Reading 7th Edition - Missions

Nick speaking,

OK, lets get straight to this, the book starts off talking about preparing your army, which includes unbound and battle-forged armies, detachments, factions, formations and command benefits. No doubt that everyone already knows all about this new stuff already, as it has been the main hot topic everywhere. Personally, I never used Allies unless I was playing a game where my forces were joining my buddies. I don't have anything against Allies, it's just the way I like to play. For me, I am more interested in the new missions, which we will get to soon...

First comes the new Warlord pages, and this is interesting, as Warlords can now be any Characters in your army, indeed, if you have no Characters from choosing an unbound army, you can select any other model to be your Warlord, making that selected mini form your primary detachment! Having said that, you can only take a Warlord trait, if your Warlord is a Character. There is a new Tactical Trait table to roll on, as well as the three old tables, and you can still use other tables, if you have them in your Codex etc. There are a few tweaks to the original Traits, but the new Tactical chart looks very interesting indeed, with it being based around objectives.

Right, so there are two mission tables, with the first set of missions being the same as before. You either choose which mission to play of roll for it. The three previous deployment styles are still in, but the order of things are different now. Now you chhose your mission, set out the terrain, roll for your deployment type, and then deploy. Any Fortification in your army are now put down when you deploy with your army. You now need to roll off, with the winner choosing to deploy first or second. Once deployed, the winner of that roll off can then choose to go first or second, seize the initiative is still there as before.

With all the new sets of scenery, there is now a rule called 'not enough room'. Basically, if you can't deploy any units they have to go into reserve. Variable game turns are as they were before, with the victory conditions also being the same, including an army not being on the table at the end of a game turn as an automatic lose, so still no reserving everything. Primary and Secondary objects are the same, with the exception of Linebreaker, where now a scoring mini within 12" of your enemies table edge wins you the point.

Placing objectives are as before, and it notes objectives should be 1" to 2" in size. All units are scoring now except if you are Swooping or Zooming, and units in a Zooming Flyer cannot score. You still cannot score if your unit has a special rule that says it cannot score.

Mysterious objectives are still in, but there is a big change for night fight. If night fight is listed in the mission, either play can ask for night fight to be activated. On a roll of a 4+ it will be night fight turn one. Night fight now only offers the stealth special rule, but every unit has it, regardless of distances etc. There is no 'half your army' rule for reserves, you may now select whatever units you want in reserve, but as I said before, if you have no units on the board at the end of the turn you automatically lose! Rolling for reserve are the same as they were, as are ongoing reserves.

We now come to the tactical objectives section, which is for the second set of six missions. All six missions use a fixed number of objectives, which is six, and these objectives have to be numbered 1-6. Then there are 66 different objectives where you have to capture certain objectives and kill certain units etc. The mission indicates how many cards to generate at the beginning of each turn, and once you achieve an objective, you get a victory point and disregard the card. This seems like fun, and I am looking forward to trying it all out.

Ok, Special Rules are up next...