Warhammer 40K: GW, Can We Please Making Holding Objectives Better?
Goatboy here talking about how we win and score in our 40k game. Holding objectives is a simple process, but boy is it dull – GW should spice things up!
Holding objectives is a simple process in order to generate points, but is it exciting? Going after a neoprene mat is great for creating a competitive game, but it isn’t really generating anything for the narrative. Is 40K moving to a place where holding objectives doesn’t seem really important, and pretending that holding them is what will somehow win the battle for our armies? What can we do to make this spot holding actually interesting?
Objectives Should Be Interesting
Let’s start with a simple solution – let’s make the objective something interesting. I don’t mean just a simple mat, but maybe make it something actually physically cool. I remember back in the day, one of the methods for the hobby side of things would have you build an objective – usually on a poker chip or terminator base – with some cool, unique parts to match your army. You might have a base full of skulls or a cool banner you are fighting for. Heck, you might just have a fallen comrade that you are trying to save. I do wonder if creating something unique to go out there and hold would be awesome to incorporate into our neoprene mats, or have something that sits on top of it?
Objectives Should Grant In-game Effects!
The physical nature of the objective can be easily fixed, but what about the game-based nature? I know we understand that holding it generates us imaginary points in order to “win” the game, but what if we had some basic default abilities that come from it? Most of the time, the only things that matter with objectives are either your army gets an advantage shooting at or charging someone on an objective, or somehow holding it increases the area in which your army’s wide aura power works. What if holding objectives gave you certain things? Maybe you could have them rolled randomly? Maybe they could have some powerful interactions and even some bad stuff that happens? What if the objective gave you cover, or you could somehow shoot better? What if it caused your bullets to shoot strange, otherworldly fire when you shoot something from this strange tablet you’ve decided to protect?
Objectives Should Interact With The Mission
What if we set up the objectives to activate certain things during the game? Maybe it was less hold 1 or 2, and instead, if you hold two, you start to power up something for the mission at hand? This way, you could maybe have a narrative mission to gather supplies for our starship or more souls for whatever dark ritual you want to start? What if your army was all about the Recon of finding things out, and the enemy wanted to hunker down and wreck your stuff? Why not incorporate the gathering of objectives into something that matters in the mission beyond just points you tick off until you score enough to “win” the prize at the end?
I want the game to be a balanced, competitive fight between players, but there have to be ways to make it a bit more exciting. This could range from making the objectives matter for more than just points, to maybe letting you do things better. It could be just simple things like removing cover or granting yourself cover. It comes even more army-specific, where holding the objective powers your units up. We would have to make sure to balance things out, but it could make for different rules for detachments that are not just methods of rerolling 1’s to hit or wound all the time.
~How would you spice up 40K Objectives in the future?
