After eight games of 11th Edition, I feel like I'm in a solid place to give some initial thoughts on the new secondary mission cards.
The 18 available secondary missions can be broadly split into three categories:
- 11 board-control missions ("stand somewhere")
- 2 action missions
- 5 kill-based missions
The balance is quite clearly weighted towards armies that can establish strong board control, have the ability to remove key enemy units when required, and still have spare resources available for actions or any primary mission actions that may come up.
In a game, you'll see a maximum of 11 secondary cards, with redraws limited to once per battle. This creates the possibility of seeing very few action or kill-based secondaries during a game, although the odds of an extreme skew are naturally quite low.
What it does mean is that armies with a strong battlefield presence gain a significant advantage when the majority of the secondary deck rewards board control and positioning.
That doesn't mean faster, less durable armies are left behind. Drukhari and Aeldari can leverage their natural speed, while Grey Knights can use their teleportation abilities to compete effectively with armies that rely on overwhelming melee or shooting pressure. Likewise, balanced "take-all-comers" armies that have tools for every situation are also very well positioned in the current mission format.
One mechanic that has had a huge impact on my games so far is the ability to hold secondary cards. Most games feature at least one low-scoring turn, followed by a big swing turn where a player scores three or four secondaries at once for 15 points. As a result, reaching 45 secondary points or close to the maximum has become surprisingly common.
Because of this, discarding cards feels heavily discouraged. If there's any realistic chance of scoring a card later in the game, even for a few points, holding onto it is often the better play. The Command Point gained from discarding rarely outweighs the potential victory points you're giving up. In many cases, you're effectively trading away points that your opponent is likely to score, turning what could have been a narrow win into a narrow loss.
I learned this lesson the hard way. In one game I discarded a Cleanse card because it looked unlikely to score. By turn five, I unexpectedly had a unit survive that could have held the objective and completed the action. I ended up losing the game by a single point.
It's been a steep learning curve because 10th Edition often felt like the exact opposite. Command Points and powerful Stratagems frequently won games, whereas in 11th Edition the ability to score a seemingly small secondary like Cleanse or Area Denial can be the difference between victory and defeat.
Overall
I'm a massive fan of the new scoring system.
So far, games have rarely turned into blowouts unless there has been a significant mismatch in player experience, matchup understanding, or army capabilities. Most games remain competitive deep into the later turns, with secondary card management creating meaningful decisions throughout the battle.
For me, that's exactly what a mission system should do.
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