Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector: How Momentum Works

Momentum is a new mechanic introduced in Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector as a way to incentivize aggressive tactics and efficient use of actions. If managed correctly, it can be harnessed as a powerful force multiplier allowing units to overperform. For players to better understand how Momentum works, we prepared a handy introduction that covers all the major facets of this unique mechanic.

Here are the main components of Momentum in Battlesector:

– Gaining Momentum
– Momentum Effects

And here’s everything you need to know about Momentum in Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector.

How To Gain Momentum

The base way for all units of any faction to gain Momentum is through eliminating unit entities, as any and all lethal damage will build up a unit’s meter. In addition, most Hero units have abilities that either give flat Momentum buffs or effects that increase its rate of build up and even some special units start out with a baseline amount of Momentum for that extra aggression.

Important to note: at the end of every turn, units will lose a certain amount of Momentum so it’s impossible to store it indefinitely without constantly refilling the meter with fresh kills.

However, both the Blood Angels and Tyranids have slight variations on how they build this resource up, and as a bonus we will briefly mention the Sisters of Battle.

Blood Angels earn Momentum based on the distance they are to their target – the closer a Space Marine unit is to its target, it will earn more Momentum. This incentivizes both lethal melee combat and close-range ranged attacks to maximize Momentum gain. The Sisters of Battle, on the other hand, earn Momentum simply by taking damage.

If you thought the Blood Angels were all about getting up close and personal to gain extra Momentum, then allow me to introduce the Tyranids. They get a large flat Momentum gain bonus for every kill in melee, while only getting a small flat rate for ranged kills. If the Space Marines have the flexibility of choosing the range of their aggression, then the Tyranids are heavily incentivized to close distance quickly and engage in melee to optimize Momentum gain.

What Does Momentum Do?

Once a unit’s Momentum bar reaches the maximum threshold, no matter the faction, the unit will immediately gain the option to Empower or Surge, which will spend all built up Momentum once a player makes a decision. Empowering allows the unit to increase the effect and potential of any of their abilities in their Action Bar. The Surge option immediately gives the unit an additional Action Point to spend the turn it Surges to move, attack, or activate abilities.

Just like with Momentum gain, both the Blood Angels and Tyranids have unique passive benefits for their units from stored and unspent Momentum. Blood Angels gain a hefty critical damage chance based on the amount of Momentum any given unit has in store. In effect, a Space Marine unit becomes deadlier the more damage it deals and the more entities it kills, due to the effects of the Red Thirst.

The Tyranids, on the other hand, also benefit from an increase in critical damage, but at a significantly lower rate than their human counterparts. Unlike the Blood Angels, Tyranids also benefit from an increased percentage to their accuracy the more Momentum a unit has. This means that the generally moderately dangerous average Tyranid unit can become quite scary with enough Momentum that even Space Marine power armor will struggle to hold back.

Momentum as a mechanic can of course be easily ignored altogether, but any player choosing to do so will miss out on a potentially incredibly powerful tool that could lead to decisive victory in local engagements or success in the battle at large. Now that you know how Momentum works and its effects on the respective factions, the challenge of maximizing its impact opens up for many hours of planning and theorycrafting in Battlesector.

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