Objective Insecurity

So, with ObSec coming back, I've become curious about something. (If you've spent the last two editions in a cave in Mongolia with your fingers in your ears, ObSec is a rule that gives Troops units right-of-way over all others when claiming objectives.)

I never saw a single game that was decided by Objective Secured, at least not one that was won with it. (Not that I can recall, at any rate.) I saw it affect some tactical choices ("I need to leave this huge unit camping an objective so his Windriders can't swoop over here on the last turn and steal it") but beyond adjusting strategies a little bit, I can't ever remember it being a huge deciding factor. Certainly not the must-have tool that it was hyped up to be.

I pretty frequently skimped out on it, and never really considered a lack of ObSec to be a tic in the 'con' column when list-building. I did very well in 7th, (competitively, better than any other edition) and never really felt like I missed it.

However, we frequently see one person's experiences being atypical. So, here's my question: how frequently (if at all) did you see games where Objective Secured was responsible for bringing home the 'W' for an army? Barring that, how often did you see it's lack deciding a game? Failing that, did you see (like me) it affect people's decisionmaking, even if it didn't win them or their opponent the game directly?

I'm legitimately curious if this is something that matters, or if it's something we've hyped up in our heads.

Objective Secured, I think, is an excellent tool for durable armies with low to lower-mid tier model count (Read, Space Marines ). But for other armies, especially Eldar, and especially especially Dark Eldar, its of little to no use.

As the old saying goes, Dark Eldar are great at taking Objectives, but horrible at holding them, and Objective Secured is, really, a tool to defend objectives. To me, I've never be able to even think about going near an Objective until I've shot its current occupants to bits.

What it really boils down to is this,
1: DE aren't tough enough to hold an objective for more than maybe a turn of dedicated fire.
2: DE aren't tough enough to contest an objective for more than a turn of combat.
3: Our heavy use of vehicles inherently comes with the drawback of lower board presence, and, with it being a death sentence to put boots on the ground, means we're poor at holding objectives.
4: Our army is built around the idea of kill or be killed, meaning, most of the time, we won't take an objective unless its empty or we've crippled the enemy beyond their ability to defend it.
5: Most importantly, we are mobile enough to not focus on objectives until late game. While other armies have to footslog and trudge for turns to even get to their target objective, to DE, a 20" distance is something that can easily be covered in a single phase. Holding an Objective takes a backseat to killing enough stuff to make it to the end of the game.

To summarize, we get little use out of Objective Secured, because we were designed to be able to function without it

In 7th edition, Objective Secured was the perfect rule for DE, since it allowed our empty vehicles to contest an objective to FA/HS/Elites, and that was awesome.
But i think it still has its use for us in 8th edition, due to how detachments work. We are an army whose general playstyle includes taking quite a lot of troops, and we benefit from taking those. For other armies, that's not the case. And in 8th edition, they are allowed to not bring troops at all, and field nasty armies made up entirely of Crisis suits, Destroyers, or whatever powerhammer they find worthy.
Thus, any meta that encourages the use of troops (that we would do anyway) is a good meta for us

In 7th edition Obj Sec wasn't decisive, since everyone brought troops anyway. But we have already seen tournaments of 8th were people revolved entirely around troop-less detachments. These lists will never be able to hold an objective against us, since we will always be able to pop up and contest whenever we please.

I've used it and I've not used it. In 7th edition I made ample use of it with my parking lot lists but less so with my double-grotesqueries. In 8th... well I probably won't be using it at all actually.

The few games I played in 7th it mattered as long as the game was evenly matched.
Far to much games was one player being steamrolled by the other, and thus objsec had little impact because one more objective hardly mattered.

While for though armies it matters in defense, I found it was very usefull, throw a unit of kabalites/wytches to their doom but gain another (few) victory point(s) can be quite usefull. But as soon as either me or my opponent threathened a wipe it did not matter much anymore and the killing becomes more important.

Right now I think it will be similar. Throwing a unit of wyches at those lootas/ mek guns in their back field with an objective and not only stop them from shooting but also claim the objective sounds good to me. It will not come up every game, for i agree we are relatively weak and thus need to kill things before claiming an objective, but I also sacrifice enough units just to keep something occupied, and that is usually not a troop: if it is on an objective claiming it automatically is quite nice. We have a lot of SMU spam (at least I still do), which means even against elites/heavies I sometimes fail to grab an objective by outnumber. If I only need 1 guy for it that is no problem for me.
But I also really like our fast attacks and troops are often in vehicles: obj sec does not help them, and it will help my opponent. 1 measly ork or genestealer survives my shooting and charge and he keeps the objective. I think obj sec is not always bad for us, but some other armies are happier with it.

I've had plenty of games were it didn't mean anything, and plenty others where I could steal objectives from my opponent late game and win.

Do you guys think wracks now being actual troops will help us at all? It'll be easier to take them, and they are.more durable than kabs or wyches. Especially with a haemonculus. Although at that point it's probably too many points for a squad which is just going to sit there.

Britishgrotesque wrote:

Do you guys think wracks now being actual troops will help us at all? It'll be easier to take them, and they are.more durable than kabs or wyches. Especially with a haemonculus. Although at that point it's probably too many points for a squad which is just going to sit there.

That would be a great question to bring up in the Chapter Approved thread, where a more general discussion of ObSec is taking place. I'd like to limit this thread to discussing actual experiences with the rule, if that's alright.

In 7th, there were a few times when I can remember it mattering:
- Grabbing objectives when playing Maelstrom.
- Last-turn objective grabs in normal games.
- Marines deep-striking ObjSec drop pods onto objectives.

Honestly though, these were rarely what won games. Objectives were almost always secured by simply blowing the other person off them.

That was largely my experience as well.

Never used obsec in my seventh Ed games ... Didn't have to ... It was either I shot my opponent off the objective or they shoot me off it as I always used the detachment in the codex to build my lists ... It was the only way to survive the first turn in my play area as there were a lot of high AP high strength weapons s but very little ignores cover so the +1 to covers saves on the first turn for night fighting really helped a lot.

The few times I was beaten in 7th Ed, was literally from this. Marines (every time) camping an objective with ObjSec. If I was unable to kill (/table) the opponent, I then couldn't take the objective.

It mattered a lot in ITC games. In 7th having it on the venom's and kabalites was huge as we often had 6+ obsec units on the board. This meant that if we killed the enemies obsec, we would dominate the mission. Also, a lot of people didnt realize that most of the formations did not actually have obsec .

It might be deceptive how important it is unless you play mostly with missions. However, I dont think we are as suited for suicide grabbing objectives like we were in 7th. Like you guys have said, we are more of a "shoot them until they are all dead and then take the objective" type of army in 8th. 7th edition was all about obsec. 8th we have to adjust.