The Necro Missions...

Let's create some constructive criticism and "modify" the Necro missions to where they are more suitable.

Here are the missions from Laz:

Mission 1:

The mission is called "Landing zone" The primary objective is table quarters. These quarters may only be held or contested by a SCORING unit so it would be tricky. The secondary objective was to hold your objective marker in your deployment. The tertiary objective was to get more KP's than your opponent. Honorariums include +1 for controlling your opponent's deployment quarter at end of game and +1 for having no enemy scoring units in yiour deployment zone at end of game.
Special rules include night fight for first two turns, no deepstrike allowed.

Mission 2:

The mission was called "forward" posistion". The primary objective was to control more objective markers than your opponent. we each had 3 to place in our standard deployment zone. The secondary mission is to have more troop choices in their deployment zone and the tertiary mission was again having more KP's than your opponent. Honrariums include +1 for controlling more table quarters and +1 if there are no enemy scoring units in your deployment at end of game.

Mission 3:

The mission was called "command & control". It is a dawn of war mission where the primary objective is to kill the enemy's highest point HQ unit, the secondary mission is keep your own highest point HQ unit alive and the tertiary objective is again a KP deal. Honorariums include +1 for your highest HQ destriyng their highest HQ and +1 if the opponent's highest HQ is fleeing at game end instead of destroyed.

Mission 4:

The mission was called "cripple the enemy". The primary objective was to kill enemy Elite choices. The secondary was to kill fast attack choices. The tertiary was KP's. If you didn't have Elites or fast attack choices it defaulted to HQ units. The honorarimus were +1 for controlling your opponents quarter at game and and +1 if there are no enemy fast attack choices in your deployment.

Mission 5:

The mission was called "Bring them to their knees". The primary was KP's, the secondary was to kill the enemy's heavy support selections and the tertiary was to control more table quarters. Honorariums included +1 if your HQ is alive and not fleeing and +1 if your opponent's HQ is destroyed or fleeing.


OK, the goal here is to rewrite each mission to avoid any of the unbalancing that may be inherent in said missions.

better to scrap the lot.

So, if you play Daemons, Deathwing, or Drop Pods, do you automatically lose the first mission?

Or do I just ignore "no deepstrike" because I can always deepstrike even when the mission doesn't allow it.

I would hope that you'd be allowed to deep strike if the special rules on the unit said it had to be deployed that way... you know a drop pod army or demons or something of that nature...

The Necro guys said it themselves, they look for constructive criticism. If by looking at the previous years missions, we can show how only minor changes could have improved the experience by so much more.

I know they didn't write the missions, but you can tell that the person who did was writing them for 4th edition at the least.

I waited for the initial comments to go through before posting my opinion.

Mission 1 - 5th edition abandoned missions where Deepstrike, Infiltration, etc. are optional. The newer codexes are written to take this into account. The latest Space Marine Codex simple says that drop pods arrive via deepstrike. So you have a potentially bad "what if" scenario. To further compound the issue, some older codexes say units can deepstrike regardless, while newer codexes don't. Best to leave that bit out, because it honestly doesn't really effect the outcome of the mission and creates more problems then it solves.

Mission 2 - Is actually pretty OK, I think it works best in the spearhead (table quarters) deployment.

Mission 3 - Is fine again. Most players don't like the "anti-HQ" mission, but this one didn't go the route of some of the more notorious ones. The honoraiums should have been rewritten to something obtainable.

Mission 4 - Should have just been a modified Kill Point Mission. Primary have more Kill Points, Kill Points follow the following chart:
HQ = 2
Elites/Fast Attack = 3
Troops = 1
Dedicated Transport = 1
Units that don't fill a FOC chart choice = 1
Units generated in battle (Tau Gun Drones, Spawn) = 0
It's not perfect, and I think it is better to have modified Kill Point Scenarios focus on the required choices to increase the odds that the games will still be fair. Focusing on Eiltes and Fast Attack will always cause problems because you will more then likely have an imbalance in a particular match-up.

Mission 5 - Could have been another Modified KP mission as well with the emphasis on Heavy Support this time.


The major problem with the majority of these missions is that they rely on too many "anit-enemy FOC" type missions. One isn't necessarily that bad, but 3 in a 5 tournament event might burn people out a little. Plus you deal with the negative effects of placing an emphasis on killing a type of unit that you opponent has the opportunity to not bring.

66% of 40k games are based around objectives and at least among my gaming group that philosophy should translate into tournaments. That doesn't stop you from being creative because there is a great deal of things you can do with objectives.