Warhammer 40k Nachmund GT Mission Pack Preview

Competitive Warhammer 40,000 (40k) sees an all new shift in the way the game is played this year as Games Workshop moves into competitive seasons, each lasting six months and with a specific focus and story around a designated spot in the galaxy. For its inaugural season, players will clash on the planet Vigilus, a crucial bastion of Imperium control in the Nachmund Gauntlet. With new miniatures, rules, and point adjustments coming each season, it'll ensure that the competitive meta of Warhammer 40k stays fresh, keeping people on their toes. Games Workshop provided us with a copy of the new Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund: Grand Tournament Mission Pack, available for preorder now, to take an early look at what's contained in this package.

What's Included In Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund?

Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund contains two slim volumes -- The Grand Tournament Mission Pack and the Munitorum Field Manual. The Mission Pack contains Secondary Objectives, nine Incursion missions (for 1000 point armies), and nine Strike Force missions (for 2000 point armies). The Munitorum Field Manual contains the most up-to-date point values to be used in 2022 for every playable faction of the game. 

What Are The Missions Like In Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund?

Each of the eighteen total missions in Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund have been carefully reviewed to provide balance between each opposing side, and the Secondary Objectives have been removed from the mission descriptions (and given their own section in the book). Now, each mission has two primary objectives, but what does this look like?

Let's take a look at the Strike Force mission "The Scouring," which Games Workshop has previously posted. In this mission, each player's army begins at opposite sides of the table, and must work to take and hold objective points in the middle of the battlefield. But taking objective points is just the first of two primary objectives in this mission. For the second primary objective, units can scan these objective points to score at the end of the game.

In another example, there's an Incursion-sized mission called "Desperate Raid" in Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund where each army is low on supplies, and needs to secure objective points on the board to secure what they need to continue fighting. The first primary objective scores you victory points for controlling groups of objective markers, and the other primary objective scores you victory points for controlling markers in your opponent's deployment zone. Thematically, this makes a lot of sense. You're in a war, and all forces are low on supplies. While you want to control lots of these caches of supplies, it would also be very good to deprive your opponent of one of their caches of supplies.

What Are The Secondary Objectives Like In Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund?

The Secondary Objectives in Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund are all designed to offer new strategic planning and resources for armies, and each player must choose three Secondary Objectives when playing in a Nachmund match, and two of those three must be from this book. For armies without an updated Codex (and therefore without access to their own unique secondary objectives), there are new Faction-specific secondary objectives. There are Faction-specific secondary objectives in Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund for Astra Militarum, Chaos Knights, Tyranids, Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Daemons, and Imperial Knights.

The Secondary Objectives are also broken down into different categories, which are labeled: Purge The Enemy, No Mercy No Respite, Warpcraft, Shadow Operations, and Battlefield Supremacy. Players cannot choose more than one Secondary Objective from a single category. Some of these objectives, like Titan Hunter (which gives victory points when enemy Titanic models are destroyed) are super-specific, while others, like Grind Them Down (which gives victory points if more enemy units than friendly were destroyed) have a wider use-case.

All in all, Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund -- both the Grand Tournament Mission Pack and the Munitorum Field Manual -- seem like well-designed, and well-balanced introductions to the new Seasonal competitive play mode. Though we don't have space to go through the Field Manual faction by faction with point tweaks, you can check out an overview of the biggest changes as posted by Games Workshop.

The copy of Warhammer 40,000 War Zone Nachmund: Grand Tournament Mission Pack used in the creation of this preview was provided by Games Workshop.