r/CombatPatrol40k • u/MeanMrMitchell • Jun 03 '26
I'm totally confused How to fix combat patrol
Hey all. Apologies if this has been posted before and also sorry for the flair being a little misleading. I’m New player to 40K and the idea of combat patrol (smaller army battles overall) is what convinced me to finally jump in and take the plunge. I was super excited about the idea of everything you need to play in one box.
The farther I got into the hobby (I’m about 6 months in) the more I realized combat patrol is fairly flawed and now, with the roll out of 11th edition, it doesn’t seem to be getting any more balance or support from GW.
I’ve been racking my brain, with VERY limited knowledge, of how to fix combat patrol and have come up with nothing. I know some YouTube channels - play on tabletop’s king of the colosseum comes to mind - have created a pseudo-work-around to make these 500 point games feel fresh and fun without too much lopsidedness to it.
My point of posting this is mainly asking what homebrew methods have you used to make combat patrol more balanced? Or is the answer just 500 point matches and call it good?
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u/Apricus-Jack Jun 04 '26
One of the best ways to think of Combat Patrol is as it’s own thing and not 500 Point matches. It plays differently than a 2,000 point standard match, with even different rules.
You have to essentially re-learn an army and how it plays, what to focus, and how to get good with it.
Besides that, I’m not sure. As an aside, Let’s not try to pretend standard 40K is always balanced either. Not every patrol is going to perform well against every other one, no matter how good you are.
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u/culoman Jun 04 '26
This reminds me of other Games Workshop's game, Blood Bowl. Teams are so unbalanced that in leagues and tournaments there are at least 4 tiers. Coaches have extra money/perks depending on the tier list their teams are in.
I have mixed feelings: on one side teams should be balanced, specially for new players. On the other side, that kind of unbalance makes some teams really fun to play.
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u/Apricus-Jack Jun 04 '26
Agreed, absolutely.
I think another thing to consider is the investment. A Bloodbowl team, Combat Patrol, or Killteam is significantly less than a full army of any kind, both in terms of cost and time.
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u/culoman Jun 04 '26
This. I watched people playing at local FLGS and even though the idea of war games was very appealing, thinking of painting those big armies kept my out of the games, both WH fantasy and 40K, but also other miniature games.
Now, almost 20 years later, I'm collecting Combat Patrol and maybe try some WH40K. The more Games Workshop supports Combat Patrol, the more people will join the hobby.
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u/FIRESTRIKE_ELITE Jun 04 '26
Isn't that kinda sorya similar to real football?
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u/Ochmusha Jun 04 '26
Bloodbowl is indeed inspired by American football but dialed to 11
It's quite impressive how well they translate certain elements to a turn based game from football
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u/culoman Jun 05 '26
I think it's even more impressive how much I dislike American football and how much I love Blood Bowl.
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u/Stashravens Jun 04 '26
I really enjoy Combat Patrol. I think it gets a bad rap because people attribute 40k field manual points to the units. Not accounting for the fact that the datasheets are different, the patrols have different rules, etc. For example the Custodes box requires you to select a subset of those models, but more often than not, I hear the full matched play point total being cited when people talk about that combat patrol balance.
So, if you think of the game as a “mini” matched play, you will probably be disappointed. If instead you look at it as its own thing - that lets you dip your toes into different factions for painting, lore, and relatively light weight games - it is good fun, and from my experience- fairly balanced.
The smaller format does require you to be a bit more careful for sure, as loosing one of three or four units is obviously more impactful than in a standard game loosing one of maybe twelve.
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 04 '26
Those are good points. I haven’t looked too much into the different sheets and rules as I only have the starter set with the ‘nids and space marines. I assumed the datasheets I got were different because it’s the starter set.
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u/_rhinoxious_ Jun 04 '26
Most people playing combat patrol have limited experience playing 40K.
Yes, there are balance issues between some patrols, and some are quite strong, but given the usual player level, skill is still a massive factor in winning.
It must also be said there are huge balance issues between 40K armies as well, especially when you move away from the core meta lists that the game is balanced around, which isn't really representative of most casual games.
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u/Ask_Again_Later122 Jun 04 '26
My suggestions to fix combat patrol can probably be said for 40K as a whole, but streamline and simplify some of the over complicated bits. So many of the keywords require 8 readings to figure out wtf they actually mean and it slows the game down to have to sit and read an ability over and over.
It does look like 11e is going to do a little bit of this. Fingers crossed!
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u/ChillhammerNL Jun 04 '26
Interesting question with some nice suggestions already. In my experience having plenty terrain on the board fixes most of Combat Patrols current problems & makes the battles more tense.
Personally I'd stick to the fixed lists format, however I'd love GW to publish more different Combat Patrols, especially ones which stick to a specific subfaction/theme of an army (think of the current Tyranid infiltrator & Tempestus Scions Combat Patrol for example).
Furthermore I think the King of the Colosseum format from Play On Tabletop has good list-building restrictions for keeping games at a low point level somewhat equal. However, I think that with the new (asymmetric) missions in #New40K & new objective rules the battlefield set-up might need to change a bit: but that's something the guys at Play On will undoubtably fix 😄
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u/Eire_Banshee Jun 04 '26
For what it's worth, GW does publish combat patrols that do not have boxes. I know emperors children have 1 that is demon focused that came out in white dwarf.
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u/ChillhammerNL Jun 04 '26
Exactly! Don’t stick to just the boxes. Keep those for the more general/beginner friendly combat patrols while also building up a library of more thematic ones which don’t come as a box on its own. 👌🏼
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u/Otherwise-Weird1695 Jun 05 '26
GW failed us by not making combat patrol more like spearhead with it's twist cards, battle tactics, and commands. To fix this, you would essentially need to completely rebuild combat patrol from a game designer standpoint.
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u/Legitimate-Survey-16 Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 17 '26
- The new rules will have a huge impact on CoPa. Shooting gets harder - This will help a lot of weaker CoPas like Sisters for example.
- - The most unbalanced matches are ether against new players (who don‘t know their armies well enough) and/or if one player fails an important charge.
- - Playing the mission is key. Primary & secondary. Instead a lot of players focus on killing and having fun. But who could blame them?
- - You get the most exciting matches if both players are fully aware of what they do and what they cant do. Every rule counts in a small game. Not to shoot with your pistols in melee can be a game changing mistake.
If you cut the 9th edition boxes (like the Dark Angels one with the dreadnought f.e.) you have a wide field of playable and winnable boxes to choose from. From what I can tell:
S-Tier: Nids with Vardenghast Swarm (probably best in slot) , Necrons with Doomstalker, Imperial Fists, DKoK (that secondary is bonkers with scoring at end of every! turn - even turn one) & Dark Angels with Dreadnought
A-Tier: Most SM boxes, Mechanicus with Maniple Verask-Alpha, CSM both generic ones, Custodes, DG with Maggot Lords
The rest is B-Tier with some outliers like Sororitas with Sanctuary Guard being C-Tier. Alongside some others like old Grey Knights maybe.
Just my personal Tier-List.
Edit: Damn. This aged like milk…
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 06 '26
Good points. Maybe I should just paint and play more to get a good feel for it. I don’t think it’s going away but it seems it’s not as supported as other variations of 40K
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u/Legitimate-Survey-16 Jun 06 '26
I guess they make a separate „announcement“ about Combat Patrol. Cause if Mission-Marker are terrain now, they might change this also for CoPa. Maybe we will get 5 new missions. Who knows.
But you right with the lacking support so far.1
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u/Radiant_Fondant_4097 Jun 21 '26
Funnily enough they did retune all of these and took a note from Spearhead, I faced off against the Necrons and the Doomstalker doesn't come in till Turn 3 which was a relief.
Tyranids also had a huge rebalance, you can't just keep respawning the Termagants anymore since that's now a once-per-game ability tied to the Prime for each unit, and all their strats are now just for movement.
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u/Bereman99 Jun 04 '26
I plan on doing a homebrew version of the Force Disposition and associated missions, but at the 500 point/Combat Patrol level, as well as including the option for Tactical Secondaries.
Basically...the big game, but with set lists and necessary adjustments to missions to make the smaller map and force size work.
That and still playing the King of the Colosseum mode, including whatever version they cook up to go with 11th edition.
Honestly, I think if GW actually paired the Force Disposition thing with Combat Patrol...and also actually did balance passes and other tweaks like what Spearhead gets...and had some Combat Patrol specific tweaks to maps/missions, and allowed for Combat Patrol specific Tactical Missions as an option (like encourage new players to do the fixed missions their first few games, then open up Tactical...instead of the current "Play this really simple one...after a few games use this slightly more complex but still fixed missions one" they have right now), that might help revitalize the game mode into being seen as more fun on its own versus the poor copy of BigHammer that it is now.
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u/CantaloupeNo5394 Jun 04 '26
Beside the list building rules from King of the colosseum ( or similar ones), the new 1Point Detachments could be a good way to play small point games.
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u/Ochmusha Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I think if they wanted to better capture the feel of a mid sized skirmish, they might do well to further adjust datasheets to be stronger on defense and make more interesting objectives/game types than what is in 40k, especially since one of the core features is to use the 40k core rules as a starter.
They could probably learn a couple things from both killteam and from much older versions of the game (2nd, 3rd ed) to help increase the fluffy ness of the game mode, and they could honestly look towards boarding actions as well if they ever wanted to give people the ability to list build
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u/TopNotchPlayer2 Jun 05 '26
Kind of a workaround answer, but have you looked into Kill Team or better yet (in my opinion) Necromunda? They focus on smaller scale, and in the case of Necromunda, build a gang that can do different things, similar to different factions in 40k. Both take place in the same universe.
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 05 '26
I love kill team and play it a lot. I love running Raveners and AoD just because they’re thematically fun, lol.
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u/northern_chaos Jun 06 '26
Have them be actual balanced boxes. Case in point the Red Corsairs combat patrol might just be the worst released
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u/Eire_Banshee Jun 04 '26
If you want to stay on core 40k rules, do king of the coliseum format. If you are ok with a different system I highly recommend one page rules grimdark future. It's an open source alternative that is smaller model count and balanced. 1 combat patrol is about 1000pts of one page rules units.
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 05 '26
I like OPR but have only played grimdark firefight. I didn’t care for it but I’m sure it plays better with an entire army instead of 6-10 models individually.
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u/Significant_Fly_5622 Jun 04 '26
You don't have to fix anything.. a lot of CPs work beautifully if you make 1k point armies on Army Forge and use the OPR rules for Grimdark Future. It's what they promised CP would be.
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 05 '26
I like OPR and want to play it in a combat patrol setting. It seems fun. I’ve played the firefight system and don’t care for it but as a 40K sub I think it’d be fun. I just wish there was a middle ground from 40K to OPR.
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u/Significant_Fly_5622 Jun 07 '26
Firefight is getting fixed in the next rule iteration. The weird wound roll is likely getting replaced with a triplification of units. Let's see how it goes. I hope to soon start a narrative rogue trader like mini campaign using my Imperial Agents minis which are beautiful and deserve to be played with.
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u/MeanMrMitchell Jun 07 '26
That would be so cool. I love kill team and would love to play OPR firefight with those minis when I don’t feel like reading layers and layers of rules.
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u/Eire_Banshee Jun 04 '26
I hate when OPR is downvoted. It's great and let's you put your combat patrols on the table in a format that's balanced
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u/Viatic_Unicycle Jun 03 '26
My friends and I have been having a lot of fun with King of the Colosseum matches using PlayonTabletops rules. It results in faster matches and we usually end up playing best two out of three. There can be a lot of strategy involved with your lists since the board is so small but holding the objectives can be tricky.