I just posted the 4th mission scenario for our Combat Patrol tournament. As always, I’m not completely sure on how this one will work out, but I’m pretty happy with it so I thought I’d talk about it a little.

Structure

I think one neat aspect of the tournament is that it is indeed a tournament, but it also has a fairly strong campaign element, in a loose, fixed narrative sort of way. It’s structured somewhat like Space Hulk, where players aren’t making real campaign choices and the outcomes only affect the story in limited ways, but there is indeed a distinct narrative in play. From the start I’ve had a pretty clear conception of an abstract story I wanted the tournament to follow, and I hope that’s done a lot to tie the missions together, give them a more compelling background context, and make them more interesting via unique objectives and parameters.

How this works out is that each of the 5 rounds/6 scenarios is set within a generic campaign setting. There are no names or anything concrete, but there is an unmistakeable notion of an Attacker invading a settlement, city, or colony in the quest to obtain something, and a Defender hard pressed to stop their onslaught. A little flavor is injected into it by just a little bit of fluff in each writeup. To highlight the generic, inclusive nature of the campaign though, this is always done from the Defender’s perspective, but with different factions involved. So far we’ve had Guardsmen attacked by (Dark) Eldar, Orks escaping Tau, Marines swarmed by Tyranids, Imperials sieging Chaos Marines, and Dark Angels assaulting Imperials. Each mission also has a brief summary of the current plot point, and the Attacker and Defender roles. Most of the missions are asymmetric, with players swapping those two roles, further accentuating the narrative. On the other end, Jason has also been writing up little story blurbs to go with the results on the web, providing little vignettes of the campaign from the perspective of his Blood Angels.

Real campaign choices have or will show up in two places: The 3rd round had two missions that had similar goals (Annihilation), but very different setups. Which one we played was determined by how many games the Attackers and Defenders had respectively won in the first two rounds. Similarly, some parameters of the final mission, and of course the result of the campaign as a whole, will be determined by how the abstract Attackers and Defenders are doing.

Background

It doesn’t affect anything, but we do actually have a campaign map we’re following along, providing some imagery and geometric anchoring to the story:

First the Attacker smashed the outer defenses (Mission 1: Listening Post). Then the Defender tried to escape back to warn the others of the attack (Mission 2: Flight). In our case, they were not successful and the invasion swarmed the inner defenses (Mission 3a: Blood Melee), while in other universes the Defender was warned and the Attacker forced to attempt opening a new breach (Mission 3b: Gunline). Right now (Mission 4: Population), the Attacker has been largely halted, but a small raiding party has slipped into the settlement to pillage for some sort of artifact, knowledge, or person required for the next mission.

Mission 4: Population

In the current round, the Attacker is searching the area for a key required for the next mission and the ultimate conclusion of the campaign. Whether the key is a code, possessed psyker, ancient relic, or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. The Defender, of course, has to stop this. Although the terrain isn’t really specified and doesn’t matter too much, the mission is envisioned to be a battle in a city, village, base, or other developed area, representing the two brawling it out throughout the settlement. Both sides setup on opposite sides and then charge in to claim the objectives:

One note here is that the mission is symmetric. The primary reason for this is that we’re running the last two tournament rounds in one evening and there won’t be enough time to run two games for each one. I do really like the asymmetric missions so I almost kept that going into the last round, but I also really want people to play more than one person that night. Given that the club’s venue time is limited, I setup the mission so that it could work well with the match played as one game or two, the latter for us or other groups using it in the future.

Goals

The objectives are where Mission 4 starts to get interesting; at least, I think so. Each objective represents property or people that the Attacker is searching through, and the Defender trying to keep away from them. How this plays out in game terms is two-fold:

• Either player may shoot or assault the objective, treated as a very weak model, in order to destroy it. This yields 1 Ransack Point.
• Either player may hold an objective for an entire turn to claim it. This yields 2 Protection Points.

This represents the Attacker hacking computers, rifling files, stealing artifacts, torturing people, whatever. It also represents the Defender doing basically the same.
At the end of the game, victory is determined by the higher of a player’s Ransack or Protection Points. In other words, if you have 2 Ransack Points and 4 Protection Points, you would score 4 points to be compared to the other player.

Morality

The beauty of this is that it both fits within the symmetric setup, giving both players the same rules, and enables them to conceptually fill different roles. Further, it brings in an element of role playing. Are you going to kill and destroy all the objectives, or are you going to try and protect or claim them? This is accentuated a bit by one of the Bonus Points being for having Ransack or Protection Points, but not both.

I like this because it plays within the amorality of the 40k universe. Sure, the Attackers are probably bad guys. But maybe not. Maybe they’re just trying to stop something you’re too low down on the chain to know about. Similarly, the Defenders may not be good guys, even if they might have the more traditionally sympathetic role. There are a lot of factions in 40k that could easily decide it’s not worth risking people or material falling into enemy hands, and start preemptively slaughtering and destroying them. With these mission goals, each player has that choice as well, and needs to fit that into their strategic picture.

On top of that, the Bonus Point highlights just a little the harsh, dualistic push of much of 40k—you might not be purely good, or purely bad, but it’ll cost you just a little to compromise.

Tournament Stuff

Another reason for the symmetric setup is that I wanted to keep things very balanced and straightforward in the last rounds to ensure fairness across the board. It’s very easy for slight biases to creep in without notice, and while I think I’ve been vigilant about that in writing these missions, there have definitely been rounds that favored armies with lots of anti-vehicle for bunker busting, others that favored cheap transports for quick mobility, and so on. The previous missions certainly didn’t go over the top, but I wanted to take extra care to keep in-game effects simple in the last rounds. For example, I had originally been planning a set of stratagems for this mission in keeping with the City Fight theme, but in the end decided to keep it simpler. We’ll see how it works out this Sunday!

Recently, Pangloss and Equinox have been having a pretty good discussion about Combat Patrol in 5th Edition:

• Realms of Equinox: Tournament Tuesdays: Overhauling the Combat Patrol Rules
• Pangloss’ 40k: Thinking About Combat Patrol
• Pangloss’ 40k: More Thinking About Combat Patrol

In an earlier post I talked a bit about some of the reasons I like Combat Patrol, namely accessibility, faster games, and reduced rock-paper-scissors effects, which can be dramatic in low points games. I’ve also talked a bit in the past about general issues in small 40k games. I thought I’d add on to my earlier points with some more thoughts on revising the rules to better accommodate the current codexes and rules.

As a case in point for why revisions are necessary, consider the new Tyranid codex. Due to the restrictions to 2 Wounds and 4+ Invulnerable saves, there are no Synapse Creatures permitted in Combat Patrol under the new book. For those unaware, without coverage from Synapse, almost every Tyranid unit has to pass a Leadership check. Otherwise it either storms toward the enemy or hides. That severely hampers playing the new book in Combat Patrol, unless you field purely hordes of Genestealers, who are not subject to Synapse, but have no ranged weapons. That also gets a little boring after a while. This essentially eliminates a very popular army from playing, a substantial problem.

Points Limits

I agree that 750pts is pushing the upper bound for Combat Patrol; beyond that it’s too constricting and should generally be played as a standard game. But I think a good set of rules could work well over ~250–750 pts, and create a game atmosphere that feels different from standard 40k but is similar enough to just sit down and go. Like Equinox said, that’s an important goal.

A major determinant in what points levels work depends on what armies are used. A friend and I regularly play 250pts. That’s probably the lower bound without true skirmish rules, but we have fun though pushing models around at lunchtime. It works because he’s running Chaos Marines and I run Space Marines, and that’s just enough points to both have some choices and field some variety. Other armies really struggle at even 400pts; Necrons are the classic example, Grey Knights are another. Viable points levels depends a lot on who’s playing.

I think the set points clearly depends on what people what to get out of it, and there isn’t a need to be too strict about what is “Combat Patrol” and what’s not. For example, one reason we’re running 750pts in our tournament is because it allows a good number of units, which in turn enables more varied mission scenarios. At 400pts a lot of armies basically field only two units, so it’d be hard to have objectives and other special scenario goals. Asymmetric scenarios, played with alternating roles, were also something we liked the sound of. But, we also wanted people to be able to play after work. The 750pt limit supports those competing goals, while also being a slightly longer match than 400pts. We have, however, applied the Combat Patrol rules rather than just limiting the points, largely in order to prevent rock-paper-scissors list making issues. Similarly, 400pts is very fast to play, very accessible, and a lot of fun in its own right. There’s clearly a place for both.

HQs

A great number of HQ units definitely seem potentially unbalanced at these point levels, or not in the spirit of the missions if you care about that sort of thing. I think you can keep out “crazy” HQs by keeping some sort of restriction against uniques, but let in the “regular” HQs by drifting the allowable wounds up to 3. That enables IG Company Commanders, Tyranid Warriors, Space Marine Captains, etc., all of which are reasonable to me, but cuts out Abaddon, Marneus, etc., whom I think present problems. More on “Uniques” later.

In any case though, I don’t think HQs should be required. Too many are glass jaws to force them at this point level. For example, a Space Marine Captain is actually a tough sell. I wouldn’t say that they really bring in their 100+ pts on average; ditto Librarians—sometimes they come up huge, but a lot of times they don’t. Chaplains also essentially force a unit to lose Combat Tactics, which is unfortunate. All are solid selections in a full list with other units to synergize with and many other models on the table, but I wouldn’t want to be forced to take one with so few points available. Conversely, I wouldn’t want them disallowed either. For this week’s tournament mission, I would have strongly considered a Captain and Command Squad—the first time I’ve ever seriously thought of the latter—but the Captain is out due to the traditional 2 wounds restriction.

Heavy Supports

In my opinion, Armor Value restrictions keep out sufficient HS. I wouldn’t ban HS completely and eliminate Devastators or Havocs, they don’t seem out of line for the feel of the game.

I also don’t see the traditional restriction against Ordnance as being necessary. If someone wants to field a Basilisk, Predator, Whirlwind, or something, I’d be ok with it, and think it’s reasonably fluffy—a lone vehicle making its way to a new position with its escort or some such. Especially on a smaller table, they’ll be prone to assault or concentrated attack, and the armor value on this units is not particularly higher than the transports; I don’t think they’d be dominating choices.

At 750pts I’d actually lift the armor restriction a bit, maybe to 34 total points rather than 33. In that size army you can field enough options to have some reasonable anti-vehicle plan, and could work to take down more heavily armored vehicles. I would probably not say this at 400pts though; the environment is just very different. In particular, my experience has been that Dreadnoughts are devastating and frequently unstoppable at that point level.

Either way, even at 750pts I’d hesitate to let in a Land Raider, Monolith, or similar vehicle. It’s true that they would be a huge points risk that might be taken out relatively easily—I’ve had Sternguard take out even an entire Baneblade by themselves in the first round of shooting, and Landspeeders can regularly do the same for Land Raiders. But I think these are just too much of a rock-paper-scissors risk at these point levels for my taste. Those also have accessibility issues for newer players trying to compete.

One idea that came up in our group is to have a total limit for the army. Something like you can field any vehicles, but the combined armor across all of them must be less than 100 (or something). That would let you use one or two big vehicles, or a couple smaller vehicles, or a mix. It might be just as easy though to say “One vehicle with armor up to 34 (or 35, etc) and any number with armor up to 33.”

Elites and Fast Attack

Tight limits on FA and Elites are also problematic. I think a squad of Sternguard and a couple Landspeeders is fairly fluffy for combat patrol. Landspeeders, Rough Riders, and Sentinels all also provide for all-FA lists very much in keeping with the spirit of Combat Patrol. Appropriate mission rules probably counter any problems here. In our tournament, you could bring a ton of Elites, FA, etc., but many of the missions have objectives, so it behooves you to bring Troops, just like standard 40k.

General Unit Restrictions

Like Pangloss said, I also think Equinox’s proposed 200pt maximum per unit restriction is too tough, although the intent is good. As noted, a squad of Marines is 170pts. Add a Rhino or a Powerfist and a Plasmagun and they’re over that limit. The problem with saying they can just take five man squads is then they don’t have access to heavy and special weapons. Cheap weapons are one of the primary advantages for Space Marines compared to many races, and their main anti-horde and anti-vehicle counter abilities, so robbing them of that would really hinder them unfairly.

Lifting the permitted wounds to 3 is essentially required, if only to enable Tyranids a few viable Synapse Creatures. It also permits the generic Space Marine Captains and Chapter Masters (and consequently Command Squads), IG Company Commanders, and many other units that don’t seem unreasonable.

Not discussed so far is if the traditional Combat Patrol restriction to no better than 3+/4+ saves should be relaxed. I am torn on this. One argument I see for relaxing it are Zoanthropes, an important Synapse Creature option for Tyranids. However, if permitted wounds are bumped up—basically a requirement, I think—Tyranid players can cover Synapse via at least Warriors. I also don’t see a reason to cut out Techmarines. However, I have mixed feelings about Terminators. They’re admittedly super hard to take down and could cleave through another army, but even at 750pts they would be a significant fraction of a list to invest in just a few models. They also don’t generally score, so the mission scenarios will enforce some sort of natural balance. Including them would also enable Dark Angels players to use their preferred codex and existing units. One plausible option might be to allow 2+ armor saves, or 3+ invulnerables, but not both. This would permit Zoanthropes, Captains in Artificier Armor, Honor Guards, Techmarines, etc., but not Terminators.

Similar to Equinox, I also don’t have issues with upgrade characters like Telion or Harker. They just don’t seem that unbalancing; they’re useful, but they’re a bunch of points as well. The key here is the wording, enabling these guys but keeping out crazy HQs. Toward that end, I think the wording should be “No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters.” The rationale behind this specific wording is based on:

• Space Marines: Telion does not technically say Unique (he has a special rule limiting him to 1 squad), but Chronus does; neither are Independent Characters. The fancy HQ characters are of course all Unique Independent Characters.
• Chaos Marines: All named characters are Unique Independent Characters.
• Orks: Snikrot and Zagstruk are not Independent Character, nor technically Unique, and hence would be allowed. The few named HQs are Unique Independent Characters.
• Tau: Aun’va, Farsight, and Shadowsun use the old terminology and are listed as Special Characters, not as Uniques.
• IG: Yarrick is a Unique Independent Character; all the company commander characters and other upgrades are Unique, but not Independent Characters. Marbo is also Unique Infantry and would be allowed.
• Chaos Demons: All the named demons are Unique Monstrous Creatures, not Independent Characters. Interestingly, Fateweaver is a Unique Monstrous Creature with only 3 wounds so it would not otherwise be covered by the rules without this wording.
• Tyranid: Most of the named characters are Unique Monstrous Creatures, though Parasite of Mortex is Unique Jump Infantry and Deathleaper is Unique Infantry and would be allowed.

I think that wording strikes a reasonable balance, permitting these manageable, colorful upgrade characters and a few solos, but disallowing the real heavies.

Rules Suggestions

That makes my current thinking on revised Combat Patrol rules something like:

• Missions should set army lists at no more than 250–750 points.
• Armies must include 1 Troop unit and may have up to 2 HQ, 6 Troop, 2 Elite, 2 Fast Attack, and 2 Heavy Support units.
• No Unique Independent Characters, Unique Monstrous Creatures, or Special Characters are permitted.
• No model may have more than 3 wounds.
• Any model with a 2+ Armor Save may not have an Invulnerable save.
• Any model with a 3+ Armor Save may not have better than a 4+ Invulnerable Save.
• In a 500pt or below game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 33.
• In a 501–750pt game, no vehicle may have total armor value (Front+Side+Rear) greater than 34.
• Units which don’t occupy Force Organization slots, such as Dedicated Transports and Retinues, are permitted caveat the other rules.
• Before deployment, each player must declare one model in their army to be their Patrol Leader. There must not be a model in the army with a higher Leadership value. Note that this implies the Patrol Leader is not a vehicle.
• Missions should be played on 4’x4′ tables.

The Patrol Leader isn’t important for standard mission setups, but I think it’s a handy designation to have in writing custom scenarios given that there’s not necessarily an HQ in each list. For example, in our tournament preserving or killing Patrol Leaders has been worth Bonus Points on several occasions.

Glancing through the codexes I have and the main rulebook, these rules seem to disallow the following for 750pt games; in general, no named characters are permitted except as discussed above regarding “Uniques”:

• Orks: No Battlewagons.
• Chaos Marines: No Terminators, Oblits, Daemon Princes, Greater Demons, or Land Raider variants.
• Chaos Demons: No Bloodthirsters, or Soul Grinders.
• Daemonhunters: No Grand Masters, Brother Captains, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Tau: Broadsides, Crisis Shas’O Commander, Hammerheads, or Sky Rays.
• Black Templars: No Emperor’s Champions, Terminators, Land Raider variants.
• Space Marines: No Drop Pods, Terminators, or Land Raider variants.
• Necrons: No Wraiths, or Monoliths.
• Imperial Guard: No Leman Russ variants.
• Tyranids: No Swarmlord, Hive Tyrants, Tervigons, Zoanthropes (3+ Inv), Doom of Malantai, Carnifexes, Old One Eye, Trygons, Mawlocs, or Tyrannofexes

Dropping the permitted vehicle armor values to 33 at 500pts further eliminates:

• Orks: No Deff Dreads.
• Chaos Marines: No Predators, Vindicators, Defilers, or Dreadnoughts.
• Space Marines and other Imperials: No Dreadnoughts, Predators, Vindicators, or Dreadnoughts.
• Imperial Guard: No Hellhound variants, Death Strikes, Valkyries or Vendettas,

Those rules also eliminate some wargear and combinations, such as Storm Shields combined with Artificer Armor. Interestingly, Mycetic Spores have only 3 wounds and a 4+ save, so Tyranids would always have their Drop Pod. For Synapse they would be able to choose from Tyranid Primes, the Parasite of Mortex, and Zoanthropes.

Conclusion

I had sort of thought the forthcoming 40k Missions Book from GW would have material along these lines, including revised Kill Team or Combat Patrol rules and missions. The part of me that refuses to accept that they don’t playtest or think about a lot of their design products nearly as much as the community does was actually hoping for that. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Of the suggested rules above, I feel pretty comfortable with the vehicle restrictions. The armor and invulnerable save restrictions however might be too permissive however. I’ll have to think about them more. As always, comments are welcome!

As announced earlier, I am currently running a multi-week 40k Combat Patrol tournament here in Philadelphia. We just finished Round 1, and things are going fairly well. Sixteen people have joined the party, and there’s a decent mix of armies. The only really surprising omission is the lack of Imperial Guard, but it sounds like several of the guys with new IG armies haven’t graduated them to their tournament faction yet. Last week we had a really good group session with twelve people playing at Redcap’s Corner in West Philadelphia. This coincided with their grand reopening after expanding the store, and it was a great time. The new space is awesome and many good games were played.

One of the plans I have for the tournament is to take the campaign oriented mission writeups, package them up with my notes on running the tournament, and post them up afterward for other groups to use in running similar events with minimal work. Toward that end, I’m going to record some of my design notes and observations here as we go along.

Combat Patrol

Perhaps most fundamentally, there are some mixed reactions to the Combat Patrol rules. Our restrictions follow fairly faithfully from those in the 4th Edition rulebook but at 750 points, and feelings are positive but a few issues have come up.

On the positive side, this setup has four big advantages going for it:

• The tournament is more accessible. Running at a low points scale and with mostly only core units allowed, more players will be able to jump in. As a bonus, it also means more players will have fully painted armies, a nice side effect. I will note though that this has had only mixed success; we did not pull in quite the crowd of new people I was hoping to.
• Games only require 4×4 tables, which means you can fit a good number of matches into a small space. We have a lot of room at Redcap’s and PAGE, but 4×6 tables are a limited supply at the latter and the former is contested by card players (mostly Magic). Physically fitting more games just makes things easier at a lot of venues.
• Small games like these can be played in 90–120 minutes. I’ve taken advantage of that to set up asymmetric missions where a match consists of two games with players alternating rounds. At 750 points that can easily be done in three hours, and therefore still works well for people to get together and play after work.
• Perhaps most importantly though, and most conflicted, the restrictions generally keep crazy and specialized units out of the game. This also helps accessibility, leveling the playing field a great deal: You know you won’t go up against someone who’s invested in a handful of Landraiders or has every model on hand to pick and choose from for an optimal list. I don’t have a problem with that at all, but it can be discouraging to new people.
  What also happens is that the restrictions take some of the tactics out of list construction and puts them back onto the table. Since everyone’s forced to focus on core, common units, it’s a lot more predictable what people will have, and the forces are a lot more similar. I certainly don’t have a problem at all with good list construction, and really enjoy that as a key aspect of the game. However, at these low point levels it’s very susceptible to rock, paper, scissors effects, where a game’s outcome is dominated by good, bad, or unexpected list selections. Given that small games have advantages otherwise, reducing that effect is a good thing.

However, the restrictions also raise some problems. Some people are turned off by the lack of crazy units, and don’t see big gains in board tactics focus or value in reducing the rock, paper, scissors effect. That’s basically a style choice; I think the former is just different, not better, but the latter is important for games of this size.

Worse though is that the Combat Patrol rules aren’t holding up well under the 5th Edition codexes. Just like we bumped the points to 750 to better suit codexes with expensive units, such as Necrons, with the additional restrictions there are just so many units barred from play that it’s a little overkill. I was really, really sad to realize my Drop Pods would not be legal, and neither would my Captain. I don’t see either of those as unstoppable at this point level, but the loss of the Drop Pods especially has really changed my play style, and forced me to scrounge together some Rhinos—in complete contrast to the goal of enabling people to play with anything they have on hand. Similarly, I don’t see huge problems in allowing in an IG Company Commander. Tyranid players also seem really cramped by the rules, with very few permitted unit choices in the new book. The newer books seem to trend toward having more wounds, armor, and so on floating around, frequently making previously available units forbidden in Combat Patrol.

I can see some value in keeping out Landraiders, Terminators, special characters, Chaos Sorcerors, etc. at this point level and game style. But, I think in the future I would relax the restrictions, probably allowing 3 wounds, 36 armor, and possibly 2+ saves. I would definitely even consider letting anything go; at 750 points these kinds of balance issues are less of a problem than at the standard Combat Patrol 400 points, and a lot of it is self balancing. Yes, a Landraider could be hugely dominating. But a couple Sternguard could also drop it in Turn 1 and wipe out a third of your points… I certainly foresee spending a good bit of time revisiting this issue for future events.

New Codexes

I expected the new Tyranid codex to drop in the middle of the tournament and wanted to afford players some flexibility. People might not be able to get it quickly, it might invalidate their models, and so on. I therefore put this in the tournament rules:

Current codexes must be used. However, players of armies with codexes released during the tournament may opt to use either the latest or previous codex, declared before a match begins.

However, what I really should have said was:

Current codexes must be used. However, players of armies with codexes released during or up to two weeks before the tournament begins may opt to use either the latest or previous codex. They must inform their opponents which book they are using when arranging a match, and once they upgrade to the newer book they must not switch back to the older book for their remaining matches..

This won’t actually be an issue for us because we have a good group with the right attitude, but it addresses a couple potential issues:

• More leeway is needed for when the book comes out; it being released the day before the tournament starts versus the day after doesn’t really change the core issues such as book availability and reworking models or lists, but in the original wording everyone would technically be forced to upgrade.
• The original intent was definitely that opponents could plan around which book would be used but the original wording didn’t actually quite say that, so it is spelled out better in the second version. Not that I think it’s a huge issue at this point level and with these restrictions, but it’s definitely the more sporting approach so it may as well be formalized.
• Similarly, allowing people to switch back and forth between books in some attempt to tune to the mission or opponent seems very gamey and unsporting. The second wording encodes that intent and eliminates that problem.

Starting & Registration

The tournament is being run in a multi-week format with only a fixed date for the climactic, dramatic final round(s). In the interim, players schedule their matches as they please to fit their schedule. This is working out well so far in enabling people flexibility to participate, but it has made the start a little awkward. For example, I still don’t have contact information for some people who were registered by their friends. It’s working—they’re making their matches and so on—but it’s a little cumbersome. In the future I would definitely consider having a mandatory session for the first round as well so that I can physically collect all the contact information, registration fees, etc., and then roll from there rather than trying to play catchup with people for a couple days or weeks.

In any event, so far so good, and I’m looking forward to a bunch of fun, tough matches in the next couple weeks. More details on games and notes on the tournament and campaign to come!