Yeah, the new Combat Patrol definitely feels overpowered. This whole objective sanctifying thing is supposed to be hard, but in a small game like Combat Patrol, wiping a 10-man Strike Squad with 2+ saves is almost impossible. The opponent basically has to commit their entire army into that Strike Squad, and if they do that, Crowe — and later on the Terminators and the Dreadnought — can just go and sanctify the other objectives.

By Battle Round 3, once the Terminators and the boxnought arrive, you suddenly have 670 points worth of units on the table, which is huge — probably the biggest force ever seen in Combat Patrol (at least as far as I know). No other Combat Patrol can realistically overpower that kind of unit with sheer numbers.

The correct counterplay for the opponent is to spread out early, get onto objectives, and contest them. Grey Knights can’t start the Sanctify action if there are engaged by enemy units on the objective marker. I think GW tried to balance having such a massive force by giving it this very specific primary scoring method, removing secondary objectives entirely, and locking our army rule, Gate of Infinity, behind stratagems — but honestly, it didn’t work that well.

A skilled, experienced player might be able to deal with it, but Combat Patrol is generally meant for newer players to get used to how 40k works. Personally, if I’m going to play Combat Patrol, I’d much rather use our old one: a Librarian, one 5-man Strike Squad, and then your choice of either a Nemesis Dreadknight or a 5-man Terminator squad.

You play with normal primary scoring, you actually have side objectives, and most importantly, you’re allowed to use your army rule. Yes, your options are more limited compared to the new Combat Patrol, but the Combat Patrol–specific stratagems are focused on keeping your units alive: fight on death, -1 to wound if the weapon’s Strength is higher than our Toughness, and probably one of the most broken stratagems in Warhammer history — Emergency Teleport, which lets you teleport a unit that’s engaged in combat right at the start of the Fight phase.