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For my own playgroup I would like to create a collection of missions that are or have been fun throughout the existence of 40k.

I don't see a lot of talk about this online anywhere, so I want to hear your opinion. What mission do you remember fondly? Preferably you can tell me as well where it was printed and what modifications - if any - you did to it when you played it.

4th-ed style Kill-Team rules I remember really fondly. I don't remember full details but one player had Heroes & other had Villains. Heroes were the Kill Team, having small unit roster but extra abilities & optional wargears, and Villains had super-powered Leader dude with lots and lots of Goons. Gameplay was assymetrical with Heroes trying to achieve some objective (blow up particular terrain piece, get across board without detection, kill Leader, etc) and Villain had to try and stop that.

It was all very silly but a lot of fun & sometimes very cinematic games!

Dunno about specific missions and that.

But in 2nd Ed? Your Mission was drawn randomly just before (maybe after?) setup. And each contained a Secondary.

Whether those missions were fair I can’t recall. Certainly the one that centred on bumping off Psykers could be crap if I didn’t field any.

But the random, and asymmetric conditions I still think to be a great idea.

The missions I remember most fondly are where the Defenders are hideously outnumbered and the Attackers only win if they manage to wipe out the enemy in a set number of turns. There are various examples of this over the editions, even going as far back as the 2nd Edition Tyranid Codex where the Tyranids could recycle their units.

Not strictly a mission, but Last Stand at Glazer's Creek is a suitably epic scenario for this. The 2nd edition battle report was shown in White Dwarf 222. The 8th Edition battle report in the June 2018 White Dwarf wasn't as great but it at least updated the rules for a newer edition.

Meat Grinder from 3rd was a nice one. Attacker's troop choices constantly respawned after dying and their mission objective was to wipe out the defender. Defenders objective was simply to survive 6 turns. If the defender had a single model left, they won.

The name escapes me, but the special Ethereal retrieval mission from the 3rd ed Tau codex is a good one too. Has a very unusual setup and has your opponent coming at you from all sides whilst you have to protect the objective in the middle. EDIT- It was called Hostage Situation.

I forget what it was called, but there was also a neat mission in the 4th ed rulebook that lead to some quite brutal and close games, where, in addition to getting VPs for killing your opponent's units, you also got VPs for keeping yours alive (such as the unit remaining about half strength, vehicle's not being immobilised etc.), leading to some very quirky games of cat and mouse of trying even moreso not to get your units destroyed. EDIT- Seek and Destroy

One that I did love, but that modern Dakka will probably hate, as it's "randumb", was the mission from Planetstrike which had off board artillery barrages. These were represented by torn off bits of paper that you would float down onto the battlefield. If they hit a unit, you'd place a template over it IIRC.

Finally, my fave mission (I say mission, but you can use these rules on any of them) from the 3rd ed era Chapter Approved was the zero gravity rules. Now this one lead to some interesting dynamics. Everyone moved as if they had a jump pack, so ignored all terrain etc. but, at the cost of your whole army's save characteristic being reduced by -1 to represent how even the smallest breach in your armour can be fatal in the vacuum of space. Marines with a 4+ save are very interesting to play with and against for example.

My favorite missions have always been the fluffy, usually poorly-balanced ones that help tell a story. The Crusade mission where you can burn objectives. A probably homebrew mission we did once where one player is defending a train, and the other is trying to take it down with terrain and units not standing on the train moving closing to one board edge each turn to represent movement. Simple survival missions where one player's forces keep steadily respawning while the other player tries to hold out...

A lot of the asymmetrical "challenge missions" from the chapter approved a few years ago looked really cool. They weren't framed as succeeding or failing but as succeeding to varying degrees.

Honestly, 40k's strength has never been in providing a balanced game. It's much better at setting up memorable scenarios and letting your weird armies bring their own twists to those situations.

I know that we all kind of poo poo'd the whole "forge the narrative" thing, but I really do prefer narrative missions over soulless tournament missions. When I was begging for better balance a few editions ago (before GW started to focus on tournament play), it wasn't because I wanted 40k to be the new chess; it was because the lack of balance at the time was actively making it more difficult to enjoy fluffy casual games.

The Covert X campaign in Citadel Journal 22 was amazing. It involved a Scout Company that survived the destruction of their chapter in cryostasis, only to be hunted by the Adeptus Arbites under the command of a corrupt planetary governor upon awakening.

It had Urban Infiltration rules- stands of Imperial Citizen models that moved using control rolls- in which Covert X Scout Squads could hide. Also, custom army lists and other mission rules, as well as formal missions themselves.

I like layered rules that can be added in- so things like Theatres of War are cool to me- they overlay a mission, so they're more useful than an actual mission. Dawn raid rules are another example- add them to any mission to switch it up.

I liked Planetstrike and City Fight and Urban Conquest- like Covert X, those are campaign based, but they are largely mission-based. Ashes of Faith is a fantastic Campaign System, but it's mostly campaign based- the missions themselves aren't all that, but the territorial effects and the bidding system of the campaign itself are pretty solid.

I remember the first Apocalypse books had a mission where there was a sidebattle for teleport/ jump troops on an Ork Rok ship. They had to smash a field generator that was affecting the main battle on the surface.

In a similar vein, Octarius had rules for Kill-Team action mid battle; if a unit met certain conditions, you could remove it to represent a Kill Team special Mission taking place during the larger battle. A mechanic like that would be a great spring board for that Apocalypse battle on the Rok.

There was a Flashpoint article that suggested a cool idea for a mission, but they never made rules for it: Guards at a prison/ work camp for Abhumans fall to chaos, and the Abhumans have to escape. Certain tunnels are only accessible by Ratlings, and certain obstacles can only be moved by Ogryns.

I like rescue/recovery missions. Supply raids- all very narrative stuff. Designing Arena-based Wych Cult missions is fun.

A more recent one is from Chapter Approved (before GW ruined it and made it all about tournaments).

6 objectives, and each player places 3. But each objective is worth between 1 and 5 points, and you select which is worth which (so, if you get to pick the 5, you might chose the objective closes to you as that one). But each objective disappears at the end of its respective turn, so a high-value objective will suddenly not be there after a couple of turns, forcing you to change your position and go after something else.

Made everything very dynamic.

Pitched battle kill points is the best mission.

Slaves capture (dunno the original name, my book is in french) from Battle Missions in 5th I edition is fun. Attrition war, from the same book.

Well, in fact, mist missions in this book are fun in my opinion, and extremely useful as they provide the campaign olayer I am with ready made canvas for a whole range of situations.

One that I liked comes from 9th edition Crusade, but can be played outside of it with no problem.

You place 6 objectives in a line in the middle of the table from left to right, with some wiggle room to put them more towards your or your enemy. If you are close enough to one objective with a unit, you have to scan it with an action. Doing so gives you some victory points and you have to roll 1D6. On a 6+ it turns out the be the one real objective and it stays in place for the rest of the game, while all other objectives get removed. If you fail the roll, only this objective is removed. For each removed objective by either player, the roll is increased by +1.

It always creates an interesting situation. Do you go for objectives closer to your army and hope for a good roll, so you have an easier time defending it? Do you try to push early into enemy objectives to deny victory points and increase your own chance at finding the objective? Which can totally backfire with a high roll on the scan.

I've always like bunker assault-type missions. Had some fun with Planetstrike in particular. That is the right level of strategems for the game IMO.

Personally, I liked the Ambush and Sabotage Missions of 2nd or 3rd edition. These were Missions where each player had opposing Objectives. In the case of Ambush, the Ambusher had to destroy as much of their opponent's army as possible. The Ambushee was meant to escape with as many units as possible off the board edge opposite where they deployed. In Sabotage, one player defended an important terrain feature and the other tried to blow it up.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dunno about specific missions and that.

But in 2nd Ed? Your Mission was drawn randomly just before (maybe after?) setup. And each contained a Secondary.

Whether those missions were fair I can’t recall. Certainly the one that centred on bumping off Psykers could be crap if I didn’t field any.

But the random, and asymmetric conditions I still think to be a great idea.

One of the major reasons I like 2nd Edition and still generally prefer it honestly. The asymmetrical conditions created by combos of mission and strategy card (both drawn right before deployment, so after selecting your army and setting up terrain) really created interesting game states. You could also optionally hide missions (something cards have always been great for) and add another level of chaos to the mix.

Not really conducive to the tourney mentality of current editions because it was another layer of randomness that could favour one side or the other, but was great for creating memorable moments and interactions alongside the rest of the rules.

2nd Edition did a great job of basically acting as a GM-less scenario-driven game with a lot of random stuff that created friction (in the Clausewitzian sense). It may have made it slow and a bad game for competition, but it made it an endlessly fun war game.

Take and Hold, 3rd Edition.

Why? Because it was easy and it made sense. Take that darn hill.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Dunno about specific missions and that.

But in 2nd Ed? Your Mission was drawn randomly just before (maybe after?) setup. And each contained a Secondary.

Whether those missions were fair I can’t recall. Certainly the one that centred on bumping off Psykers could be crap if I didn’t field any.

But the random, and asymmetric conditions I still think to be a great idea.

One of the major reasons I like 2nd Edition and still generally prefer it honestly. The asymmetrical conditions created by combos of mission and strategy card (both drawn right before deployment, so after selecting your army and setting up terrain) really created interesting game states. You could also optionally hide missions (something cards have always been great for) and add another level of chaos to the mix.

Not really conducive to the tourney mentality of current editions because it was another layer of randomness that could favour one side or the other, but was great for creating memorable moments and interactions alongside the rest of the rules.

2nd Edition did a great job of basically acting as a GM-less scenario-driven game with a lot of random stuff that created friction (in the Clausewitzian sense). It may have made it slow and a bad game for competition, but it made it an endlessly fun war game.

While I don't play second edition (but I am intended on trying one day), the idea of hidden objectives for both parties even in my modified 6th rule core could definitely be a blast.... Taking note

It was a little bit clunky because of the math involved, but I really liked the 4th edition style missions. Half the points were for killing enemy units (vp = cost of the unit), the other half for whatever the objective was. It could be markers, could be table quarters, could be terrain.

 Polonius wrote:
It was a little bit clunky because of the math involved, but I really liked the 4th edition style missions. Half the points were for killing enemy units (vp = cost of the unit), the other half for whatever the objective was. It could be markers, could be table quarters, could be terrain.

That sounds similar to what a remember of 7th edition fantasy victory conditions! This would be a great game type to put into 40k!