Objective Mission Tactics: Control the Center

My Precious! Objective

Hello Gents,
Good evening a pleasure to see you and thanks for tuning in. Today I wanted to take some time to talk about some tactics for winning objective missions. With a large majority of missions in tournaments revolving around capturing objectives in 6th edition I wanted to go over some of my thought process and tactics for winning these missions. More specifically how controlling the center of the board helps with this process.

With the Nova Open being next week lets use their objective placement as our focus for this article which is one objective in the center of the board and one in the center of each table quarter.

Lets start with why holding the center of the board is a good thing in this format and setup. When you hold the center of a board you are the shortest possible distance to all four of the objectives in the quadrants. This is important because as a game evolves it allows for some fluidity in your plan to make adjustments and make plays for objectives that if you were to go heavy on one flank, it would be out of the question for you to attempt to go for the others.

Holding the center is also good for offensive purposes as you can easily shift your hard forces in the center to either flank and lend assistance. As a common theme in this blog you need the right tools for the job and not all lists are designed or all that good at controlling the center of the board.


If you do not have the right list; controlling board center is going to be difficult if not impossible. A tau gunline for example is not going to run in the center of the field and expect to hold strong. Looking at something like a GK paladin list or even my Tyranids however is the very definition of a board center control army. Once you dig 10 paladins or, oh, say 3 tervigons and a swarmlord into the center of the table not only is no one going to want to go near that center objective but you are also one turn away from being on any obective, especially with Tervigons making babies all over the place.

You also want to be sure to set this up correctly; when playing a board center control army going second is usually the best idea. This allows you to effectively do two things; the first being that you have bottom of the turn to contest/control objectives, and second is something I mentally setup every game during deployment and that is making a slightly harder push to one side.



Remember; with 5 objectives on the table you need 3 to win assuming that everyone is going to be controlled. Once my opponent sets up i look at their deployment and decide which of the two side objectives i am going to push harder for. Being a board center army I know I am plopping my heavy hitters in the center so that is one objective taken care of, you will usually want a couple deck chair units to take care of one of the objectives in your deployment zone so that is two. The third objective I always try to pick as the weakest flank in my opponents deployment zone.

Picking this as your third objective does several things. One thing is does is keep your opponent fighting in his deployment zone, second thing it does is keep your opponent away from your deck chairs and the this thing it does is force your opponent to move to the weaker side of the board to react.........Exactly! this forces them to move past your nice strong center.

This exposes another advantage to board center armies. They tend to force your opponent to react to you as opposed to the faster, or heavier fire power armies which have to react to what their opponent is doing.

Sorry I know that was kind of wall of text like but it is a pretty complex topic. Again; if you local guys really like this stuff bug Chase (you know who he is!) and have him schedule a tactics session.

Categories: