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Just a passing thought, but holding objectives is a little bit weird, right? Having units stand on designated patches of ground isn't a new concept to 40k, but in 10th, it's a central part of basically every mission. I find myself wondering if there's a better direction GW could have taken mission mechanics for the sake of forging the narrative.

Don't get me wrong. I know that the missions of past editions got a lot of complaints for not being balanced or for encouraging people to do nothing but murder the enemy before diving onto objectives last minute. I know that 10th is the latest evolution GW trying to make more balanced missions that encourage people to push their armies forward rather than just gunlining at each other for the first four turns. I'm definitely not saying that I want the old Breakout mission to be part of tournament play or that I want static gunlines to make a comeback. It's just that objectives feel a little gamey and limiting.

In past editions, for all the flaws of mission design, my eldar could generally spend the battle flying around in circles, trying to thin out the enemy, and then end-of-game scoring basically measured whether I'd thinned the enemy out enough to plop more bodies on an objective than my opponent. It was flawed, but it did feel like I'd "secured an area" by fighting the battle and then moving my forces into the now-safe(ish) area once the coast was clear. Plus it didn't punish me for using my mobility to skirt the edges of the table and hide out behind terrain.

In contrast, a 10th edition mission really wants me to steadily throw waves of bodies into no-man's land throughout the battle even and especially when the area is still unsafe. And at the end of the game, I might lose the battle for not standing on the important dirt piles for the first 3 turns even though I clearly had control of them towards the end of the battle.

Marching waves of bodies steadily into the blender is all well and good for orks and guardsmen, but it's kind of weird for eldar, tau, and marines who all place value on not wasting lives unnecessarily. And a lot of factions in the game (eldar, tau, daemons, probably others) are specifically known for *not* being all that interested in digging in and holding specific dirt piles for extended periods of time. Like, you can only headcanon that there's a servo skull whose data you need to download in interrupted spurts so many times. When every single battle features objectives that you somehow benefit from standing on for a few seconds at a time, it just feels really odd.

All of which is to say, could GW have chosen a different mechanic/objective to focus on for missions rather than standing on patches of dirt? For forces the size of 40k armies, simply killing as much of the enemy as you can, though boring and maybe prone to encouraging gunlines, really does seem like the sort of thing armies should be up to. Missions where you can blow up objectives after you've taken them are probably a lot harder to balance, but they're definitely easier to hang a story around than throwing squad after squad into hotly-contested-dirt-pile-03 again. The Relic wasn't exactly tournament-friendly, but you can easily grasp the notion that there's something on the battlefield both sides want (or that one side doesn't want the other to have) and that the armies present are doing a violence about it.

I guess I'm basically just spending a lot of words to say, "I wish missions felt more fluffy." But to add a little nuance to that, what I'm really wondering is whether there are other mechanics GW could have framed mission design around that also wouldn't sacrifice a ton of game balance. Like, is there a way to eschew the dirt piles without turning the game into gunlines stat-checking eachother? Would something like the old Table Quarters missions do a decent job of representing battlefield presence/control without forcing everyone to pile onto specific patches of dirt?

"Holding" doesn't always mean holding. Sometimes you're up loading a datafile. Well, you have to stay at the terminal until the datafile uploads. If you upload for a turn, maybe 20% or 25% of the file is uploaded. If you can upload for four turns, that's the whole file up and away!

(And if you're me, you use that as a mission hook in the next game- Uploaded the whole file? In the the subsequent game, with the other half of the roster that received that data gets to use one free strat; any other result, not enough info to get the bonus)

In another game, the exact same thing (holding the objective) could represent desecrating the Imperial shrine, searching for archeotech, etc.

Now having said that, apparently actions are returning to the game in the next season deck (Pariah). This is a good thing for mission diversity... Assuming GW gets it right.

I feel any game benefits from a variety of victory conditions and ways to score victory points.

Taking and holding objectives I see as vital locations in the wider field - the board we play on only being a tiny fraction of a wider battle, so that they don’t necessarily make visual sense I can excuse. Though I do encourage interesting deployment of objectives markers all the same.

Specific tasks and assignments can be other fun ways to determine a battle. For instance, taking out the enemy command structure, wrecking their transport pool, destroying support units can all help a game feel thematic and cinematic. Certainly far more than “everyone report to the middle of the board for the grand punch up” where you only score VPs for killing stuff.

Though, straight up fights do serve a purpose for teaching and familiarising the basic mechanics of the game. And a good punch up can still be fun, once in a while.

But, importantly? The Mission Should Never Be Set Before The Army Lists Are Written. Not only does that invite heavy tailoring, but you may find victory more often going to those with the deepest pockets, as they’re more likely to have a large enough collection to really spec into certain mission parameters, whereas someone of more modest collection size simply can’t.

And yes I’d extend that to Tournaments. Set the points size. Confirm the number of games and your scoring structure. But keep the missions secret. Otherwise it’s too easy to cheese it, removing a chunk of skill.

GW could make faction specific secondaries, and maybe even primaris objectives. Now they would be balanced as everything else GW writes, so am not sure how different would it be.

The system that exists right now is gamey and abstract. Like with many GW rules the player has to convince himself why his army is changing objectives on a per second basis, going from deploying equipment to trying to kill officer, to then suddenly focus on vehicles.
Now I am not asking for narrative missions (as in one or two missions objectives per game). But what if objectives could be linked to make more sense?

You pulled assasinate. You do it and at a certain threshold, you have an option to "upgrade/further" the objective. The opposing army is shaken, and now your army is trying to push their enemy from the mid zone. And if that part of the chain is done, you get a options for capturing objective (fortifying positions) or killing off the strugglers.

Something like deploy teleport homers/landing lights. Could stay unchanged, but turn in to some sort of "secure the landig zone" objective , with the third stop being some sort of "expending the beachhead" one.

Now the player would still pick from 2 objectives per turn, and wouldn't have to "chain" them. But "chaining" should come with benefits. Maybe through upgrading the VP gain of the next in chain secondary or generating specific effect. Lets say you "deploy jammers" and then defend them, and by that you get VP you would normaly get, but now also your opponent can't teleport around as easily. Or you get extra CP not just VP, if you chain objectives. And those chains could get progresivly stronger. You killed the officers and pushed out the enemy from the no mans land, maybe your troops are now high on moral and can not be battle shocks/get re-rolls/+1A in melee.

As far as 10th goes, I am getting a feeling from it similar to how 8th was. That it isn't a "real" edition. It is a pre edition after a rules reset and what GW really wants to do with th game we will see in 11th. And then in 12th they will reset it again.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But, importantly? The Mission Should Never Be Set Before The Army Lists Are Written.

In most circumstances, 100%.

In a narrative Crusade, you choose your forces from a set roster. This can provide opportunities for pre-mission intel (from a previous campaign game, for instance) to allow a force to know the mission in advance, but they have to choose units for the battle from the roster, not the dex at large.

I was interested in this thread, so I just read a summary of the mission rules for 10th.
Am I right in this being the way you do it?
1. Draw deployment style
2. Draw primary mission
3. Decide whether secondary mission is random or fixed, which means you can focus on one objective for your secondary or get a new one each turn
4. On turn 3, you can choose to discard your primary for a gambit, which is randomly chosen and may result in you having to continue with the primary.

Is that how it works? It's a pretty clever system for randomly generating missions. I'm not a fan of the turn by turn secondaries, because they always seem really gamey to me, but I get that they make the game a lot more dynamic.

But from what you're describing, all of these missions boil down to holding different objectives most of the time? That's unfortunate. Seems like the deck based approach would be ideal for subbing in new missions and themed missions for certain warzones or narratives.

It's been my experience that when you put non-standard missions into the game, a lot of players won't like to choose them because they worry about some sort of disadvantage arising from the fact they built their list with the standard missions in mind. It's a real shame. This method seems like it has the potential to shake that up, because it gets you used to the idea that you get a random mission each time, but if you always score by standing on an objective then obviously people will just game that with certain units as well.

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But, importantly? The Mission Should Never Be Set Before The Army Lists Are Written.

In most circumstances, 100%.

In a narrative Crusade, you choose your forces from a set roster. This can provide opportunities for pre-mission intel (from a previous campaign game, for instance) to allow a force to know the mission in advance, but they have to choose units for the battle from the roster, not the dex at large.

Eh, I think list tailoring can make a lot of sense for narrative missions. If the Guard battlegroup is attacking the bunker line, it is going to assign its Demolishers and siege engineers to the attack if it can. If Orks are carrying out a sabotage raid, chances are they'll have kommandos in the vanguard.

I like the core list + sideboard approach for campaigns, where units can be swapped in to match the mission.

PenitentJake wrote:"Holding" doesn't always mean holding. Sometimes you're up loading a datafile. Well, you have to stay at the terminal until the datafile uploads. If you upload for a turn, maybe 20% or 25% of the file is uploaded. If you can upload for four turns, that's the whole file up and away!

That's the kind of thing I was referring to with this bit:

Like, you can only headcanon that there's a servo skull whose data you need to download in interrupted spurts so many times. When every single battle features objectives that you somehow benefit from standing on for a few seconds at a time, it just feels really odd.

Thinking of an objective as a datafile needing uploaded or spirit stones needing recovery, or any number of other things is a good approach. However, it feels weird that every single battle features something in that vein. Like, surely not every single battle in the 41st millennium involves an objective that can be partially completed in spurts, that both factions have an interest in, and that can only be completed while standing in a few specific areas of the battlefield. Like, you can imagine daemons trying to stop you from downloading data, but why do they start downloading the data themselves while standing near the console? Or does every console just happen to be located next to a particularly important shrine that the daemons are determined to desecrate?

It's a good approach, but it starts to feel forced pretty fast.

Karol wrote:GW could make faction specific secondaries, and maybe even primaris objectives. Now they would be balanced as everything else GW writes, so am not sure how different would it be.

Faction-specific objectives would be cool, but I'm dubious about GW making them feel sufficiently unique and also balancing them all. Something I've thought about is having players pick like 3 traits (ex: Mighty, Swift, Sneaky, Unscathed, etc.) Each of those is tied to a mission. Roll a d6 to see which of the missions gets played. If it wasn't your mission selected, you can pick a twist based on one of your 3 traits to modify the mission. Still a big ask, but could potentially require fewer overall objectives.

Da Boss wrote:

But from what you're describing, all of these missions boil down to holding different objectives most of the time? That's unfortunate. Seems like the deck based approach would be ideal for subbing in new missions and themed missions for certain warzones or narratives.

Totally agree. It took me way too long to realize, "Huh. All these missions are basically just about standing on objectives all game, aren't they?"

Haighus wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But, importantly? The Mission Should Never Be Set Before The Army Lists Are Written.

In most circumstances, 100%.

In a narrative Crusade, you choose your forces from a set roster. This can provide opportunities for pre-mission intel (from a previous campaign game, for instance) to allow a force to know the mission in advance, but they have to choose units for the battle from the roster, not the dex at large.

Eh, I think list tailoring can make a lot of sense for narrative missions. If the Guard battlegroup is attacking the bunker line, it is going to assign its Demolishers and siege engineers to the attack if it can. If Orks are carrying out a sabotage raid, chances are they'll have kommandos in the vanguard.

I like the core list + sideboard approach for campaigns, where units can be swapped in to match the mission.

I'd love for a crusade book to provide some sort of intelligence/strategic minigame before the game. Heavy tailoring obviously isn't fun, but being able to bring a bunch of infiltrators to the saboteur mission or fast units to the "escape off the board" mission is fluffy and fun. This would also give you an actual reason to build a large/diverse roster in Crusade. One of the problems with Crusade is that you really don't have any incentive to *not* run the same army over and over again to rack up XP. But wanting to ensure you have the tools for different types of missions and then knowing what the mission is so you know when to use those tools sounds like a blast.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


I'd love for a crusade book to provide some sort of intelligence/strategic minigame before the game. Heavy tailoring obviously isn't fun, but being able to bring a bunch of infiltrators to the saboteur mission or fast units to the "escape off the board" mission is fluffy and fun. This would also give you an actual reason to build a large/diverse roster in Crusade. One of the problems with Crusade is that you really don't have any incentive to *not* run the same army over and over again to rack up XP. But wanting to ensure you have the tools for different types of missions and then knowing what the mission is so you know when to use those tools sounds like a blast.

Yeah, I'm also on board for a "Big Book of Campaign Play" supplement.

Crusade keeps campaign rules vague to allow people to do their own thing... But I think people are looking for some guidance. The campaign system in Ashes of Faith was really cool, and I'm thinking of modifying it for my own campaign.

Map-Based campaigns where standing forces are required to maintain territorial control is an excellent excuse for splitting a roster, but it did work better under the old detachment system than the new; in 9th for example, you could have an Inquisition Vanguard on Territory A, a Sisters Battalion on Territory B, and an enemy who attacks territory B will have to contend with the Inquistion showing up as reinforcements (they don't get to be in the army from turn 1 because they have to travel to territory B). And you could combine both of those detachments as a single army.

That's why I've talked about the 9th detachment system as a Narrative tool.

Attrition campaigns are also cool, and Crusade doesn't provide a framework for that. It would have to be at least somewhat easier for units to die in order for an attrition campaign to work with the Crusade rules.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Totally agree. It took me way too long to realize, "Huh. All these missions are basically just about standing on objectives all game, aren't they?"

This is something that's incredibly hard to get away from in minis games. Even Malifaux, which has a pretty wildly varied scenario designs, its very hard to avoid losing the description of what you're doing to the mechanical process of doing it. The more actions you have to take to accomplish things the more you feel like the scenario is removing engagement with your opponent and its often just difficult to create things that both sides in the conflict would be wanting to accomplish at the same time.

The unfortunate truth of it is what's most likely to break this is just a lot of hobby work. Decorative objectives or objective zones that you change up for a variety of well designed maps tends to go much farther than having everyone not shoot to deploy teleport homers. It just takes good terrain design, which is just a part of the hobby that often doesn't get enough attention in general.

The focus on holding ground in 9th/10th scans to me as a panicked reaction to GW realizing just how lethal they'd accidentally made the game. If you force players to build lists that might be able to survive long enough to score points you don't get the same kind of glass-cannon first-player-wins two-turn games you've seen at some points in the game's history.

Maybe I'm demonstrating a lack of knowledge of other games - but to my mind you've either got "stand on the pile of dirt" or "kill something".

There can be extra steps to this. For example you can have a range of different actions representing your unit doing something on the battlefield - but its still about getting them to the point on the board where they can perform that order.

If you make the game all about killing, then that tends to just produce lists looking for 1st turn kills.

Basically I agree having every fight be about servo skulls and spirit stones is a bit contrived. In real life there's plenty of examples of "two forces encounter each other, have a skirmish, the winner gets to take the area while the loser retreats". But for the game I think scoring objectives throughout is better than doing so at the end - and you need something beyond "we fight, winner is the person with the most stuff left at the end fo 5 turns."

I mean you could have something other than the objective based primary. I think in AoS (possibly some editions ago) and Warmahordes you had missions where there's a zone on the board - and if you hold it for 2 or 3 turns (or something) without it being contest you just auto-win. But arguably that's just standing on a very specific patch of dirt.

Tyel wrote:
Maybe I'm demonstrating a lack of knowledge of other games - but to my mind you've either got "stand on the pile of dirt" or "kill something".

No shade meant, but yes I think you are. FIrst example that comes to my head is Star Wars legion, which has a "downed X-wing" mission. The main thrust of the mission is that the defender has captured an enemy pilot, and the attacker's job is to rescue them, then escape. The attacker picks on unit to start with the prisoner "attached" to them (represented by an upgrade card, like everything in Legion). This provides a buff to the unit, however it prevents them from moving. Now, if the attacker manages to kill the defenders captor unit, the prisoner is let lose. It can't move or anything, but this gives the defender a chance to pick them up. Similarly, if the attacker grabs them, this provides the unit is a much more minor buff, but the unit can still move. Then the game becomes a match of Tug-of-war, the defenders trying to hang onto the captive, while the attackers try to rescue him and get him back to the deployment zone for extraction. Or in my last game of this mission, a brick of 5 B2 super battle droids hiding behind heavy cover sitting there tanking shots all day.

I definitely think more unique missions and mission objectives are possible, even within 40k. In Boarding actions for example there's a mission where the attack has to open as many of a specific set of airlocks for scoring at the end of the game, the idea being they're Venting the defenders out into the void.

Kill Team has a lot of action-based objectives, as the missions are more of a string of campaign missions.
There are some like "Get fuel from a tap, and carry it off the table", or "Run the Gauntlet", to get the attacker's models from one end of the table to the other.
40k's competitive leanings seem to get in the way of a good mission.

 Skinnereal wrote:
There are some like "Get fuel from a tap, and carry it off the table", or "Run the Gauntlet", to get the attacker's models from one end of the table to the other.
40k's competitive leanings seem to get in the way of a good mission.

Drastic differences in faction capabilities also get in the way - 'get fuel' sounds a bit like the 8e relic capture mission which could be completed on the first turn by the index book sisters (and celestine leading seraphim was in every list), while 'run the gauntlet' was one of the old spearhead vehicle missions that just didn't work when it took five turns for one faction to drive up the board and one single movement phase for their opponent...

There are movement restrictions in those missions, and vehicles aren't involved in Kill Team. Models are more similar in KT than in 40k.
In "Get Fuel", it takes a model a turn to fill a can, and then a model picks up the can and waddles off to the table edge. A fast model might not last the whole turn while filling the can.
Yeah, some missions are easier than others for certain factions. Not all KT missions will work well in 40k.

But, GW can do missions when it wants to.

 ProfSrlojohn wrote:
No shade meant, but yes I think you are. FIrst example that comes to my head is Star Wars legion, which has a "downed X-wing" mission. The main thrust of the mission is that the defender has captured an enemy pilot, and the attacker's job is to rescue them, then escape. The attacker picks on unit to start with the prisoner "attached" to them (represented by an upgrade card, like everything in Legion). This provides a buff to the unit, however it prevents them from moving. Now, if the attacker manages to kill the defenders captor unit, the prisoner is let lose. It can't move or anything, but this gives the defender a chance to pick them up. Similarly, if the attacker grabs them, this provides the unit is a much more minor buff, but the unit can still move. Then the game becomes a match of Tug-of-war, the defenders trying to hang onto the captive, while the attackers try to rescue him and get him back to the deployment zone for extraction. Or in my last game of this mission, a brick of 5 B2 super battle droids hiding behind heavy cover sitting there tanking shots all day.

I definitely think more unique missions and mission objectives are possible, even within 40k. In Boarding actions for example there's a mission where the attack has to open as many of a specific set of airlocks for scoring at the end of the game, the idea being they're Venting the defenders out into the void.

Well yeah, we had the Relic back in 7th edition.

But without wanting to go overly special pleading - in your example we are still talking about killing (i.e. the prisoner's defenders, and then presumably whoever holds the prisoner thereafter) or standing on a given pile of dirt (to pick up the prisoner).
Maybe narratively that's enough.

What makes it special is the unique objective model and terrain. Ultimately you can do the same with the Leviathan missions; its just not sold that way and takes some hobby effort. It's rarely a matter of actually being different so much as "feeling" different.

I would be all for switching things up a bit. I don't mind objective games sometimes, but doing it all the time feels really monotonous.

My favourtie 40k supplement was the Battle Missions book from back in... 5th... I think? Essentially there were three specific missions for each faction that catered to their style of play and things they would be attempting to achieve (though you could play any mission as any faction if you wanted to). Not all of them were winners, but enough of them were memorable that I still adapt many of the missions to the current edition because they are a lot of fun.

From the ones I enjoyed off the top of my head. Drukhari (or Dark Eldar at the time) had Slave Raid where the goal was to capture enemy characters (defeating them in close combat) and escaping off the board with their unconscious bodies.

War of Attrition was a fun Guard one where your Troops (essentially Battle Line units) would be able to be re-deployed on the battlefield the turn after they died, allowing you to throw waves of disposable chaff at the objectives.

Deamons had one where there was this warp portal in the center of the table that they deployed out of and no enemy unit could move with in 12" (I think, maybe it was 9" or 6") of it or they just get torn apart by warp energies. There are 4 objectives, one near the center of each table edge. The Deamons are trying to seize them to stabilize the portal, while the defenders are trying to shut it down.

All Around Defense was a Space Marine mission and was always my favourite. There is a single objective placed in the center of the table and the Defender deploys within 12" if it. The attacker can deploy some forces anywhere else on the table (up to 6" away) but MUST keep some in strategic reserve. Whomever controls the single objective at the end of the game wins.

All the Tyranid ones were fun, but First Contact was the best. The board is split into 6 equal sections and the defender rolls off for each unit to see where it deploy, they can't put anything in reserve. The attacker MUST start with everything in reserve and can deploy from reserve on their first turn, however, they also have to roll off when deploying and can only place them in the table section they roll. At the end of the game, whomever controls the most table sections wins.

There was a Necron one where one player controlled a convoy trying to escape off the other side of the board (and had to deploy in a narrow line in the center of the table) while the other a raiding force that came in from the side edges trying to destroy them. You scored points on the number of units that escaped vs killed.

This was also the book that popularized Kill Team as an alternate game mode, before it became the format it is today.

There were lots more, (33 IIRC) and almost all of them were a lot of fun.

Would all of these missions be balanced for competitive play, probably not, but I actually think that's a good thing. Having all the missions based around the same objectives objectives in the same way makes it a lot easier to build skew lists. Yes some lists would be a lot better at some of these missions that others, but would be a lot worse at different ones. Personally I think that a much wide variety of mission styles would lead to not only more interesting games, but more balanced list building because you could be called upon to do such a wide variety of things.

 Tawnis wrote:
Would all of these missions be balanced for competitive play, probably not, but I actually think that's a good thing.

This here, I think, is the key. Objective-based missions are great for competitive play, but it would be nice to have something for non-competitive Matched Play.

Battle Missions was largely a repackaging of missions that used to be included in the big rulebook. It was interesting but I thought it was a shame they stripped them out of the one book almost everyone buys. Mission variety got more and more stale until 8th, where it went very random and too far the other way.

Most can be re-used in 10th will little adjustment, I expect.

So, who's up for collating the 'Best of' missions thread?

I can say that after reading the missions for 10th I was bored right away and knew I wouldn't be playing them. No variety, no themes, no terrain to make a table look beautiful, just remixed "stand on invisible objectives in ruins", *vomits in my mouth*. It's like they're trying to turn their game into a MOBA crossed with chess to emulate a state of balance. This game will never be as balanced as chess or as accurate an indicator of how good someone is strategically. As it is, this game is a slightly more nuanced version of HoMM battles. Anything that could be done to put some life or simulation back in this game would be great. Hopefully by 11th ed this may be worth playing again.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
Would all of these missions be balanced for competitive play, probably not, but I actually think that's a good thing.

This here, I think, is the key. Objective-based missions are great for competitive play, but it would be nice to have something for non-competitive Matched Play.

Tyrranic War has some asymmetrical stuff, particularly after the initial phase. They very much fit the bill.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Haighus wrote:

 PenitentJake wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But, importantly? The Mission Should Never Be Set Before The Army Lists Are Written.

In most circumstances, 100%.

In a narrative Crusade, you choose your forces from a set roster. This can provide opportunities for pre-mission intel (from a previous campaign game, for instance) to allow a force to know the mission in advance, but they have to choose units for the battle from the roster, not the dex at large.

Eh, I think list tailoring can make a lot of sense for narrative missions. If the Guard battlegroup is attacking the bunker line, it is going to assign its Demolishers and siege engineers to the attack if it can. If Orks are carrying out a sabotage raid, chances are they'll have kommandos in the vanguard.

I like the core list + sideboard approach for campaigns, where units can be swapped in to match the mission.

I'd love for a crusade book to provide some sort of intelligence/strategic minigame before the game. Heavy tailoring obviously isn't fun, but being able to bring a bunch of infiltrators to the saboteur mission or fast units to the "escape off the board" mission is fluffy and fun. This would also give you an actual reason to build a large/diverse roster in Crusade. One of the problems with Crusade is that you really don't have any incentive to *not* run the same army over and over again to rack up XP. But wanting to ensure you have the tools for different types of missions and then knowing what the mission is so you know when to use those tools sounds like a blast.

In our current campaign we are using a Risk styled map between each campaign round to mark down conquered territory and other stuff (such as ressources of each sector and buildings inside). You have to spent ressources at the beginning of each round to attack a sector from an opponent (simulating the cost to muster an army). The attacker chooses one out of several missions in advance. The defender doesn't know it until the moment both players meet up to have a game. It does create a neat little dynamic where attackers can bring highly specialised armies while defenders need to bring true TAC lists. Despite the attackers advantage, not every game is won by them.

The missions the attacker can choose from depends on the point size being played. Examples would be "just kill each other", "get to the other deployment zone", "find the mystery objective and hold it", "hold multiple objectives", "ambush the enemy", "destroy one objective in the middle", "capture enemy bunkers", ...

Let’s be honest, most people are playing this game because of the setting, not the ruleset. 40K has pretty much always sucked as a ruleset, has terrible missions etc.
My wife finally played a game with me (just because she always said she wanted to see what it was about), and I had to apologize how bad and boring the game is the entire time. It’s a terrible game, only the setting and the minis make it reasonable.
My better games of 40K are purely narrative missions that are not always balanced (and definitely doesn’t have the god awful tourney style terrain layout).
Now I’m wondering why I’m still interested in this game, lol.

The mission book for ProHammer was our attempt to get at what the OP is hinting at. I'm pretty proud of how it all came together. The basic principles used are the following:

(1) Use a variety or scoring timing systems. Some missions will use "End game" scoring where only the final board state matters, other missions use "Progressive Scoring" like you see in 10th. Others use "Threshhold scoring" where you're trying to be the first to X-number of points or be x-points ahead of your opponent.

The above creates variability in pacing between different missions.

(2) Use different scoring triggers / objectives. Sometimes it's all about holding one spot on the map. Sometimes you get points based on how many points you control when you activate a node. Sometimes you're searching for a hidden objective, or trying to infiltrate units off the board. Basically we wanted to give a variety of things to "do" feat wise.

These two things intersect with other parameters like the arrangement of objective locations, deployment zone layouts, etc to create a pretty huge diversity of setups.

This was designed for ProHammer but should work for 10th without much fuss.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Totally agree. It took me way too long to realize, "Huh. All these missions are basically just about standing on objectives all game, aren't they?"

This is something that's incredibly hard to get away from in minis games. Even Malifaux, which has a pretty wildly varied scenario designs, its very hard to avoid losing the description of what you're doing to the mechanical process of doing it. The more actions you have to take to accomplish things the more you feel like the scenario is removing engagement with your opponent and its often just difficult to create things that both sides in the conflict would be wanting to accomplish at the same time.

The unfortunate truth of it is what's most likely to break this is just a lot of hobby work. Decorative objectives or objective zones that you change up for a variety of well designed maps tends to go much farther than having everyone not shoot to deploy teleport homers. It just takes good terrain design, which is just a part of the hobby that often doesn't get enough attention in general.

There are a ton of variants on missions you can do without requiring extensive hobby work. Just a few I've encountered in various games over the years:
-Hold (progressive scoring by turn)
-Seize (all-or-nothing scoring at the end of the game- either specific objectives or table quarters)
-Retrieval (grab objective and escape through your table edge)
-Breakthrough/Breakout (escape with as many units as possible through enemy's deployment zone, or to the edges of the board when starting in the middle)
-Escort (escape with a single VIP through enemy's deployment zone)
-Assassination (kill enemy commander or VIP)
-Attrition (kill the enemy)
-Holdout (survive with as many units as possible)
-Escape (fall back from a forward deployment position to your board edge)

And I mean, if players are willing to accept bland abstract tokens as objective markers, clearly the modeling expectations are pretty low.

40K used to have an awful lot more missions than the 9th-10th bland minor variants on Hold. It's just that they've been gradually whittled down to this point by the specific combination of:
1. A gameplay paradigm where you have to build your list with no idea what mission it'll need to perform, what terrain it'll be operating on, or what force it will be facing,
2. A stronger-than-ever focus on competitive design, where the idea of randomly receiving a mission that your list is bad at is seen as a failure of game design rather than a failure of listbuilding, and
3. An emphasis on competitive balance, where having basically just one mission with minor variants makes it easier to determine the value of a unit, since its utility is consistent rather than contingent upon the mission.

It's not that 40K can't support more varied missions or that the hobby requirements are onerous; 10th Ed missions are boring because GW's target audience doesn't want variety, it wants predictable missions it can optimize listbuilding for. It's the same reason the game has bland, symmetrical recommended terrain layouts, a consistent five-turn game length, and game sizes at fixed points increments. It's all in the name of competitive balance.

I don't think GW is getting away from either competitive play or listbuilding-in-a-vacuum anytime soon, so the best we can hope for is supplemental mission packs. Or just roll your own with like-minded friends.

 bullyboy wrote:
Let’s be honest, most people are playing this game because of the setting, not the ruleset. 40K has pretty much always sucked as a ruleset, has terrible missions etc.
My wife finally played a game with me (just because she always said she wanted to see what it was about), and I had to apologize how bad and boring the game is the entire time. It’s a terrible game, only the setting and the minis make it reasonable.
My better games of 40K are purely narrative missions that are not always balanced (and definitely doesn’t have the god awful tourney style terrain layout).
Now I’m wondering why I’m still interested in this game, lol.

It's a bit beside the intent of this thread, but there are a bunch of alternate rulesets you could try that are designed to make use of 40K minis. Grimdark Future is one of the more popular ones.

something we've been doing with battletech recently is moving objectives, your chasing down clues and once claimed for a turn you roll to see where the next objective will be that could be done with scatter dice maybe?

it can lead to some quite fun case with about turns or full on clashes with units best avoided

 catbarf wrote:
10th Ed missions are boring because GW's target audience doesn't want variety, it wants predictable missions it can optimize listbuilding for. It's the same reason the game has bland, symmetrical recommended terrain layouts, a consistent five-turn game length, and game sizes at fixed points increments. It's all in the name of competitive balance.

I don't think GW is getting away from either competitive play or listbuilding-in-a-vacuum anytime soon, so the best we can hope for is supplemental mission packs. Or just roll your own with like-minded friends.

In this environment, it's still possible to have mission variants like you list by putting them right in units' databases. People get the predictability they want, because when they take a bike unit they know it comes with an assassinate-style objective against enemy fire support. Armour units IRL have been line breakers they take a battle tank, it comes with a line breaker objective. If they take Guilliman, the opponent gets a huge VP award for killing him. Basilisk automatically come with Deploy Jammers style objectives because they're firing off field. It's all automated: your list and your opponents' lists give you your missions.

That's a lot more accessible than the various game modes and campaign books that GW sometimes writes but don't get bought or used that often.