have to pay some CP to do it, but it would be worth it for them. Keep in mind they will have to bring him in on turn 3 at latest, and all the while he is not on the table, so you may actually be able to use this as a valid tactic to keep the big scary thing off the table. There is also a weird interaction with Daemons that is going to need an FAQ(I think). At the end of the mission description it says that if a model is resurrected or "OTHERWISE RETURNED" to the battlefield that they have to be killed again to score the points. Now, there is a FAQ about summoning that says something to the effect of if a named character is killed can it be summoned again (assuming you have points available) and the answer is yes. So if you can summon a named character that was just killed, could you summon your warlord back to the table after it was killed? Maybe I'm just an asshole...
Finally we have Assassinate, which earns you 3 points for each Character killed. This one is actually going to be a little trickier than you might think as there will likely be fewer detachments taken in games, meaning fewer characters. While there are some armies that need a bunch of characters, your opponent can also put some of these models in Strategic Reserve if needed to keep them alive.
Shadow Operations is a category of objectives that use a new mechanic brought into the game, an action. In order to START to perform an action a unit must not be in ENGAGEMENT RANGE, have Advanced, or Fallen Back plus it needs to meet whatever criteria the specific action requires. While performing the action the unit cannot make a Normal Move, Advance, Fall Back, cast a psychic power, shoot, charge, or perform a Heroic Intervention or it will end the action. So the unit can still Pile In, Fight, and Consolidate. Also notice that most of these actions are started at the end of the movement phase, so you can make a Normal Move, Advance, and Fall Back before you start this action.
Raise The Banners High combines end game with progressive objectives. It requires an Infantry unit to start an action at the end of it's movement phase and it must be within range of an objective that has no enemy units within range of it and is completed at the end of the turn. Multiple units may perform this action but they must be performed on different objectives. When this action has been completed place a marker on that objective and at the end of your Command Phase, and at the end of the game, you earn 1 point for each marker you have. Markers are removed if an enemy unit controls an objective with a marker. This one is pretty good since your going to be trying to hold on to those objectives for the primary mission anyway. This just doubles down on your objective holding abilities. It's also pretty good for taking the second turn as you can essentially score points twice on turn 5, once in your command phase and then at the end of the game without having to worry about any kind of retaliation.
Investigate Sites requires a non-character Infantry unit to start to perform an action at the end of your movement phase if you are within 6" of the centre of the table and there are no enemy models within 6" of the centre of the table. This will earn you 3 points at the end of your turn making it a progressive objective. This one is pretty easy to disrupt especially if your opponent has quite a few throw away units like guard as all they have to do in their turn is get a model within 6" of the centre of the table to prevent you from starting that action since you have to start the action before you can kill off the enemy units. Very difficult to score high points unless you can completely cover the centre of the table and not get pushed off. Maybe Primaris Marine death ball, or Nurgle Daemons?
While Deploy Scramblers can only score you 10 points, it is an end game objective that is incredibly easy to accomplish especially if you have deep strikers. There is a bit of a gable in that it's all or nothing. In order to score those points a non-character infantry unit must complete an action in your deployment zone, in "no man's land" (6" away from any deployment zone), and in your opponents deployment zone. What makes it so easy is that the action is started at the end of your movement and completed at the end of your turn. Perfect for Genestealer Cults who are bringing in units all over the table. Keep in mind that the unit can't really do anything after starting the action, so it has to be somewhat a throw away unit.
Teleport Homer is only a viable mission if you find that you have a couple units that make it into your opponents deployment zone and don't die...even when your opponent is trying to kill them. This action requires one infantry unit to start it at the end of the movement phase and be wholly within the enemy deployment zone and is completed at the end of your next Command Phase. If you can do this each action completed earns you 4 points. This one is really hard to accomplish multiple turns of but, as I said, if you happen to have units that spend 3-4 turns in the opponents deployment zone weathering turn after turn of punishment then perhaps this one is for you. While you're at it you might as well take Linebreaker.
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| Time to start working on your chakras... |
For the last category of objectives we have Warpcraft which require you to perform Psychic Actions, another new mechanic. A Psychic Action is performed the same way a power is manifested, can't be done if you performed a Fall Back move, can be denied with Deny the Witch, and can cause a Perils of the Warp on double 1's or 6's. If a Psyker unit performs a Psychic Action it cannot attempt to manifest any other powers. However, I do find it interesting that it looks like a model can perform both an Action AND a Psychic Action,
Ironically the first mission, Abhor the Witch, requires you to have no Psykers, and earns you 3 points for each Psyker unit killed and 5 points for each Psyker Character killed. Pretty straight forward. Now, from what I can see, there is nothing that stops secondaries from stacking, so if your playing against an army with a ton of Psyker characters this one goes well with Assassinate. Otherwise it's pretty much an auto take vs Grey Knights or T-Sons.
Mental Interrogation requires one of your Psyker Characters to pass a Psychic Actions with a Warp Charge of 4 while within 18" of an enemy Character for 3 points. Only one of your Characters can perform this action per Psychic Phase, so you have to pull it off in all 5 turns to score max points. This is not too difficult to pull of if a certain number of boxes can be ticked. Your enemy does not have any Psykers that can Deny the Witch, your opponent is playing an army where his Characters needs to get into your face, you have the second turn, and you don't absolutely need your Psyker Characters to manifest other psychic powers. If you check all those boxes then this one is a possibility for you. I'm thinking maybe Guard with a couple Astropaths or something like that.
Psychic Ritual is an all or nothing, for 15 points. One Psyker Character must perform a Warp Charge 3 Psychic action three times within 6" of the centre of the table. All three actions must be performed by the same Psyker. This one seems like it's an easy one to pull off, but again there are a number of things to check off. You have to be certain that you can keep your character alive to perform all 3, you also don't need that Character to be manifesting other powers. You also need to be comfortable holding the centre of the table which makes this one pair nicely with Investigate Sites. This is not an easy task but can be pulled off by certain army builds who can flood the centre of the table with extremely durable, and psychic, units.
Pierce the Veil is another end game objective, but it has a middle point, 8 points if the action is performed twice, and 15 points if it's performed four times. The Psychic Action has a Warp Charge of 4, and must be performed by a Psyker Character within 6" of the opponents Battlefield Edge and more than 6" of any enemy models. This one is not for your typical army, you should have multiple Psykers, not need them to cast powers every turn, have them be very mobile or able to deep strike OR play on a map like Sweep and Clear or Vital Intelligence where their battlefield edge is not fully in their deployment zone. It is not an optimal choice, but it might be slightly easier getting 8 points on this one than more on some others.
We have covered all the basic Secondaries, but we are not quite done as I also want to talk about each of the missions, which have their own dedicated map and objective placement as well as their own Secondary Objective. Now I'm only going to talk about the Strike Force missions, the ones designed to be played at 2000 points because that's the typical tournament size.
Retrieval Mission has the "Hammer and Anvil" style deployment with Take and Hold as it's Primary. It's fairly easy to score 10 points with this Primary as you have one objective in your deployment zone and 2 more just outside it. The key to getting 15 will be keeping your opponent off of one of his objectives so watch for your opponent to try and overwhelm one side of the table to take one from you and use that movement to to either counter strike and crush the forces he sent at you, or to move along the opposite side and do the same thing he is trying to do to you.
The Secondary Objective for this mission is Minimize Losses, which earns you points for NOT losing units. Before the battle starts count up all the units you have, if you have 75% or higher of the number of units at the end of the battle you score 15 points, 10 points for having 50% or more, and 5 points for more than 25%. If units split or merge as the game is being played you adjust the total accordingly. So if you have 2 guard units merge then you would reduce your total unit count by 1. I have very rarely played a game where I still had more than 50% of my units left at the end of the game, so this Secondary is limited to extremely durable armies where the whole army is durable, not just a couple key units.
Raise the Banners High is a pretty good Secondary for this map as you are likely to get 3 objectives with banners right off the hop. Engage On All Fronts also has potential, especially if you are the kind of army that is going to try and push to take one of the 3 objectives on the other side of the table.
Scorched Earth has the good ol' fashion 12" from the centre long table edge deployment with 6 objectives. It has Take and Hold as a Primary Objective, although this one is going to come down to who can hold the objectives in the middle. This mission has a special rule to it that allows one player to remove an objective that is in the other players deployment zone by starting performing an action at the start of their movement phase. The primary mission is Take and Hold, so if you can destroy one of the objectives early in the game it could very well cripple your opponent. You shouldn't have too much trouble scoring 10 points a turn as there are 2 objectives at the edge of your deployment zone.
The mission specific Secondary Objective is to Raze the other players objectives. You get 6 points for one and 12 points for both, so you can't get your max number of points for this secondary AND it's not easy to accomplish unless you are a particularly aggressive army and plan on spending a good deal of time with most of your army in the enemies deployment zone. If this is the case, then Pierce the Veil and Linebreaker might not be bad choices to fill out your other choices. Here is a funny idea as well, if you manage to raze one of the objectives, then achieving Domination becomes significantly easier. You will still have a heck of a time getting all the points,
Vital Intelligence has an interesting special rule in that if you hold an objective at the end of your command phase then you count as holding that objective even if you move away from it until your opponent controls it at the end of any phase. This is important because the Primary Objective is Domination. This one has a diagonal deployment, and the way the objectives are place you will likely look to push clockwise around the table to the closer objectives.
The Secondary Objective is an interesting one called Data Intercept where one of your units starts performing an action at the end of your movement phase and you score a number of points equal to the number of objectives you hold when the action is completed at the end of your next Command Phase. You will need to be careful with this one as your opponent can toss quick cheap units at your objectives to steal them away from you if you're not babysitting them, and the objectives are placed far enough apart that keeping a firm hold on more than 3 will be really tricky. This is one of the maps where Pierce the Veil is an option as your opponent's deployment zone does not stretch across his whole Battlefield Edge. Also your deployment zone spans 3 of the 4 table quarters, so Engage on All Fronts isn't a terrible choice.
Surround and Control has some pretty widely spaced out objectives which will really help out mobile shooting armies (like they need much help). The Primary Objective is Take and Hold, again helping out fast moving armies as holding 2 objectives for 10 points shouldn't be much of an issue. Getting that third one will be tricky.
Surround Them is the Secondary Objective and requires you to hold both objectives in your deployment zone and one objective in your opponent's deployment zone at the end of your Command Phase to score 4 points, or to hold all 4 of the objectives in the deployment zones for 8 points. While this is scored in your Command Phase throughout the game, it is also scored at the end of the game which makes taking second turn a possibility to score this one in a late game dash and making it somewhat reasonable to pick up 12 points with this one. You are still probably better off not taking it though.
Next up we have Battle Lines which uses Take and Hold Primary Objective and has only 4, fairly widely spaced, objectives. This makes it a little more difficult for death ball style armies to hold multiple objectives, but there aren't enough objectives for delicate fast moving armies to hold while easily avoiding enemy units. If you can push and hold the middle of the table then you are within striking distance of most of the objectives, but not necessarily within holding distance so you should probably look for holding 2 and then just preventing your opponent from holding any.
The Secondary Objective, Vital Ground, earns you 3 points for holding the objective in the opponent's deployment zone and 2 points for holding each of the objectives in "no man's land" for potentially 7 points at the end of your Command Phase. However it can't be scored on the first turn so your Scouts will have to hang tough and survive a turn. If you can hold the centre of the table, then you should be able to get both of the objectives in "no man's land" and while you're there you can Investigate Sites and/or Psychic Ritual some more secondary points.
The Scouring has a weird central Hammer and Anvil style deployment and 5 objectives all of them placed in "no man's land" making them all fairly close together which makes the Primary somewhat easy to achieve despite it being Domination. A highly durable army that likes to hold the middle of table is really going to excel on this map as all of the objectives are in no-mans land and are relatively close.
The Secondary Objective also has some serious potential to be achieved as it requires you to Strategic Scan as many objectives as you can by starting an action at the end of your movement and completing it at the end of your next Command Phase(or at the end of the game). You can't scan the same objective twice, but if you complete 4 scans that earns you 15 points. For a central table control army this should be pretty easy. Pair this with Domination and all you have to do is hold 3 objectives and easily win this game. I see this mission being a blowout one way or another.
The Primary Objective in Overrun is Domination, which isn't too hard as 3 of the 6 objectives are close to or in each players deployment zone. While holding 3 objectives shouldn't be too hard, holding more than that could prove tricky as you now have to push deep into the enemy half of the table. If you can hold the centre of the table and hold the left or right side, that will give you access to 4 different objectives.
That brings me to the Secondary Objective which is also called Overrun. I guess the naming guys took the day off for this one. Anyway, you have to hold the objectives in the enemy half of the table at the end of your Command Phase. One objective earns you 2 points, two objectives earns you 3 points, and all three objectives earns you 5 points. The problem with this is is that if you push your army across the table to hold your opponent's objectives, he will likely be able to move across and take yours. So if you can hold the 4 objectives on the right or left half of the table you're set. Easy right?
Sweep and Clear is another mission where you still count as holding the objective even if you don't have models near it until your opponent controls it. It also only has 5 objectives with Take and Hold as the Primary. The deployment is table quarters with a 9" no-mans land in the middle, so once again if you are a tough durable army who can push the middle of the table you shouldn't have much trouble holding the 3 objectives you need to fill our your Primary score.
Direct Assault the Secondary Objective for this mission is holding the centre objective and the objective in your opponent's deployment zone. You score 3 points for holding one of them and 5 points if you hold both of them at the end of your turn. This map is one that makes Pierce the Veil possible, although Psychic Ritual might be better along with Investigate Sites. Move your whole army to the middle of the table and watch those points come rolling in.
We have finally made it to the last mission, Priority Target, which has 5 objectives and Take and Hold as the Primary Objective. 2 of the objectives are labelled A and 2 are labelled B. There is a neat little back and forth that happens before deployment though and I really kind of like. Before any models are declared for reserves or to be put in transports the Attacker moves one of objectives labelled A or B 6" in any horizontal direction making sure it is not placed within an obstacle or Defensible terrain. The Defender then moves an A AND B objective that has not been moved yet, following the same rules, finally the Attacker moves the last A or B objective that has not been moved. Once all the markers have been placed players secretly mark one of the 2 objectives in their half of the table as their Priority Objective, the is really only important for the secondary.
Which is Priority Target in which you get 3 points for holding one of the Priority Target Objectives or 5 points for holding both of them at the end of your turn. This one is actually a little weird and seems like you can just score max points by holding your objective for the entirety of the game. If you are playing a mirror match where both armies are the slower moving durable table control armies that is what we will have. Then the game will basically hinge on the objective in the middle along with the other secondaries, which will likely revolve around holding the middle. The movement of the objectives will be key as faster, more agile armies will want to spread those objectives out and the "turtle" armies will want them closer together. If we have a mismatch in armies we will want to watch for the more dynamic army make a big move turn 3, bringing in a bunch of their army from reserve and striking hard looking to cripple their opponent and steal their objective for the last 3 turns to score max points.
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| It's a whole new ball game. |
The game has changed pretty drastically from how armies are built, to how you score points, to how terrain works. You are going to start seeing fewer armies that are straight up dedicated to annihilating your army turn one and more armies designed to hold the table and not go anywhere. Now, we could simply move to a paper, rock, scissors type game where some players will build "turtle" lists which move to the middle the table and stay there, others will build "sledge hammer" lists which rush forward and smash whatever gets close enough, and others will play a scalpel style army that moves quick, strikes hard, and is generally anywhere and everywhere at any given time. All of these look like they fair well in 9th, but only the best will survive.
Thank you for reading, I know this was a long one and you stuck it out to the end. Or just skipped ahead to see how it ended. It's the from dark, it doesn't end well. Feel free to leave a comment if I got anything wrong or if you have some insights.
Til next time, keep them dice rollin.
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