https://www.tabletopbattles.com/40k-11th-edition-force-disposition-review-disruption
Don't know if anyone else has been reading the not-Goonhammer review's of the primary missions based on the Force Dispositions.
FWIW I quite liked these articles but disagreed a bit with this one on Disruption.
At the danger of simplifying things, I feel there's a lot of "the two armies fight, and then the Disruption player comes off worse, so the opponent gets to dominate the central objectives and walks away with the game".
And while that's certainly possible, I don't see why it should be taken as a given. Generally in modern
40k if you could consistently hold more you'd just win. You need to stop them doing that.
One thing to say is that I think Disruption's standard composition is kind of weird. You need a decent number of Actions against Take and Hold and Reconnaissance. (You could potentially try and grind these out with only a couple per turn - but its probably easier to get a big score early and work back).
But you only need 1 a turn versus Priority Assets and none at all against Purge or in the mirror.
I could be wrong, but I don't think this is the Force Disposition for "armies of trash" as some on Reddit are describing. That's probably Recon or Priority Assets (with a few hammers in there too). I think with Disruption you want to murder things but with a bit more going on than with Purge. You want to hold 1 objective, but generally you are concerned with keeping the rest clear or tagged in your turn rather than necesarilly held for a whole turn.
Against Take and Hold - sorry Jidmah but still standing by my guns here. I think this is Disruption favoured. You need 5-6 actions over the course of the game - for say the 3 central objectives plus 2 other terrain areas - and maybe the opponent's home objective if you can tag it at some point for another 5
VP. If you can get the 3 central objectives+2 other terrain areas trapped across the first two turns, you should be up something like 26 points to their 12 (unless you've let them deepstrike onto an objective on your side of the board). In which case the Take and Hold player is playing catchup. It will almost certainly cost you those units, but if these are relatively cheap fast/infiltrators at 50-75 points a unit I don't think that's the end of the world. I understand "the Take and Hold player marches up to the central objective and proceeds to wipe you off the table. They then start getting 12-14
VP per turn until the end of the game". But to my mind at least that's not guaranteed. The Disruption player really should hit 45 (just from hold 1 and kill something that was on an objective) unless the game goes completely wrong so the pressure is very much on the Take and Hold player to hold those objectives in the opponent's half of the board. Perhaps oddly the best thing for the Take and Hold player to do is to abandon their half of the table and seize the opponents - but not sure detachments with this disposition will favour lots of fast stuff (but they may well take a chunk of such units anyway).
I think the match against Purge is also potentially more equal than described here - although I think it depends heavily on comp. There are no actions here - just classic holding objectives and murder. They get 5
VP a turn for killing a condemned unit - and you get 2
VP for killing anything (limited only by the 15 maximum per turn). Against certain armies (idk, 3 Defilers) the opponent may only have 12~ units, and so you need to effectively table them to get a decent bunch of points. That will be hard. Against perhaps more balanced lists though with say 15-17 units I think killing 9-10~ units (maybe even 12-13) by the end of the game is suddenly not such an ask and should be expected unless you've decisively lost. Purge don't need action monkeys - but they probably want some stuff for screening and do need to hold objectives. (There is admittedly the danger
GW have created a monster and whatever the new equivalent of 3 Defilers or C'Tan etc will just run around tables eating everything for 3 months.)
This might be special pleading on my part - but is it worth noting how the Disruption player can potentially dictate what gets condemned? You have a degree of control over which units are on objectives and/or killed an enemy unit on the previous turn. This whole bit about how they can target an uppy-downy unit and score if it leaves the table is true - but they can only select it if they fit that criteria. The main issue I think is that you are incentivised to keep claiming the central objective for 3
VP, and this should allow them to immediately condemn that unit and kill it next turn for 5
VP. Ultimately the Purge player has the opportunity to run away with the game if they can hold the centre and secure hold more - but as said above I don't see why this should be guaranteed.
Vs Priority Assets is kind of weird but feels equal to me rather than a bad matchup. Its at most one action a turn. Not sure I agree its an option to just ignore it as you are handing the opponent a bunch of extra
VP, although I agree this one will require testing/experience. I think you probably want to do the 2nd and 4th sensor sweep so it will vary a bit with which player goes first. The contest seems to be that the Priority Assets player should be up 8
VP from sensor sweeps, but you should be able to dictate where the relic is by doing the final sweep, and therefore concentrate your forces on the relic ahead of them. So you are more likely to hold it and bag 4
VP a turn that way (not quite sure how this interaction works but presumably the scan completes, then there's 1 marker left and you bag it). You also get 4
VP for killing a unit on an objective while they get 3 - but even across 4 turns this is minor stuff. Finally there's a big 5
VP swing on who has the Relic at the end of the game. The Tabletop Battles guys think Disruption is disadvantaged here, but I can't really see why. Feels even - maybe even advantaged because you should be dictating where the relic ends up.
They rate Recon as a bad matchup as well - but I'm not entirely convinced. The Disruption player needs to maintain a steady pace of actions to set decoys which is a weakness that could lead them to run out of units over the course of the game. But equally if the Recon player has to keep chucking units on objectives to wipe the decoys out they are probably going to die quite quickly too.
Its very easy for the Recon player to get to 36 points (20 from 5 Surveils, 16 from holding 1 objective). To get further though they need to hold more (4
VP) or eliminate all decoys (5
VP). You'd probably expect to hit 45. By contrast the Disruption player gets 40 from tagging 1 objective in the opponent's side of the board turn 1 plus 2 on their side, and then just decoying their objectives and holding 1 for the rest of the game. If as they describe the Disruption player can go "hog wild" by tagging all 4 objectives turn 1, they could hit 44. (This is probably the play if going first, whereas if going second you'd position for the 10
VP for having 4 decoys up at the end.) So to max out you need to decoy up one objective in the opponent's turn one extra time. I initially thought it was heavily Recon favoured - but when you describe it like that it doesn't sound so bad. I think it will come down to who can take the initiative and put the most pressure on the objectives on the opponents side of the board. In an inverse of the situation with Take and Hold, the Disruption player could arguably ditch their side completely and just try to secure the objectives where decoys are worth 4
VP a turn. But I think it will probably come down to who trade's best otherwise it should be a 45/45 game.
Anyway that's probably
TL/DR, but I wanted to write my thoughts out to see how they compare with reality down the line.
