Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: The Best Secondary Objectives
Goatboy here with what I think are the best secondary objectives you can always get.
Goatboy here and the trick to doing well in 9th edition seems to be building your armies around secondary objectives you can always get. This is important as well – that is one of the main ways you can win the game obviously. I think 9th is about movement so figuring out the Secondaries that both benefit movement and your army are going to be very important. I think we’ll end up seeing a similar set of army builds that take advantage of specific secondaries to try and overpower the opponent in points – not in sheer killing power. With that in mind let’s go with what I think are the best for my playstyle in each group.
Purge The Enemy – aka did someone take a Lot of Knights?
Obviously, this is the one that is dependent on what your opponent has in their army. I do enjoy these types of objectives as they force you to choose something to create a different play style – but they can be extremely brutal if your army happens to fit in the whole – oops you took a lot of X so I guess I get max points. I expect if you see knights you take Titan Slayers and if you see a ton of vehicles/monsters you take Bring it Down. Either one of those is my favorite for this section of rules. Assassinate seems set up for some specific armies but with the lack of massed characters, it isn’t nearly as amazing as you would want it to be.
Battlefield Supremacy
There are two here that you should always be thinking about when building your army. They are both dependent on your army to be fast, score at the end of your turn, and benefit from how 9th edition is heavily dependent on Movement. I almost always take Engage on All Fronts as you get 5 turns to grab points which can be important to hit that sweet spot of 10+. The other interesting one – especially for you Eldar/fast unit players is Linebreaker as you can easily hit it turn 2 and hit that even better spot of 15 points pretty quickly. Even if you only hit it 3 turns you get 12 points – which is close to max and with only a 3 turn investment.
No Mercy, No Respite
I am a Death Guard player and like to run Daemon Princes so the While We Stand, We Fight seems pretty good for that type of army. Anything, where you can have tough stuff that is a tad expensive and can hide, seems pretty well suited to that Secondary. It is an end-game secondary so you can quickly figure out if you can lock in that 15 points and run away to win the game. I like Grind Them Down too as if you have a smallish and tough army you could easily get that one – especially if you have some decent long range firepower. For Marine Players the Oaths of Moment seems like a pretty non brainer here as you can easily racked up some points quickly – without really doing a ton of work.
Shadow Operations
These are interesting in that it takes you doing “something” aka Engineers from the older 8th edition days. I like Raise the Banners High if you have an army that is majority Infantry and can move pretty quickly. Teleport Homers also seems interesting in that you can get 12 points in 3 turns – which can be important if you have an army trying to do a lot of killing the first 2 turns and needs to quickly get points to catch up. These are the more interesting Secondaries and finding one that your army can do pretty easily is an important one in case you need that 3rd. Especially if your opponent has an army that doesn’t give you a no-brainer choice.
Warpcraft
If you are not playing psychic and you come up versus Grey Knights or Daemons – congrats you are an amazing player and take Abhor the Witch. This is one of those build your army around it option and between Abhor the Witch or Mental Interrogation. I can see a lot of Daemons with super casting Lord of Changes going Mental Interrogation route as it can be something you can easily do. All of the casting options are interesting as you pick this secondary and all your casters can do it. They seem well set up for your big bad monsters who can cast mind bullets to try and do. They seem kind of cute to try for – so either your army can do it or they are going to be trying to stop it by killing all those that can do these Secondaries.
Picking your 3 secondaries is an important test of building a competitive list. Most of the time with my armies I try to play Engage on all Fronts, Oath of Moment (my White Scars army), and then either Mental Interrogation or Raise the Banners dependent on the army I decide to bring. It lets me have a chance to pull that 40 points of secondary winning goodness and thus leaving me with a good chance of being in control of the game early and quickly.
What Secondaries are you finding interesting? I am hoping we see some other ones come into play in the future that are easy enough to play with and bring a different aspect of the game to the forefront.
