by Peter Atkinson

“OMG my Clanrats will count as 468 models on objectives!”

“Well my Stabbas will be 746, cop that!”

With every preview and rules reveal, there’s regularly something in there that bumps up your objective Control Score, and people regularly misinterpret how it works. Nothing wrong with that – we haven’t read the full rules yet, and the part that told us how objective control is going to be calculated was a little one-liner buried in one of the earliest reveals, dumped into the world right as GW deleted a bunch of armies and everyone was burning with righteous anger.

“Urgh who could possibly not get this. It’s obvious”

Well bully for you. I can tell you though that it’s far from obvious. I’ve seen a lot of comments from a lot of smart people – tournament winners, people who’ve been playing this game for years – not getting this right. And let me tell you – they are not stupid. So if they’ve got the wrong end of the stick, as huge numbers of them have, then clearly it’s far from obvious, QED. It’s simply wrong to claim that it is.

There’s no shame at all if you’ve got the wrong end of the stick, because you’re in good company and it hasn’t really been laid out clearly by GW. We did cover it very briefly in yesterday’s Skaven hype piece, but it’s a topic that keeps coming up and deserves to be addressed properly. So let’s straighten it out.

How it doesn’t work

Time and again we’re seeing rules that improve your Objective Control Score, and people are taking it to be multiplicative:

A selection of comments. I’ve got plenty more

Here’s an example.  We know from yesterday’s Gloomspite preview that the Bad Moon adds 3 to your control score:

Baseline Stabbas count as 1 each on objectives, you add 3 to that from the Bad Moon ability, and now they count as 4 each:

40 Grots at +3 from the Bad Moon = 40 x (1 + 3) = 160 “models” on the objective

Well I’m afraid that today I’m the guy telling you that Santa isn’t real.

How it actually works

What we need to do is to distinguish between Control Score and Control Characteristic.  It all comes back to this distinction.

Here’s the snippet from that Nagash article:

So this is how we’re going to count our models on objectives:

• You take the Control Characteristic for the unit, and multiply it by the number of models in that unit
• That gives you the Control Score
• Then you add or subtract any modifiers to that Control Score to get your final number

So crucially, if it’s affecting you Control Score – you add this after counting up how many models you’ve got on the objective.  Which is to say that the modifier is to the overall total, not per model.

Circling back to that example of 40 Grots above:

40 Grots at +3 from the Bad Moon = (40 x 1) + 3 = 43 “models” on the objective

The only way it would multiply up exponentially would be if the rule affected your Control Characteristic, but that’s not what we’ve been seeing so far in most of these previews.

Are there any examples of this new rule being used to stiff Destruction?

Yup.  The new Squig Herd warscroll that was revealed last night is causing a lot of confusion in this space:

I could keep going, seriously

Sorry for the bad news, Random Facebook Guy. Let’s take a look at the rule in question:

See that?  It’s dictating the unit’s Control Score.  So this is placing a hard cap on how many “models” this entire unit will count as on objectives.

1 Squig?  Control Score is 1

24 Squigs?  Control Score is 1

If the rule was capping you at 1 per model that would be the Control Characteristic, but that’s not what this is.

Isn’t that a bit shit?

Yes, it’s a cataclysmic nerf for the unit.  We’ve never before seen a unit with this kind of proactive limitation in what is still an objectives game, although it may not be the last time – there could be others to come in AOS4 indices.

What I would say is that this does come up in MCP, and in that game if the unit is strong enough at fighting it will still see play. Squigs might still prove to be good role-players as a fighting screen (if the points are there to support them as such), but we’ll have to wait and see the bigger picture there.

The Nuance

Let’s finish up with a few thoughts about how this will work on the tabletop. 

Banners matter

Firstly, shoutout to our guy Theo for flagging this one up – don’t forget that Banners have now been standardised to add +1 to your Control Score.  So if we remove models from that unit of Moonclan Stabbas, and leave just the Banner as the last guy, your Objective Score will be 5:

1 baseline + 1 for the banner + 3 from the Bad Moon = 5

That’s enough to retain control from a Monster, so it’s pretty spicy.

Littler units get bigger bonuses

And that leads onto the second point: static bonuses to Control Score are disproportionately impactful on smaller units. 

Adding 3 to the Control Score for a unit of 40 Stabbas is probably going to to be inconsequential.  The difference between capping as 40 and capping as 43 is neither here nor there.

The inverse is also true, however: one small foot hero will cap as 5 models under the Moon, and that’s a pretty big deal.

2 baseline (for most small heroes) + 3 from the Bad Moon = 5

So shoutout to the legends in the Gloomspite WhatsApp for talking through that last night, including Mike Chadderton who flagged up the disproportionate impact on foot heroes.

More units is more better

Slamming a lot of small units on the table will add a lot of + 3s for Gits, and no doubt other armies will have similar play in this space.  Not to mention that the objectives themselves are a lot smaller in 4th Ed, so toeing multiple units (and therefore multiple +3s) onto that limited real estate will give you a big leg-up when contesting. Something worth thinking about.

A similar rule applies to Liberators from an earlier teaser article, leaving you with an interesting list building choice between unlimited reinforcements (and therefore bonuses for holding objectives) at the cost of a possible increase in drops. Should be fun.

Judging from the abilities that are repeatedly popping up in warscroll reveals, 4th Ed seems pretty intent on staging a dynamic clash over objectives, which is in-keeping with the evolution of the game from the first GHB right up to the modern day. Should be a good time.

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So that’s a wrap!  Hopefully a few people have found this useful, and it’ll give you a bit of context for upcoming reveals as well as those we’ve already seen. 

Have a good weekend, nerds – see you on the other side.

Cover image: Those circles we’ll all be standing on in 4th Ed. Photo by Tinbox Hobbies

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