Tipping the scales of war; the size of 9th Edition battlefields REVEALED and was I wrong about fast paced games?!

Sometimes a new bit of news feels more like just an update to the thinking I've done. And then through the glorious process of obsession and overthinking blossoms into a full discourse. And finally you realise you've gone down a rabbit hole that you really shouldn't have done...

Hello chaps and chapettes. We've had a bit more news about how 40K will be played in 9th since last week, where I wrote about the new close-quarter blood baths that might be coming in. I'm right, but you will need to make a small adjustment to your expectations for smaller point lists and might want to build in some greater mobility... and I'll explain why. Also, a theme of 9th Edition missions appears to be specifying where objectives are in the mission itself, and big shift from players deciding where they are.

Warhammer Community released their 4 Sizes fits all article amidst the other updates and leaks about 9th Edition. The most relevant things to know about this are the article I wrote earlier about small size games and then also what I wrote about the vicious and swift to engagement nature of the new 9th edition missions. A lot of it is confirming some of the old rules regarding competitive play found in 8th:

With the new 9th edition rules here:

What's really new is the minimum sized boards as opposed to setting the full board scale, and also the omission of max number of units from the same data sheet. We can probably expect the plague burster/commander spam of early 8th to be countered by the new detachments costing CP to buy, but the minimum size boards and new 500 point mission release look like they're actually designed to slow the game down! 

In the mission article I wrote I discuss the implications of the close-quarter deployment, and how the missions were set up to encourage quick action over turns of manoeuvring. This is almost immediately countered by the new mission coming out for small scale engagements. 

The deployment zones below are the typical spread nature of 8th edition and earlier, with deployment zones being a good long ways across from each other at 24-inches. You could argue that the context of the mission, being more of an exploratory attach by small forces, means that the big distances fits in well. It doesn't detract anything about the fact it makes the game slower paced, doubly so if you have small units.

But, it does need to be said that the objectives are really close together. The maximum distance between objectives on the above field is 32-inches, well within the range of most long range weaponry (taken to be the standard heavy bolter/sniper rifle etc 36-inches). Even the standard infantry weapons have a chance at messing around with far objectives in each deployment zone, provided you played aggressively enough. Starting on your deployment line and having one standard move will have you within 22-inches of the furthest objective. 

This makes the contest over victory points more of a focus. You can have as big a battlefield as you like... but all the action will happen in the middle, making the combat more concentrated.

Of course, since we're dealing with minimum table size you can have a potentially infinite battlefield. You could even have a four-foot deep deployment zone! A silly exploit would be to field a bunch of Basiliks waaaaay back in your deployment zone hammering away at enemies. You'd almost certainly give up control of the objectives in the first few turns, but you'd be able to apply firepower without any return damage... at least until the reserves came in. Smash Captains and fusion commanders would end that fairly swiftly, so I wouldn't recommend it. 

This element of range, which with minimum table sizes only gets worse between units when you have smaller forces, means that some foot sloggers will have turns of just running around the battlefield, which is hardly the exciting blood bath I detailed in an earlier article.

Of course the whole purpose of this set up is to actually slow the game down. Sounds bonkers right? 

After all the work I've put in to convince you it's to speed things up. But consider the relative size of armies. In 500 points there aren't that many units to consider, and the loss of a single one is catastrophic for the army. 2000 point lists, or at least the competitive ones tend to have redundancy of units build in over diversity. If you take a unit of Shining Spears you tend to take two more. Why? Well Space Elf Knights riding flying motorcycles is cool, but not having your main damage dealing unit alpha'd off the field is even cooler. You can't do that with 500 point armies, since three units of anything is typically your entire points allowance... or at least to the cost of anything else in your army.

The time extending factor in 2000 points is the sheer number of wounds you have to chew through, whereas the time extending factor in 500 points is the unit getting killed leaving you with a broken force. If you've played as many small games as I have then you know that the last few turns are literally one or two models, not units but models, slugging it out in an absurdly protracted melee. Neither can statically put out enough wounds to actually kill the other, leading to a stalemate in terms of killing each other. The game kind of grinds to a halt instead of having a gripping conclusion, simply because the forces become exhausted too quickly.

Victory points have been a way of countering this kind of stalemate since they were introduced. The difference with the 9th Edition mission design is that larger games start closer together (so far, based on the ONE mission we've got), so that forces can get to the grind of chewing through wounds more quickly. For smaller scale ones, positioning on objectives becomes easier than trying to alpha the enemy off the field. This is particularly true, since you can cap out all of your victory points in one aggressive turn of capturing, particularly if the enemy sits in the deployment zone.

In essence, the distance on smaller battlefields are good for two reasons:

• Keep the pace of the game consistent from turn to turn
• Train newer players with small collections to play to objectives rather than the kill

So what do I recommend? If you're going to play low point armies, stick to units with either good deployment options or excellent mobility. Slow thumpers and artillery units are tremendously effective when they have supporting screens and back up. But despite the great ability to delete units, you run the risk of losing the game on objectives and victory points. You can have some success with a standard gun line castle, provided you're savvy enough to know when to break formation to grab objectives. 

Or I could be hugely wrong about all this! Let me know in the comment below what you think, and make sure to subscribe to the blog to stay updated.

Until next time!

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