The War Zone Nachmund GT Mission Pack is right around the corner and while our Tabled Talk Podcast is sure to cover the changes to army construction & the missions, I want to take a minute to double down on a huge predicted change to most army lists coming up: more squads & more filled out troop slots.
This isn’t a hard change to foresee coming once you look at some of the biggest changes to tournament-favorite secondary choices & a lot of the new Primary Progressive scores needing actions to be performed. Let’s dive more in-depth into some of the biggest changes to some popular secondaries.
-Retrieve Nachmund Data-
Gone are the days of a lone soul surviving some important shooting, high-tailing it to another table quarter, and retrieving that all important Octarius Data. No sir, this here Nachmund data is a bit more finicky & requires an Ocean’s 11-esque team to complete.
Retrieve Nachmund Data, (or RND as I’ll continue to call it from now on), is similar to it’s previous counterpart with one HUGE change: the Infantry or Biker unit attempting the action rolls 1 D6 at the end of the turn, (subtracting 1 if the unit is a Troop unit), and if they roll higher than the current model count in the unit, the action fails! Rest in Peace to our buddy the Tyranid Lictor. Going forward this is still a solid Secondary choice that rewards smart positioning and using your assets correctly, but there is definite risk to this secondary, and it’s not the guaranteed 12 points that it used to be unless you build more into it.
-Engage on All Fronts-
Oftentimes when that lone Lictor was Retrieving Octarius Data he would, as a bonus, score you Engage on All Fronts for just existing in a table quarter. You could easily scoot a multi-melta attack bike into a table quarter on a flank you didn’t want to dedicate too much to, and edge out those bonus points from this Secondary.
The notable change to Engage going forward is that it can only be scored by a unit of 3 or more models or a Vehicle / Monster. This is huge going forward as you’ll need not only a unit fast enough to rush into a quarter, but a below half strength infantry unit or a plane will no longer easy-street this score for you. People taking Engage from now on are probably going to have to build towards it and will need to make sure they have a backup wave or deepstriking unit on each flank going forward, just to solidify their board placement.
It’s not just these Secondaries, however, that are looking for you to construct a more well-rounded Infantry heavy list, we also have the new Progressive Primaries. For anyone unaware of what these are, essentially the Mission Specific Secondaries are a thing of the past and have instead been replaced by Progressive Primary bonuses. Now that Primary scoring will consist of 4-point increments, the missing 3 points per turn will be rewarded to you for completing various side objectives each turn.
A few of these new missions may require you to do actions, or have special rules that favor the Troop slot in a detachment. Let’s take a look at a few of these missions so you have an idea of what I mean:
- Tear Down Their Icons -
This mission features a Primary Progressive that rewards you for performing an action to plant a bomb in the opponents half of the board, or will have you perform an action to remove a planted bomb, scoring you points at the end of the game for each bomb you planted that blows up on the opponents half of the board.
First off, this is bonkers cool to me! Secondly, this already favors builds that can perform an action & do anything else without said action failing. It also lends itself to builds that abuse a bunch of fast small units and already want to be controlling the board. I can already see a Drukhari player taking Herd the Prey as a Secondary and laughing as it doubles down on you also not scoring the extra primary points.
- Data-Scry Salvage -
This is the new version of the Vital Intelligence mission from the last GT Pack. They’ve added the previous mission secondary of performing an action then scoring points on your next turn for each objective you hold, as the new Progressive Primary scoring. This already had lent itself to fast cheap units, but doubled down on that concept with the new mission rule.
Before, if you held an objective in your Command Phase, you would continue to hold said objective until your opponent physically put models on it. Going forward the objectives are only “sticky” if an Objective Secured unit holds the objective in your Command Phase. For a lot of armies there are now tricks for getting many instances of Objective Secured, but for all others you most likely can only accomplish this with something in your Detachments Troop slot.
- The Scouring -
A fixed version of the Scouring shows up next on our list. The Primary Progressive rewards you for doing an action to scan any of the 5 objectives to score 3 additional points per objective. This again rewards board dominance and having cheap enough units to afford yourself to play the game, while also not missing out on these bonus points, which could make or break your entire game.
This is just a quick preview of what’s to come in the Nachmund Mission pack. An important thing to remember when constructing your army going forward is that you may have to play on any or all of these missions depending on the event you are going to, so having a well rounded army that is prepared to play all aspects of the mission is of more importance than ever. A lot of tournaments have grown to such huge heights in popularity that the need to score as high as possible to make the top cut is huge. Make sure going into the Nachmund season that you’re ready to either disrupt the opponents units that are vital to scoring points, or are building around these Infantry squads that can play all aspects of these new Progressive Primaries and changes to the better Secondaries.
