The Chapter Approved deck – What is it and how does it work?

The new edition of Warhammer 40,000 brings a fundamental change to how your battles are fought, centring them around the question: What have you built your army to do? 

The new Chapter Approved deck provides the step-by-step guidelines and mission components necessary to answer this question with more agency than ever before as you battle your way through the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium.

Your Army Has Orders

At the heart of the new Chapter Approved deck are Force Dispositions – broad strategic approaches that describe how your army intends to win the battle. Some forces advance relentlessly to seize ground. Others are here to annihilate the enemy. Some are swift reconnaissance elements, sabotage forces, raiders, or hardened defenders protecting vital assets at all costs.

Each detachment in the new edition is associated with a Force Disposition, helping connect the way your army is built with the way it fights on the table. There are five Force Dispositions. 

The result is simple but powerful – your detachment doesn’t just give you rules, it helps define your army’s mission. Rather than both armies always approaching the battle in exactly the same way, your Force Disposition interacts with your opponent’s to create the shape of the mission. A force sent to Purge the Foe will experience the battle differently when facing a stubborn Take and Hold army than when clashing with a slippery Reconnaissance force or a sabotage-minded Disruption detachment.

Varied Battles for Everyday Play

Thanks to the way armies are constructed in the new edition, you’re also able to build forces with the flexibility to pursue a variety of missions. For example, an army might be built with one detachment linked to Take and Hold, and another linked to Priority Assets. In everyday pickup games, you and your opponent have the flexibility to choose which Disposition (i.e. which set of orders) your army will adopt prior to each individual battle. This is especially helpful when playing against the same friend or family member on a regular basis, letting you mix up your army’s approach for a fresh experience every time.

Chapter Approved also provides a set of maps that indicate where pieces of terrain that count as objectives should be located based upon deployment zones in casual play. Whilst not as prescriptive as the terrain layouts in the Event Companion (see below), these maps provide rough guidelines for you to throw terrain down on a battlefield and get to rolling dice within minutes of opening your Armageddon boxed set.

The Chapter Approved Mission Deck contains 15 individual mission matchups, built from the five Force Dispositions. Each matchup creates a distinct strategic challenge, complete with appropriate deployments and mission objectives. Coupled with the ability to select different Force Dispositions from game to game in a casual setting, this gives players a huge amount of variety without losing the clean structure expected from modern matched play.

Chapter Approved also includes a brand new set of Twists meant to keep battles fresh and interesting. These can fundamentally alter rules, like providing Hidden for the entire army, or simply mix up what mission you’re playing for a fresh take on a familiar experience. 

Refreshed Secondary Mission Cards

While Force Disposition establishes the overarching operational orders your army follows as it marches to war, Secondary Mission Cards represent fragmentary orders received or evolved during the chaos of an active war zone. These cards received several key changes going into the new edition, giving you more agency around when and how you achieve these sudden battlefield opportunities. First, several new missions have been added, while some old familiar ones were updated for the new edition.

Previously, you only drew new Secondary Mission Cards each turn if you didn’t already have two cards in your hand. Now, you always draw two new missions during each of your Command Phases, giving you the tactical flexibility to choose when and how you’ll achieve these missions. The pressure is still on, however, as you can only score up to 15 points from Secondaries in a single turn, even if you complete missions that would otherwise exceed this value. You no longer feel behind the entire game simply due to an unfortunate early turn draw, but you still can’t wait all game to try and rack up points only in the final turn or two.

Finally, and critically, you no longer must score a Secondary card. Combined with the ability to hold cards longer, you may choose not to score a mission when you’ve only achieved a portion of the available points. Holding cards until you’ve achieved their maximum value could net you a mighty shift in game state by the end of the battle, unless you run out of time or units first…

Chapter Approved and the Event Companion

The Event Companion (which will be released as a pdf soon) is designed to integrate with Chapter Approved, providing organisers and participants in singles, doubles, and team events with the rules for fighting Chapter Approved battles in an organised play setting.

Unlike casual play, every player selects a single Force Disposition from those available to their army’s detachments. This gives you a clear expectation of the kinds of battles you’ll fight, whilst ensuring balance between players regardless of the number of different Detachments their army has access to. 

To ensure variety and make it harder to solve for every scenario, the Event Companion also includes a set of three different terrain layouts for each of the 15 missions, along with guidelines for which layouts to use during which rounds of an organised play event. These have been extensively playtested to ensure the closest representation of the balance outcomes intended with each army’s unit and detachment points. Like with points, community data from games played on these layouts will be continually reviewed to ensure Chapter Approved missions play as intended throughout the season.

A Totally New Battlefield Experience

The many subtle changes to the core rules of Warhammer 40,000 create a feeling of evolution for the new edition. Every phase contains refinements and tweaks that seem light touch individually, but create a greatly improved gaming experience when taken as a whole.

In contrast, Chapter Approved changes the fundamental concept of Warhammer 40,000 missions dramatically, adding asymmetry and army-driven battle concepts to deepen the narrative experience and greatly diversify what an effective army might look like from game to game. 

And they haven't been updated purely for narrative purposes. The team have leveraged years of game data and lessons learned to create the overall best Warhammer mission experience possible.

Chapter Approved provides players of all types – from at-home friend groups to veteran tournament-goers – with a fresh new take on how to fight a battle in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, one driven by player agency and centred on your personalised miniatures collection from start to finish.

The new Chapter Approved deck will be available in the Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon boxed set and also separately soon afterwards. Sign up for our newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out when we announce the date for pre-orders.