Well the GHB has been leaked all over the internet (and every group chat), and now it’s already old news as the Slaanesh book has leaked too. Whaddya gonna do? Today we’ll take a look at the Battleplans and some early thoughts on them – what they’re each asking of you, common themes and exactly how annoying deployment is going to be. I also speak French1, so I’ll have a stab at guessing what the original English phrasing was on a couple of things, before it was translated into French and then rammed back through AI.
Probably the biggest conversation around the current GHB being retired is Obscuring terrain going away, so we’re all going to have to get used to getting shot off again, unless you play DOK. At least 20 smug DOK players have been tripping over themselves to tell me that they have a subfaction that protects them from shooting, and it just warms the heart to see them finally catch a break.
The rest of us are going to have to do things the hard way, so hopefully this GHB has a bit of spark to offer. I’ve played every Battleplan from every Handbook in every edition of AOS2, and I’m keen to blast into this new lot, so shall we take a look?
General Themes
There’s a bit of a rebalancing of the VP scoring: they’ve generally back-weighted the “One-Two-More” VPs from 5+3+2 to 3+3+4, as you ramp from holding one or two objectives to holding lots of objectives. So in broad terms, the scoring incentivises you to spread out and contest more of the board, rather than being content with camping on one or two spots.
You’ll also notice there’s a few maps with 6 large + 2 small terrain pieces now. I can’t imagine TOs are going to go around switching stuff out between rounds so in practice I think this will be “The six largest pieces you happen to have on the table” rather than nickle-and-diming every piece with a tape measure. Let’s see.
The third and final theme I’d flag for attention is that while Underdog bonuses vary hugely in impact, there’s a clear trend for them to be more impactful in this batch, so that’s something to think about. In some cases they’re going directly to the WinCon, which is probably needed for them to match the raw power of “Just take the double and table your opponent”. Something to think about.
Now here’s the rundown on the six missions from Table 1.
Battleplan 1: “In the Flames”
“Power Site” is clearly Place of Power, and this mission gives you +1 rend for controlling your home POP. To me this just looks like a straightforward smash-up down the centre of the board, battling over the central objectives. I think a common play pattern will be to go hard on the centre and one side, and maybe dangle something cheap on the other side to force an enemy combat unit to go over there and deal with it. Classic Tradehammer.
Battleplan 2: “Bloody Ribs”
Yeah there’s no way that “Côtes” was “Ribs” in the original English. My friend and Patron P’tit Fût advises me that this was probably “Bloody Coast”. It can also mean hillside, so it could be coastline or hillside, but it certainly won’t be ribs.
This one gives you +4 VPs in the second round onwards for taking an objective back from your opponent’s control, so you can’t max-score by just camping, which is interesting. You can also get +1 to hit or +1 to wound tokens from holding objectives, which Grand Alliance Hits On 4s will appreciate.
Battleplan 3: “Ash Avalanche”
We can remove objectives! I love it when we can remove objectives, it always creates a really interesting puzzle.
Only the Underdog can do that, so that’s clearly a massive incentive to have Underdog status. What’s really interesting about this one – and I’ve checked the French to make sure it’s accurate – is that you might have access to fewer than 10 VPs on the Primary in later rounds, once the objectives start disappearing:
You can lose a lot of objectives very quickly depending on how the rolls go (it’s not capped at one per round or anything like that), so as the opportunity to score 2 and / or More disappears, you get other ways to score via terrain instead:
- If there’s exactly 2 on the table, you have to control both to have One-Two-More for 10 VPs (holding one each only scores you both 3 VPs)
- If there’s exactly 1 on the table, you can’t hold Two, so you have access to One-More-Terrain (still for 10 VPs)
- If there are 0 on the table, all you can score is 7 or 0 for controlling most terrain features.
So it won’t always equal 10 VPs and it could create some spicy play patterns with a fast-slow scoring dynamic: if you have the edge on battle tactics, you might be able win by scurrying loads of units onto the primaries and blowing them all up to choke out the scoring. I really enjoy headfuck missions with emergent win conditions and it reminds me a little bit of Limited Resources in late-AOS3. I’m looking forward to having my brain broken by it.
I’m also glad to see the Devs burst out of the “20 VPs Every Round” pseudo-constraint they’d kind of invented for themselves (and only rarely step outside). I’d like to see a mission with explosive scoring upside too: Longbeards will have very fond memories of blasting a game wide open with a big-scoring round of Battle for the Pass. More of this, please – way more.
Battleplan 4: “Caverns of Massacre”
The translation isn’t wrong, but I suspect that something like “Caverns of Slaughter” might read a little better in English.
Another big one for the Underdog: they can put “tunnel tokens” on two terrain pieces, then teleport from one terrain piece to the other (still 9″ from enemy models). Other than that you’re looking to score Pairs, and note both players effectively have a “Home” pair (red on the left, yellow on the right). So you’ll get there either through a daring tunnel-raid into your opponent’s backfield, or (and let’s be honest, more likely) walking onto it after smashing up in the middle and killing all their stuff.
Battleplan 5: “What’s Yours Is Us”
This one is clearly called “What’s yours is ours” in English.
You score extra VPs for scoring the prime pair of objectives, which flip-flops every turn (starting with the reds), and the Underdog can overrule which is the prime pair. I’m generally not a funky deployment guy, but I think I kinda like that funky deployment, with a little squad potentially off on its own?
Battleplan 6: Hidden in the Ash Clouds
The first deployment that makes me shudder, mainly because you’ll have to keep it marked out for the whole game.
Practicalities aside, it’s actually a really neat mission. By default, the clouds are low, and if there’s an Underdog they can choose whether to lift them or bring them down. When they are down:
- You can’t set up in neutral territory
- You can’t end a move in neutral territory, unless you started that move wholly within there
- Neutral territory effectively blocks LOS
I’m making a small assumption that the French “placé” is how GW talks about set-ups in their French rules writing – the pdf that’s doing the rounds translates it as “placed”, which is linguistically correct, but not the rules language we use in GW English.
This is really neat conceptually but given that we don’t play at tables with gridlines marked out on them, I can’t see this one being played at events much, because a lot of people will wind up marking out a rectangle with a chain of dice which will be too much of a hassle (and eyesore). They’ll inevitably get knocked about, or picked up and rolled.
From going to tourneys over the years, I have a big collection of measuring sticks that I use to mark out deployment, but they’re not gonna stay in place for 5 rounds. Are we blu-tacking plastic sticks to the table now? Is that where we’re at? Yikes.
Maybe a good one for the TTS crowd, but I think it’s a bit impractical for IRL tournament gaming. And you know what? Not everything has to be designed primarily for tournament play, there are 11 other missions to choose from after all.
So let’s close it out with a DDF-style tier list, ranking the Table 1 missions alongside AFL clubs because it’ll confuse our dear American readers more than the metric system. (Don’t worry, it’ll be equally lost on the Poms, the Europeans and everyone in the wrong half of Australia).
The rubric in my head is which ones I’m most jazzed to play, representing some vague blend of spark and practicality:
So that’s my thoughts on the missions from Table 1: they’re a pretty good and creative batch of scenarios to work with. I’ll take a look at the second set of six next week and hopefully the battle tactics too. If you’re a sicko and playing one of these missions this weekend, lemme know how ya go, because I’m keen to hear about it.
Have a good weekend, nerds – see you on the other side.
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