In fairness, anything remotely resembling progress will look like xeno-tech given the state of the empire's science the past 10.000 years and given that the tau do seem to be the only ones inventing new stuff is liable to look like them for a while.
I couldn't´t agree more. I really dislike the new dread, and the tank too. I think I´ll just stick with Forge world´s dreads, which are absolutely stunning. My favorite is the leviathan dreadnought. For me the best dread design yet.
I like the grav tank, but the thing I find most interesting is the weapons. I see some lascannons, but is that a freaking heavy stubber? Are Space Marines so desperate they need to start bolting on trash-tier weapons to their new shiny tanks? Mockery aside I quite like it and can't wait to riddle one with bullet holes (Death to the False Emperor!). On the point of rules and new stuff I managed to find a less-than-legit full leak of the Chaos, Imperium 1 and Imperium 2 Index books. I haven't had a good look at the Imperium ones yet (other than to prevent a good friend of mine from going into shock over the edition change by drip feeding him rules on his favourite models), but I've been digesting the Chaos one over the weekend. My "copy" is missing about 10 pages but from what I see there's not a lot of background - at least nothing like a "proper" codex. This was expected. Secondly - Legions are gone. Kinda. There's the <LEGION> variable keyword but it's not HUGELY relevant outside a few exceptions. The only Legions that actually get some kind of rules or restrictions are the ones devoted to a particular god, even then the only difference between generic Chaos and World Eaters is they can take can take Berzerkers as troops, and Emperor's Children take Noise Marines. Death Guard (as of the time of this post) consists entirely of the units from Dark Imperium, a handful of generic characters, Possessed, Spawn, cultists and all the CSM vehicles except for the Helldrake and Mauler/Forgefiend. They are the only legion to get their own psychic discipline (for now) and all of the Death-Guard specific characters have some kind of buff that only benefits DG. And they're pretty good! Thousand Sons have similar limitations - they are entirely made up of the stuff that was released with "Wrath of Magnus" last year, with the addition of Cultists, Spawn, Sorcerers and the full range of Chaos vehicles. It also seems that apart from Rubric Marines (which have the <LEGION> keyword if taken as Elites) all the Thousand Sons units, including Tzaangor are locked in to the Thousand Sons keyword. So what does this mean? Well according to some other forums (which shall remain nameless), this makes all Death Guard armies everywhere illegal and invalid and destined for another 4 year rotation on the shelves. I call bullshit on that. With the rules as they CURRENTLY are, there is nothing stopping me from saying "My army is Chaos" and then mixing legions within that army. I can still use Bikes, Terminators and Havocs I painted up as death guard last edition (if I had painted my models...), I just give them the Death Gblard Legion (yes you can make up your own) and call it a day. Do they have the same benefits as the "True" DG units? Well... no. But seriously did anyone expect the Traitor Legions supplement stuff to carry over? I have a Thousand Sons army that has no Thousand Sons units in it. Am I disappointed? No actually, because I can use everything as Tzeentch, call them the "999 Sons" and paint my guys up the same colours as Thousand Sons and run them in the SAME ARMY as true Thousand Sons with little to no penalty. And the Icon of Flame is pretty neat for 10pts. This brings me to the only real problem I have with this book. There's not a lot of Synergy. I guess there's SOME, but it doesn't feel as impactful as in AoS. That might just be the nature of Chaos as an army though, I've never felt that Chaos armies have had an "enhance your units" list building philosophy and has always been "Unit X is good at this, so make sure you bring unit Y to do stuff that X sucks at". I feel like there was a lot more room to play with the <LEGION> and <MARK> keywords that wasn't utilised, but hey this is our equivalent of the free PDF rules. More will come, I'm sure of it.
Anyone who has read through the rule books in a store (or the leaks online) have any opinions on my squad of 10 deathwatch dudes coming in at 360-ish points? Sounds a lot but I dunno my ass from my elbow... I think my hero guy whose name I forgot comes in at 120 points.
Seems pretty expensive, but I'm not familiar with Deathwatch from 7th so I'm not sure. If you're decking them out with Combi-Weapons they'll be pretty expensive, but Combi-Weapons in general got a pretty massive boost. EDIT: I totally fudged the math on that somehow. A squad of 10 Chosen with 6 Combi Meltas (including the champ's wargear) clocks in at 274pts. Splitting it into 2x 5-man squads lets me give everyone Combi-weapons, so that would bump it up to 350pts to give 10 Chosen Combi-Meltas. Fallen have the same options but for some reason are slightly cheaper in points, so this costs 254 for the 10-man unit, or 330 for 2x 5-man squads with the same loadout. So yeah, pretty expensive but I guess Deathwatch are on-par with other similar elite power armoured special weapons spammy units.
I went with 4 heavy weapons (the maximum you can get in a unit of 10), upgraded the sergeant to the better looking sword, took one guy with the two handed hammer thing that looked pretty strong... Overall only one guy is using the "basic" blaster and power sword combo. I tried to get in a variety of the different weapons... I guess I'll give it a go and see what happens.
Chosen and Fallen are a bit more limited in their options but lets see what I can get with a similar loadout. Chosen 10 models 4 Combi-Flamers (No heavy flamers for us heretic scum!) 1 Power Fist (No fancy hammers either) Power Sword and Plasma Pistol on Champion Total cost: 235 Fallen 10 models 4 Combi-Flamers 1 Power Fist Power Sword and Plasma Pistol on Champion Total cost: 215 So yeah, I'm a lot cheaper but a Deathwatch team has a lot going for it that Chosen and Fallen don't. You get And They Shall Know No Fear, Special Ammunition and all those fancy rules that come with mixed units if you run it as a Kill Team. Also Heavy Flamers are a fair bit better than Flamers, and the Thunder Hammer is pretty good too.
I left my notebook at home to give the full breakdown of the other weapons I chose, but yeah I think the kill team setup is generally more expensive. I like the variety in setup between units - but when I played the demo game on Saturday of 8th, it is a bit confusing having to go through and do it weapon-by-weapon when attacking... So in some ways I do prefer the AoS system, but I can't deny it's fun letting off one of the bigger weapons. My concern is remembering that I have all those different things I can do, might have to print myself off some custom rule sheets so I have it all in the one place.
The thing I really like about 8th is that if your opponent agrees to it you can both say "screw points" and work out army lists based off Power Level instead. This is how me and my regular opponent will be playing most games, only really worrying about points if it turns out to be really one sided (and we don't think it will be) or if prepping for a tournament. I'm super lazy and find list writing tedious so using Power Level really appeals to me.
Yeah, the power level definitely seems like a cool mechanic - we'll probably go with that locally too, but at the moment working out points values seems like the most accurate representation of power vs costing, particularly with certain weapons costing more than the individual unit.
I've been spending a lot of time pondering possible combinations within the Heretic Astartes list and have found it somewhat lacking. Beyond Lords giving re-rolls of 1 to hit and Sorcerers casting Warp Time or Prescience there isn't much else there unless you're Death Guard so really there's not much reason for me to stick to a particular Legion or Mark of Chaos for a general Heretic Astartes list. But, one thing I did find interesting is the Daemons army. There are a lot of rules and powers that buff NURGLE DAEMON, TZEENTCH DAEMON, KHORNE DAEMON or SLAANESH DAEMON units. Heretic Astartes have a fair few models that have the DAEMON keyword, and can select one of the 4 gods as their <MARK> keyword as well. Possessed, Mutilators, Obliterators, Warp Talons, characters on Daemonic steeds and nearly all Daemon Engines have the DAEMON keyword. This opens up the door for some cool mixed Chaos armies. For example, a Possessed Marine (Heretic Astartes) with a Mark of Khorne would have both the KHORNE and DAEMON keywords. From the Daemons of Chaos a Herald of Khorne on Bloodthrone has a rule "Herald of Khorne", which gives +1S to friendly KHORNE DAEMON units within 6". If the Possessed Marine unit was within 6" of the Herald, would they get the +1S bonus? I think so but there is one thing that might stop this. On the Herald the KHORNE and DAEMON keywords are listed under "Faction Keywords". On the Possessed Marine KHORNE is a Faction Keyword, but DAEMON is just a plain old run-of-the-mill keyword. I THINK the Faction Keyword only really applies during the army building process so I'm pretty sure the Possessed would still benefit from the Herald of Khorne rule, but I'll have to wait until I have a copy of the main rulebook to know for sure. At this point it's all theoryhammer - my miniatures collection has very few Daemons so I couldn't really pull this off even if I wanted to. For as long as I can remember I've longed for the days of combined Daemon/Marine Chaos armies and it looks like they might be back - and not in silly 7th ed "Summon spam, psychic battery" form.
That's a problem that is likely caused by this site, L-O is so beautiful and so easy to use, that it ruins all other warhammer forums for me.
Or literally any site that has been made by anyone half way competent in the last 5 years. Hell, that thing comes straight out of 1999.
Daka-daka does indeed look hilariously much like a relic from back when we had dial-up modems, back in time immemorial.
Yah, no interest in subjecting myself to that! In other news... I'm going to start painting the Dreadnaught tonight. Get hype.