AICN TABLETOP: Warhammer 40,000 BATTLE MISSIONS reviewed!

Hola all. Massawyrm here.
BATTLE MISSIONS If there is one thing 40k has been lacking since the release of 5th Edition, it was the addition on new missions to play. While last year’s PLANETSTRIKE was awesome, the missions contained in the book were not designed with pick-up game play in mind. While it is great for an environment containing you and a handful of friends, going to a place like BATTLEFORGE GAMES on a Thursday night where 20-40 people are wandering around looking for pick-up games, the odds of finding someone who brought an army tooled for PLANETSTRIKE is even slim at best. What was needed was something beyond the standard 3 mission/3 setup grind from the book, as many of us have gotten tired of some of those options (like Dawn of War.) Enter BATTLE MISSIONS, a book comprised of 33 new missions – 3 a piece for each major codex and 3 additional special missions. Here’s a great visual rundown of all the basics from my buddy BigRed over at Bell of Lost Souls. So how is it? It’s a MUST OWN. At first glance some folks might find this a bit limited in scope, after all, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Many of the missions are simply objective holding or killpoint missions, just like those from the book. That said, the setups, victory conditions, scoring variations and reserve rules all work in tandem to make each game a challenge unto itself. First things first, despite there being only three missions for each codex, all of the missions are actually perfectly generic and entirely suited for any codex you happen to be playing (or playing against); it just happens that each mission is themed for the codex it is listed for. For example, all three of the Dark Eldar missions happen to be rapid strike attacks and setup geared towards the Dark Eldar’s strengths. Meanwhile, all of the Tyranid missions are built around swarming hoard armies and feature different kinds of deployment or special rules. But nothing will prevent you from playing these with different armies – in fact, you might not even notice in most cases that it was geared for another army. This goes for every mission but the last three *special* missions. Those each require tailoring a list for them (but I’ll get to those in a moment.) I played through a few of the missions tonight as well as watched a few other games using the book and can tell you that despite the limited nature of the core design, each mission felt very different from the one before it. Wanting to take a beating from the new Tyranid codex, I ran my playtest version Blood Angels (more on that next week) on a few of the missions against a player playing something of a very nasty list – a list that made me miss my Pedro Kantor/Sternguard army something awful. We ran Tyranid missions, the first of which involved me (the enemy – the enemy being the designation for the opposing codex) picking a long board edge and setting up anywhere I wanted to as long as it was more than 12” from any of the remaining three board edges. Then the Nid player split his army into three forces of at least one unit each. The Nids went first (automatically) and the Nid player rolled randomly for which force he could deploy and chose a single board edge to deploy them. He would repeat this the following round, choosing only from one of the remaining two board edges, then finally deploying the last on the final board edge on turn three. After a devastating first turn of incredible rolling verses terrible rolling, I found myself 14 Veteran Assault Squad marines down and short a land raider – and wanting to purchase a ticket to jolly old England to I could personally punch Robin Cruddace in the face for THE DOOM OF MALAN’TAI (Seriously. Fuck that shit) – and an immediate concession led to trying it again. This time I fared much better and only lost a few marines before pumping the DOOM full of melta…before getting my ass kicked again. Nids coming from three different directions is scary…and very fluffy. The next game was a little different as we ran another Nid mission, this one giving all the Nids Stealth…while giving all my marines Preferred Enemy. Being that I was running an assault army, I fared much better, and his Stealth didn’t help him against my not so shooty army. Still got my ass handed to me. Assault Marines are no match for kitted out assault Nids, even when rocking Furious Charge. My favorite mission in the book is a spearhead style marine mission in which all of the marine infantry count as scoring – and for 900pts they can take a Thunderhawk (if you have one lying around – fortunately BATTLEFORGE does). The Thunderhawk leaves at the end of turn three – but if it is destroyed in the interim, the Space Marines automatically lose. As you would imagine, deployment favors the enemy and the Marines are forced to take the objectives from them and hold them. Another great mission puts a single objective in the center of the board and forces the player to deploy within 12” of it – but all of his units gain fearless. The enemy player is held in reserve and gets to reserve in from different edges. Winner is the guy holding the objective at the end. Each mission lays out the deployment, who gets the first turn (with varying degrees of randomness), the reserve rules, victory conditions and any special rules. There is a random mission generation table that will allow you to simply randomly roll a mission up and throw down right away. Then of course there are the last three special missions. These require army construction beforehand, but allow for some interesting, fun play. The first mission is the much beloved KILLTEAM, giving each player 200 points to spend on a troop, elite or fast attack choice – while allowing each member of that unit to act independently as their own unit. You are even allowed to upgrade up to three of the members with special rules. This allows for quick, fun games that can be played inside of half an hour and are really great for teaching the basics of the game to new players. The second mission is LINEBREAKER, a 1500 point game pitting three Baneblades against a normal 1500pt army. It’s both for people who have and enjoy the idea of running three Baneblades and for those that love the challenge of tailoring an army to try and stop them. Finally there is CLASH OF HEROES that is tailored towards running a battle in which your named characters try to duke it out amid a raging battle. All in all, the book will become pretty much essential for anyone who likes to change things up and break the monotony of the standard deployment. It will be a godsend for anyone that runs tournaments as you now have 30 more standard missions to choose from. And it will be a great way for campaign players to supplement PLANETSTRIKE for creating narratives. Do not miss this book. It streets March the 6th.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. Massawyrm
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