Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Let’s Talk About Next Year’s New Missions
Goatboy here to talk about what those two new missions for 40K mean for the future of the game.
We got a preview of the 2 new missions for the upcoming matched play updated in Warhammer 40k. Overall I am pretty excited about them as it shows that GW is looking at how games are scored and seeing if there are some ways to tweak it to help armies out. The overall squishing of the points is important as it shifts scoring from a 3 turn affair into players having to pay attention to that first available primary points turn and not just – waiting to get my 40 in the last 2-3 turns.
New Missions Better?
Will this make things better? I think so as it will push armies to do stuff ton turn 2 especially with some of the more brutal Alpha Strike aspects getting pushed down a bit. It will push much more aggressive strategies as they can easily capitalize on trying to get to the middle areas, score that first 12, and then utilize a movement based secondary to lock in more points. I do find it interesting in that initially the game was decided by how much damage you could do and thru tweaks and changes (Terrain, points scored when, etc) it feels like the game is a much more broader range of board control and objective securing.
Which is fine if a bit harder for some players to grasp as just smashing your toys against each other is the easiest. Thankfully we see some of this smashing nature return with the return of Kill Points for one of the missions. I think having a bit more of this will allow some players to play for points based on the nature of what they like about the game – killing your enemy. Especially those armies that are built in ways that the killing stuff secondaries just don’t work nearly as well. The other extra victory points is also an interesting one as it forces you to hold a particular objective – one chosen by your opponent in your deployment zone. This most likely will force a “shooting target” like set up as you are forced to move out in the open with your pants down and exposed. I also like these extra scoring points are at the end of the turn – not something you have to ensure you have done during your command phase.
This is important as a lot of the time you could lose out on primary just due to the nature of an army that forced you off objectives – especially those hold two or more for the initial scoring points. I am hoping the other missions have the same sort of set up as I really think this will help some things out. I am also hearing some chatter the secondaries are getting looked at too so it might be an exciting time for players to learn new missions.
New Mission Points
I am guessing all the points are going to see a bit tweak and move away from an easy 15 per turn. How many times have you seen players turn in 100 points and you have to wonder how did you do that? Or those 95 wins vs 90. Moving the points down is an interesting way to force you to really pay attention to each turn and each chance to score as while the points per primary are lower the total is still the same. It just means going for an easy 40 is now going to be an easy 32 which is a big difference when you have the other player rocking it with an end game of 12 if going second.
It sounds like we won’t have a whole lot of time to wait to see the rest of the missions. I am guessing the beginning of the new year will have a release coming with a 2022 book that is hopefully spiral bound and maybe they will be nice to include the missions cards from their events. Those cards they added really added a ton of utility in making the game much easier to track. I ended up using Dice on top of the Secondary cards but could easily see those spin down dials for each one but it is just nice to have the rules for them right there. This also included all the missions on a nice card stock making it easy to see the deployment, objectives, and mission at hand.
Anyway just excited to see new 40k stuff. We have Custodes and GSC coming next which are armies that are completely on different sides of the spectrum when it comes to how they play. The Custodes do not care to sneak around, while the GSC are super sneaky snakes. It looks like the Advent calendar is some Eldar stuff which makes me so excited to see the army I like the least come out and kick my butt. I am still trying to figure out what LVO list I need to take but I am leaning towards losing hard with Space Goats so will see. Maybe the new Missions will let my juggernaut riding Beastmen win a game or two. Or I give everyone a great time as they kill some bit of Ancient Counts As Nonsense.
For the Emperor!
