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Right now, objective control (OC) only serves for scoring primaries, but I think an OC requirement for secondaries would make a lot more sense than anything involving the words "wholly within". Because how come a squad of 20 ork boyz can't score Engage On All Fronts if it has just one model outside a certain table quarter, yet a lone character who's wholly within by one millimeter can score it? I guess to avoid a squad occupying two quarters at once? You could either: 1) rule that the squad must choose one quarter to occupy for this purpose; 2) modify Engage OAF to be based on minimum distance between units (e.g. designate 3-4 units that are more than 24'' from one another) instead of table quarters; or 3) set the OC requirement high enough that, if you can manage to put enough OC from a single unit in two different table quarters, you damn well deserve your two-for-the-price-of-one Engage OAF. The third option also encourages a higher ratio of Battleline units (which tend to have higher OC per model) instead of just elites and specialists, which imo is a good thing in the post-FOC meta of list-building.

Actions could require that you devote a certain amount of OC to the task. This would allow large units (like the aforementioned 20 orks) to have some models perform the action and leave others free to dakka the enemy. Ain't no way you need all 20 orks to perform a Sabotage or Cleanse... They'd just get in each other's way.

Given their generally low OC, vehicles would be a poor choice for performing OC-based actions, even if they have nothing better to do. I think that's good, too. Actions usually imply some pretty involved or technical task.

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-Guardsman- wrote:
Right now, objective control (OC) only serves for scoring primaries, but I think an OC requirement for secondaries would make a lot more sense than anything involving the words "wholly within". Because how come a squad of 20 ork boyz can't score Engage On All Fronts if it has just one model outside a certain table quarter, yet a lone character who's wholly within by one millimeter can score it? I guess to avoid a squad occupying two quarters at once? You could either: 1) rule that the squad must choose one quarter to occupy for this purpose; 2) modify Engage OAF to be based on minimum distance between units (e.g. designate 3-4 units that are more than 24'' from one another) instead of table quarters; or 3) set the OC requirement high enough that, if you can manage to put enough OC from a single unit in two different table quarters, you damn well deserve your two-for-the-price-of-one Engage OAF. The third option also encourages a higher ratio of Battleline units (which tend to have higher OC per model) instead of just elites and specialists, which imo is a good thing in the post-FOC meta of list-building.

Actions could require that you devote a certain amount of OC to the task. This would allow large units (like the aforementioned 20 orks) to have some models perform the action and leave others free to dakka the enemy. Ain't no way you need all 20 orks to perform a Sabotage or Cleanse... They'd just get in each other's way.

Given their generally low OC, vehicles would be a poor choice for performing OC-based actions, even if they have nothing better to do. I think that's good, too. Actions usually imply some pretty involved or technical task.

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Conceptually, I'm 100% on board with this. (Despite my precious Nurglings having 0 OC.)

In practice, it'd obviously need refinement and testing. But that's true of basically any change.

I miss the old bizarre missions that had you pick up objectives and carry them to certain spots on the map.

All this OC stuff isn't very interesting. I wish 40k would take a page or 2 from Kill Team.

That would be great, cause staying in macigal circles is super stupid thing. Nod testroimg/defend, stealing or protect but just staying. But that not gonna happen cause it's bad for tournaments.

Regarding oc for secondaries that would be good change I think.

Fun concept! I do have some concerns though.

Setting a minimum OC value to complete secondaries means that you either set the value so low that it almost doesn't matter that it's based on OC, or else it's so high that you risk making OC1 units incapable of doing secondaries.

So for instance, let's say the minimum OC required to engage on all fronts is 2. Nearly every unit in the game is going to satisfy that requirement with the exception of characters running around on their own or OC one units that have been reduced to the last model. So pretty situational. But if you bump the minimum OC up to 4? Now all it takes is two casualties on most 5-man squads in the game to make them incapable of participating in scoring that secondary.

And it seems to me that there are plenty of OC1 units with low body counts that seem like they should be *good* at secondaries rather than being prone to being incapable of doing them. Eldar rangers are the first unit I think of when someone mentions "sabotage," and warp spiders/striking scorpions are right behind them.

I think what I like about your proposal is the potential for a unit with a high OC value to do secondaries *better.* Maybe we lean into that in a way that doesn't make other units *worse* at participating in secondaries?

So rather than setting a minimum OC requirement to score Engage, you instead say that a unit doesn't have to be wholly within a single quadrant so long as it has at least X OC in each quadrant it's in and is more than Y inches away from the center of the battlefield. Or do the action-based thing you suggested where units can give up X OC worth of models' shooting to do the action but can then otherwise shoot as normal.

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OC feels a little weird to me. When they introduced it, it was pitched as solving the problem of a single lone gretchin denying an objective to a squad of terminators because of obsec. But now, the only times OC generally matters is when you're doing a similarly weird thing. Like, my eldar guardians having OC2 means that I can toss 5 of them onto an objective with 10 terminators and deny them the objective in the following command phase because our OC values match. Yet an aspect warrior (who also underwent guardian training) is apparently worse at whatever it is the guardians are abstractly doing despite being able to actually threaten the terminators.

It feels to me like OC is a bandaid fix for the problems with obsec. Obsec was a bandaid fix for the old troop tax. The troop tax was a hamfisted way to force you to field units that the designers couldn't be bothered to incentivize you to field through good unit design. So now ork boyz are somehow better at contesting an objective infested with terminators than nobz and lootas and so forth are. OC kind of feels like it speed ran its way into being one of those odd mechanics that mostly exists because something like it existed in previous editions.