So far in our coverage of the new edition of Warhammer 40,000, we’ve looked at how missions work and the changes to terrain. Today, we’re seeing how those come together as the new-look battlefield objectives.
Rather than objectives existing as tokens that units need to stand next to, most are now secured by claiming a terrain area*. It might sound like a simple change, but it has a couple of big implications that shake up how you’ll approach the battle for your objectives.
For starters, many objectives will now offer a measure of cover to those capturing them, so you don’t need to worry about your dutiful vanguard being left out in the open as a sacrificial lamb. Infantry, Beasts, and Swarms that choose not to shoot can also make use of the new Hidden rule that we saw earlier this week to avoid long-range fire, making them safer as they contribute to your overall victory.
Larger units, such as vehicles and monsters, will also be able to contribute to claiming objectives in greater safety. While not able to use Terrain Areas to gain cover, they can still perch behind ruins, trees, and rubble to gain the benefit of cover, which will be most of the time when holding an objective, as objectives ARE ruins, trees or rubble.
Vehicles can also traverse the terrain around objectives more easily, being able to move through lighter features like low walls, scrub, and treelines without slowing (effectively, all the yellow bits on these maps).
Besides that, it also plays into the story of your games, with armies locked in a back-and-forth scrum over an important strategic ruin, critical power generator, or sacred site – and you can still use your lovingly converted objective tokens to mark which terrain areas are the ones to contest. As we touched upon while discussing new mission types, most primary missions will want you to hold objectives while accomplishing your other tasks, so you’ll always have some hotspots to brawl over.
The number of objectives varies by mission too, between 5 and 6. That's worth factoring in when you build your army list – will you aim to contest the whole battlefield, or concentrate your forces to secure a handful of critical points?
That’s not to say that every objective must now be a building, or treeline, or an important mess of craters, and you’re still welcome to mark them with 40mm bases should the mission require. You might need to defuse a bomb,** for example, or pick up and move relics while running around a crumbling cityscape.
We hope the new focus on area-based objectives gives you some ideas for really cool terrain features to fight around, and spices up the narrative of your games whether they’re light-hearted tussles on the kitchen table or tactical tournament matches where every move matters. We’ll be back next week with another miniature reveal from the Armageddon boxed set, and more rules changes you can look forward to.
* We covered the definition of a terrain area in our terrain article earlier this week.
** Cut the red wire! Or the blue one, maybe…
