One thing that can be potentially overlooked when planning to play at a tournament is what missions will be played. The players pack for events will typically (at least in my experience) give some indication of what will be happening in regards to the games that will be played and this can be vital in your preparation for the event. Planning your list to make the best of these conditions will increase your chances to do well.
Eternal War
You will almost certainly be familiar with the standard ‘Eternal War’ missions. These classics have been around a while now and it’s the go-to for most casual/garage players who just want to throw down and play. Almost all of these missions rely on you holding objective sat the end of the game to score points as well as awarding bonus points for specific secondary conditions. It can be easy enough to plan for these types of games as you know you need to destroy key units of the enemy to deny him claiming objectives while preserving your own. Simple! Mobility needs to be part of the list but it’s not a game breaker as long as you are starting the infantry march early in the game. You will want to be reasonably durable and have a decent offensive output as well. I think it’s a reasonable assumption that most players when they write lists are writing for these games. It’s also important to remember that in the objective missions, you don’t score a point until the end of the game which means going second can be a real boon to ensuring you know how to win the game.
The ‘Purge the Alien’ mission within the Eternal War scenarios deserves a special mention as it removes the objectives from the game and rewards you for destroying enemy assets. This requires the force at your command to give up less points than you are gaining. This mission means that the MSU (multiple small unit) style of army is badly punished in most cases. Where MSU is great for objective games, able to flood the table with lots of units who can score points, in missions involving kill points – it’s just more points for the enemy. Dark Eldar lists tend to hate this mission as its almost always giving up more points than it can gain back. Likewise, mass drop pod space marines with 5 model combat squads also suffer if their initial attack wave does not do significant harm to the opponents forces.
Maelstrom
The ability to score points every turn is the key change for these missions. This mechanic is generated from a deck of 36 cards (in most cases). The access and number of cards varies from mission to mission but the principle remains the same – you must be mobile to score them as quickly as possible in order to cycle through the deck. Armies that contain bike or jump forces tend to do very well as they can rapidly redeploy to score points over the course of the game. Of special note is also the warlord trait chart that specifically helps you score points and somewhat control the variable VP points on some of the cards. The Tactical warlord traits will often be overlooked in favour of race specific or strategic charts but in my experience, roll Tactical every time when playing maelstrom if you can.
Deployment Type
The other half to missions is the deployment type. Officially we have 3 types – Vanguard (corner to corner), Dawn of War (long edge to long edge) and Hammer & Anvil (short edge to short edge). Each of these presents its own challenges for a player. Hammer & Anvil (H&A) is probably the most polarising as armies with solid ranged firepower tend to have it better as they have more room to fall back and keep shooting while the mobility of the enemy is limited by the fact the table is only 4 feet wide using this method of deployment. Both Vanguard and Dawn of War (DoW) are more typical in the way you can approach a mission as the wider table allows more freedom to move and the wider frontage makes it harder to apply board control.
Placing Objectives
This is crucial to you doing well – simply throwing down objective counters tends to be poor planning at best and terrible strategy at worst! You need to think about how you will achieve the mission as well as how the enemy will be doing the same. There is no harm in scattering the objectives as far apart as possible if you have the speed to claim them (Eldar Windriders spring to mind). The reverse is also true – Imperial knights or a particularly strong deathstar unit will do well in placing objectives as close together as possible and roughly in the middle of the table. This maximises the impact of these super models/units as the enemy must engage them to claim or contest the objectives – which is even harder is the model/unit in question has solid firepower as well as combat ability.
What happens when you both have that speed to claim the scattered ones? Make the enemy units that can achieve it your priority – at the expense of nearly any other target. You might have to sacrifice a unit or 2 to achieve it and you might not score any points in the first turn or 2 either but by removing this key mobility in the late game, you open up more options for taking and holding objectives if need be with the worst case being neither side claims it in the end. Ideally though – you DON’T scatter all the objectives and force a battle neck or choke point that he has to waste his speed in trying to hold. You can then afford to not rush in if you don’t want to and (assuming the objectives are in the open) then force him to lose models or units to hold these points.
What about opposed death star games? Again, you must play to your own strengths. By going head to head you let the dice decide the outcome. By making the decision to scatter the objectives and then play the long game of a steady score increase while aiming to engage his death star turn 4 or 5 you can ensure the game is less dice dependant. The other option is to kill his mobile scorers with your units to the expense of all other targets, then tie up the opposed death star with your own. By being hyper aggressive most players will engage your death star to try and make it more manageable which should leave your mobile scorers free to claim and control objectives into the late game.
Custom missions
Sometimes an organiser will throw you a curve ball with a custom mission or missions. These could be from older editions of the game, from another event that they had played at or just something they have cooked up. What do you do? You treat it like every other mission. Understand what you need to do to win (the victory conditions), how you deploy, how the objectives are deployed and what special rules are in play.
An old favourite mission of mine is called ‘Thunderhawk Down!” This mission came out of GW surprisingly as part of their event pack back in the early 2000’s. You deploy in what is now called Dawn of War and start the game. First Blood, Slay the warlord and line breaker are in play for this mission (added to help bring the mission up to date). Starting at the beginning of game turn 2 roll a D6. On a 3+ the Thunderhawk that’s in combat airspace above the game crashes! If you fail the 3+ roll, roll again at the start of game turn 2 and every subsequent turn needing a 3+ for the Thunderhawk to crash. It will always crash turn 4 if it has not done so already. When the Thunderhawk crashes, the active player rolls a D6. 1-3 indicates the crash coming in from the left hand side of the table while 4-6 makes it come in from the right. 10D6 are then rolled. The total of this roll is how far onto the table the Thunderhawk come before it impacts. The Thunderhawk moves directly down the centre of the table in a straight line. A large blast marker is placed at the point of impact with the hole of the blast marker over the distance of the 10D6. The blast inflicts a S6, Ap4 hit on every model touching the blast marker (vehicles take the hit on side armour). The centre point of the large blast then becomes the objective and is treated as per the relic mission however, it cannot be moved.
At its core, the mission is a modified ‘Relic’ mission from the Eternal War range. The random deployment of the objective combined with the damage it inflicts when it lands adds some fun to the mix. Originally the large blast was placed on the table and moved across the board – dealing damage to everyone touched so as to represent burning debris that was falling but the latest version above has removed this. The first time I played this mission, the club I was at had modelled up large blasts with wreckage on them and a little flag at the centre so everyone could see the objective and keep the theme in play for the whole game.
In contrast to this we have the missions from the Australasian Team Challenge (ATC) as well as the European Team Challenge (ETC). These use a 3 layer scoring system. You play a mission with an Eternal War mission objective, a Maelstrom mission objective and then kill points from Purge the Alien as well. This complex mission (essentially playing 3 missions at once) seems to ensure lists are much more balanced as they have so many tasks to work with. You can check out the Useful Links tab above to find the WA Masters players pack which includes 6 missions using this method – it’s a really fun way of mixing up the game.
What custom missions have you played? Did they work or were they terrible? Let me know in the comments below!