Not the Same Ol' Song and Dance

I would like to welcome Greg Sabino to my blog! I first met Greg at the Baltimore GT in 2008 when I wound up playing against him, and we were both fairly new at 40k. I gave him a sound thumping, handed him my army list with my blog URL, and we became friends! He later bought one of my painting videos and I would like to claim full responsibility for his fantastic looking space marines! :) Just joking Greg. In truth, he puts many many hours into his hobby. He is a true student of his passion and it shows in his work. I am bringing Greg on because of his love for what he does. I personally can't think of any better reason! I am looking forward to seeing what he adds to the table. Jawaballs


My name is Greg S.(Saab) and I play out at Brothers Grim which is on the eastern end of Long Island. I have absolutely no desire to give tactical or list building advice because there are plenty of people on the internet who think they can provide such a service. Instead, I will hopefully provide a resource concerning missions, objectives, and new ways to enjoy the game of 40K.

If you play enough like me, I am sure you frown when you and a buddy roll “That Same Damn Mission“ from the back of the book. So each week, I will be building a database here at Jawaballs: The Blood Angels and Warhammer 40K Blog with various missions I’ve either played in tournaments, leagues, or wrote at 4am on the back of a napkin. A sort of “Mission of the Week!”. From time to time, I will also post up missions from various GTs around the country and highlight any new and interesting takes on the game of 40K.

What I want from YOU, the reader, is to give your feedback on these missions. Ask yourself, “Was their loop-holes? Did it favor one type of army? Was it fun?” etc. We work so hard on building and tweaking our armies that we deserve to use them in more than 3 types of “scenarios”. Will all of these missions, be amazing or life-changing experiences? No, but anything is better than rolling “Dawn of War / Annihilation “.

Now before I start posting up missions, I want to examine a key feature that affects all of us who play the game of 40K, “Mission Objectives”. In my time playing in tournaments, I have experienced two main systems; a Primary/Secondary/Tertiary format with Bonus Pts, and a Primary Only with Bonus Pts. I’ve always stated that I prefer the three mission objectives over one primary mission objective. One of my reasons is that I feel you get a better “spread” of scores. I believe this to be important because we use the Swiss Ranking System and it gets the best players playing each other instead of someone who just got lucky. However, I’ve never really sat down and looked at the scores before, which makes the researcher in me cringe (I’m in the last year of my Immunology PhD). If I am going to talk, it shouldn’t be out of my *ss. So I decided to graph up some scores from past GTs I’ve attended.


These data are from 5 game GTs, but the sample size is small because it was the only two GT numbers I had access to while in lab. These score all include bonus points received in addition to mission objective points.

Upon first glance I notice two things right away. First, in the 1 Objective (black) scores appear to be in three clusters. Secondly, the spread/slope of the Top 10 in the 3 Objective (red) is much steeper when compared to 1 Objective. When I look at the 1 Objective (black) graph, I feel like there was no clear winner. Anyone in that top group of 6 people could have received “Top Battle Points” that weekend due to how close it was. However, when looking at 3 Objective (red), there’s a clear 1st 2nd and 3rd. When you’re dealing with 3 objective missions, you really need to beat your opponent into submission to maximize your points. Where as with 1 objective, you can get lucky and still win the game with 15pts even though you only have 1 model left of the board at turn 5(this did happen that weekend). I ran the numbers in Excel and the slope of the lower scores from the 3 Objective graph is still steeper than the slope of the 1 Objective graph. Also, I’d guess that the three clusters in the 1 Objective (black) are derived from the ridged scoring system used.


So what am I getting at? Well, the vast majority of the missions I will be posting will use the 3 Objective system, and the graphs above are a partial reaffirmation of my gut-feeling concerning the topic. However, I’m not about to proclaim the superiority of 3 Objectives throughout the land. The 3 Objective system has its draw backs too, (You can forget about them until turn 4, they can get over complicated and lead to scoring errors, etc.), but overall, I find them to be more entertaining; and I hope you do too.

I have alot of work to do for my committee meeting, but I hope to have my first mission post up in a couple of days

-Greg (Saab)