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Hi all,

Anyone else finding these secondary objectives are just very poorly thought out? Sure they give you the chance to score how you wish - but they are designed in such a way that certain armies are at a huge disadvantage by default.

As an example, armies that have squishy units combined with tanks and monsters (Drukhari, Tyranids and Guard come to mind) - you can easily take 2 secondaries to score points for killing the squishy units (eg, Kabalites, Gaunts, Infantry) and to kill vehicles (Venom, Sentinels, Carnifex).

Armies that are more elite-based on the other hand have a huge advantage in this respect. Custodes for example offer very little opportunities for these objectives .

Obviously the primaries are where the real points are, but with armies like Space Marines getting their historic buffs to shots, attacks, doctrines etc - they can quickly make short of those same armies as mentioned earlier so that even if they make it to the objective - they don’t get to stay on it.

Unless the new Codexes do something to change this, then I can’t see how those armies would be able to overcome such an obvious disadvantage from a gameplay mechanic. Assuming that wasn’t the plan to get us all buying space marines......

It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.

40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Half the secondaries need a huge rework right now and frankly they're preventing mediocre/bad armies from being decent much more than their outdated codices

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.

Nonsense. That does not describe things at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

KurtAngle2 wrote:
Half the secondaries need a huge rework right now and frankly they're preventing mediocre/bad armies from being decent much more than their outdated codices

Yeah. A huge chunk of secondary objectives are so bad they might as well not be there except for the most specific of circumstances.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.

40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

This would be a bad take in any thread. Bravo.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....

ccs wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....

If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

ccs wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....

If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.

Let's say a new army is about $1000 U.S. An edition roughly lasts 3 years. So it's about $30 a month to keep up with the Joneses as you say. I grant you it ain't nothin', but I also know good number of people that spend more on coffee in a month than that. Hardly a thing that requires one to be born in the Rockafeller family to afford. Just some budgeting and patience.

And that's all based on the false assumption that what you say is true. Which it ain't. However, don't let me stop you. If you start now, you can have that competitive hoard army ready to go for 10th for less than $40 a month easy if you start now.

Yes. Basically all the secondary objectives that involve killing your opponent's models need to be under the same category. Certain armies are put at a horrible disadvantage by the fact that there is a secondary to kill a lot of models, one to kill lots of characters, one to kill lots of vehicles/monsters, and one to kill lots of psykers. It's so easy to max secondary points against Imperial Guard or Tyranid players who aren't taking crazy skew lists because of this.

I agree with all the comments about secondaries needing a rewrite. There is little equality between them. I however am not with you on the elite vs horde thing. Horde armies dominate the board control ones (which would basically include the majority of primaries), Elite dominate the "Kill" ones. I play both types of armies, and tend to be able to equal these out.

All secondaries need to be reworked because there are too many auto-take ones you build your army to accomplish, rather than take because of the mission, board terrain, or opponent. This takes away some of my favorite parts of the game, generalship (already too limited by GW's inability to balance at all.)
Here's my (not unique) take.

1: Secondaries requiring actions are auto's for armies that can take cheap (say less 30 point or less) units, drop them in hidden, and complete. For all other armies who can't waste a unit standing around...useless. For proof of this, read the brilliant table work in this excellent series of battle reports by RandomHeretic. Particularly, the use of ripper swarms.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/793594.page

2: See above for all the psycher ones.

For my next two points, I consider extreme outlier armies outside my thoughts (mostly the super elites who have an entire army of 3++. That durability overwrites tactics. That's the point of them.)
3: The board control ones are gained in the build stage, not on the table (see 1 above for how easy that is for certain armies). It is very hard to stop 3/4 table quarters against a horde army. Elite armies A: do not have as many units to put in each quarter and B: MSU can be focused down by picking the table quarter with the fewest/weakest and drop your opponent to holding two. I am not claiming this is simple, just doable.
It is very hard to stop "get in the enemy deployment zone" against ANY army in this edition. Tougher/survivable helps though. To me these wash between the two types, and are almost an auto-take, as mentioned above.

4: The kill "x" models of one type or the other are easier for Elite armies to avoid. However, those elite armies often give up the same points in the kill characters area. Look closely at the kill infantry one: gaining a point for 1/10th is not great. Even horde armies rarely have 150 models. The kill more in a turn equals out. Elite can kill horde armies who aren't tough, but MSU means they can give up units dead as well. For me, another wash.

Just my two cents because I like these discussions. And no, I do not think 40k is a deep tactical game...which is sad.

They're just bad. I've been banging the drum on this one for months, and it's interesting to see people slowly coming around.

And the race-specific secondaries are even worse - even more inconsistent, even more clearly "this is a winner" or "this is a loser," and even more likely to create imbalance since not everybody can take them.

At the very least, I would be shocked if the faction-specific ones aren't pretty quickly banned from competitive events.

The ITC 2020 secondaries pack was significantly better than what GW came up with. The initial claim was that the GW version was going to be harder, so scoring 15 would be rare...but instead what we got was just super inconsistent choices, and worse, ones that favor certain army types of others (cough elite multi-wound infantry cough).

yukishiro1 wrote:
They're just bad. I've been banging the drum on this one for months, and it's interesting to see people slowly coming around.

And the race-specific secondaries are even worse - even more inconsistent, even more clearly "this is a winner" or "this is a loser," and even more likely to create imbalance since not everybody can take them.

At the very least, I would be shocked if the faction-specific ones aren't pretty quickly banned from competitive events.

The ITC 2020 secondaries pack was significantly better than what GW came up with. The initial claim was that the GW version was going to be harder, so scoring 15 would be rare...but instead what we got was just super inconsistent choices, and worse, ones that favor certain army types of others (cough elite multi-wound infantry cough).

One could make the argument that elite multi-wound infantry are supposed to be the star of the show, however.

edwardmyst wrote:
Particularly, the use of ripper swarms.

What actions is he doing with ripper swarms? Because deploy scramblers, the main "deep strike and do an action" secondary, can only be done by infantry. Rippers are swarm units.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

ccs wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....

If you're keeping up with the Joneses and don't have Elongated Muskrat as your dad, you're probably selling the old army to finance the new one.

This buy/sell/buy/sell/constantly cry about it cycle is the approach of - at best - the short sighted. At worst the stupid.
The recipe for non-rich people having multiple forces is simple: You get a job/go to work. You pay your bills. With your hobby $ you build an army (one that you LIKE). Then you expand upon it for a bit. Then at some point you you stop expanding the 1st army & start building a 2nd (ideally one that you like that plays completely different). You keep playing the 1st while you build up the 2nd. At some point you have 2 armies & the option to switch between as rules shift or when bored. You expand the 2nd army for a bit. Then you start putting that $ into a 3rd army, or other game systems, etc.....
Storage space MIGHT be a constraint on how many armies you can build.
Oh, and somewhere in there? You get better jobs

I, largely, disagree.

The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.

What's good about the secondary's is that it helps inform list building. It's set to punish some aspects where you might want to stack some kind of advantage.

However, there's a goodly amount of missteps...which is fine in a new system...but I've found this system to be exceedingly good for most players.

Sure, some armies have Gimmi's for their opponent...but you can also punish those. For instance I had a Knight oppoent recently that had 3 Knights, two armiggers, and an assassin. Titan Slayer was a risk because he only had the three knights so if he delayed me and kept away with one I can't score max.

One of the biggest mistakes was not using ITC's rule for only allowing one "kill" or "thing" to count; as stated above by somemone that if you kill a Psycher Character it CAN count for Assassinate and Abhor the Witch. Which is a dumb thing to have.

As to some other complaints...Elite armies give up board control Secondary's very easily. So sure, the direct, KILL THIS things don't usually apply but you're giving up Engage/Domination/Linebreaker to your opponent since you can't control space. Furthermore you also hamstring yourself on some choices (a lot really) for action-based secondaries. So while you dont GIVE up some you might not be able to COMPLETE many in a given situation.

In short: the system needs a few tweeks; but makes the game infinitely better.

There's definitely some issues.

The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.

There are a few that you do by virtue of just playing the game, which I think is problematic. Oath of Moment (name maybe wrong - I don't own the SM codex) is a no-brainer.

Overall I think they make for really interesting games and are a net positive to the game.

Oath of Moment is probably the most obnoxious faction-specific SecOb so far. You basically score VP for being a Space Marine.

With that being said, as a Guard player, I find the "killy" SecObs, especially Asassinate and Bring It Down, to be biased against us, but things kinda even out by having an easier time with the board control and Perform Action SecObs than elite armies. Altough course, Marines just had to have a Stragem that allows them to perform an action and still shoot.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Nonsense. That does not describe things at all.

But it kind of a does. How does GW fix stuff? If it is too good, then the changes are either non impactful, like the supposed nerfs to Inari and eldar were for most of the 8th ed, or they do a real fix and the army because bottom tier of bottom tiers.

it goes for armies, it goes for units. It is the same type of design has. Lets take scouts for example. They were spamed because other unit options were bad. GW fix to this was make scouts elite, so no one will ever take them.
Who runs centurions now, where are the armies that take 9 eliminators or snipers at all. Where are the tau shield drom spams. Or even in case of my GK. for all of 8th, mechanicaly falchions were better in all situations then every other GK melee army. GW instead of giving the different weapons new rules, just rises the point costs of falchions makes it is stupid to take them for 4pts. That is not fixing stuff, that is just making people buy more stuff and having a rotating meta to which you either never keep up, or have to spend thousands, if you want to have a good time at any given time. To me that is exactly the way MtG works.

Stuff like legends and phasing out stuff is also TCG thing.




As objectives goes, it would be nice if psyker ones were actualy worth trying to do and not turning off your character for 3+ out of 5 turns in a game, because the balance to those in the form of AtW is a bit too good, in comperation to what one gets in return.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Umbros wrote:
There's definitely some issues.

The psyker ones stand out as the most poorly conceived - abhor is an auto include for many armies vs TS/GK. Plus most of them are abysmal - ritual is basically impossible, interrogation is acceptable but comes with a cost that other secondaries don't.
.

interrogation and the other psyker objectives could only work, if all other objectives weren't done automatic. If to claim points for killing a unit or sitting on objectives you would have to take a test, which would have a good chance to fail or be stopped, then it would be equal.

Being Drukhari I always got hit by killing my transports and killing my frail infantry. I'm learning to play with those Secondaries maxed against me just because of the war.

Yes, but that is just 2 out of 3 secondaries being auto take. The game becomes something way different when your opponent knows they can max out all 3 secondaries, as long as they get turn 1. It really changes the game. Specialy if your point costs and rules aren't ment for given rule set.

GW has had 4 iterations of CA to refine the primary objectives, which are now the definition of perfection.

On the contrary, this is the first time that they apply secondary objectives to the game. You can see that they started from the ITC ones, but those were quite bad to begin with, and didn't translate one to one to the new system, so changes were clearly made.

The next CA will surely refine them, and I'm quite sure that the next GT will have a "No faction specific secondaries" as a rule.

Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.

Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.

We just stopped using the secondary objectives entirely, with the exception of the mission specific secondary that everyone automatically has. In fact, we made the points for the 'primary' objective locations gradually ramp up as well, so the mission specific secondary has a bigger impact on the score. Works better.

That sounds like an interesting and fun way to play.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Umbros wrote:
Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.

Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.

I would like to point out that this type of logic in 8th ment that someone people had to wait 3 years for the community to have to agree that army X is kind of a bad or in a bad state. And considering not many people play retroactive editions, the 100% clarity if something is really bad after an edition, is for me a bit too late.

Umbros wrote:
Certainly I think we need to see all the codexes before making a judgement on the nature of the secondaries. There's obvious problems with the psychic ones - though I suspect these will be mitigated with strategems.

Similarly Necrons and Space marines have an inherent advantage in that they have means to do actions and shoot.

As long as it comes with a cost, doing actions while shooting is perfectly fine.

 Mezmorki wrote:
We just stopped using the secondary objectives entirely, with the exception of the mission specific secondary that everyone automatically has. In fact, we made the points for the 'primary' objective locations gradually ramp up as well, so the mission specific secondary has a bigger impact on the score. Works better.

That sounds like a good way cut down on the first turn advantage. I think it might also be a good idea to extend the "no reinforcement units set up within range of objectives" rule from Four Pillars to other missions, particularly since we now have two factions that can deep strike turn 1.

Bitharne wrote:
I, largely, disagree.

The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.

What's good about the secondary's is that it helps inform list building. It's set to punish some aspects where you might want to stack some kind of advantage.

However, there's a goodly amount of missteps...which is fine in a new system...but I've found this system to be exceedingly good for most players.

Sure, some armies have Gimmi's for their opponent...but you can also punish those. For instance I had a Knight oppoent recently that had 3 Knights, two armiggers, and an assassin. Titan Slayer was a risk because he only had the three knights so if he delayed me and kept away with one I can't score max.

One of the biggest mistakes was not using ITC's rule for only allowing one "kill" or "thing" to count; as stated above by somemone that if you kill a Psycher Character it CAN count for Assassinate and Abhor the Witch. Which is a dumb thing to have.

As to some other complaints...Elite armies give up board control Secondary's very easily. So sure, the direct, KILL THIS things don't usually apply but you're giving up Engage/Domination/Linebreaker to your opponent since you can't control space. Furthermore you also hamstring yourself on some choices (a lot really) for action-based secondaries. So while you dont GIVE up some you might not be able to COMPLETE many in a given situation.

In short: the system needs a few tweeks; but makes the game infinitely better.

Good post!

I am really enjoying the Secondaries. I've played in three tournaments, and the Secondaries make both list-building and game play more interesting. Its true that some lists "cough up Secondaries" more easily than others, but those lists are often skew, or have the ability to take advantage of alot of the Action-based Secondaries. As more Codexes roll out I hope to see everyone get Stratagems where you can shoot and perform an Action.

I am conflicted on Abhor the Witch. It certainly discourages players from taking a single Psyker. It also makes playing against a Triple Keeper list manageable.

We'll see what (and when) the CA21 Mission Pack brings. I certainly hope that Secondaries stay an integral part of the game.

The secondary system is very good...some of the choices need to be executed better, granted, but they're FAR and away better than ITC's garbage system from early 8th and still better than their revised system in late 8th.

I found the marine/custodies player!

Really though - much like Yukoshiro, I had some issues with the secondaries early on (and also with the fairly obvious first turn advantage) and we see the issues playing out. A big part of the problem is that if you play an army like marines or custodies, they’re great. Makes sense that you would see no issues. If you play Tsons, Tau, or GSC it feels like whomever designed the secondaries had a personal grudge against you! Abhor the witch and assassinate in combination with how Look Out Sir now works, makes Tsons really difficult to use without giving up at least 16 almost every time, and there are far too many examples of codexes that can easily be built to give up hardly any secondaries while other books just have to live with the fact that yeah - your stuff was pretty much targeted here and there’s nothing you can do about it. Hopefully you go first?

As far as the codexes go - no. I don’t see them helping this. We know now that “perform an action while shooting” is going to be the new rule everyone gets in order to ignore the “actions” rule, but we aren’t going to get anything to fix the issues that exist here.

In particular, there needs to be at least one secondary that targets elite infantry lists. I don’t see it happening, but that alone would go a long way towards smoothing some things out.

ccs wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the mer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of arm
40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

Well, once you have a hoard army, and then you buy an elite army, you'll be set for future pendulum swings.
Unless your stupid & do the buy/sell/buy routine....

Except even on horde/elite there's variance.sure you can go custodians for your elite.then they get nerfed and it's heavy intercessor spam. Then switch to tyranid warriors etc.

Unless you buy everythng gw always finds way to forcefeed new sales.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
It's almost like, after an edition where hoards ruled the roost, GW deliberately made those armies unviable, causing everyone to buy new elite armies (and push more Primaris sales), and then will swing the hammer in the other direction in 10th edition, thus necessitating another round of army buying.

40k isn't a Miniature Wargame anymore, it's a TCG now.

The 'anti-horde' secondary is really quite bad, even against a dedicated horde opponent. You need to kill a hundred fifty models to max it out. Most pure horde ork lists are only like 130-ish atm.

Were armies with Psyker units and with lots of small vehicles really that overpowering in 8th that GW decided to murderize them in 9th's mission structure? or is it more likely that the killer Character+Psyker combo objective was just not particularly well thought out?