Missions and Mission Decks

A game of Warhammer 40,000 is won on victory points, and the mission is what decides where those points come from. This page covers how your army's Force Disposition and your opponent's combine to deal each of you a primary mission, how the secondary deck works alongside it, and how the terrain layout and deployment map follow from the same pairing.

Victory points

Victory points are the only score that matters. Both the primary mission and the secondary missions pay out in them, and when the last battle round ends the higher total wins. Everything else on the battlefield, from killing a unit to holding a ruin, matters exactly as much as it moves that number.

Because scoring is spread across the whole game rather than settled at the end, a lead built in the second battle round is real. An army that never destroys anything can still win, which is why players talk about "playing the mission" as a distinct skill from playing the army.

Force Disposition

Every army goes into a game with a Force Disposition, a statement of what kind of army it is and how it means to win. There are five:

• Take and Hold: an army built to seize ground and stay on it.
• Purge the Foe: an army built to destroy what is in front of it.
• Reconnaissance: an army built to range across the table and gather what it finds.
• Priority Assets: an army built around specific points on the battlefield.
• Disruption: an army built to deny the opponent their plan rather than execute one of its own.

Your disposition is not a free choice made at the table. It comes out of the detachments you took when you built the list, so it is settled the moment you finish writing the army. Building for a disposition and building for a playstyle are the same decision, made once.

The mission matchup

This is the part that is new to eleventh edition and the part most worth learning. Your primary mission is not rolled for and it is not chosen. It is read off the pairing of your disposition against your opponent's.

Five dispositions on each side make twenty-five pairings, which is why players talk about a mission matrix: your row, their column, and the cell where the two meet. A mission matchup is one of those cells.

Two consequences follow, and both catch people out.

The first is that the pairing is asymmetric. Outside a mirror, the two players are usually not playing the same mission. Take and Hold against Purge the Foe hands the ground-holding army one mission and the killing army a different one, each written to reward the thing that army came to do while making it fight for it. You can be well ahead on your mission and still be losing on theirs, and you will not notice unless you have read both.

The second is that you can know your half of the matrix before you leave the house. Your disposition is fixed by your list, so there are only five missions you can ever be dealt, one per opponent disposition. That is five cards to learn rather than twenty-five.

Primary scoring is capped: 15 victory points in a single battle round, and 45 across the whole game. The cap is what stops a runaway first turn from deciding the game, and it is why a mission you are scoring perfectly still leaves room for the secondary deck to matter.

Secondary missions

Alongside your primary you play secondary missions, and these you do choose. Each player has their own deck and holds a hand from it, so the two of you are usually chasing different things at the same time as chasing different primaries.

Before the battle begins both players roll off for a pair of roles: one is the Attacker and the other the Defender. Some secondary missions are only available to one side of it, so the roll-off is worth caring about rather than treating as a formality.

Within your deck, some cards are marked as Fixed missions. Committing to those means taking them up front and keeping them for the whole battle: you know exactly what you are scoring from turn one, you can build a plan around it, and you cannot change your mind when the board turns against you. The alternative is to draw as you go, cycling cards through your hand, which trades that certainty for the ability to take whatever the battlefield is currently offering.

Neither is correct in general. Fixed suits armies whose plan does not change, drawing suits armies that can react, and the matchup usually settles it.

Terrain layouts and deployment maps

The same matchup that names your primary also tells you what the battlefield looks like, which is the step most easily skipped and most often regretted.

A terrain layout is a recommended board setup for a matchup: where every ruin, barricade, container and objective sits, placed so that neither army starts with a free advantage. Each matchup has three of them. Events pick one, or rotate them by round, or have you roll. The point of a defined layout is that both players are playing the same board, and any two players anywhere in the world running that matchup are playing it too.

A deployment map is the pattern that carves the board into the two deployment zones. The classic shapes recur: Dawn of War's long facing strips, Hammer and Anvil across the short edges, the diagonal quarters of Search and Destroy, and the corner and wedge patterns of Crucible of Battle, Sweeping Engagement and Tipping Point. The layout and the map arrive together, because a layout only makes sense against the zones it was drawn for.

Everything in Terrain, from cover and visibility to what a terrain area is, applies to the pieces a layout places. Everything in Objectives applies to the objective points it marks. This page is the layer above both: which board you are setting up, and why.

Frequently asked questions

How is the primary mission chosen in Warhammer 40,000 11th edition?

By table lookup, once both players have named their Force Disposition. In practice you exchange dispositions during the pre-game sequence, find the cell in the matrix, and each read your own card. Bring your five possible cards printed or on the app, since the one you are dealt depends entirely on what the opponent brought.

What decides my Force Disposition in 40k?

Your detachment. Because the detachment is chosen at list-building, changing disposition means changing detachment, with every knock-on for enhancements and stratagems that implies. If you run two lists for the same army, checking which disposition each carries is the first thing to do, since it changes every primary you will face.

How many victory points can the primary mission score in 11th edition?

A maximum of 45 over the game and 15 in any one battle round, which means three rounds of full scoring reaches the cap and the fourth and fifth rounds of primary can only defend a lead. Any secondary total sits on top of that, so a player maxing primary is not safe until the secondary gap is closed too.

What is the difference between Fixed missions and drawing secondaries?

Fixed cards are declared before the first turn and cannot be swapped; drawn cards come off the deck during the game and cycle through your hand as it goes on. The usual guidance is to go Fixed with an army that scores the same way every game, such as a durable objective-holder, and to draw with a fast army that can be somewhere else next turn.

Do both players play the same secondary mission deck in 40k?

No. You each hold your own hand, and the Attacker and Defender roles from the pre-game roll-off remove some cards from one side. It is worth reading your opponent's available secondaries as well as your own, because denying a card is often cheaper than scoring one.

What is a terrain layout in Warhammer 40,000?

The published board plan for a matchup. Three exist per matchup, and tournament packs will name which one is in use for each round, so ask before you start placing terrain. At home, agreeing to use a layout is the quickest way to stop the "terrain argument" that a freeform setup invites.