Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Chapter Approved – New Missions, New Game
Goatboy here with what Chapter Approved 2022 means for 40K. Get ready for radical change!
Chapter Approved is here with this year’s update to the 40K Missions and points all in one small little package. Annoyingly enough the missions are not spiral bound (cost, time, etc) but I am pretty sure if you go to one of the GW events in the upcoming future you will get those snazzy little mission cards to help keep your booklets spine from getting wrecked.
Hello Chapter Approved 2022
Anyway this is an important release because it is a big change to the upcoming tournament season. The missions are heavily changed with new secondary set ups, new bonus points, and new “rules” to make playing the mission harder. The ones we were previewed were the easier ones for sure as these new ones do a lot of interesting things. There are actions your units can do, limits to Command Point generation, and even deployment issues all within these hallowed pages. With that let’s go over some big changes.
Allies Are Fading
The first big change is how you muster your army. There is a new wrinkle in how you build in that all selectable faction keywords of the same army must have the same selectable faction. This means all your Space Marines are your custom Whirlwind/Borne Heroes Iron Thingies. All Kabals are of the Black Heart Variety. Now this doesn’t say all units have to be the same selectable it is just – if they can be the same selectable faction you have to be the same. So this doesn’t break Dark Eldar as they can have a Kabal Detachment, Coven Detachment, and Cult Detachment. Wait who am I kidding it is going to be only one Coven Detachment.
The only thing that doesn’t have to be the same selectable are Marks of Chaos or Allegiance of Chaos. This means he only inter-soup-able armies are Chaos based ones. So you could have a “Nurgle” Detachment that is all gross and 3 PBCs have some Death Guard Choice. They also added a new +2 command points for a Super Heavy Aux detachment if the unit in it is not your Warlord but comes from the same Faction as your Warlord. It also is not just limited to Chaos, Imperium, Aeldari, Ynarri, or Tyranid. This means you could take a AM Cadian giant tank if your armies warlord is Cadian and it only costs you 1 CP vs the 3 CP.
Updated Secondaries
The next thing is a bunch of Secondaries got changed around. A lot of this was leaked early and the big fun bits are we have some special secondaries listed for specific armies. This gives some armies an option while they wait for a book. AM has a For the Emperor! Secondary that gives you 1 VP for every enemy unit you kill up to 3 per round. Chaos knights get another kill one as well in No Mercy No Respite that gives you a VP for a Chaos knight unit killing something while the model is either in your deployment zone, middle of the board, or opponents deployment zone. Nids get a weird one too that is based on Synapse units killing things in a round with a limit of 12 VP which feels off.
Of course as Crusher Stampede is the big Nid army at the moment will probably not see this one taken. Chaos Space Marines don’t get 2 wounds. But they do get a secondary where they have to kill units off of an objective and control it for maximum carnage. Poor Daemons get one that is all based on if a model flees the battlefield or if you beat their leadership of a destroyed enemy unit. It feels just complicated. Even Imperial Knights get one about Yielding No Ground that feels like they should still just take Stranglehold.
New Missions
Onto the Missions – and these have a lot of changes especially to the bonus points. We know primary points are now 4, 8, 12 per turn so we should see points start to drop from wins/losses. On top of the point changes there are a ton that have Actions you can do with one of the first ones – Tear Down Their Icons – utilizing a method to prime explosives in your opponents territory and at the end of the game you get 4 points per primed explosive. Your action is to start at the end of your movement phase – with troops finishing it at the end of your turn and other units finishing it at the beginning of your next command phase.
Your opponent can also spend an action to defuse it – get near it at end of movement and start the action. At the end of your turn roll a d6 and add 3 if your units has objective secured and on a 4+ you defuse it. So yeah – here is a mission where you can take away end game points if you want too. I am not sure about this mission as I wonder if players will just ignore the extra points and will see his is a lower point “win”.
Hello Actions
A lot of the other missions have Actions too for the extra primary points. A lot of them are matching the old “secondaries” like Data Intercept. Here you get VP (up to 3 per turn) based on how many objectives you Data Intercept in no mans land during your turn. This mission is also that diagonal one that we all love to hate. But they added some helpful measurements in Blue to make it easier for those players that have kids and forget all the measurements.
Heck we got a mission that is all about controlling the center of the table. In this one you can’t deploy units in no man’s land with a Scout-like ability or move. This feels very old school GW. With the whole Extra Primary that has you gain points for holding the middle. Plus gaining points for killing enemy units that were near the middle. Finally, points for holding the middle at the end of the game. At least this one feels easy to do and remember.
We got another one that only gives you CP if your Warlord is on the battlefield (including being in a transport). At the same time the extra primary on this one has you gaining VP if you control your opponents objective, objectives in no man’s land. And then you lose VP if you don’t control your objective in your deployment zone. Other fun action based ones has you scan each objective with a unit and each one scanned gives you 3 VP. That is simple enough and the Objectives are not all over the place – thus making it again a center punch fest.
There is this weird one that has a new “objective” set up that is kinda funky. All the bonus points are based on holding your opponents objective and the ones on their side of the table. On top of that you only get CP if you control your home objective and it is very close to No Man’s land which means you are rip for those first turn charges.
The next one is another mission that feels like the Primary is a win more option – so those armies crushing your soul will just pounce up on points so it feels hard to “come” back. You get points for control all the objectives or taking an objective from an opponent and then a bonus point if you killed a unit that was in range of an objective. It is a hold/kill more option that just seems well – brutal. Final one is the Secure Missing Artefacts mission we have seen where we have A and B objectives and we get to move them around. If you control your Priority Objective marker in your territory you get 3 VP at the end of the turn.
Overall the missions are different and interesting. I am not sure about some of the win more option ones but that is the violent nature of 40k. There are also a ton of Actions so armies that don’t have “throw away” engineer units might need to invest in some. I expect a lot of Chaff to show up to help out in a game. Thankfully a lot of the actions are doable by units so you could have a simple little troop unit or a giant Robot carefully prime an explosive or two.
Updated Points
Beyond all of this we also have points to look at. There will be a ton of discussion with points and while I am thankful we have some kind of thought process for balance it does feel a little bit heavy handed when we compare some armies to others. It would appear that a better system might be to just forgo doing the print and keep it all digital like a PDF for the points with the Warhammer App upgraded to have it all quickly. I like the Missions getting printed but the points can be a real frustrating trying to look thru the book and not destroy the spine. I could just see this being added to White Dwarfs and give a push to purchase the magazine with the hint we might see more powerful armies of Renown.
The Verdict
It sounds like these missions will be with us for the year as I expect the 6 month refresh to maybe look at more “broader” changes to challenge players and force armies to adapt. Maybe some kind of “realm of Chaos” invasions or other fun things.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
