New 40k

[Ritual]

I thought that was the Seraphon?

So you are beginning to piece together what makes me tick...

 

[Captaniser]

Statline reveal for the morkanaut. Big units will have somewhat the same damage table as monsters do in AoS.

What do you guys think? is it dope or nope?

 

[Canas]

mm, units getting wounded and becoming ess effective is nice. Brings them more in line with smaller squads that lose members. Plus, it stops some monstrousity with 1 wound left from annihilating half your army with his dying breath.

 

[Killer Angel]

What do you guys think? is it dope or nope?

In AoS it's working.
It's a simple adjustment and it makes sense. When it's reduced to a couple of wounds it's almost a walking debris. It's still dangerous but it cannot fight at full power.

 

[Bowser]

Since these can be ships or giant mechs, a self destruction tactic would be cool to see, down to 1 or 2 wounds, on a 4+ kaboom and wound everything within he blast radius. Would change up some of the tactics.

 

[Canas]

Since these can be ships or giant mechs, a self destruction tactic would be cool to see, down to 1 or 2 wounds, on a 4+ kaboom and wound everything within he blast radius. Would change up some of the tactics.

'
O, especially if it's random and not a skill you choose to trigger. Have some big bad thing blow up in your own lines if you don't protect it appropriately.

 

[NIGHTBRINGER]

'
O, especially if it's random and not a skill you choose to trigger. Have some big bad thing blow up in your own lines if you don't protect it appropriately.

Or kamikaze it into your enemy.

 

[Soxii]

'
O, especially if it's random and not a skill you choose to trigger. Have some big bad thing blow up in your own lines if you don't protect it appropriately.

Isn't that what the Tervigon does in the Tyranid army? (I think it's the Tervigon- the big monstrosity that spawns more gaunts at a possibly horrifying rate). If I recall from conversation with one of my warhammer buddies (who collects Tyranids), if you roll a double (might be just double 6) it explodes and no longers spawns more gaunts, and covers everything in a big blast radius (seeing as it may have acidic blood etc) I remember him saying there was some kind of formation that allowed you to have something like 7-9 of them at once with their respective gaunt squads! So it was a good 100+ models needed to field it in its entirety! o.0

 

[Canas]

Isn't that what the Tervigon does in the Tyranid army? (I think it's the Tervigon- the big monstrosity that spawns more gaunts at a possibly horrifying rate). If I recall from conversation with one of my warhammer buddies (who collects Tyranids), if you roll a double (might be just double 6) it explodes and no longers spawns more gaunts, and covers everything in a big blast radius (seeing as it may have acidic blood etc) I remember him saying there was some kind of formation that allowed you to have something like 7-9 of them at once with their respective gaunt squads! So it was a good 100+ models needed to field it in its entirety! o.0

Well anything less than a 100 models is for weaklings

 

[Fhanados]

Wow I stop paying attention for a few days and things get even better!

Formations being gone entirely is interesting - a total backflip on the increased focus on Formations in 7th. This totally levels the playing field, and also totally destroyed my planned army! Never mind, I'm sure it will fit into one of the twelve(!) new Force-Org style detachments. I've always liked the good old fashioned CAD. I'm an old fogie and through most of my gaming "career" I've been building armies around it and I've always loved the alternate force org charts presented in supplements like Cities of Death, Planetstrike, Stronghold Assault etc. The best part, and GW have openly admitted this, is that it levels the playing field. As it stands in 7th, some armies have a wealth of Formations and Detachments to choose from (looking at you Space Marines), and others don't have any (poor Sisters of Battle), and others still have plenty of Formations (Chaos Space Marines) that have too many overlapping/redunant units when fielded together, or a cool detachment bonus that has an absurdly high buy in cost (Cadians, Orks). Or some just plain suck. I'm really looking forward to the new army building method.

Declining Monstrous Creatures was very much needed. Even back in 3rd edition it struck me as odd that a tank hit by a missile could have its turret blown off, or some other permanent damage that reduces effectiveness but a scary monster would be effectively unharmed until it lost the final wound. Critical existence failure indeed. By the time we got to 7th it seemed absurdly unfair that my 200pt robot with guns could have its weapons blown up, become immobilised, and generally just be less durable than someone else's 200pt robot which was arbitrarily labelled a Monstrous Creature instead of a Walker, and thus remain fully functional (and have an armour save!) until totally destroyed. Not all Monstrous Creatures were stupidly powerful, but the disparity between the unit types still existed.

Infantry seem to be mostly the same, but with one big change. Like, fantastically big. Contender for my favourite-change-ever kind of big. All models in a unit do not have to shoot the same target. For all those times I've looked at my options and thought "well that's useless because it wants to shoot at something the rest of the unit can't hurt", it's now an option. Is it good? I don't know - that remains to be seen, but all those missile launcher/flamer squads people accrued through starter sets have a use now and I like that.

Another kind of big thing that slipped in the "Infantry" release was the new "To Wound" chart. Gone is the old SvT to wound table, but really I think the effect is going to be similar. Your strength is higher? Cool, you wound on a 3+. Strength double toughness? Make that a 2+! Lower? 5+ for you. So on and so on. Simple, easy to remember and there is no longer the dreaded "N/A" or "-"

I'm not going to say 8th edition is perfect - there are certainly some things I'm leery of, but it's shaping up to be the closest thing to my ideal 40k in a LONG time. The Faction Focus article on Chaos Space Marines definitely helped!

 

[Fhanados]

Double post (Sorry!) - new daily info release has got me riled up!

So we had 2 things pop up on the Community site: Faction Focus article on Astra Militarum and the rules article on Characters.

The Astra Militarum one is the usual hype about everything being usable and things working the way they should, but it does drop a mention about Leman Russ tanks being T8, with a 3+ save and 12 wounds. Honestly I expected a heavy battle tank to have higher toughness and save, but 12 wounds is pretty swell.

The juicy bit is the Characters. Deathstars are gone for good, which is good. How they did it though - I'm not so sure about. Characters can no longer join units. The thing is this is 40k not AoS. Most of the heavy lifting is done by rapid fire grenade launchers, laser beams, blobs of superheated plasma, big explosive shells and physics defying lightning guns. So how do you save lonely heroes from this? Why by making them untargetable of course! Wait what? So if your Character has 10 or less(!) wounds they cannot be targeted by shooting unless they are the closest viable target. Interesting, but I think I'd rather a kind of "Look out Sir!" or priority check mechanic as opposed to straight up immunity. I will admit this simplifies the rules A LOT - since the rules for Characters alone were something like 5 pages long but I'm really unsure about this.

Something I am sure I like is that a lot of characters will have a bubble or aura ability that buffs nearby units, and it's based on keywords. I love the idea of using keywords instead of unit types, and I love the idea of the leaders and commanders of the army having some kind of effect on the game. From my experience characters in 7th seem to fall into 3 categories: "really good at stabbing", "psychic annihilator", and "totally useless" with a few exceptions here and there. The Chaos Marines codex has 5 HQ choices. Of those, 2 are generally considered good (although Daemon Princes became amazing in certain Legions with the Traitor Legion book) and the rest are never seen outside mandatory formation requirements. I want to see Dark Apostles at the head of Word Bearers armies again, and Warpsmiths giving the order for Iron Warriors to bombard the enemy into oblivion, and Chaos Lords do ANYTHING other than just kill kill kill. These dudes are the mightiest warlords in existence, but have no actual ability that benefits their army in any useful way aside from whackin' stuff with an axe.

But one thing stands out to me. So Deathstars are gone, but doesn't this just mean that what USED to be a deathstar is just a meatshield? The problem with Deathstars was multiple characters joined to a hard to kill unit to provide multiple buffs and disposable wounds for the Characters to do the heavy lifting in combat. Now that Characters provide buffs to nearby units AND can't be targeted isn't this doing the same thing? Multiple characters sitting behind a unit could still provide multiple buffs, and that unit in turn soaks up damage that was intended for the character. I guess it remains to be seen what the buffs actually do so I might be jumping the gun here. We'll see.

 

[Canas]

-snip-

To be honest, that might actually be worse. If you play well you could now simply swap out the meatshields. Instead of having to shoot through 1 unit worth of cannonfodder you'd now have to shoot through a bunch.

On the bright side, it does make flanking a thing. Much more so than in AoS while also giving counterplay to snipers just shooting your big bad heroes from across the map. So it might not be all bad.

 

[Jorgik]

while also giving counterplay to snipers just shooting your big bad heroes from across the map. So it might not be all bad.

I bet snipers will have a special rule to ignore this rule. If not they´ll be tremendously useless, or at least, it wouldn't´t make sense

 

[Killer Angel]

I bet snipers will have a special rule to ignore this rule. If not they´ll be tremendously useless, or at least, it wouldn't´t make sense

I hope so.
If snipers cannot snipe, what's the point?

 

[Captaniser]

I bet snipers will have a special rule to ignore this rule. If not they´ll be tremendously useless, or at least, it wouldn't´t make sense

I hope so.
If snipers cannot snipe, what's the point?

Taken directly of the Warhammer community site.

"with their sniper weapons allowing them to pick out and target Characters – will now be reaping a tally on your enemy’s leaders in the name of the Emperor!"


So i would assume that snipers will be effective against leaders.

 

[Canas]

Taken directly of the Warhammer community site.

"with their sniper weapons allowing them to pick out and target Characters – will now be reaping a tally on your enemy’s leaders in the name of the Emperor!"


So i would assume that snipers will be effective against leaders.

blegh... please tell me that is at least subject to something.. e.g the cannonfodder has to be at lleast 1" away from the target.. I never like it when someone can just kill you from halfway across the field without any oppertunity to counter.

On a seperate note, is it only characters with this protection? Or any 1-model unit? E.g. stuff like the warpfire thrower of the skaven in AoS desperatly would like a rule like this for protection.

 

[Fhanados]

I never like it when someone can just kill you from halfway across the field without any oppertunity to counter

To be fair, my entire experience of 7th edition 40k is someone killing me from halfway across the battlefield with no opportunity to counter.

Sniper weapons are fairly uncommon and only currently available to a select few specialist units.

On a seperate note, is it only characters with this protection? Or any 1-model unit? E.g. stuff like the warpfire thrower of the skaven in AoS desperatly would like a rule like this for protection.

From the information we have I'd say it only affects Characters, and it specifically states the restriction that only characters with 10 wounds or less get this benefit.

That said, if something as big as Guilliman gets target immunity by being screened by trash units but units like a Carnifex or Zoanthrope don't benefit then I would be pretty annoyed. I guess that remains to be seen.

Edited for clarity

 

[Canas]

To be fair, my entire experience of 7th edition 40k is someone killing me from halfway across the battlefield with no opportunity to counter.

Sniper weapons are fairly uncommon and only currently available to a select few specialist units.

Meh that's not too bad.. just that in my experience fringe cases like that tend to get abused cuz they're easy victories..

From the information we have I'd say it only affects Characters, and it specifically states the restriction that only characters with 10 wounds or less get this benefit.

That said, if something as big as Guilliman gets target immunity by being screened by trash units but units like a Carnifex or Zoanthrope don't benefit then I would be pretty annoyed. I guess that remains to be seen.

Edited for clarity

meh... I'm fine with stuff that has more than 10 wounds not having the protection. Mostly just want smaller models, such as the the skaven weapon teams in AoS, that only have a handfull of wounds to have it. They're the ones that need it, arguably more so than characters. Characters at least generally have a halfway decent save and more than a handfull of wounds.

 

[Fhanados]

Mostly just want smaller models, such as the the skaven weapon teams in AoSt, that only have a handfull of wounds to have it

There aren't many units like this in 40k. There's Astra Militarum heavy weapons teams, but they're either part of a unit or a squad in and of themselves with 3 teams per squad and are a pretty disposable unit in the overall scheme of things. There are things like Thunderfire Cannons but they're quite durable. Off the top of my head the only other single model support units are a handful of Tyranid units (Biovore, Zoanthrope, Venomthrope, Pyrovore) and maybe some Daemon units (Exalted Flamer) but from memory they can all be taken in larger units too. It's been so long since I've faced off against any army other than some variation of Space Marine or Astra Militarum it would be hard for me to comment on how this ruling will affect other armies though.

I didn't post anything about yesterday's news, which was another look at weapons. Twin-linked now just doubles the number of shots. I haven't bothered math hammering the difference between re-rolls and double-shots but I think on average you'd probably be looking at slightly higher damage output, but with the potential for more swingy results.

The combi-weapon change is just ace though. Combi-weapons aren't limited to 1 shot only with the alternate weapon mode and you can choose to shoot BOTH weapon modes simultaneously (but with a -1 to hit modifier). That's cool.

As someone with lots of Chaos terminators, both of these benefit me immensely and I'm pretty happy with this even if it didn't. It's how I've always thought twinlinked and combi weapons SHOULD work anyway.

Blast weapons I'm not so keen on though. The template is gone, and blast weapons just get a random number of shots. Honestly, I'd rather it have a single shot that does a random number of wounds, or have the number of shots random but they auto hit (like the flame weapons). That battle cannon profile just seems very underwhelming to me considering you still need to roll to hit.

On to today's news though - another Faction Focus (Eldar this time) and a sample datasheet. The Datasheet is kind of like a blend between the current unit entries from a codex and an AoS warscroll. It's exactly what I wanted! The only thing I would have done differently is to keep the weapons profiles in a separate summary table to avoid duplication throughout a book, but it does say that common weapons will be listed separately so the example given (Thousand Sons Rubric Squad) might only have them listed because they're the only unit with access to those weapons.

A few notable differences are Keywords (divided into "Faction" and generic keywords) and Power rating. The second is most interesting to me - it seems that "Power" is a rough indication of a unit's worth, but isn't it's actual points cost. At least that's the feeling I get. Kind of a built-in comp perhaps? They say it "is a quick and easy mechanism for balancing in less competitive narrative or open play games." so maybe it's just a way to balance up your armies without bothering with points... but that effectively makes it a second points cost anyway? I'm intrigued, but not sure how useful it's going to be or how it will be integrated into matched play once proper points are taken into account.

Edit - I'm an idiot and made the whole post a quote! Fixed.

 

[Captaniser]

Here comes the new, all different, super unique, totally will not become the new 'pay to win' unit. Here is the Primaris Speesh Marhreens