Taking a look at the worst and best missions from the new GT Mission Pack.
The new mission pack is officially out and with changes to make armies stick to 1 singular Subfaction besides a few outliers, this mission pack is a huge change to the game right now. Primaries are now scored for 4, 8 and 12 points and you can gain additional points on top of it to score 15 in your primaries per turn.
Although this can lead to some messy things like seeing a round of Primaries score 9 points instead of your divisible by 5 numbers, it can be somewhat ugly to look at from time to time but hey that’s just my OCD kicking in.
So let’s take a look at some of the missions and see which ones are good and which ones are a bit difficult for Strike Force missions.
Mission 11 – Recover The Relics
Replacing Retrieval mission the layout of this mission stays the same with 6 objectives to battle over. This mission however has a caveat where you can only gain CP if you control one or more objective markers in your opponent’s territory or one or more objectives in No Man’s Land.
Additionally, if you control the objective marker in your opponent’s deployment zone you receive an additional CP. Hurts a lot of armies without pre-game move however we’ve seen a lot of armies running a low amount of CP anyways and CP usage isn’t as bad with 9th edition codicies so it doesn’t hurt them too much. However for 8th edition codicies this can really damage an army, specifically looking at Chaos Daemons who traditionally run around 4CP for a game.
As for the Progressive Objective – Break Them, Body and Soul (awesome name btw) you gain points in your primaries for each enemy unit destroyed during the battle round to a maximum of 3. If you’re mowing down 3 units a turn, you’re probably already winning at that point but regardless this is going to be an extremely killy mission.
Mission 12 – Tear Down Their Icons
Full disclosure, I hate this mission. There are so many problems with it for a GT setting that makes it a poor mission to roll up to, definitely sounds fun on paper but in practice it’s kind of an oof. This is also a mission that you don’t want to be discussing at an airport on your flight over to the next major event.
Replacing Scorched Earth, Tear Down Their Icons is a Diagonal Deployment with 5 objectives to control for a hold 1, hold 2 and hold more mission.
Going over the mission rules, you can select a unit to prime an explosive. If the unit has Obsec or a similar rule the action completes immediately however if the unit doesn’t have Obsec you have to wait a turn for it to go off. Additionally each explosive has to be more than 9″ away from each other. In order to defuse the explosive you have to do the Defuse Explosive action with no enemy models near the explosive and it has to happen during your movement phase. If your unit has Obsec it defuses the bomb automatically and if it doesn’t have Obsec you have to roll a dice and on a 4+ the bomb is difused.
At the end of the game you score 4 points for each Primed Explosive you still have on the board to a maximum of 15 points.
This mission is pretty rough and if you get second turn you can score pretty big at the end of the game if your opponent doesn’t have units dedicated to performing the defuse explosives action. Being a diagonal deployment mission and needing to be in your opponent’s territory you can just simply move a unit 5″ from the corner and start planting explosives.
Immediately, going second along with end of game scoring on primaries you can also get an easy 4 points by just planting a bomb with an obsec unit to get a 16pt. swing at the end of the game. More frustrating is that first turn has 0 way to stop you from scoring the last 4 points on priming an explosive.
On top of that, you can only do each action once per round and you can only defuse the bomb if no models are near it. So that means you have to first kill the unit from the board and THEN on your next movement phase you can attempt to defuse the explosive. If you just keep putting a unit near that explosive after a unit is wiped (meaning they have to wait another turn just to defuse it) and then start placing bombs in other places the mission starts becoming a lot more tedious.
Not to mention you’re also dedicating 2 units to perform these actions. That means taking a shadow operations secondary means you’re now taking 3 action monkey units and if you decide to perform the action with a non-obsec unit you still have to roll and it’s a 50% chance you even defuse the bomb.
Rough. Super rough.
Mission 13 – Data Scry-Salvage
Our first hold 2 mission in the book and it’s pretty solid. Replacing Vital Intellegience, this mission is a diagonal deployment with 6 objectives to hold for Hold 2, Hold 3 and Hold more.
Starting off, this is a sticky objective mission with a small pre-requisite. In order to permanently control an objective before someone else takes control of the objective you have to first control the objective with an Objective Secured unit. If you don’t, then you just treat the mission like any other mission to hold objectives.
The Data Intercept action is pretty simple to understand. You just have to perform the action on an objective in your deployment zone and at the end of your movement phase you gain points equal to the number of objective markers you control that are in no-man’s land.
This is a tad bit different from other ways you score at the end of your turn since it scores at the end of your movement phase. Instead of having a complete turn to shoot something off of an objective to score points on something like Stranglehold at the end of your turn, you have to control the objective at the end of your movement phase instead to gain extra points on this mission. So you’ll have to find ways to steal objectives from your opponent from the get go to control the objective.
A bit strange, however if you’re up against a sea of fast moving obsec you’re going to get outpaced in the progressive objective portion of this mission. Plus it’s a hold 2. Ouch.
Mission 21 – Abandoned Sanctuaries
Genestealer Cults hate this mission. In fact, any army that relies on a pre-game scout move hates this mission.
Replacing Surround and Destroy this is a 4 objective mission to Hold 1, Hold 2 and Hold more.
In Abandoned Sanctuaries you are not allowed to go into into No Man’s Land at any point during your deployment phase. That means absolutely 0 pre-game moves. You can still do things like Veil of Darkness with Necrons, but during your deployment you just cannot put any units within No Man’s Land.
Additionally, you gain 2 points at the end of your turn for controlling the objective marker in the center of the battlefield or destroyed an enemy unit that was within 6″ of the center of the battlefield at the start of their turn and at the end of the game whichever player control the center objective scores an additional 5 points.
This is a bit interesting, being able to score 2 points per turn from doing what you should be doing is pretty nice but also gives second turn a pretty huge advantage again. With end of round scoring, you’re looking at a 19pt. swing if they end up holding more. You get 12pts. for holding more, 2pts. if you control the objective in the middle at the end of your turn and then an additional 5pts. on top of that for end of game scoring since you control the center objective.
A good way to combat first turn alpha strikes, but it might also be incredibly strong. A 19pt. swing at the end of the game is pretty big and if you just keep up with trading at the middle it’s really not unfeasible to score it reliably every game if you’re going second.
Mission 22 – Conversion
Replacing Battle Lines, this is a 5 objective mission for Hold 1, Hold 2 and Hold more.
Honestly, this is probably the easiest mission in the game and feels fair for both sides. You only gain CP per turn if your warlord is on the battlefield and then gain 4 points for controlling the objective in your opponent’s deployment zone, 2 for controlling one more in No Man’s Land and lose 1 point if you don’t control the objective in your deployment zone.
If you’ve lose your home objective mission, you’ve probably already lost but even then the caveat needed to even lose a victory point is pretty difficult to do since it happens at the end of your turn. So you still have a full turn to circumvent your lose of victory points. So even if you get alpha striked with obsec on your home objective you don’t lose points which is nice. Obviously, that should probably never happen and if it does you probably messed up during deployment.
Altogether a solid mission.
Mission 23 – The Scouring
Talk about a 180. Going from probably the worst mission in the game (second turn had such a huge advantage in the Scouring it was almost laughable) it’s now a pretty good mission that’s fair for both sides. Plus instead of a small deployment zone you now get access from board edge to board edge so no more having to spend more CP for strategic reserves just to field an army if you can’t fit everything on the board. Plus it’s now a hold 1, hold 2 and hold more mission!
To score extra points you just have to scan an objective with no enemy models near it to get 3 points for each objective scanned at the end of the game. Pretty self explanatory.
Mission 31 – Tide of Conviction
The next Hold 2, hold 3 hold more mission for this book. It’s a 6 objective mission with the objectives moved around slightly.
This is another mission when you only gain CP if you control the objective marker in your own deployment zone. For extra points you score 2 points for controlling at least one objective marker in your opponent’s territory for rounds 1-4. Surprisingly, you cannot gain points on this secondary in Round 5 but you gain points at the end of the battle.
4 points for controlling the objective in your opponent’s deployment zone and 2 points for each objective in their opponent’s territory to a maximum of 8 points. That’s a pretty big swing in points for second turn. First turn it’s going to be incredibly hard to score points there unless you’re already dominating the game and in that case this is just extra points to rub salt in the wound.
Otherwise for second turn this is almost a 20pt. swing if you can survive until then while also making it into your opponent’s deployment zone to control their objective.
Mission 32 – Death and Zeal
Interestingly, we get another mission with the corner deployment replacing Sweep and Clear for a hold 1, hold 2 and hold more with another sticky objective akin to the one mentioned earlier. As for the progressive objective you gain 2 points if you control every objective marker on the battlefield (lmao okay) or one objective marker that you didn’t control at the start of your turn or if you destroyed at least one enemy unit that was on an objective at the start of your turn. If you did both requirements, you gain 3 points instead.
This one is interesting, in order to get points here you have to do what you normally do however you have different ways to score 2 points at the end of your turn making this pretty balanced.
Although controlling every objective marker is really silly, controlling one that you didn’t control at the start of your turn and then destroying an enemy unit off of another one is well within reason and is basically what you’re doing throughout the game anyways. If you’re not doing that already, you’re already losing in the first place.
One thing to note here is that on your first turn you can just not be on your home objective and then just move onto into on your turn to gain an easy 2 points turn 1. This is also a hold 1 mission with sticky objectives so you can really spread your army around in this mission without worrying about holding an objective. I love this mission and think it’s a mission you’ll be seeing the most action on since players don’t have to worry too much about holding objectives too often.
Mission 33 – Secure Missing Artefacts
Replacing the final mission in the 2021 GT mission pack, Secure Missing Artefacts performs basically the same way it was before with repositioning the objective markers (which is honestly such a drag that I just don’t like playing this mission because of the extra setup time).
However one big change is that the priority objective that you select is one that’s in your opponent’s territory and not within your own, so you are able to choose which one you want your opponent to score points on.
The progressive objective is just that you gain 3 points if you control the Priority objective in own territory. Pretty simple here, choose your opponent’s priority objective and then they score points if they hold it.
Final Thoughts
Some of these missions look kind of easy while others look pretty harsh. There’s definitely a huge uptick for scoring if you go second which is a bit strange to me seeing as I find going second nowadays so powerful with the amount of redploys and cagey armies out there that can just survive and spike points at the end. There’s also a huge schtick here for attacker and defender style games where if you go first you have to put in a huge dent turn 1 to stop your opponent from scoring in later rounds. It’s almost weird thinking that these missions are obviously pushing for 2nd turn to score more points but because of it can cause more armies to become even more volatile on turn 1 to stop them from doing so.
Killing things is always fun, however winning through out scoring and out pacing your opponent is how competitive 40k should feel. So we’ll see how these changes affect the game but one things for sure, this game is going to get a lot more bloody.
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