Battle Missions

So I finally got my hands on the battle missions book. Overall I was pleased, the mission setup maps were great. They did a great job of showing the basic setup with a very easy and consistent theme.

The missions were pretty decent, they did a good job at giving some interesting twists to the objectives, nothing terribly groundbreaking, mostly this was accomplished by giving special rules to one army or another. In most cases it the army got Stubborn, or a Without Number in some form or another.

I liked the newly re-invented Slave Raid mission for the Dark Eldar, basically everytime you win an assault, or sweep an enemy you gain one slave. However both players gain this advantage, so it's basically a modified kill point mission. HQs you capture are worth a D6 slave points at the end of the game.

The one Dark Eldar mission I wasn't fond of was the Feigning Retreat. You basically divide the table in three width wise, one section on the short table end is the enemies deployment, then the Dark Eldar gets to setup 2 units in the center section (and yes a transport counts as 1) and the rest of the army deploys in the third section on the opposite short table edge. The idea is that the enemy is going to pursue you into your trap. The reality is they get extra turns to shoot at raiders.

I think my favorite mission was the new combat patrol. I don't see this being used as a normal mission, but I do see it spawning a new type of gaming style. Basically with 200 or 500 points, players can have 0-1 elite, or fast choice, 0-3 troops. From there each model functions independantly. This ingtrigues me quite a bit, it almost reminds me of a starting for a system like Necromunda, or GorkaMorka with your existing 40K armies. I might toy with some further test rules.

Overall, I think the missions will be more for casual play because of the variety of special rules and advantages, but we'll see how it works in a tournament setting. My girlfriend is going to try and run some of the Battle Missions at the club tournament in April.