Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: About Those New Secondary Rules
Goatboy here to talk about the changes in 40K Secondary Missions and where the game is headed.
While the points update in CA2021 left us a bit underwhelmed there were some nice things to see in the updated Secondaries. The majority stayed the same but the overall updated ones are moved into the right direction – going from all or nothing to something a bit more… progressive. I think as a whole that is the right way to look at it as it gives players a bit more control over how they win and how well they win. This is important as again it lets players build armies that can compete by being able to do those actions/things/etc well.
Warpcraft
I think the psychic ones look a lot better – not super good but still a heck of a lot better. Warp Ritual becomes progressive so if you can do it twice you easily get 7 points – which could be ok versus a not psychic army. If you know your opponent isn’t going to be in the center it might be something to try as it also doesn’t go up to 15 points – letting you get a chance to control your totals a bit easier.
Pierce the Veil can also have some funky uses for say armies that can bring a psyker out of the deployment edge or just show up as needed. I wish Psychic Interrogation was a bit better – but we can only ask for so much. Overall these are all moves to the right side of being almost good enough to take. I am sure a bit more tweaking and we have some winners so will see whenever the chatter on another mission/update is coming.
Shadow Operations
Shadow Operations got a nice update to Scramblers as it shifted to Retrieve Octarius Data. I liked Scramblers as it wasn’t nearly as stoppable but this new one ends up working better because again it is progressive. It also fits nicely into the whole Engage mission as you move things around and try to complete these actions on the tabletop. It went from 3 areas to each table quarter needing an action but it now goes to 4 for 2 actions, 8 for 3 actions, or 12 for 4 actions.
I wish we had some tweaks to Raise the Banners High because it can feel somewhat overwhelming when an army can easily bust out 3-4 quickly while you try to catch up.
Battlefield Supremacy
Battlefield Supremacy saw a change by transforming Domination into Stranglehold. Now you have to have 3 objectives and more than your opponent. It means more on those missions with 6 objectives so those fast armies can easily take this one.
No Mercy, No Respite
Lastly, we have some No Mercy, No Respite missions with 2 updates. No Prisoners is like kill points for wounds and ignores characters, vehicles, and MC. Tally all the wounds and divide by 10 to get your points. That is easy enough and maybe those new Ork armies will have a ton of bodies on the table.
Finally, we have To the Last which is the 3rd iteration of While We Stand We fight with an update on those units that can split apart. If the unit is split and you kill part of the unit – you only get 3 points versus 5 points from before. That is important for all those Combat Squad tricks we were worried about.
The Verdict?
Overall I think the Secondary’s all went to the right place – I think we need to have a hard look at the mission secondary options as that is where the bigger offenders are. With missions that are never taken and ones that are too easy to do. I still would love to see events force players to take one of them as a way to balance some things out a bit. Of course, I would rather have them be fixed so armies could effectively take them and not feel handicapped in the end when trying to add their points up for the game win.
What do you think of the new secondaries?
