The 8th Edition 40K Rulebook Review - Part 2 of 3

Cocked up on scheduling so this has appeared in the wrong order! Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll be aware that the latest edition of 40K is being released on Saturday. If, for some reason, you still haven’t pre-ordered your copy why not do it here now? 

Today I continue my look at the new 8th edition 40K rules with my thoughts on the Shooting, Charge, Fight and Morale phases. If you missed the first part of my review, you can find it here.

Shooting Phase

First thing to remember is that, in general, you can’t shoot if you’ve Advanced or Fallen Back. The other key thing is that units can split their fire. That means your tactical squad’s lascannon can hit a big monster whilst your bolter guys are hosing some infantry. Bear in mind that models with several weapons can fire each one at different targets. This certainly makes things like crisis suits incredibly flexible. Remember you have to declare targets for the entire unit before rolling any dice. There were complaints that this will slow games down but in practice, how often are you really going to fire 10 marines at 10 different targets?

There’s still no shooting into combat. It’s a shame but I suppose it makes sense. With everything having the ability to Fall Back I don’t suppose it’s too big of a deal either. You can always shoot your pistols at a unit you’re locked with though in your next Shooting Phase.

Characters can no longer join units but can only be shot at if they’re the closest target (apart from a few exceptions). It’ll be interesting finding ways to hide your characters whilst you attempt to expose enemy characters.

The weapon types have changed in this edition too. Firstly, twin-linked is gone to be replaced by most of the weapons that used to have it getting double shots. Rapid Fire no longer stops you from Charging. Assault weapons can now fire after Advancing, albeit with a -1 to hit. You’ll have to decide whether it’s better to Advance to be in range for a less accurate shot or not shoot at all. Similarly Heavy weapons can fire at -1BS when they move, a massive upgrade over the Snap Shots of previous editions and again there’s nothing stopping them charging afterwards. Destroyer, Salvo, Ordnance and Barrage weapons are no longer a thing but now have individual rules depending on the weapon.

I'm sure everyone is aware that templates are gone. It seems small blasts have been replaced with D3 shots (although some get D6 e.g. frag missiles) and large blasts are generally D6. Remember you still have to roll to hit after seeing how many shots you get. Templates generally cause D6 automatic hits but vary in range. It's tough to decide whether this makes these weapons better or worse. In the past it was pretty situational but you'd quite often find your opponent would leave their models in a helpful formation to let you get all 10 of them with flamer. You might only hit one model now even if you're right in front of them. Blasts are probably about the same owing to the nature of scatter (which isn't a thing now, even for Deep Strike - add your scatter dice to the pile of useless accessories). All of these weapons are better against single models though as you'll get more than one hit most of the time. This makes things like battle cannons much better against vehicles. Can flamers now hit flyers though? Granted most of them aren't going to do much damage but I can't see anything saying they aren't hit automatically like everything else?!?

Grenades are limited to one use per unit instead of that model firing a weapon and most of them can no longer be used in combat. Melta bombs are now combat only rather than being able to chuck one in the direction of a tank. Makes sense from how they’re supposed to actually work.

Pistols are interesting. They’ve got similar range to the 7^th edition versions but you can choose to fire them instead of any other weapons. If you do so, you can fire into a unit you’re stuck in combat with. Obviously only effective in the turn after you’ve survived a charge though. Remember there’s no need to switch to pistols with your marines if you want to charge as they can fire their bolters and still head into melee.

It’s important to discuss the new to Wound chart too. I’ve summarised it in the diagram below to help explain a few things about it.

Green shows 2+, blue 3+, grey 4+, yellow 5+ and orange 6+. The black numbers show the same value as in previous editions, white values are better than before and red ones are worse than before. 

The key lines to look at are S4 which is still the standard value for most infantry based weapons. It’s not worse against anything but is better against anything over toughness 5. Interestingly T5 seems to be around entry range for vehicles and anything up to and including T7 you’ll wound on a 5+. Most of the vehicles that were AV10 are now being wounded on 5+ instead of 6+ so they've been given more wounds to compensate. Obviously a save modifier and good damage is important but as GW have said. Anything can, theoretically at least, kill anything. Toughness 8 is another interesting part of the chart. Little will be able to wound you on a 2+ (granted only S10 could before) and this is the point where S4 starts to need 6s. Also worth noting that T4 is better against S6 and 7 but otherwise the same.

Trying to figure anything out from this table alone is too simplistic though as obviously you've got several shots one some weapons, varying ballistic skill, save modifiers and obviously varying types of save. 

Speaking of save modifiers, these are worth some discussion. AP seems to have been converted as follows:

AP5/6/- = 0 save mod

AP4 = -1

AP3 = -2

AP2 = -3

AP1 = -4

This means that a 3+ saves now gets a 6-up to AP2 and 5-up vs AP3. That's obviously a big boost to power armour but remember that AP4 now reduces you to a 4+. Weapons that previously had S6 AP3 e.g. a Heldrake's Baleflamer. Now wound marines on 3+ and they'll get a 5+ save. They've given it a damage of 2 to compensate a little but in general that's significantly worse against standard marines but strangely more affective against Primaris! 

That's assuming you aren't in any cover which, generally speaking, gives a +1 to your save. A much simpler method and it makes sense that a marine behind a barricade should be tougher to kill than one in the open. Bear in mind the ENTIRE unit has to be in cover for any models to benefit and most big things now have to be 50% obscured. 

A weapon that causes multiple damage will be much more effective against vehicles or monsters but the damage is wasted on single wound infantry. That's a bit of a boost to hordes and regular marines I'd say. 

Charge Phase

As I said in the first post. It's important that all charges now happen before any fighting begins. This was kind of the case in previous editions but you'd often let your opponent charge and fight with a unit before moving onto the next. You won't be letting them off with that now though as charging units nearly always go first in combat. This has massive implications for some units and makes getting the charge hugely important. Sure you can use your command points to strike first but you'll get through them pretty quickly doing that. Once the charging units have fought, you alternate between the two of you to pick a unit and fight. That makes for some tough decisions.

The loss of Initiative is a big deal for some units. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. My Wyches aren't going to like being charged very much. They already got to strike first most of the time when they charged but are now vulnerable to being charged. It's difficult to figure out how much of an impact this will have until you factor in all the movement ranges etc but I can't help but feel formerly high initiative units will suffer. A unit of guard charging something with much better reflexes shouldn't get to strike first in my opinion. 

The actual mechanism of charging is essentially unchanged (still 2D6" move) except you no longer need to get into base contact to be successful. Overwatch is similar too although now units can fire several times if those charging them don't make it in. Flamers become awesome here too with their automatic hits. Again, I can't see anything stopping them being used to full effect in Overwatch, correct me if I'm wrong. Since you can now charge with vehicles I can see their generally higher toughness being used to soak up Overwatch before a squad charges in. I'm glad this mechanic has replaced the clumsy Tank Shock and Ramming rules.

Multiple charges can now happen without penalty (except multiple Overwatch). That'll save a lot of confusion. Just declare a couple of units will be charged and, if you roll enough inches to get to them, you can engage both.

Fight Phase

Characters can now jump into a nearby fight using Heroic Intervention (woohoo no more Challenges!). It might be difficult to get them in like this as they need to be within 3" of the enemy unit. It'll be important to keep them pretty close to your units to get them involved. Obviously they can try to charge as normal in their turn but getting into the fight might be difficult. I'm not really clear on how they're going to work in combat. Can you target them separately? It seems to me there's nothing stopping you other than needing to be within an inch. If they aren't though, how are they going to hurt you back? Timing their pile in will be important.

Speaking of piling in. I've seen some people saying you can use this to engage a second unit if the one you charged was destroyed by another unit. However, in "Choose Targets" it says units that charged can only target the units they charged. In subsequent turns you probably can though. 

You can now split your attacks between your close combat weapons. There'll be some decisions to make for some units but most will be using the same weapon for all their attacks. Speaking of which a lot of the melee weapons have changed significantly. With initiative no longer being a factor most of the power fists, hammers, etc. just give a -1 to hit modifier. That's a huge boost for them and remember they can double your strength above 10 now! 

Finally, cover no longer has any effect on combat. That's a big boost for units that don't have grenades. Well, in a way at least, they'll still need to be the one charging to guarantee going first.

Morale

I've liked this mechanic from the point I read about it. Firstly you aren't testing for a unit several times a turn. Second, nothing is getting swept in combat and most importantly no full squads of trained soldiers are running from the battlefield in fear because a couple of their mates died. You'll have to test sooner though as it's any units that have any lost models rather than 25%. You'll get used to which units can skip testing when they've only lost a model or two though:

I've highlighted the 6 on the D6 row because obviously that's the worst case scenario. It means a leadership 7 unit needs to lose two models before it will take any casualties from morale. Remember the casualties are whole models not extra wounds. That's pretty harsh for units with multi-wound models. I've highlighted Ld10 too because that's the point where you'll never have to test on a 5-man unit and a 10-man unit will never take casualties. 

Interestingly, it doesn't seem like vehicles are immune from Morale checks. The majority of them are single models of course but vehicle squadrons could potentially need to test. A quick flick through the indexes though and a lot of squadrons are now treated as separate vehicles after deployment. When you think about it there's no real advantage to keeping them in squadrons anyway since you can't split damage like you used to.

Transports

I wanted to cover these separately because I think the changes are a big deal. Firstly let me say that, like some other rules, the rules for these are seemingly randomly placed in the rulebook. It's not like there's tons of rules to wade through though so I can't say it bothers me that much.

A transport has a capacity as ever but can now transport multiple units. You could therefore throw several characters in the same transport or a couple of 5-man squads into a rhino. 

Embarking now just requires you to get all the models within 3". You can't do anything from inside a transport any more which seems to include firing out of hatches although individual vehicle rules will probably allow for this. 

Disembarkation now happens at the start of the movement phase i.e. before the vehicle moves. You don't deploy from access points now but with AV no longer a thing and likewise fire arcs, it doesn't really matter which way your vehicle is pointing. No more emergency disembark etc. You can now charge from a vehicle but obviously with having to get out before the vehicle moves you'll not be getting many first turn charges! Sitting there in your vehicle hoping you survive a turn to charge whilst your opponent moves his units out of range is going to be tough to get used to. Still, getting out 3", moving and then charging is a pretty big range. You won't need to get your vehicle as close as before.

If the vehicle blows up you're only losing models on a 1 now which is a big deal for Orks and especially Dark Eldar but bear in mind you aren't getting a save against it and multi-wound models are just removed. 

Conclusions

Games Workshop has probably written less words in the core rules section than I've just used in these two posts talking about them! That's an awesome thing for new players. The old rulebook was intimidatingly complex. Of course the datasheets are where the complexity comes but they're generally just adding a modifier or giving a re-roll here and there. There's a nice example turn in there to give new players an idea of how everything works together. They've done a great job in getting sets out to stores early so they can give people demo games. Something that would've been unheard of in previous editions.

The rules are much more straightforward. There's a lot less rolling of dice but, early on at least, there'll be a lot more referring to unit entries even just for things like checking how far they can move. Still, you can easily see that games will be a lot quicker, especially when you're used to how your army works. Being able to pick your psychic powers rather than roll for them for example will save a huge chunk of time for some armies. Obviously you might want to change them in each game of a tournament though. 

I think there'll be a lot of "are you sure you can do that?" followed by "well, show me where it says I can't" in the early days of 8th. It'll be tough not to assume things have remained the same from previous editions. Even little things like no longer getting an extra attack for charging or no longer being pinned after your transport explodes. Oh and the Most Important Rule is still there. Such a shame, I much prefer a good argument and the animosity that then hangs over the rest of the game. Each to their own!

It's crazy to think about just how much has been culled from the rulebook. Obviously the USRs are now on the datasheets but there's no longer page after page about vehicles, unit types, etc. I'm all for it. I don't think it's dumbing the game down on any level just making it more enjoyable to play. I still think they missed an opportunity by keeping it as a D6 based system. I'd love to be rolling D10s and the like again and it'd add a bit more variety to the weapons which can feel a bit samey.

One last thought for today: GW said something interesting in their Faction Focus for Ad Mech on Tuesday: "And be aware that if you can get a +1 to hit, you get the bonus hits on the roll of a 5 or 6". The wording of most of the bonus is "+1" to whatever roll. I'm just assumed you'd simply pass a 3+ roll on 2+ in that circumstance. I hadn't thought that you'd therefore have a better chance of getting a six. This is interesting for a lot of weapons which give extra damage (and often mortal wounds) on a 6. I'll try to find examples of this in my faction reviews.

Come back tomorrow for my last post on the rulebook where I'll cover army selection, missions, deplyoments, etc. I hope you're enjoying this series. You can support my efforts to review all of the new material by buying your new models from Element Games using the adverts on my blog. I get a small cut and you get a decent saving on your miniatures. Win-win! Alternatively, click on some of the Google ads if you like. 

The 8th Edition 40K Rulebook Review - Part 3 of 3

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll be aware that the latest edition of 40K is being released on Saturday. If, for some reason, you still haven’t pre-ordered your copy why not do it here now? Although, you'd probably not be getting it by tomorrow at this point!

Today I continue my look at the new 8th edition 40K rules with my thoughts on the Army Selection, Missions, etc. If you missed the first parts of my review, you can find part one here and part two here.

I'm not going to cover the Open and Narrative Play portions of the rulebook. They offer some interesting ideas for thematic battles but since most of my 40K play is centred around tournaments I won't be discussing them here. They do offer some interesting ideas for custom missions at future events I might run but for my first 8th edition events I'll probably keep things pretty simple. Narrative missions tend to give one side a bit of an edge to represent attacker or defender so in competitive events they're unlikely to get much use. I won't go into Battlezones or the rules for things like Planetstrike etc as they probably won't see much use in tournaments. I might borrow them for my events though in one form or another. I'll also refer to points in my reviews of the factions as I think that'll still be the most common selection method at events.

Army Selection
Keywords come into play here as an army's units much all share a faction keyword. The allies chart and it's associated rules are gone. I can't help but feel this gives Imperial players far more options as everything shares the IMPERIUM keyword. I think as the codexes come out it'll be advantageous to limit things to say BLOOD ANGELS or ASTRA MILITARUM but for now there's no real penalty to mixing and matching. Eldar and Dark Eldar now have AELDARI and CSM and Daemons have CHAOS. That isn't much fun for Tyranids (although they get Genestealer Cults to play with), Orks, Necrons, Tau, etc. I think those armies will be fine though!

Reinforcement Points are an interesting idea. If you want to create extra units e.g. summoning, Tervigons, etc. you'll need to pay for them in advance. This isn't saying you have to decide you'll summon plaguebearers though. I know there's been consternation about this but I think it's an elegant solution to the summoning problems of 7th. There'll still be an advantage to be gained from being able to bring in the right tool for the job in the right place. For a Tervigon you can replenish units for free but newly created ones will need to be paid for. More on these things in the faction posts though.

Interestingly, GW suggest that for a 1,001-2000 pt game (which basically covers nearly all tournaments) you should be allowed a maximum of three detachments. Bear this in mind when I'm talking about detachments in a minute.

The Force Organisation Charts (FOCs) feel pretty familiar with a compulsory core of units to allow you to take other optional ones. Depending on how restrictive they are, you can gain Command Poitns (CP) to spend on Stratagems. We're told there'll be faction specific ones in the codexes but for now we can choose between three:

• 1CP to re-roll a single dice
• 2CP to fight out of sequence with a unit that hasn't charged
• 2CP to pass a morale test automatically

All of these could have pretty dramatic effects but knowing when to use them will be important. I'm not sure they add the tactical depth that GW seem to think they add but we'll see how things play out when we've got more of them to use.

There are currently no faction specific warlord traits so you're stuck with the three mediocre ones from the rulebook. At least you can pick from them rather than randomly generating if you want.

Matched Play Mission Rules
Psychic Focus is a big deal for some armies. Since we've currently only got a maximum of 3 powers available to single faction armies, they'll soon exhaust their faction specific powers and have to use Smite for everything else.

Stratagems (more on them soon), are limited to one use per phase. That means, for example, you can't use several command points to make multiple units fight first.

Reserves can only comprise half of your army now. No null deployment. That's not really that drastic I don't think and remember you aren't rolling for reserves in Matched Play (you do in some Narrative Play missions). Having some tactical choice about when to bring units in is a refreshing change. Don't wait too long though as you've only got the first three turns to bring them in. Presumably units like Swooping Hawks and Mawlocs which can leave the battle are able to return in turn 4 and beyond though. It's worth noting here that Flyers aren't forced to start the game in reserve and it doesn't seem like you can put something in reserve that doesn't have a specific rule to allow it.

Deployment
The three deployment types we've gotten used to Vanguard, Dawn of War and Hammer & Anvil return but they're joined by three more. Veteran players will remember Search and Destroy but Spearhead Assault and Front-Line Assault are new. It's nice to have a bit more variety to proceedings and it'll be interesting to see how these play out with some armies. Starting 18" away is always interesting for fast moving armies and even more so now there's varying movement values.

Bear in mind you determine the deployment map after placing your objective markers. This was the case in 7th but I'm not sure people paid much attention to it most of the time. Also note that you now control an objective if you have more models within 3". No more contested objectives, well in theory, what do you do on the occasion where both players have a model each which are equidistant or even touching the objective marker?

From a quick skim of them missions it seems like all of them use alternating deployment with each player deploying a unit at a time. This is similar to other games but it makes a welcome appearance in 40K. It's interesting that the person who finished first gets to choose whether to go first or not. There's a significant benefit then in having a smaller unit count but I can't help but feel this a big boost for elite armies that will naturally contain less units. This is probably the first change in the new rules that I struggle with. Maybe going first isn't going to be such a big thing but I really don't see how it isn't!

Terrain
Let me remind you that Difficult and Dangerous terrain are no longer a thing. Instead we're given classifications for all of them. They generally all offer the same +1 to saves. Some area terrain reduces charges by 2" but interestingly has no effect on movement. Gone are the days of a big monster having a toe in cover and claiming a cover save though as for most of these units they specify they need to be 50% obscured to benefit.

Missions
There are still six Eternal War and six Maelstrom of War missions. Most are similar with some subtle changes here and there. The secondary objectives of Slay the Warlord, First Blood and Linebreaker are still there. Here's a rundown of the Eternal War missions:

1. Retrieval Mission - four objectives worth 3 VPs at game end
2. No Mercy - basically Purge the Alien - 1 VP per unit destroyed
3. The Scouring - six objectives with one "Superior" worth 4 VPs, one "Inferior" worth 1 VP and the rest worth 2 VPs at game end
4. Big Guns Never Tire - four objectives worth 3 VPs at game end but Heavy Support essentially have Objective Secured. Heavy Support worth 1 VP each when destroyed.
5. Secure and Control - single objective each (set up in own deployment zone) worth 3 VPs at game end
6. The Relic - single central objective - major victory if carrying it, minor victory to player with closest model if not carried. Can only be moved by INFANTRY and can't be put in a TRANSPORT. Can move a maximum of 9" per phase.

Random game length remains the same with round 6 on a 3+ and round 7 on a 4+. Pretty similar then with Big Guns being returned to a more sensible form where Heavy Support have a benefit not just a drawback. The Relic still seems pretty stupid. You can move it pretty fast. Granted you can't take it more than 9" but that's quite a lot really and could potentially take it with you when charging.

I'll talk in more detail about the Tactical Objectives in a separate section below so I can properly analyse them. You still can't discard impossible objectives but you can spend 2CP to discard an extra one (you can still discard one for free). Importantly they can now be scored in both your turn and your opponent's turn. The missions are as follows:

1. Cleanse and Capture - three objectives per turn.
2. Contact Lost - one objective in first turn then one objective per marker controlled in subsequent turns - can use a 3CP stratagem to generate an extra one (still capped at 6)
3. Tactical Escalation - same number of objectives as round number - nominate a "Tactical Priority" for a specific objective type to be worth a bonus VP. Also get a bonus point for achieving more of their Priority objectives than their opponent.
4. Spoils of War - as before. Can steal objectives from your opponent and can't discard "Secure Objective X". Get a bonus VP for scoring more of these cards.
5. Cloak and Shadows - keep objectives secret. Night fighting in effect (-1 to hit over 18") - can bypass this by paying 1 CP to light up an enemy unit with flares.
6. Deadlock - start with six objectives in round 1 and decrease by one each turn. Stratagems double in cost from round 3.

Nothing drastically different here. There's a few little bonus rules thrown in here and there but I still think Maelstrom will be my preferred way to play the game. Eternal War feels a bit tired in comparison and they've not really done much to rejuvenate it.

Tactical Objectives
The cards are pretty similar but there's a few that have been replaced and others which have been tweaked. Here's a brief rundown:

• 11-16 (Capture and Control) and 21-26 (Take and Hold) - the same as before
• 31-36 (Storm and Defend) - give you a 2 VPs for controlling objective X for two consecutive turns
• 41-46 (Seize Ground) - as the group name suggests, Behind Enemy Lines, Supremacy, Domination and Hold The Line which are similar to before with new additions Advance (get everything out of your deployment zone) and Mission Critical Objective (random numbered objective worth 1 VP or D3 if you steal it from your opponent).
• 51-56 (Purge) - Overwhelming Firepower, Blood and Guts, No Prisoners and Psychological Warfare, Master The Warp (formerly Harness) are all roughly the same but and Area Denial gives points for clearing out the centre of the board.
• 61-66 (Annihilation) - Kingslayer, Witch Hunter, Scour the Skies, Assassinate, Big Game Hunter all essentially the same but Priority Orders Received is new and gives you bonus points for scoring an additional objective with your Warlord (stolen from Blog Wars? I'll let you decide - probably not let's face it!).

That means no more Demolitions, Hungry for Glory and Recon (for obvious reasons). Supremacy is gone too but it Ascendency has been renamed to Supremacy to make things confusing!

It's a shame the D3 points are still in there. I think Maelstrom is random enough without keeping that in. Fast armies will still have an advantage in Maelstrom but with no ObSec you won't find it so easy to steal objectives from your opponents with those Windriders. 

Conclusion
There's a lot of subtle changes to the mission rules that will have a profound impact on the way armies are chosen and battles are fought. I can't get over the rule essentially giving first turn to the player with the least units.

Army selection will be an interesting thing in 8th edition. Not least because the indexes make it a pain in the arse to work out how much units cost! I'll get to that in more detail when I do my index reviews though.

Right, that's it for the rulebook. You'll have it in your grubby mitts tomorrow! Come back for reviews of the armies as an when I get through the indexes. I hope you're enjoying this series. You can support my efforts to review all of the new material by buying your new models from Element Games using the adverts on my blog. I get a small cut and you get a decent saving on your miniatures. Win-win! Alternatively, click on some of the Google ads if you like. 

The 8th Edition 40K Rulebook Review - Part 1 of 3

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll be aware that the latest edition of 40K is being released on Saturday. If, for some reason, you still haven’t pre-ordered your copy why not do it here now? 

You’ll also likely be aware that it’s a pretty dramatic shake up of the game we know and (mostly) love. My longer serving readers will know that I used to do detailed reviews of every new rulebook and codex that was released. This started to become impossible to achieve with rules coming thick and fast from various sources. I think I gave up around the time Skitarii was released but 8^th edition sees all those many source materials merged so it seems a great time to start full reviews again. 

I’m going to try and avoid too many comparisons to the old edition but they’ll inevitably creep in but I think the key to enjoying 8^th edition is not to worry about the things your army used to be able to do and not to assume that units that used to be terrible still are (and of course, vice versa). It’s probably better to forget everything you know from previous editions too. If the new rules don’t say you can’t do something then assume we can until told otherwise. I’ll give some examples later. 

I’m going to work systematically through the rulebook. It’s not going to be completely exhaustive of course but once you get your hands on the book you’ll be able to fill in the blanks.

One last thing before I start. I’ll talk in general terms about the rules but, from reading through the indices, for every rule there’s a unit that breaks it in some way. For example, you can’t Advance and Charge but Orks under a Waaagh! can. That means I'll nearly always say "in general", "for the most part", etc. since some units bypass the restrictions. Right, onto the review:

Ways to Play

The first thing you’re presented with (once you’ve got past some gorgeous artwork) is that there are now three “Ways to Play”.  I’ll cover these in more detail in the next post but for now: 

• Open Play is essentially Unbound from previous editions. Bring whatever models from whatever army you want and fight it out. There’s some basic scenario/deployment rules in there but the aim is to get you rolling dice quickly.
• Narrative Play is pretty self-explanatory. Power Levels (more on them later) are used instead of points and there’s a multitude of fluffy scenarios to play through that help set the scene for more cinematic battles. These come with their own stratagems to really help theme the battles and differentiate between playing attacker or defender in some missions.
• Matched Play is essentially the game as it was before 8^th. Units cost points. as do their upgrades. and armies need to conform to detachments to be legal. This will be the basis of tournament play and, from what I’ve read at least, early tournaments won’t need to worry so much about “comp” as the rules laid out here seem to make for a pretty solid rules pack. I can imagine tournament organisers (TOs) will still limit the number of detachments you can take but the missions, deployment and army selection criteria will mostly be left alone. 

From this point forward all of my discussion will be based around matched play. I’ll also be basing my faction reviews on the assumption that you’re playing in a points based system with a reasonably competitive atmosphere.

Before I start talking about the core rules phase by phase it’s worth noting that they’ve finally started to call them “Turns” and “Battle Rounds” no more confusion between “Turn” and “Player Turn”. The turns themselves are pretty similar to previous editions with Movement, Psychic, Shooting, Charge, Fight and Morale phases. The key differences being that Charge and Fight are deliberately separate phases and the Morale phase is the only time you check leadership.

Statlines

Veteran players will be relieved to see that the statlines are, for the most part, similar to what we’ve had before. The key difference is that Initiative is completely gone (more on that in the Fight Phase) and the Movement value has returned. Stats are no longer capped at 10 which is worth thinking about when we consider things like power fists doubling Strength 7 up to 14. Vehicles now have wounds instead of hull points and often well into double figures to make them tougher to take down. I’ve not played much 8^th yet but I’m in favour of this so far as I think it’ll make tanks feel tough to stop and prevent some of the flimsier vehicles e.g. trukks from feeling like they're made of cardboard.

Finally, WS and BS are no longer a number but rather a roll. These can be modified by various in game effects but it takes an extra step out of working out what roll you need. Not a big deal for veteran players but nice for new guys. Not to mention that it means that your characters will often be hitting everything on 2+ rather than comparing WS. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of this on first glance because it seems a bit strange that really skilled combatants aren’t any harder to lay hits on (in general at least).

Keywords

Age of Sigmar players will be familiar with them but for people like me who’ve never square-based these are a new way of grouping units together to determine how they’re affected by various in-game effects. For example, some weapons are better against INFANTRY and units with FLY can ignore terrain. Again, there are a lot of exceptions to these things but for army selection purposes, choosing units with the same faction keyword will make things more straightforward and, once the codex comes along for your army, it’ll be clear which units benefit from specific special rules.

Movement Phase

Not the most complicated section but there’s still some important changes. The most notable being that, as I’ve mentioned above, units can now move at different speeds. There’s quite a range of values here too so slow lumbering units will actually feel like that and quick nimble units will too. As they FAQ’d in previous editions, they’ve clarified that no part of a model can move more than the movement value. No sneaky pivoting of my Dark Eldar Raiders then!

Might sound daft but they’ve even clarified that you can’t move through walls. Well, in theory at least. The rules for Ruins muddy the waters a little here. In general though there’s no rolling for difficult terrain and moving straight through a wall. Speaking of which, Difficult and Dangerous Terrain are no longer a thing. Some terrain types will slow your movement by a set value but there’s no longer a random element to it. They don’t specifically clarify it but to me you still can’t move your model through a gap its base can’t fit through. Common sense will hopefully prevail.

There’s a multitude of ways in which armies can be deployed (e.g. Infiltrate) or arrive from Reserves (e.g. Teleport) but most things have to remain 9” away. In general these units arrive at the end of the movement phase so can’t move any more but they can shoot and charge as normal. That means roughly a 1 in 3 chance of getting a charge off with a teleporting/deepstriking/whatever unit. Remember you don’t have to get into base contact anymore.

This is also a good point to talk about Coherency. You still have to stay within 2” of other models but with Blasts and Templates gone there’s no need to spread out your models. My 30-strong mobs of Ork Boyz have suddenly become a lot more bearable to play with!

Advancing (formerly called Run) now happens in the movement phase but it’s still D6 extra inches. It’s going to be an important decision though whether to Advance or not as it still (for the most part) prevents shooting and charging. That means you’ll no longer find a unit suddenly without a shooting target and decide you may as well run them. It also means no more running a unit that just arrived from reserve (as they can’t move any further). Most of us would let our opponent move and run in the Movement phase in 7^th to speed things up but having it in the core rules will certainly move things along quicker (pun intended).

A final note on Movement, the rules for ruins say that only INFANTRY can end up on top anything but the ground floor of ruins unless the models have FLY. There should be a semi-colon in there somewhere (page 248 - GW again struggles with punctuation) to make it clear that you can still put a flying Hive Tyrant on the top floor but can’t get a Rhino up there.

Psychic Phase

There are again some pretty major changes here. Firstly, they’ve clarified how many powers a psyker can cast per turn (and attempt to deny). In the indices at least, there doesn’t seem to be a way of increasing “mastery level” by paying points. A Rune Priest can cast two powers for example. Everyone gets Smite plus a varying number of powers from their Index entry. There are no other psychic powers in the rulebook so, for now at least, armies will have to stick to their faction specific powers. That means no Invisibility for all and no Summoning for non-Daemon armies (again, for now at least).

You can choose which of those your psyker knows though. Frustratingly an army can only attempt to cast each power once per turn (in Matched Play). Even if you have several psykers who all have the same power you can only use it once. That’ll be pretty frustrating for Tyranid players who want multiple units casting Catalyst. It does mean the psychic phase won’t go on for hours though as you’ll quickly work through the limited number of powers your army can cast. It’s worth noting here that Summoning (now Daemonic Ritual) is no longer a psychic power but I’ll talk more about it when I get to Daemons.

I’m a big fan of the new mechanism for casting powers. No more piles of dice for psychic armies. Each power has a set value you have to achieve on 2D6 to successfully manifest it. Your opponent has to roll more than your roll to Deny it. Simple but effective. Smite for example has an 83% chance of a successful cast without modifiers (although remember you can’t pick your target). 

I’m also a big fan of Deny being limited to Psykers only but being able to block buffing powers too if you’re in range. It always seemed daft to me that Guardsmen could prevent a psyker from targeting them with a power. It means it’s probably a good idea to include psykers for defence purposes as well as for their offensive power. Also worth noting that if you get your power off on a double six (and don’t die in the process) it’s nearly impossible to cancel it.

Perils now happen on a double one or double six again but there’s no table to roll on to see what happens. Just a pretty good chance the psyker will die from it and if they do every unit nearby will suffer too. Should make for some dramatic psychic phases and saves you looking up the Perils table because who could remember anything other than 1 and 6?

It’s worth talking about Mortal Wounds here. They ignore absolutely everything, invulnerable saves included. That makes for a pretty simple mechanic and makes anything that can cause them pretty damn effective against everything! It seems to me that the variously named versions of Feel No Pain can still be taken against Mortal Wounds though.

One last thing here, the ranged effect powers will, unless stated, affect the psyker too. The same goes for Characters with aura effects. It was one of those things that was always assumed but wasn’t explicitly stated in the original rules.

That'll do for today. I'll be back tomorrow with the Shooting Phase, Assault Phase & Morale Phase then some more on the missions, army selection and terrain etc.

New 8th Edition 40K Rules - Weapons, Datasheets, Points & Stratagems

In theory this post has caught me up with the information that GW has released but by the time it posts we'll have had another three days worth of stuff. I really need to get onto some stuff for Double Trouble 2. Hopefully later in the week because by then there'll only be a couple of weeks to go. Not long to get your ticket then if you haven't already!

Weapons Part 2
I'm reassured slightly that there'll still be some dramatic stuff happening if your dice are hot on those random shots and damage rolls. Especially with a twin-linked lascannon or two. Twin-linked returns to how it was the past. Basically a single weapon that fires twice the shots of the standard version. It'll be interesting to see how the cost of units with twin-linked weapons are adjusted to reflect this. Something tells me they'll generally reduce points so that you need more models to have a game of a decent length.

Anyway, firing twice as many shots is significantly better than just re-rolling. That makes for some massive damage potential. The twin heavy bolter example is interesting because it seems that AP4 is now a -1 modifier. It follows then that AP3 = -2. AP2 = -3 (as we saw with the lascannon) and AP1 = -4 (as we see with the meltagun). What we don't really find out is what happens for AP6 and AP- though. Will they also be AP0 like AP5 or will they give a positive modifier?

You've also got to wonder how twin-flamers will work. Just double the shots that still automatically hit? That'd be brutal.

Combi-weapons are certainly better (depending on how much we have to pay for them). They don't fit the fluff of limited ammunition for the combi bit but you have to make a choice between an accurate shot for one of the other or gamble that you'll get more damage from firing both. Question is, are they actually worth it? You'll be firing both at the same target so often you'll not bother with the bolter to get the melta a better chance at hitting a tank. Since you can now split off from your unit to do this, would you just be better taking a meltagun where available?

Speaking of which a meltagun is pretty much what I expected. A more reliable anti-tank weapon (in terms of damage) than the lascannon but with lower strength it has less chance of getting to do that damage.

As we already knew. There's no blasts anymore but it seems that weapons that used them will still be useful. A battle cannon won't kill more than 6 models in a unit of single wound models but will be significantly better against units of multi-wound models and hugely improved against a single MC. Your old blast could only cause a single wound to an MC but now you could potentially cause 18 wounds to an MC (or vehicle for that matter). The Leman Russ is looking pretty good right now.

Datasheets
This is the kind of thing we wanted to see. Actual rules and stats from units. It's a shame that the random person on FB didn't pick something more interesting than Rubric Marines but still, there's a lot to unpack. Firstly, special rules are gone. That's about 20 pages out of the rulebook already! I'm a big fan of (nearly) everything for a particular unit being on the same page. There'll still be some army-wide stuff but mostly you'll be able to open the book to the right page for whatever unit you're dealing with at the time. Hopefully this doesn't mean the death of the summary stats page at the back of the codex though.

There's mixed feelings about keeping the points and rules separate. Firstly, this isn't really a new thing. Up until the last couple of editions you had the rules early in the book and the points later. The latest codexes "simplified" this by having a reference page for all of the rules. They presumably though this would be easier but flicking back and forth through a book was a pain. It's promising that they're planning on updating the points to reflect how the meta changes. Besides, once you've picked your army you don't need to know how much it cost. What is strange is that the datasheet has wargear options on it. Why bother putting these on here if the points for them are listed elsewhere? Wouldn't it make more sense to remove this section to save space? You'll have to refer to your army list to see what everything is equipped with anyway.

Anyway, it's interesting that units can still potentially have two different battlefield roles. Opens up the possibility of thematic armies for things like Blood Angels and White Scars where assault troops and bikes respectively can be take as Troops.

I know Keywords are nothing new really but for 40K I think they make a lot of sense. You can easily group units together for things like how they interact with cover, how they're affected by special rules, what vehicles they can board.

Again, it's a shame that we weren't given a more interesting unit as an example. What we can gleam from this though is that Force weapons act differently. Swords are still the lowest in strength compared to axes, staves, etc but they now have better AP! With no Initiative any more you'd have to wonder how much they cost relative to each other because presumably they all strike at once now. You'd have to wonder how Force weapons compare to their Power weapon counterparts though.

Finally, interesting that models within the same unit can have different movement values. Does that mean coherency isn't a thing anymore? I know you could sometimes have characters in a unit that moved differently but had to remain in coherency but with templates gone you have to wonder what the mechanic will be now.

Points & Power Levels
Well, first thing that strikes me here is that the Ambush mission deployment looks pretty brutal if the defender is a shooty army and the attack is combat based! Starting pretty much in charge range looks nasty. Still this is a Narrative mission by the looks of the description.

I'm liking the idea of power levels. Points are all well and good but they're often a little meaningless and you end up spending ages deciding between two 5 pt upgrades to use up those final points. Just being able to pick units to a certain power level cost takes a lot of that nonsense away. Perhaps in my casual games we'll switch to this if the power levels seem reasonably sensible.

Onto some actual points and a tactical squad marine is now 13 pts (formerly 14) but a multi-melta is now 27pts (formerly 10). The rumours of super marines not withstanding, that certainly feels like marines aren't going to suddenly return to their status in the fluff as brutal fighters capable of taking on multiple lesser foes. Of course, we haven't seen how much anything else is yet so we've got no yardstick but it's interesting that they think 2,000pts will be a two hour game. If true, that either means higher points in tournaments or else the possibility of getting a fourth game into a one day event if you stuck at 1,500pts.

Sidenote: I'm in favour of the game being more streamlined but if it becomes too quick to play it will definitely lose some of its identity. Of course we can play bigger games but having shorter games has the potentially to make it feel less... epic somehow.

The big hammer drop here though is Summoning. No more freebie units. Instead you'll be using your "Reinforcement Points" to determine how much you can summon. Also worth noting here than Infiltrate and Deep Strike are still things that exist. I still hope they limit the units factions that can use Summoning (Keywords make this simple to do). You can make whatever fluff argument you like for an Eldar farseer suddenly summoning some Slaanesh daemons but to me it feels incredibly wrong.

There's a big question mark here about whether GW will actually try to keep maintaining balance by tweaking points for weapons/units but at least they're recognising the concept and allowing for the potential to balance things.

Stratagems
The term isn't anything new to 40K. They've been around in things like Planetstrike for a long time. I've never been a fan of them in that guise though as they're an extra thing to choose when selecting your army and more things to remember to do (and more importantly be aware that your opponent can do) during the game.

I'm reassured then that it sounds like everyone gets access to the standard three presented here but there'll also be some for each faction. Providing this doesn't end up with silly amounts I think it's a good mechanic that adds some tactical depth. Deciding when to burn your command points is a key thing to master in games like Space Hulk and I can see it being the same here. Use them early on trivial things and you might regret it when you need them for something more vital later.

Seems like a good way of rewarding people for creating armies that use fewer combinations of factions too and for adhering to FOCs with what they select. I like the Stratagems shown here. You can see that they'll be useful and the costs seem reasonable too. One point for the re-roll, which may not work out anyway, but two points for the Stratagems with guaranteed rewards.

Hopefully there'll be other characters besides Bjorn that affect the amount of command points you receive or how you'll use them. I'm fully expecting Warlord Traits to be a thing of the past (one less thing to bother with in pre-game) and Command Points/Stratagems seem to be a great replacement.

Conclusion
I'm really struggling to find fault in most of what GW is doing here. I'm still skeptical about their ideas of balance and every unit being useful but it all seems to be going in the right direction. The 8th edition of our beloved game is shaping up to be recognisable as 40K but without a lot of the baggage that has made it less fun to play.

Speaking of which, I really hope we get a post on the pre-game sequence (and that it's clearly mapped out in the new rulebook). This has always been one of my big problems with 40K. When it takes some armies about 30 minutes to even start putting models on the table it's easy to see why new players might be put off. If Warlord Traits are gone, Psychic Powers aren't random anymore, etc then maybe we'll get stuck into killing each other a lot sooner. That has to be a good thing.

With the amount of stuff they've already released, you'd have to think that the new edition is coming pretty soon. What they've said though is that every faction will be a getting a "Faction Focus" article in the run up. They're releasing them every other day at the moment. We've had four so far and there's something like 21 factions left (depending on how you define them e.g. are Skitarii and Cults just Ad Mech now?). That means another month and a half unless they either a) increase the frequency, b) merge some factions or c) aren't actually going to cover all of them. If everything stays the same we'd be looking at the end of June rather than the mid-June release I'd originally guessed.

Still, the smart money is on them announcing the date for pre-orders at Warhammer Fest and I'll be there so I can hopefully let you guys know what I find out!

New 8th Edition 40K Rules - Faction Focus

Seems like GW are releasing one of these articles every other day so the next one will probably be out before you read this. These articles are pretty light on meaty content but there's still some useful stuff to be teased out of (most of) them.

Faction Focus - Chaos Space Marines
You have to feel for CSM players. They got the first codex in 6th edition only to spend the rest of it feeling like they were screwed over by every subsequent book that came out. They're getting a similarly raw deal now. They get the first Faction Focus article but despite writing a lot of words, Frankie (off of Frontline Gaming), doesn't actually tell us anything of substance. Those units you don't use. They're good now they are. That's basically it.

Clearly GW have responded to the complaints about this on social media and all the other articles now have at least a couple of titbits of actual info in them. Poor old CSM players will have to wait (possibly until release day) for anything more useful.

Faction Focus - Astra Militarum
More of the same puff piece that makes you think your Guardsmen will be a forced to be reckoned with and that some rarely seen unit (here Rough Riders and Bullgryns) will now be a viable choice. There's some useful information thrown in here though such as Ratlings (and presumably all snipers) being able to target Characters.

We get some actual stats too. A Leman Russ will be T8, 3+ save and 12 wounds. It's interesting to compare this to a Dreadnought. Formerly AV12, 3HP it now gets eight T7 wounds with a 3+ save. Clearly the Leman Russ is tougher but with the new To Wound chart it doesn't seen hugely better than a dread. It'll be interesting to see if a Land Raider gets a 2+ save or higher toughness to correlate with the AV14 all round.

Orders are now automatic (cutting out a Ld test - more streamlining). First Rank, Second Rank seems similar to how it does now but for me the interesting thing is that Rapid Fire seems like it'll work in the same way it does now.

Faction Focus - Eldar
Again, more talking up of units with minimal back up. The snippets are interesting again though.

Phoenix Lords sound like they'll be cheaper and offer some army (or at least bubble) benefits. Oh and Asurman deals some mortal wounds with his sword. Good for him! Guide, Doom and Fortune are back but no word on how they work or how easy they'll be to cast. Sounds like both Striking Scorpions and Howling Banshees have had some love too. Still can't see how the Banshees will make it into combat though, even if they are really fast moving.

The last little bit is the Wailing Doom. We don't find out how many attacks the Avatar gets, whether he'll be more durable, faster or given a new model but we do know some things about his sword. Nothing that drastic here. It's what you'd expect from it really. Dealing D6 damage will make a huge difference when the Avatar is taking on a single multi-wound model but won't stop him getting stuck wading through a pile of weaker models though. At least Morale might help him there.

Sidenote: has combat resolution gone then? Do you just roll for Morale at the end of the game if you lost models? Can you still overrun units? Have they already told us this and I've missed it?

Anyway, as an anti-tank weapon it's pretty decent but isn't likely to be one-shotting anything substantial. Taking a chunk of wounds from an MC is a massive upgrade for the Wailing Doom (and indeed the meltagun) though.

Faction Focus - Chaos Daemons
Easily the most significant bits of info in this post out of the lot. It really seems like GW are trying to release more and more information in these posts. I mean, I'm assuming they schedule these posts like I'm doing with mine but it's interesting that they're getting more and more meaty.

I like the Khorne mechanic of what is effectively Furious Charge in this Initiative-less world. Interesting that it works in the first round of combat regardless of who charged too. Tzeentch giving a bonus to invulnerable saves isn't really that new but interesting that a LoC now has 4++ and 16 wounds (although we still don't really know how invulns work). I'm sure Daemons players won't be happy but I'm pleased that splitting Horrors are being dealt with too. Having a unit that always takes at least three turns to get rid of was stupid. You can still do something similar but you'll have to allow yourself some "Reinforcement Points" for this.

Sidenote: makes me wonder what other uses Reinforcement Points have. Tervigons spawing gaunts for example. What about things that weren't freebies in 7th?

Daemonettes sound similar to Banshees in that they're striking first the majority of the time. Having said that, I'd again wonder how they're going to get their alive though. Interesting that the larger the unit the better they are too. Maybe there'll be other things to discourage MSU for other factions too.

Nurglings are getting what sounds like FNP 5+ which isn't much of a surprise but makes me wonder if other units will be losing it. Interesting ot see what Mischief Makers does. Sounds like they can do some sort of Infiltrate move.

Obviously, the big deal for Daemons came in the Points and Power Levels post with Summoning no longer giving you "free" units. So far, Daemons seem to be the army that will seem the most different in 8th. No more spamming summoned units, no more piles and piles of psychic dice to buff a single psyker, no more silly combos of characters to make incredibly resilient units. Daemons had a long period of being a low tier army. Whilst I'm really not a fan, I hope they don't get relegated back there. It's early days though and I'm not going to condemn them yet (unlike a lot of people on FB). I still think Summoning will be a useful mechanic that gives you a tactical advantage in that you can bring in the right tool for the job and that having a pile of psykers on the table will still be advantageous.

Conclusion
This all reminds me a bit of the NFL in the offseason. The hype slowly builds for all of the teams so that you really start to thing your crappy franchise (the Bears) will have any hope in the season. Then the season starts and you remember they've still got a crap roster and won't be winning anything. I really hope I'm wrong!

One thing I do like is that Reece and Frankie are writing these posts. They know more about the current meta than it seems GW themselves do. Talking about things like Screamers with re-rollable 2+ saves is at least an acknowledgement of some of the problems with the game as it is now.

I really can't see how their claims of "every unit will now be viable" (or words to that effect) can be true. There's too many units for everything to be useful. Perhaps the gap between units will be smaller but I still reckon there'll be units that get spammed whilst others still don't get used. Maybe these will be different ones to what we see now but there'll still be more preferable choices in competitive play.

Still, I'm finding myself more and more addicted to these posts and therefore more excited for 8th edition. Good job on that at least GW. Sure I don't necessarily like everything they're doing but at least they're doing something! None of us really wanted a 7.5th edition that didn't really solve the problems of 7th. We didn't want AoS (as it originally happened) either. Despite the nay-sayers on Facebook telling you other wise, this isn't AoS for 40K. They've clearly learned a lot from how that went down with people. Actually involving the community in the whole process is a massive step forward.

Cautious optimism remains.

Thoughts on the 40K 8th Edition News So Far (Week 1)

Well it seems GW are sticking to their promise of releasing new information about the 8th edition of 40K every day. Well, today it wasn't particularly rules related but for the past week we've been treated to nuggets of info about how the new edition of the game will play. Today I'll run through the officially released information that has been posted up this week on Warhammer Community. There's been the odd snippet on FB, Twitter and Faeit too which I'll touch on.

First things first. It seems from the rumours that are around that June 10th will be launch weekend. This is pretty much what I expected. Their vague suggestion of "this year" was never going to mean anything past June. To release this much info and then say "out in September" would be pointless. Basically, they'll use Warhammer Fest to reveal a chunk of new things (and maybe even the starter set) and then put pre-orders up. This makes me happy for two reasons. Firstly, we don't have to wait long but also, and more importantly, Double Trouble 2 will be the last tournament of 7th edition and will take place on launch weekend for 8th. That means we'll all be in a room together studying our new rules whilst throwing some dice together. I'll also try to theme the raffle prizes around 8th edition stuff assuming we get info on what's being released early enough.

Day One - Three Ways to Play
Nothing we didn't already know really. Open play sounds like the version of the game that I'm least likely to play. Having no restrictions at all doesn't appeal to me. The game isn't balanced even with points but just taking whatever you feel like won't make for much sport in my opinion. I was never a fan of Unbound but, hey, it's there if you're into that kind of thing.

Narrative play is something that really interests me. We're constantly talking about running a campaign or playing battles that have a vague theme to them at least. We rarely actually get round to these games though because we're normally testing something for a tournament on the rare occasion we actually have time of a game. Having a framework for playing these games might be the motivation we need to finally make it happen.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly but the version of the game that interests me the most is Matched play. I'm a mixture of relieved and disappointed to learn that the Eternal War and Maelstrom missions are returning. Hopefully they've been updated more than "a little" like the post suggests. I'd love some more interesting deployment options than the three we've gotten used to and some tweaks to the objective missions in Eternal War to stop them feeling so samey. It's a shame that things like control points (objectives you score points for controlling every turn) don't sound likely to appear. I'd be happy knowing I didn't need to buy new Maelstrom cards but also disappointed if some of them weren't fixed a little bit. Get rid of the D3 points for a start. I'm hoping they'll make the "ditch the impossible cards" rule (that most of us play anyway) official.

The talk of revisions to points values and units becoming competitive again is exciting but you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical. What I'm a little worried about is the bit about "Stratagems". They're something that's appeared in things like Planetstrike and I'm not really a huge fan of them. Feel like the Blood Bowl special play cards. I'll reserve judgement until I see them though.

Finally, they reckon a 1,000-2,000 point game takes just over two hours. That's a promising sign that the game has been streamlined. As I said before, it's nice to think we might be able to get a fourth or even fifth game into a one-day event.

Day Two - Unit Profiles
Tell me you aren't intrigued to know just how far Hormagaunts can move! I'm pleased that Movement is back as a stat. All infantry essentially moving at the same speed has always felt wrong. It's interesting that vehicles are given a profile too. Will this mean that they have differing movement values too? Maybe they can shoot everything at standard movement and limited weapons at double movement for example and a Leman Russ will move slower than a Devilfish.

Giving vehicles wounds is intriguing too. Nice that they've simplified things. Mind you, they say they're getting rid of AV but surely a vehicle will now have a Toughness value instead which will likely have a similar mechanic. There's still some residual whinging about lasguns killing land raiders but I'm sure it'll be a case of 500 might be able to strip a wound or something to that effect. Theoretically they can kill a land raider but you'd likely be wasting your time. Let's hope so at least. Imperial Knights with "dozens of wounds" sounds fun.

Having a standard system means that anti-tank weaponry should make a come back. The humble lascannon has been a rare sight of late with players favouring spamming S6-S8 firepower to strip hull points. There'll still probably be an advantage to massed fire like that but hopefully it won't be the only option. More on this in the weapon profiles bit though.

It's interesting that 'fexes are getting more wounds too. My big hope for 8th edition is that Tyranids will become instantly more viable. I'd love to own a 'nid army but I've never been able to persuade myself when they've been comparatively weak or mono-build.

I'm liking what I'm hearing about no Super Heavy rules too. This all sounds like huge swathes of the rulebook will have gone and we'll hopefully be left with a more manageable ruleset that still makes things play like we'd expect them too. That's a big ask but what we've seen so far is promising.

Onto the statlines then. The first thing to notice is that Initiative is gone. I'll wait until the Combat Phase post to get too worried about this but I do have concerns about the way melee will work in 8th. Benefit of the doubt for now. Anyway, I like that they've made Guilliman at least a little faster than a normal marine and that they've finally just printed what the rolls required are. Yeah we all know it's just 7-BS but why bother with the extra step. Modifying them is the exciting thing for me. Hopefully cover saves will work in a similar way to Necromunda and faster moving targets will be harder to hit. Jink never really sat well with me as a mechanic.

Terminators aren't, so far at least, the beasts that I was hoping they'd become. Obviously two wounds is great but I was hoping for their save being taken on 2D6 like in the old days. There's a lot of people seemingly losing their shit about how good dreadnoughts will be though. Sure they've got 8 wounds and a 3+ save now but unless something else gets released about them I'm not getting too carried away yet. Am I missing something?

Day Three - Weapon Profiles
Well, more confirmation (seemed people needed it) that templates are a thing of the past. Instead the flamer will be doing D6 shots that automatically hit. Obviously screws over single models but big units potentially benefit. No more getting out of a rhino only to have your entire 10-man unit fit perfectly under a flame template. Also, and this is important, no hitting two or more units at once. There seems to be a buzz that flamers are back but we really need to see more from the other special weapons before we get carried away.

The thing that's really upset people though is how the mass reactive rounds of the bolter don't have any extra armour penetrating power. I'm not too worried about this though. We don't know what saves things like guardsmen are going to get, we don't know how cover works and we don't even know how rapid fire works either.

As I hinted at above, I'm hoping that lascannons can make a bit of a comeback. They're an iconic part of 40K for me and they've been relegated to novelty items of late. Causing a potential 6 wounds against a vehicle, MC, character for example is a huge plus. I'm assuming that it'll effectively work like a D weapon does now. Single save against the shot and then D6 wounds lost if you fail. Anti-tank weapons should be better against vehicles and MCs and it seems like they're heading the right direction.

The interesting thing is, assuming it works like I expect, a space marine will get a 6+ save against a lascannon. Sure it'll still have a great chance of wounding him but we'll have to see what the AP is of some of the other weapons. Will old AP1 be -4 for example? Will a meltagun be -5 or more?

What's really awesome about this post is that D weapons are gone. It'll be interesting to see what profile the former D weapons get though. I'm assuming they'll still be quite likely to one-shot all but the toughest models but hopefully they'll not just be 6s to kill (pretty much) anything. It's also intriguing to find out how blast weapons will work. I might be one of few people who are pleased to see the back of the current mechanic but I hope they still feel like they're doing splash damage of some kind.

Day Four - Movement Phase
Thinking about bikes having a movement value that's much higher than infantry got me thinking about what will happen to Turbo-boost. Will they simply be able to "Advance" faster than infantry? I like the idea that flyers get different movement values too. Hopefully DE flyers will end up better than they were.

The idea of running in the movement phase is certainly going to speed the game up a little. In practice a lot of us would allow opponents to do this anyway but it does mean that the tactical decision has to be taken early. No more killing something sooner than you expected and running a unit forward who now has nothing to shoot.

Sounds like, the Movement Phase isn't going to be drastically different though. They did, however, tease something about the assault phase. You can pull out of combat in your turn. Sounds a lot like Hit & Run but without being able to shoot your assailants. No dropping out of combat in your opponent's turn and charging back in your own either. Not sure how I feel about this yet. On the face of it it'll make combat less powerful but there's still so much we don't know.

Day Five - Psychic Phase
I play Tau and Dark Eldar so my interest isn't as high as it might be but obviously my Wolves, DE and Orks care. Anyway, this new plan for psychic attacks sounds significantly better. No more throwing in some psychic battery units to boost a single powerful psyker. Seems like it'll basically be the same chance of casting a power no matter how many other psykers you have. I like that having multiple psykers is useful now. Often in 7th, one of your psykers might never actually use a power whilst another stole their dice to make it more likely to get one of their powers off.

Seems like the mechanic will work a lot like a leadership test does now. Weaker powers will be easier to get off whilst the big stuff should be requiring 11s or even 12s to cast. My only hope is that they've thought about the power levels a bit more. In 7th there were some Warp Charge 3 powers that were significantly worse than others that were only WC1.

The mechanic for blocking powers also seems sensible and cinematic. A psyker in 24" gets a chance to block the power. Presumably that means non-psychic units can't stop them anymore but that felt a bit silly anyway sometimes. Especially when a nearby friendly psyker would stand idly by and let the unit next to him be hit by a power without trying to intervene.

I'm hoping that the rulebook powers are gone. Clearly Smite remains but hopefully each faction will get themed powers rather than everyone being able to use Daemonology for example or defaulting to Telepathy to get Psy Shriek. Speaking of Smite, that sounds pretty good to me. D3 wounds that you can't stop and only needing a relatively low roll to cast it. Could be pretty nasty to have a pile of cheap psykers just throwing this out every turn.

Mortal Wounds are interesting and they confirm that invulnerable saves are still a thing. I'm assuming what were once D weapons will have a much higher chance of causing Mortal Wounds.

Conclusion
There's very little cause for concern here, well, for me at least. There's obviously a lot that we're still speculating on when we've only got little bits of info to go on. What I've seen so far though makes me think they've really put the effort in this time. No more tweaking of the existing rules and trying to make them work. If they feel like a mechanic is flawed they've simply rewritten it (e.g. casting powers). Seems like the new rules will be a lot more straightforward which is good because I also think the game will have changed quite a bit and getting used to the new rules quickly will be a bonus.

Already it seems like we'll need to rethink what units, and indeed weapons, we consider to be powerful. A shake up like this is obviously going to be good for GW's sales too which I'm certain crossed their mind in doing this. They don't really want any range of models to undersell and having pretty much everything as viable is obviously good business. Not only that but suddenly finding that your specific OP list isn't what it was will force people to buy some new stuff.

Ultimately, there's no point drawing too many conclusions just yet until we know more. They're releasing new information every day so I'm sure we'll have a fair idea of what the game is going to be like before June 10th rolls around.

The 7th Edition 40K Rulebook Review - Warlord Traits (Part 5)

Just a (comparatively) short post today to talk about the Warlord Traits in the new rulesbook. Tomorrow I'll be talking about army selection in the new edition and as you'll see there, the advantage of a Combined Arms detachment is that you get a re-roll on the traits table. That's a pretty big deal when you're often getting a trait that simply doesn't apply to your army or isn't particularly useful if it does.

In the 6th edition book we were offered traits from Command, Personal and Strategic. These tables are still there but in addition we've got Tactical traits which are closely related to the Tactical Objectives and hence the Maelstrom of War missions (there'll be a post about those too).

Command Traits
Inspiring Presence - same.
Intimidating Presence - same.
The Dust of a Thousand Worlds - same.
Master of the Vanguard - changed to a +1" to run and charge moves rather than simply a extra dice when running.
Target Priority - now gives re-rolls on 1s to hit all the time not just when shooting objective holders.
Co-ordinated Assault - no longer affects charge distance but now gives re-rolls of 1s to hit in combat.

Not a bad selection really and most armies will find any of the results useful. I can't remember ever rolling on this chart as I was usually trying to get night fighting with my Dark Eldar so rolled on Strategic. Speaking of which...

Strategic Traits
Conqueror of Cities - same.
Night Attacker - same but now your army gets Night Vision making it useful for everyone.
Master of Ambush - allows three non-vehicle units to Infiltrate (used to give Acute Senses to Outflankers).
Strategic Genius - same re-roll to reserves but now also gives +1 to Seize.
Divide to Conquer - same.
Princeps of Deceit - no silly redeployments, instead causes three enemy units to take a Pinning test.

Like the Command traits these have received a bit of a buff. Dark Eldar used to love Night Attacker but now any army can make use of it. I sincerely hope that Dark Eldar have a way of making it night fighting outside of this though when their new book hits. I don't think there's a bad trait in this list actually. Only way for some armies to get Reserves manipulation too, especially with a lot of Battle Brothers being taken away.

Personal Traits
Master of Defence - gives Counter Attack all the time now, not just in deployment zone.
Master of Offence - as above, now get Furious Charge all the time but only the warlord, not his unit too.
Master of Manoeuvre - still gives Outflank which is passed on to a unit he joins.
Legendary Fighter - same.
Tenacity - just warlord gets FNP but all the time, not just when controlling an objective.
Immovable Object - Fearless and It Will Not Die. Used to make him scoring but everything is now!

Generally these traits have gotten more personal which you'd expect from the name. Easier to remember them though as they aren't specific to where the warlord is e.g. in his deployment zone. That makes them more useful but I think this is probably the weakest of the tables since, for the most part, they only benefit your warlord. Could be useful for a particularly powerful warlord but I'd rather have army-wide benefits.

Tactical Traits
These traits basically manipulate the Tactical Objectives allowing for more discards, extra VPs, etc. Difficult to say how useful these are because I've not played a Maelstrom game yet. From what I've read though these games can often result in a gap opening up between players, so it's probably worth rolling on this chart to give you the best possible chance of victory in your games.

Conclusion
There's some nice changes to the existing warlord traits with things getting a lot simpler and better for the most part. Still, generally speaking, the codex specific traits are better. Having the option to roll on these tables does give you some flexibility though depending on the army you're facing and having that re-roll will really help to get a trait that's useful. As it stands at the moment my Orks, Space Wolves and Dark Eldar are all forced to roll on these tables but I'm hoping not for much longer. In the meantime though I won't be complaining too much.

To be honest though, this was one of the things that I didn't really see the point of in 6th edition. It adds a random aspect to the game which can make things more interesting but in practice it's another thing to roll for during pre-game and another thing to remember. How many times have you only remembered your warlord trait after he's died? It's also frustrating that some of the special characters have a fixed trait which just feels like a special rule has been stolen from them.

The 7th Edition 40K Rulebook Review - Psychic Powers (Part 4)

Moving on to the next section of the rulebook in the break-neck paced review. We're up to the psychic powers. Firstly I want to talk about the new psychic phase mechanic, I'll then look at the existing disciplines and what's changed before moving onto the much maligned Daemonology powers. Here goes...

The Psychic Phase
I've only had a single game with the new rules and already I can see some issues with this mechanic, still let's talk about the good things first. I'm a huge fan of giving it a separate phase. Not only will this mean I actually remember to cast my powers (although I forgot about the whole phase a couple of times and went straight to shooting) but also it clarifies a lot of arguments about when powers are cast in relation to everything else. The method of casting is an interesting change and being able to potentially deny Blessings is a huge bonus to some armies. On to the bad...

Each time you start the phase you get so many dice to play with. In my army I had a single Spiritseer so had D6+2 dice in each phase with which to cast my Telepathy powers. I mostly tried to cast psychic shriek so used 3 dice for that to give me an 88% chance of getting the power off (slightly less than an old style Ld10 psyker) but also minimising the chance of Perils. I cast the power pretty reliably but Matt was using a GK/Inquisition/SW army which had something like 13+D6 dice per turn. Since I was targetting a unit with a psyker in it that basically meant I got denied nearly every time. Now, I suppose this makes sense, a lone psyker against practically an army of them would need some force of will to get those powers through. However, the whole experience was just frustrating. On the other hand Matt was using Malefic powers (more on them later) with tons of dice to throw at them and very little chance of me cancelling.

That for me is the issue. If you've got a lone psyker I think he's more powerful than he was before. My spiritseer could potentially cast 3 powers per turn compared to two in the old edition. He could potentially cast WC3 powers if I wanted. Not only that but he can target several different units with witchfire and still shoot his pistol (for all the good that does). That's pretty good really. If you've got a whole troop of psykers I think the individual ones will suffer. Matt, for example, spent his warp charge on conjuring daemons with his inquisitors and then hadn't got enough left over to activate his dreadknight's force weapon. In the past, alright he couldn't have conjured daemons, but he'd have been able to cast every single power he had (potentially). He was easily able to produce two vortex templates, some bloodcrushers and turn an inquisitor into a bloodthirster with little I could do to prevent it.

In theory, getting both players involved in each psychic phase is a good thing as then you're not just spectating but in practice I was just as much of a spectator anyway. Daemonology powers weren't even the problem it was just the fact that he could easily cast and I had next to no chance of getting mine off. Of course Matt's list deliberately contained a lot of psykers (Coteaz, 2 inquisitors, 2 rune priests, 2 dreadknights and a dreadnought) but it's far from the worst list out there for this kind of thing.

I think if the sides are evenly matched in terms of psychic ability then it'll seem pretty similar to 6th. Obviously in 6th if you were using DE, Tau, etc against a psychic army you still felt powerless (against psychic at least) but the stakes are a lot higher now. More satisfying rolling a deny with a non-psychic army now though I suppose.

One final thing to note. There's no longer any restriction (that I can see) on a ML1 psyker casting a WC3 (or more) power. Providing you can generate the warp charge there's no limit to what you can do.

Psychic Disciplines
First off let me express my frustration that once again GW has failed to put the chart showing which disciplines each race (sorry, Faction) has access to into the rulebook. This means you'll need the cards as even newer codexes get this wrong. Having said that the insert in the psychic cards set (from the pictures, I haven't bought any) isn't really accurate as not all SM psykers have access to everything. In fact that chart is a waste of time really. Anyway onto the powers which I'll cover just like the special rules yesterday.

Biomancy
Smite - same.
Iron Arm - +3 not D3 and now Smash but no longer Eternal Warrior
Enfeeble - same.
Life Leech (moved from 4 to 3) - now 18" range and the bonus wound can be passed on.
Warp Speed (move from 5 to 4) - again +3 not D3.
Endurance (moved from 3 to 5) - now WC2 and now Eternal Warrior not IWND plus FNP 4+ now
Haemorrhage - WC2, now 18" range and requires 2 tests for first model.

Some worthwhile powers here, particularly Iron Arm. Smite remains a bit crap but still a strong discipline when in the right hands. Still gone for Tyranids though but a T9 Mephiston with Smash seems like a fun idea.

Divination
Prescience - now WC2 but otherwise same
Foreboding - same.
Forewarning - same.
Perfect Timing (moved from 4 to 3) - same.
Precognition (moved from 5 to 4) - same.
Misfortune (move from 3 to 5) - now WC2 and causes Rending rather than forcing re-rolls.
Scrier's Gaze - now WC2, gives a re-roll instead of three dice and pick and obviously removed Mysterious Terrain to be replaced by Mysterious Objectives and can discard and re-gen a Tactical Objective.

Everyone's favourite discipline in 6th is likely to stay near the top of the pile. Prescience is still useful if potentially harder to cast at times. Otherwise little has changed here.

Pyromancy
Flame Breath - same.
Fiery Form - no longer +2s but gives re-roll to wound for other pyro powers.
Fire Shield - 4+ to everything now (no melta/soul blaze exceptions) but just Dangerous Terrain instead of the old 2D6 S4 hits.
Spontaneous Combustion (moved from 4 to 3) - just S6 AP3 with Soul Blaze now, but blast after is now S5 AP4.
Sunburst (moved from 5 to 4) - increased range to 9" but Blind swapped out for Soul Blaze.
Inferno - (moved from 3 to 5) - WC2 but Large Blast for your trouble
Molten Beam - same but better for Beam rules not reducing strength anymore.

Still hard to love this discipline but with the ability to now use several different Witchfires potentially Pyromancy will get more love. Main problem is the crappy Primaris though, not so bad when you're getting it for free I suppose.

Telekinesis
Assail - again better with new Beam rules but still not great
Crush - same.
Gate - gone to Sanctic.
Objuration mechanicum (moved from 3 to 2) - now just Gets Hot but still Haywire on vehicles.
Shockwave (moved from 4 to 3) now 9" range Nova with S4 and 2D6 hits.
Levitation (new) - basically the poor man's Gate. Move the unit an extra 12" like they've got Jump packs in the psychic phase but can't assault. Safer than Deep Strike though.
Telekine Dome - WC2 now, 12" bubble around psyker with 5++ save to shooting but no rebounds anymore.
Psychic Maelstrom - similar to Vortex of Doom from 6th but Large Blast and Barrage and no penalty for failure.

Probably an underrated discipline but again poor Primaris is less of an issue now. Nothing especially bad here so we might see more of it.

Telepathy
Psychic Shriek - now 18" range.
Dominate - same.
Mental Fortitude - same.
Puppet Master - gone and probably missed by many.
Terrify (moved from 4 to 3) - now -1Ld but don't lose Fearless anymore.
Shrouding (new) - 6" Shrouded bubble
Invisibility - now can only be hit on 6s in both shooting and combat. Incredibly good!
Hallucination - 1-2 same, 3-4 just -1 to WS, BS, I and A. 5-6 character hit by rest of unit instead of whole unit attacks each other. Basically a shadow of its former glory.

Towards the end of 6th people started to see the attraction of Telepathy over Divination but I suspect they'll head straight back as some of the things that made this discipline good simply aren't there now. Basically if you don't get Invisibility don't bother but Psy Shriek is still nice (especially with range boost) and Terrify could be useful in the right situation.

Sanctic Daemonology
Banishment - reduces Daemon invulnerable save by -1.
Gate of Infinity - as before but no range limit.
Hammerhand - +2 strength not +1 like in GK book.
Sanctuary - +1 to invulnerable save and 12" Dangerous Terrain bubble.
Purge Soul - focussed basically poor man's Mind War.
Cleansing Flame - WC2 version of Sunburst basically but S5 AP4 instead.
Vortex - WC3 but worth it for a 12" range Destroyer blast that persists until you roll a double on scatter.

Pretty solid set of powers here but clearly aimed at Grey Knights. I can see this replacing their codex powers ultimately. Definitely best choice for GK but risky for other armies. Vortex is potentially excellent if you get that lucky 6 and in a GK army shouldn't be too hard to cast.

Malefic Daemonology
Summoning, Sacrifice, Incursion and Possession - all allow you to conjure up some Daemons of various flavours. Of course you've got to roll the right powers but in a Daemons army you can be adding a huge number of points worth of new units to your army every turn. Those units can in turn create more and, well, you get the picture.
Cursed Earth - +1 to invulnerable and no Deep Strike scatter in 12".
Dark Flame - torrent flamer
Infernal Gaze - Beam but only AP4 so no great shakes.

Yep, that's what Daemons needed. A way to get a re-rollable 2++ without using Divination. Brilliant. All of the Conjuration powers are frankly stupid. I actually think they'd be acceptable in a CSM army (and would make sense) but in a Daemons army they become daft quickly.

Conclusion

Some minor changes to the existing powers for the most part but a few beloved powers are lost or else moved around. Of course, the big problem is going to be Daemonology. Sanctic isn't going to ruin the game particularly but Malefic almost certainly is. 

I've read various people's opinions over the interwebs and they range from "it's ridiculous" to "no-one will buy that many models" and even "let Daemons have something good for a change". Frankly, it seems Daemons have been the OP army of choice a lot recently. We had the Screamer/Flamer nonsense, the flying circus and screamerstar and now this. If I was a long term Daemons player I'd actually be pissed off that there'll be a lot of bandwagoners. 

GW have done so much right with 7th edition but this, combined with the subject of tomorrow's post (army selection) I think they've gotten very wrong. There's little or no risk to a Daemon army of producing tons of units each turn with most armies unable to do anything to counter it. Not only that but a Tzeentch themed list will get worse every turn! GW clearly want to flog a lot of Daemons. Of course, you aren't going to meet the maxed out lists much but it'd be miserable the odd time you do. No worse than some of the lists around at the end of 6th I suppose but GW had done some excellent work in preventing some of the dirty combos only to create the mother of all of them.

Don't get me wrong I love the idea of it in some ways but competitively it's nonsense. Frankly most TOs will ban it. It's too early to make any kind of call for BW8 yet though. GW clearly want us to pick and choose what we want from the rulebook (they say it nearly every other page) but I wish they'd put some kind of limit on things. As you'll see in tomorrow's post they don't seem to keen on that idea.