I do agree that this skirts with being a different game altogether - although a very fun sounding one. The orders approach seems similar to Epic Space Marine/Legions Imperialis (although I've got a soft spot for the former). I'm also not sure that I get the application of the theme.
I'd love to give it a go - but that's more because I love playing different games!
Thanks for the feedback! For the thematic application, this mission's goal creates 4 different configurations of objectives that can trigger an instant win at the end of a round (left 3, middle 3, right 3, or 4 outside). This starts at round 3, and so it encourages players to advance quickly while trying to outguess where the enemy will make their push. (This is made even more compelling because unit actions must be chosen at the beginning of the round and are initially hidden.) As the round unfolds and the tides of battle swing, players will have to shift priorities quickly to avoid being checkmated.
Also, thanks for the heads up on Epic Space Marine/Legions Imperialis; I will definitely check out those rule-sets. In my mission's special rules, the army rules, unit action types, objective capturing, and alternating activations are all still there, so it felt very OPR in my playtests. The timing of choosing those actions and resolving them is slightly modified to capture the effect of the purple haze.
Give it a go! I'd love to hear your experience with it.
