HomeFeaturesWarhammer 40,000: Battlesector
Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector on Game Pass lured me into turn-based tactics with a familiar settingIt’s leaving Game Pass at the end of the month
It’s leaving Game Pass at the end of the month
While XCOM is about as serious as I get with turn-based tactics, I have been curious to try more, so I decided to giveWarhammer 40,000: Battlesectora go after seeing it’s leaving Game Pass soon. Brothers, it’s decent. Familiarity with the rock-paper-chainsword setup of Warhammer 40K arsenals is easing me into the unfamiliar world of retreating attacks and armour calculations. If you’re in a similar position and also on Game Pass, maybe have a look before it leaves Microsoft’s subscription service at the end of the month.
Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector || in 2 minutesWatch on YouTube
Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector || in 2 minutes
So off we go, into turn-based battles on a square grid which kinda functions like a hex grid. It is genuinely helpful for me to try more-tactical tactics in the familiar setting of Warhammer 40K. Thanks to games including Dawn Of War and Spice Maureen (not to mention the hypnotic training undergone while being implanted with new organs upon joining RPS), I’m coming in broadly understanding the strengths and weakness of different units and how I should use them. So now I just need to learn how to play turn-based tactics.
Building an army is fun, and similar to what I know of the tabletop wargame. You go into each battle with your army pre-chosen from available ‘units’, a term which might mean one single vehicle or might be multiple infantry ‘models’ who stand on the same square and follow the same orders. Models have their own health bars and make their own attacks, so a unit can lose models and become weaker but still fight on. Each unit costs points to field, with stronger units generally costing more, and each mission has a cap on both points and units. For example, 50 points gets you a squad of five Battle Sisters (vulnerable but versatile) while 205 points will get you one single Baal Predator tank (y’know, a tank). As long as you keep within the caps, you’re free to try whichever outlandish arny you want. It might not be sensible to send out a 100% jetpack army, but you could do it. Plus your army also always includes a handful of named hero units, who cost 0 points and have powerful abilities.
So I have my tank charging up to burn through a swarm, my Inceptors jetpacking in behind snipers, my chunky Aggressors following up for more swarm control, my Battle Sisters behind equipped with Blessed Ammunition to tear through chunkier melee units or deal with a surprise flying flank, and a squad of Hellbasters with plasma cannons to punch through armour. And then I end my turn and an alien bovine the length of a train carriage, a Tyranid Exocrine, ambles out of the fog and bursts an entire squad with a single blast from their bioplasma cannon. Right, yes, I should have scouted better. I get it. That’s why I have scout units in the first place.
Torching Termagants
Across the campaign, you recruit more hero units and unlock more generic units to field. Completing missions and bonus objectives also awards medals to spend on the heroes' mskill trees. Their trees are interesting, with a mix of buffs for heroes themselves and buffs for your generic troops. You’ll find new weapons to equip, new active abilities, and passive stat boosts. These can really change how a unit plays, and I’ve enjoyed planning unlocks to boost my favourite units (my beloved Battle Sisters start weak then grow quite tricksy). Units also gain small stat boosts for surviving a mission, so it’s worth trying to rescue units but not crippling if they die (they’re free to replace with newbies). Missions' army point caps go up across the campaign too, escalating to bigger armies and bigger fights. I just wish the plot and characters were more interesting.
I’ll get that Thunder Hammer one day
The campaign is very much the follow-up to a novel where the exciting stuff actually happened. Now the galaxy-changing events are over and the heroes are safely back on their battle barges, polishing their helmets, while my coworkers and I clean up the leftovers and feel out the new political landscape. With the unspeaking Tyranids simply doing swarm things, the friction of the story is amongst the Imperium of Man.
Intentionally playing poorly to create a dramatic screenshot
