Welcome back to another edition of Mastering the Chapter Approved 2025-26 Missions. Be sure to check out the other articles in the series Mission A: Take and Hold on Tipping Point and Mission B: Supply Drop on Tipping Point.
Competitive missions, terrain, and scoring can feel overwhelming when you’re first stepping into tournaments. If you want a clear starting point, I’ve put together a full guide on getting started in competitive Warhammer 40K that explains which resources actually matter and how to use them.
In today’s article I’m going to be breaking down Mission C: Linchpin on Tipping Point deployment from the Chapter Approved 2025-26 Tournament Companion Mission pack (found here). I’m going to go over the approved GW terrain layouts and how to approach the mission for each. The goal with this article is to give you the fundamental understanding of how to breakdown the mission, how to approach it tactically and how to prepare a gameplan for success. Let’s get into it!
Mission C: Linchpin Primary, Tipping Point Deployment
Linchpin is a fairly common Chapter Approved Mission you will encounter in competitive play. It’s important to understand how this Mission scores Primary Victory Points so you can develop a gameplan ahead of time. Let’s look over this Mission and how it scores.
Second Battleround Onwards: When: End of your Command Phase (or at the end of your turn if it is the fifth battle round and you are going second)
- If the player whose turn it is does NOT control the objective marker in their own deployment zone they score 3 Victory Points (VP) for each objective marker they control
or
- If the player whose turn it is controls the objective marker in their deployment zone, they score 3VP for controlling that objective marker, and 5VP for each other objective marker they control (up to 15VP per turn).
Key Takeaways
- There are 5 objective markers on the battlefield
- You can earn VP for controlling the objective marker in your deployment zone
- You earn more VP for each other objective marker you control if you also control the objective marker in your deployment zone
- The player going second has an advantage for scoring Primary Victory Points by maintaining control of their home objective marker and taking control of other objective markers at the end of their turn on the fifth battle round
Mission C: General Strategy
Linchpin has 5 objective markers and not only awards Primary Victory Points for controlling your home objective, it makes the other objective markers you control award more Victory Points when you control the home objective marker. This puts a large emphasis on protecting your deployment zone, and most importantly, your home field objective, throughout the game. This puts less emphasis on having to push and contest objective markers in No Man’s Land early in the game and allows you to develop a strategy to hold home and an expansion objective without the pressure to overextend early on in the game.
Because a player controlling their home objective allows the other objective markers to award more Victory Points, your gameplan should revolve around protecting your own home objective marker and deployment zone and applying pressure on the opponent’s home objective. If the opponent doesn’t control their home objective, then the other objective markers are worth less Victory Points on Primary. Units that have the “sticky” ability are also very valuable in Linchpin to protect the home objective marker.
Some armies are better at applying pressure early or consistently through speed and close combat pressure (eg World Eaters, Blood Angels and Orks) while some more gunline style armies may struggle to apply pressure throughout most of the game to take the opponent’s home objective (eg T’au, Space Marine gunline builds, Astra Militarum, Ad Mech, etc.) It is important to know and understand how to defend against fast pressure armies in this Mission through screening and move blocking units to slow them down.
Linchpin can oftentimes yield a low Primary score. While you earn more Primary VPs for holding your home field objective, the home objective marker itself only awards 3 VP. So, if you control your home objective and one other in No Man’s Land, you’re going to earn 8 VP. Compound this over 4 turns, and your Primary will be 32 Victory Points. This yields a large advantage to the player going on the bottom of turn and scoring at the bottom of the fifth battle round to flip an objective at the end and earn 13-15 VP on the final turn.
All of the suggested terrain layouts offer secure positions to control your home objective in your deployment zone with units that can hide behind ruin walls or terrain footprints.
Mission C: Layout 1
Mission C on Layout 1 with Tipping Point can be challenging because of how the objective markers in No Man’s Land are positioned. The home objective can be pretty easily controlled and protected from enemy shooting because of the two large ruins in the deployment zone. This allows you to put a model towards the back area of the objective marker and spread the rest of the models back and laterally to provide a large screening bubble to prevent opponent reserve units from dropping in behind your lines.
The objectives in No Man’s Land are mostly open with only a small section of the objective marker covered by intervening ruins on the north and south areas while the center objective is itself open in the middle to wide diagonal shooting lanes from multiple areas of the battlefield. Infiltrating units, “sticky” units and Lone Operatives are very valuable for controlling your natural expansion (objective in No Man’s Land closest to your own deployment zone) early. The L-shaped ruins in the center provide good areas to stage threats to contest the midfield objective and threaten the opponent’s home objective as well. Those corner ruins create staging areas for fast pressure melee armies to launch from to attack the opponent’s home field. Screening those areas from pressure threats can be critical.
Both the north and south No Man’s Land objectives are mostly exposed. This can allow you to make pretty aggressive pressure onto the opponent’s natural expansion staging behind or around your homefield L and pushing out. You don’t want to overextend but you want to apply enough pressure to force the opponent to commit resources to counter you.
Mission C: Layout 2
Layout 2 has some wide open shooting lanes across the diagonal of the middle of the board. This makes it hard to hold what would normally be your natural expansion No Man’s Land objectives (the objective closest to your deployment zone). The No Man’s Land objectives on the north and south areas of the map do have an area to hide behind a ruin wall, however those are inverse to your normal “natural” expansion objectives. The layout provides pockets to move, stage and hide to move and control these objectives. So rather than moving up to your normal natural expansion, it is often better to move to put pressure on the opponent’s natural expansion as the ruin wall can provide crucial cover with the ruin wall to control it.
The mid-board objective marker is wide open and creates an X shooting lane. Units pushing into the middle can be exposed from multiple enemy positions. The ruin walls in the center do provide some safe staging to launch from to push out to contest the mid-board. Because of the openness of the mid-board objective marker, the opponent is likely to be hesitant to push units out there early and will often attempt to bait you into bad trades. Using units with Lone Operative to control this center point can create especially tricky situations.
Once again, the ruin in the deployment zone on the home objective marker offers a good amount of protection from shooting threats as you can stage behind that wall and avoid most enemy firepower. Again, spreading your units out to prevent and zone out enemy reserve threats is critical to success for holding your home throughout the game.
Mission C: Layout 4
Layout 4 is similar to Layout 2 in that the mid-field objective is wide open. The natural expansion objectives in No Man’s Land are mostly protected by the corner ruin walls in the north and south ends which gives some line of sight control. You can stage and hide smaller infantry behind those positions to hold the No Man’s Land objective and be protected except along the long board edge flank.
The mid-field objective marker is wide open making it very difficult to occupy over multiple turns. Much like layout 2, you’ll be trading skirmish units back and forth here early. The ruins footprint just in front of each home objective marker allows you to stage good counter-punch threats for units that want to apply pressure on your home field.
Pushing up to defend your own natural expansion while neutralizing threats that can skirt along the long board edge is key here. Using “sticky” units here can be incredibly useful allowing you to push threats out from your natural expansion and apply pressure on the opponent’s home objective or the mid-board.
Again, the home objective is protected from shooting threats by a large ruin wall that allows you to position units to hold and stretch out along the backfield for zoning and screening against reserve threats.
Mission C: Layout 6
Layout 6 has smaller ruin footprints in the mid-board area that offer more hiding spots and provide line of sight blocking to the objectives in No Man’s Land. Like Layout 4, you have a corner ruin to defend your units and hide to hold your own natural expansion while needing to defend that long board edge from incoming threats.
The smaller ruins in the middle of the board offers some protection for units positioned on the mid-field objective marker. There are a couple of open shooting lanes along the X diagonal however, but while the mid-field objective marker is “open” the smaller ruin footprints provide good spots for smaller skirmish units to stage and attack the middle area or the opponent’s home objective marker.
The long board edges offer protection to apply pressure on the opponent’s natural expansion objective marker. Ultimately, like layout 2, you’ll want to “sticky” your natural expansion if possible, and pull resources out to threaten the mid-field objective later in the turns.
The home objective is again easier to defend from shooting threats behind the large ruin wall allowing you to stretch those units out to zone the backfield (seeing a trend yet…always use this tactic to defend your backfield).
Mission C: Layout 7
Layout 7 is vastly different from the other layouts used in this Mission. Because of the central ruins and somewhat limited shooting lanes, it works as a very comfortable layout for pressure melee armies. With various ruin walls to stage and launch from, it can create avenues to attack the opponent’s home objective early.
This layout provides limited movement lanes for Vehicles and non-fly Monster units. This makes their deployment and movement paths easier to predict. This is beneficial as it opens up areas to stage, screen and move block those units knowing their limited paths of movement.
The tip of the home objective marker extends behind the ruin wall in your deployment zone giving you a small window to hide and control your home objective. The large ruin directly across in No Man’s Land provides a large ruin wall to stage behind to attack the home objective, so it is important to screen and defend that area of the board in this mission. Pressure melee armies can aggressively attack and take your home objective marker by turn 2 or 3 if not defended well.
Mission C: Layout 8
In Layout 8 the large ruins near the mid-field objective are replaced with smaller 2″ ruins that offer no walls to stage behind. This means staging units safely requires remaining behind this footprint as the ruin itself will hold limited to no line of sight protection.
The large ruin footprints in No Man’s Land are placed against the board edge with a large ruin wall. This makes it difficult for enemy Monsters and Vehicles to attack the flanks. Like Layout 7, this makes their movement somewhat predictable and offers some decent protection along the long board edge for units holding those objective markers.
As I noted above, there are no large ruin walls near the mid-board objective, but the 2″ ruin footprints are closer to the marker, touching it on the corners allowing you to stage units behind those footprints to attack the mid-board objective marker.
The home objective is again protected by a large ruin wall allowing you to defend it pretty easily from shooting threats. Those large ruin walls opposite of the home objective in No Man’s Land provide protection for units to stage and threaten so you’ll want a plan for protecting and screening those threats. Conversely this can also be a strategy you can use to apply pressure on the opponent’s home field objective as well.
Deployment for Mission C
Linchpin is very much dependent on being able to hold your own home objective and challenge the other No Man’s Land objective markers. That being said, you want to ensure in deployment that you have identified what unit or units are going to control your home objective marker and plan to layer screens to protect your own deployment zone from threats. It is important to assess the opponent’s list. Are their main threats in Deep Strike? Then zoning out your deployment zone is likely the top priority to defend your home. Is your opponent running a fast pressure melee army like World Eaters or Orks that wants to stage and push aggressively up the battlefield? Then layering screens to protect your home objective is probably the move.
You want to assess the board and note which No Man’s Land objective marker you want to push to defend as the game progresses. Stage units in deployment to protect them as you push up to guard that objective.
If you are running a pressure army, then prioritizing attacking the opponent’s home field objective is a solid gameplan. If you can take away the opponent’s ability to control their home objective, you can gain a lot of leverage in Primary scoring. Think about the path you plan to use to attack the opponent’s home objective and deploy so you can move and stage safely as the turns progress.
Pitfalls to Avoid in Mission C
Defending your home objective is a top priority to ensure you can leverage higher Victory Points on the other objective markers you’ll control. You don’t have to overextend too early and can focus a gameplan on holding your home marker and one other objective marker in No Man’s Land as the game progresses while applying pressure to threaten the opponent’s objective control.
Whether you will be on top or bottom of turn can greatly influence how you may have to approach this mission. Having bottom of turn can create a huge late game advantage allowing you to play more reserved to flip the Primary for a big score on the bottom of turn 5. Having top of turn may require you to be a little more aggressive especially towards the middle of the game to prevent the opponent from having a big Primary scoring turn in the fifth battle round.
Final Thoughts
Mission C requires prioritizing holding the home objective in your deployment zone over the course of the game as you push out to take No Man’s Land objectives. Your gameplan will require identifying what units are going to hold your home objective marker and what units, if any, are going to apply pressure on the opponent’s home field to deny their Primary scoring.
If you’re new to the game or want to improve quickly, then don’t forget to grab my FREE eBook: Forging Your Path to Victory: A Beginner’s Guide to Competitive 40K. A great starting point for those looking to jump into Competitive 40K. Subscribe and get your free copy!
Want more personalized insight into the meta? Looking for some help with an Army List build for your next event? My coaching program is designed to help give you the tools for success to navigate meta changes and weather the storm. I’d love to help you one-on-one level up your game.
If you enjoyed this article and want to keep seeing ad free content and get access to additional competitive 40K content, consider supporting me on Patreon.
See you on the tabletop.
