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Warhammer 40K: What You Need to Know About Old Secondaries & the New

4 Minute Read
Jul 9 2021
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Adam here to go over major Secondary Mission changes from the new Chapter Approved.

As soon as we have one of the busier weekends for tournaments, we have a bit of a slowdown thanks to the holiday weekend here in the United States. Only a couple large tournaments and maybe a few RTTs this past weekend so not much to report. One of the things we haven’t really looked at are some of the changes to the secondary objectives. Not all the secondaries were change too drastically, or at all, and some were removed altogether, and there are still some that no one ever uses. This week will have a look at a few of the secondaries that have changed and whether it was for better or worse.

No Prisoners

This one really only had one change but it had a big impact if you take this secondary. They both had the same first part. You add up all the wounds for the destroyed models during the game and divide it by 10, in order to see how many points you earned for the secondary. The main difference is that in the original secondary any vehicles per monsters that are 10 wounds or more are worth 10 points, no matter the amount of wounds it originally had. So a 24 wound Imperial knight will still only give you 10 points. The new version doesn’t even allow you this option as you can’t get wounds from vehicles. monsters, or characters.

This secondary wasn’t chosen a lot to begin with and now, with the removal of scoring against vehicles and such, it will probably be chosen even less. I mean there are some all infantry lists out there, like the Terminus Est Army of Renown. Now that I have said that, we are seeing a lot more infantry based armies out their, because most vehicles are still in a bad place, so maybe people will start using this secondary more. Or maybe not, since you would nee 100 – 150 wounds in order to get a decent score for this secondary.

Retrieve Octarius Data

This secondary, like it’s older version Deploy Scramblers, has you have units make actions in certain parts of the battlefield. This new version has you perform the action in each table quarter. Now this newer version is a bit harder because you have 5 turns to perform 4 actions, but it is actually better. In the old Deploy Scramblers, you only had to do the action 3 times and in 3 different locations. Most armies had the means to accomplish this so it was relatively easy to do. One of the drawbacks of the old secondary was the all or nothing aspect of it. If you couldn’t perform all 3 actions then you got zero points and if you did happen to do all 3 actions you got a whopping ten points.

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The newer version, although a bit harder to achieve all 4 actions, at least rewards you depending on how many battlefield quarters you performed the actions in. If you happen to do all four, you get 12 points. This one was chosen a lot, I choose it almost every time, and even with the tougher requirement I would still choose it for 99% of my games.

Bring It Down

The big change for this secondary is the points you get for destroying vehicles and monsters. The original points was 2 points for vehicles and monsters 9 wounds and under, and 3 points for those with 10 or more wounds. The new version reduces the point values to 1 point for units under 9 wounds, 2 points for units 10-20 wounds and 3 points for units that are over 20 wounds. I believe the reason for this is so that people would field more vehicles on to the tabletop. I think this works on some level as I know that I have been fielding more vehicles and not giving up too many points if someone takes this secondary.

That being said, this secondary wasn’t being taken before and I am not sure people are going to be taken now. I think only an all knight army would really get you max points for this and even that may be a hard sell. With the introduction of more 9th edition codexes, and their own unique secondaries, there are more and more options for players. I don’t see people taking this secondary unless they are up against a 100% mechanized army.

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~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and what changes to the secondaries you like or dislike, in the comments section below.

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Author: Adam Solis
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