The vicious new Missions of 40K 9th Edition, and the violent rebirth of Assault 40K: Mission reveal explained!

I looked at the mission and started off by saying "Meh". And then I looked closer. And closer. And closer. And then I hit my head on the computer screen. 

Slapstick comedy doesn't translate well into text, but I was still pretty shocked on close analysis. These missions are vicious!

Hello chaps and chapettes, we're working late in the classroom now because Games Workshop won;t let up with the new edition reveals. You'd think they wanted us to get hyped up over 9th Edition or something! This mission is a very clear indicator of the direction they want to move in, and I have to say I am very impressed, and think the speed of games is going to go through the roof!

First up, go and read my thoughts on why the points costs are changing. The TL;DR is that it can help increase the speed of games, but I dive into the economics of it too.

Now, look at the mission above, taken from Warhammer Community. A couple of things should stand out to you.

• The distance between deployment zones
• The distance to objectives

The distance from each deployment zone to the next is 18-inches. For those of you who might be wondering why this is significant, usually the no-man's land is 24-inches wide, as in impossible for an infantry unit to get across and charge in one turn. Infantry genrally have a movement of 6-inches, and the maximum charge distance is 12-inches (and you only have a 1 in 36 chance of achieving that). 18-inches? Some units with Advance and Charge, or just a bigger movement speed can make that relatively easily.

What this means is that first turn charges become a very real possibility for every army out there. 

Every "slow" unit, through the battlefield becoming smaller, has now been buffed up a bit. 

I wrote recently about the slow speed of the new Primaris Veteran models probably being not so effective thanks to their slow speed. This set up neatly solves that problem, with both White Scars, Black Templars and even Blood Angels eagerly crossing that gap. Heck, most Space Marine chapters with a Chaplain and access to re-roll charges might be considering a zerg rush of ALL THE TROOPS at that distance. 

But they might not even need to consider it. Objectives are very close to all deployment zones, 10-inches for the ones not in deployment. This means that even the slowest troops, with maybe an advance move, can make it to charge or capture range in the first turn!

Let's just say orks are going to have a wonderful time with this.

The very swift turn to violence doesn't end with just the choppy stuff. The two deployment objectives (after doing some quick trigonometry) are just a hair more than 36-inches apart. That distance is achievable shooting by some Troops choices in the game (Stalker Intercessors, Some T'au Firewarriors, anyone with a heavy bolter), which means objective campers can menace each other, and still be in threat range for counter-menacing! 

What this all adds up to is some very bloody first turns.

You could castle up in the corner of your deployment zone, but the mission's rules discourage that straight away. 

The Primary Objective is Take and Hold, with victory points awarded for control of objective markers. The wording of it s quite important:

Awarded 5 victory points in each of the player's Command Phase IF:

• They control 1 objective marker
• They control 2 or more objective markers
• They control more objective markers than their opponent
• For a maximum of 15 points

Essentially if you hide in the corner you can give your opponent 15 victory points on a golden platter in the early turns. They just need to bunker in at that point. Keep in mind though that these points can't be scored on the first turn, which is certainly time to engage in the big messy fireball of first turn charges and alpha strikes.

As a question though, it is important to find out if that 15 points cap is per turn or per game. It does make a bit of a difference to the relative strength of fast deployment armies.

The close confines and rules set up strongly encourage aggressive play, and if you're wondering if I am just exaggerating here, keep this in mind; this is designed for 2000 point armies. Even with the points increase, the deployment zone front line is going to be very crowded.

It's really worth mentioning now that this puts gun lines at a severe disadvantage. With less foot slogging needing to be done, assault themed armies can make it to combat in larger numbers, and unless the gun lines have strong over watch abilities they might find themselves over run before dealing enough damage. 

With this, and the Assault Intercessor forming part of the possible Starter Box, I think the theme of new Edition 40K can be safely said to be Assault. 

Which is just fine by me. I have an unkillable T'au gun line 500 point list that has just been begging to be nerfed. 

As for the secondary objectives being selectable?

I love this mechanic more than anything else. 

The idea is that you can pre-choose the Secondary objective you want for a game. Here they are:

This means that you can bake your own personal victory conditions right into your list building. Armies don't just become an exercise in bringing high damage/high durability units. Now those with niche roles can make a drastic impact on the game. 

I often make up fluff for my armies going into battles. My Space Marine Field Police will usually have the mandate of arresting the enemy force (White Scars for speeding, unpaid parking tickets for the Imperial Guard and practising medicine without a license for some Drukhari forces... although that last one usually has a longer rap sheet). Now those quirky bits of fluff can affect how the game is played.

I don't know if this particular mechanic will last. 

As  with all things metas develop, and the easiest/most efficient choices float to the surface. Just off the top of my head, if you bring Assassinate to a game against Genestealer Cults, then you'll have a good time. Conversely the same mission against Grey Knights is not going to go so well. Equally different points values will dictate which Secondaries are most effective. Take the Thing Their Ranks secondary versus 500 points of Imperial Knights (if any fit in 500 points in 9th Edition!) and you'll only get 1 VP.

Unless of course you auto win for tabling the enemy. This will always be the danger for any rules mechanic. Pack enough firepower, and you just don't care about the rules anymore.  

To wrap up everything I've picked out of this reveal:

Games should be faster paced

Assault is much more achievable

Narrative can now be baked directly into lists

I like all these changes, and I really look forward to seeing the rest of the missions available in 9th Edition. Subscribe to the blog if you want to have more updates, and comment below if I've missed anything.

Until next time!

Thanks for reading.

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