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This is an interesting phenomenon I've encountered over the past few months: I haven't really been playing to the mission, and I've still been winning. A lot.
As a Space Marines/Wolves player, my scoring units range from mediocre to pretty good, but nine times out of ten I have been winning through sheer destructive force. There are just so many high-damage weapons in 6th edition that even the most indestructible or tanky units can't survive, short of 2++ rerollable cheese units. It's far simpler to take the 600-800 points that would normally go into making sure I have durable scoring squads, and just buy that much more sweeping power. If my opponent has no scoring units at the end of the game, then the mission type is moot.

Has anyone else tried or encountered this? I still play to the mission a little bit, but when building my list I rarely have more than 45 troops squads in my 2k list, even with an ally, and I have still been doing very well in objective-based games against more mission-based lists.

I've been getting the opposite, I win because I play to the mission.

Just yesterday I was playing IG against Chaos, and the guy flew his Demon Prince warlord into my army's killzone. Took him out turn 1, getting warlord and first blood. After that my warlord was going to ground anytime someone looked at him funny, and I ran him across the table to avoid a rampaging demon engine.

Game before that, my opponent was Tyranids, and he had six troops choices in a mission with six objectives. I won because I ran my one remaining guardsman to seize the 4 point objective and sent my ratlings to deny his genestealers from a 3 point objective. He was still shooting at my tanks with his zoanthropes, even though my ratlings were what won the game.

It's easy to get caught up in the middle of the fight, trying to target their big guns. But as long as one guard squad can make it to the objective and win the game, it's irrelevant that his demon engine just tore through a demolisher and a chimera and is eating its way through my platoon command squad.

Little of column A, little of column B. Sometimes I play the mission, sometimes I play the army, sometimes I play the player. It's situational. If I'm playing Dark Eldar against an Ork army, I'll probably play keep-away and try to score late game. If I'm playing my Drop Pod Salamanders and my opponent plays, say, hybrid Guard, then I'm probably going to ignore everything else and just try to slaughter his army until one stone does not stand upon another. It all depends.

Sometimes you just can't play fully to mission. For example, eldar pretty much ignore your tactix. They're too fast and can contest any time with hidden jetbikes that move across the whole map and get 3+ cover and armor just because. They're too shooty for you to just protect the points and they ignore cover and shoot across the whole board with a lot of mid-high str shots. They're too durable to just shoot at them and hope to wreck something if you don't have reliable means of downing serpents and notably, not many armies have them. So you got to go fully offensive and start thinking bout the points around turn 5. But generally, sticking to mission is what wins you games. At least to orks cause i'd not say we've got super-destructive power cept for nob bikers so you got to stick to mission anywayz.

But yep, generally, people take minimum troops and maximum offensive stuff. That's why i like relic and scoring missions. Cause i got a ton of ork boyz rolling across the field and it's enough to kill 2-3 min squads of enemy troops to disallow him score or capture anything. And all that baledrakes and riptides will never kill enough boyz.

 koooaei wrote:
And all that baledrakes and riptides will never kill enough boyz.

Nothing truer has ever been said.

As I play Blood Angels, my damage output/survavibility isn't that high.
Because of that, the few games I win are because of playing the mission.

It doesn't matter if my friend's Tau army has wiped out everything but my Scouts and single Assault Squad.
It doesn't matter if the Tau still have 60%+ models left.
If I have two objectives, he has two objectives and I have Firts Blood, I win.

I rarely have a good opening to a wipeout.

Don't worry WP, you can face roll me again next time we play. No need for objectives!

As a tau player I don't really play the missions due to the amount of fire power I can put out, and lack of durable troops.

I play the mission, every time. It helps me to win a lot more often than not. Even if I can't win, I can pull off a draw by doing that. I like having missions and paying attention to them, they make the game more fun.

Though I'd love to once again try objectives-per-side like in 2nd edition, or the chart that was in Chapter Approved in 3rd or 4th edition (which I have as a file somewhere, so might talk some people into trying it).

Yeah, I like when each side has their own mission. I'm thinking of trying some of the third ed missions that actually got you to use a different FOC for a change as well!

Waaaghpower wrote:
This is an interesting phenomenon I've encountered over the past few months: I haven't really been playing to the mission, and I've still been winning. A lot.
As a Space Marines/Wolves player, my scoring units range from mediocre to pretty good, but nine times out of ten I have been winning through sheer destructive force. There are just so many high-damage weapons in 6th edition that even the most indestructible or tanky units can't survive, short of 2++ rerollable cheese units. It's far simpler to take the 600-800 points that would normally go into making sure I have durable scoring squads, and just buy that much more sweeping power. If my opponent has no scoring units at the end of the game, then the mission type is moot.

Has anyone else tried or encountered this? I still play to the mission a little bit, but when building my list I rarely have more than 45 troops squads in my 2k list, even with an ally, and I have still been doing very well in objective-based games against more mission-based lists.

Not the same thing, but I have two friends that whenever I say, "lets roll for the mission", they say something like, "Nah...lets just roll for deployment, then blow eachother up."

They always end up being fun games, so I'm not complaining.

I much prefer mission, because it gives you a reason to take and hold something, or otherwise perform some sort of tactical play that isn't blasting each other away. If I wanted to play "shoot at each other until someone loses" I'd play Apoc.

Playing the missions is most of the fun of the game as it usually produces the improbable wins/ties.

I pulled a win from the jaws of defeat last night.

I was about to be tabled by a Guard player after he had first turn and shot my army to peices. We were playing the scouring, and on the top of turn 5, I held the 4 point objective with two (fragile) units. He held a 3 point, a 2 point, also having first blood, linebreaker, and warlord. I had linebreaker.

I won the game by deep-striking a single swooping hawk (who skyleaped on the previous turn), onto his objective, contesting it. Rolled a 2 to end the game, and I won by a single point.

It was a move that won me the game, in the only way that I could possibly win it.


I try to play each turn with a different mindset.

Turn 1/2 - Kill the biggest threats to my key units, minimise losses of my killy units.
Turn 3 - Pressure and out manouver my opponent, protect my troops, plan for the endgame
Turn 4/5 - Kill troops, move to objectives.

Waaaghpower wrote:
This is an interesting phenomenon I've encountered over the past few months: I haven't really been playing to the mission, and I've still been winning. A lot.
As a Space Marines/Wolves player, my scoring units range from mediocre to pretty good, but nine times out of ten I have been winning through sheer destructive force. There are just so many high-damage weapons in 6th edition that even the most indestructible or tanky units can't survive, short of 2++ rerollable cheese units. It's far simpler to take the 600-800 points that would normally go into making sure I have durable scoring squads, and just buy that much more sweeping power. If my opponent has no scoring units at the end of the game, then the mission type is moot.

Has anyone else tried or encountered this? I still play to the mission a little bit, but when building my list I rarely have more than 45 troops squads in my 2k list, even with an ally, and I have still been doing very well in objective-based games against more mission-based lists.

most of my wins are because i focus on destroying the enemies scoring units and i tend rely heavily on adding as much scoring units in my army as possible...

I mainly move to take objectives and kill units in a way that allows one to:
Gain air domance
Gain tac superiority- kill armor, arty, command.
Gain points.
And deny the enemy the same. Table the enemy and hold the objectives.
Unless you roll a ton of , it tends to work. It is a shooty game now, so I tend to forsake objectives for military domanance, but objectives are fun.