Open War deck for 40k

Hey all,

I managed to get my hands on an Open War deck this week and I thought I'd do a bit of a review as while it's designed for 40k you could feasibly use this for 30k too which I will get to later.

The box is of the same quality as the tactical objectives deck: sturdy, resealable and matches up with the astetics of the rest of the new releases.

The box itself contains 5 decks and a small instruction sheet that covers how to make use of the decks. In short, there's a deployment deck, an objective deck and a twist deck that determine the core rules. In addition, there is a ruse deck and a sudden death deck that provide additional bonuses for underpowered armies.

There's 12 deployment maps all in all. Some you may be familiar with from the core rules, others from expansions like Stronghold Assault or Sentinels of Terra. I can see some being a pain to set up like the old diagonal deployments but ultimately worth it for a more varied experience of the game.

Objectives are like the eternal war objectives but more options are available (12 rather than 6). Most depend on objective markers being placed on the board, others are kill point based, and there are a couple others that are a bit different. It's worth noting that tactical objectives aren't really directly compatible with these as they are - I'd be tempted to house rule some of the objectives victory conditions to make them compatible.

Twist cards add an additional element to the core mission - for instance, global modifiers to shooting, units taking damage from debris falling on the battlefield or even additional objectives for the mission.

Sudden death bonuses are very much like the ones in 7th edition and only come into play if a player is using an army that has half the power rating of their opponent - complete one of these objectives to instantly win the game (grabbing victory from the jaws of defeat).

Ruse cards give you minor bonuses such as redeployment options - for example, ambush allows you to redeploy some of your units nearer to your opponent like as though they have the old infiltrate special rule. These are used in the more common event where one players power rating is slightly lower than their opponent.

For 30k, I'd definitely make use of the first three decks - ultimately the other two don't really work with points balanced armies in the Age of Darkness rule set. These could easily be used for a random pick-up game or could be used to develop a set of scenarios for a campaign.

What do you guys think? I'm looking forward to putting these to use in the future in both 40k and 30k.

Until next time.

Hector Cephas