The new edition of Warhammer 40,000 is rapidly incoming, and it’s an exciting time for fans of endless warfare in the 41st Millennium. Over the last few weeks, you’ve learned a bit about how Chapter Approved games offer matched play missions and different victory conditions in the new edition, so it’s time for the next of the flagship game modes – Combat Patrol.
Combat Patrol has been designed for a wide variety of players. It can be picked up by new and returning players, people who might struggle to find the time for a larger game, players who want to try a new faction without building a 1,000 point army, or people who simply want to master a new game format.
Instead of building an army from a selection of datasheets and points values, your games will feature balanced but varied forces based on the Combat Patrol boxes you can find in stores. You simply pick up the Combat Patrol box from your favourite faction, build your miniatures, and get ready to battle. It really is as simple as that!
The Leviathan launch box itself contains enough miniatures to assemble two full Combat Patrols – The Vardenghast Swarm, for Tyranids, and Strike Force Octavius for the Space Marines. These two armies are made up of some – but not all – of the models in the box.
The rulebook inside the Leviathan launch box (the Core Book will also be available separately) contains the organisational rules for Combat Patrol - and these will also be available to download for free here on Warhammer Community. There will be six missions designed exclusively for this game mode, which is played on a compact 44” x 30” board (that’s 2 Kill Team boards pushed together). And you can look forward to Combat Patrol sections in future Codexes!
So how does this game mode work? The Warhammer Studio have been hard at work tinkering with all the many disparate forces that are already available in order to create a fast, thrilling, and meaningfully balanced end product. This process involved lots of playtesting, with gamers of all experience levels competing with each other to test out this exciting new game mode. Rules for each of the Combat Patrols were revised based on the feedback from these games to ensure each force hit that sweet spot of thematic, accessible, and balanced.
The core principle is simple – each Combat Patrol has been given a full set of self-contained rules that define it on the table. This includes datasheets, but also secondary objectives, faction rules, Enhancements, and Stratagems, all flavoured to match that force’s narrative – and balanced against every other Combat Patrol.*
The majority of datasheets have been modified, both to adapt units that would be overpowered in this format, but also to slim down more complex units to one defining rule and ensure players can master the key abilities of their units before discovering their full potential in larger games.
To keep things balanced, the weapons options for the units have been fixed for all the Combat Patrol datasheets, so there’s no need to fret about your character and unit equipment prior to a game. You don’t need to worry about which guns to give your Chaos Space Marine Havocs, for example.
The core rules remain the same, – so nothing you learn in Combat Patrol will be redundant in Chapter Approved or Crusade games. Check out how the Captain in Terminator Armour from the index cards compares with the streamlined Captain Octavius from Combat Patrol.
Every faction's army rules will remain largely the same – Tyranids retain Shadow in the Warp and Synapse, for example – but each Combat Patrol features Enhancements unique to this game mode to let you tweak your WARLORD and try out new strategies.
New to playing Tyranids and worried that your prized Tyranid Prime might be a little fragile? Psychostatic Veil gives the Terror of Vardenghast a 4+ invulnerable save, and makes it harder to target at range or hit in melee. After you’ve got some games under your belt, you can try turning it into a nimble buff piece with the Secretion Goad Enhancement, offering increased Armour Penetration to other units - perhaps your Termagant swarm. Glorious, venomous revenge!
The six Combat Patrol missions in the core book each have their own characteristic mission rules, deployment map, and primary objectives. You’ll find one change from the core rules here – unless they’re Battle-shocked, your BATTLELINE units can secure objective markers, allowing you to keep control of them even when your squads move on. This presents new applications for many BATTLELINE troops, and board control challenges for the elite Space Marines…
In addition to your mission’s shared primary objective, every Combat Patrol can also choose between a pair of secondary objectives that let you define how you play. Wrath of the Emperor has you send your juggernaut Captain right into the fray, spraying guts and ichor with storm bolter and power sword, scoring 2VP for each phase in which he kills any models.
However, you may find that certain armies are resistant to the hammer-blow assault of one very chunky boy. As you develop your tactical nous, you might instead prefer to employ Shock Tactics to wrench back battlefield control with your elite Adeptus Astartes, scoring 5VP every turn you knock your enemy off an objective and take it for yourself.
Even Stratagems are brought into consideration – each Combat Patrol has just three bespoke Stratagems, with one that’s designed to be reactive. These are also part of the balancing in Combat Patrol – the Vardenghast Swarm gets to top up its squishy Termagant swarms with Teeming Broods, bringing back destroyed models or even recycling a whole unit as Strategic Reserves. Maybe shooting them off the board isn't such a good idea…
It won’t have escaped your attention that certain Combat Patrols contain big, tough MONSTERS and formidable VEHICLES, while others are somewhat lacking in the heavy weapons you’d normally use to take such targets down. Stratagems like Veteran Instincts will even the score, by granting your Terminators the ability to re-roll Wound rolls when swinging their power fists against giant-sized targets.
These rules, shaped by in-depth testing that saw old veterans and brand new Warhammer 40,000 players test their mettle against each other over many, many games, result in a mode of play that’s simple at first glance, yet full of depth.
With fewer units on the board and fewer abilities to consider, Combat Patrol is more about working out what to move and when, holding your prize haymaker back until just the right moment, and learning the intricacies of your force’s options.
Everything you need to play Combat Patrol – apart from the miniatures – will be available for free online when the new edition launches. Introducing a friend to the world of Warhammer 40,000 with the help of your collection has never been easier. You could even set up your own Combat Patrol event, or why not go wide and collect one Combat Patrol from every faction?
There are more Faction Focuses coming soon to Warhammer Community, alongside more information about the game modes that will define the new edition of Warhammer 40,000.
* If you’ve played the Rivals format in Warhammer Underworlds, it works a little like this.