New FAQs

[Pavement Artist]

I'm fairly certain Abaddon is AP 2. His weapon is the undivided daemon weapon except his strength is doubled instead of getting +1

 

Tzeentch ones are still AP2, They just follow the undivided ones in close combat.

[Brother Ambroz]

Meh, a few small improvements but no fundamental changes. Daemonweapons are still quite bad ( although ap2 certainly is an improvement ) and flying princes suffer just like other flying mcs in comparision to flyers.

 

FMCs are alot better than "jump" MCs. How many other weapons strike at initiative and are still AP2?

[Sception]

Yeah, these are some pretty significant changes, both to us specifically (at init AP2 option on lords, FMC on princes) and to the game in general (major changes to LOS, removal of character units).

[Iron Sage]

I have a daemon prince with wings which is converted and painted in thousand sons colours. Will be interesting to test it with the new FAQed rules as I have never played with flyers before :lol:

[zyl-]

I've been using the princes as fmc all along. Seemed pretty intuitive to me that a monsterous creature that flys is a flying monsterous creature O.o

[JamesI]

I've been using the princes as fmc all along. Seemed pretty intuitive to me that a monsterous creature that flys is a flying monsterous creature O.o

The previous FAQ said it was jump not flying.

[Ethrion]

Typhus' man reaper isnt poisoned anymore? I hope I am reading it wrong but Plaguebringer's poisoned attack is just 4+ to wound. So if it attacks models that is toughness 3 or lower is it still 4+ to wound or can it still get 3+ to wound?

Manreaper, as with any poisoned weapon, will always roll at lease 4+ to wound regardless of the target's toughness. However, if Typhus would naturally roll better than a 4+, say against guardsmen, then his wounds get re-rolls.

[Khestra the Unbeheld]

More than a bit annoyed they didn't take out the worst aspect of the Daemon Weapons. There's no point in taking a weapon that you can't trust. 3.5 handled it much better with the roll after combat to see if you took a Wound from it. Shutting down a Lord completely before he ever gets to swing is nonsensical, and I had hoped someone in the design studio would have recognized that we're the only faction in the game whose CC weapons potentially screw them over. It displeases me that such imbecility has been allowed to perpetuate into a second edition. :confused:

 

FMC Princes, however, I think are a step in the right direction, especially given Daemon Allies where you can potentially have several of these things cruising over the board wrecking shop. Makes a Chaoszilla list a bit more frightening to have to face down.

[Hellrender]

this is still the old codex though, not the 6th edition chaos dex. i dont think they would change the whole mechanic of an item trough a FAQ. And even though the daemon weapon can screw you hard, it does has a potential of giving 6 extra attacks, on +1 strenght, that destroy terminator armour, and strike oftenly BEFORE those pesky terminators. It is a very powerful weapon, imagine the cost of it, without that 1/6th chance of a drawback.

[*Furyou Miko]

Why do Challenges need fixing? What's broken there?

[totgeboren]

Why do Challenges need fixing? What's broken there?

 

Lets say I take my 30-man blob squad with a Commissar. And then I assault them with Khârn. The blob squad can challenge Khârn every round until they run out of sergeants and the commissar, so that's 4 combat phases before Khârn can start killing guardsmen, and seeing as how the assault often comes in turn three, that could mean he can't start killing dudes until turn 5. Would Khârn really care if a sgt throws down his glove? 'Blood for the Blood God' is suddenly not all that important, you have to give people a fair fight first and foremost.

 

Or even worse, a Chaos lord and his homies are assaulted by a Chapter Master and his squad. The only character on the chaos side is the lord, whilst the SM side has a CM and a sgt. He then of course issues a challenge with the sgt, meaning the Lord can choose between killing the sgt, or not fighting at all, whilst the CM can butcher the rest of the CSM as he pleases. There should be some rule that both sides can influence which models fight in the challenge, so that cheap throwaway characters can't be used to neutralize more powerful ones so easily. It becomes a game of having more characters than the enemy. If you have a Lord, you really must have a 1W character to babysit your Lord so he doesn't get locking in pointless challenges that results in you loosing all your grunts.

[Lepaca]

Why do Challenges need fixing? What's broken there?

 

Lets say I take my 30-man blob squad with a Commissar. And then I assault them with Khârn. The blob squad can challenge Khârn every round until they run out of sergeants and the commissar, so that's 4 combat phases before Khârn can start killing guardsmen, and seeing as how the assault often comes in turn three, that could mean he can't start killing dudes until turn 5. Would Khârn really care if a sgt throws down his glove? 'Blood for the Blood God' is suddenly not all that important, you have to give people a fair fight first and foremost.

 

Or even worse, a Chaos lord and his homies are assaulted by a Chapter Master and his squad. The only character on the chaos side is the lord, whilst the SM side has a CM and a sgt. He then of course issues a challenge with the sgt, meaning the Lord can choose between killing the sgt, or not fighting at all, whilst the CM can butcher the rest of the CSM as he pleases. There should be some rule that both sides can influence which models fight in the challenge, so that cheap throwaway characters can't be used to neutralize more powerful ones so easily. It becomes a game of having more characters than the enemy. If you have a Lord, you really must have a 1W character to babysit your Lord so he doesn't get locking in pointless challenges that results in you loosing all your grunts.

 

Certainly annoying but just at some characters of your own to the unit and the problem disappears.

[RapatoR]

Why do Challenges need fixing? What's broken there?

 

Lets say I take my 30-man blob squad with a Commissar. And then I assault them with Khârn. The blob squad can challenge Khârn every round until they run out of sergeants and the commissar, so that's 4 combat phases before Khârn can start killing guardsmen, and seeing as how the assault often comes in turn three, that could mean he can't start killing dudes until turn 5. Would Khârn really care if a sgt throws down his glove? 'Blood for the Blood God' is suddenly not all that important, you have to give people a fair fight first and foremost.

 

Or even worse, a Chaos lord and his homies are assaulted by a Chapter Master and his squad. The only character on the chaos side is the lord, whilst the SM side has a CM and a sgt. He then of course issues a challenge with the sgt, meaning the Lord can choose between killing the sgt, or not fighting at all, whilst the CM can butcher the rest of the CSM as he pleases. There should be some rule that both sides can influence which models fight in the challenge, so that cheap throwaway characters can't be used to neutralize more powerful ones so easily. It becomes a game of having more characters than the enemy. If you have a Lord, you really must have a 1W character to babysit your Lord so he doesn't get locking in pointless challenges that results in you loosing all your grunts.

I disagree, there is plethora of ways to kill cheap throwaway characters before they can issue challenge.

Besides it still better than DP/char charging a unit only to have hidden/unkillable PF in B2B that will squish him after he swings, like in 5th.

[Excessus]

totgeboren, the problem is that you aren't playing 6th ed with that thinking. If you bring a lord you need a champ next to him for those throwaway challenges, just as your opponents won't be bringing lonely lords in their squads...

 

Since only one challenge can be issued at a time, and your champ most likely will decimate the sergeants and commissar one by one, your lord have several nice rounds to go to town on the rest of the blob. All you really need is a throwaway character for yourself!

[Sception]

The challenge rules are supposed to create dramatic personal duels. They don't do that. Instead they create immersion breaking gamist moments when Trygons and Hive Tyrants and daemon princes are held up by turn after turn of seargents, and it makes power fists pointless because they'll never get to strike, and so on. And there's no punishment for losing a challenge, no matter how badly you lose it by - at least in fantasy you still count overkill wounds for combat res.

 

Anyway, it remains a pretty bad mechanic in fantasy, and the stripped down version of it they stuck in 6th ed 40k is even worse. Would have been better if there was a significant bonus for winning challenges, and no penalty for refusing them, so that challenges would only happen between roughly equivalent characters, giving us the exciting duels they're supposed to portray.

[RapatoR]

I don't know why everyone is whining about challenges being nerf to brutal CC units. If some MC charges me I would try to avoid challenge as he might kill only one char but it would remain locked in combat alas I couldn't shoot it in my next turn.

 

Malisteen I would like to ask you, what is better: charging large blob of orks/IG killing some regular dudes that can't hurt you like in 5th while dudes that can hurt will eventually kill your MC or charging, or killing dude that matters and then kill others that cannot hurt you?

[totgeboren]

totgeboren, the problem is that you aren't playing 6th ed with that thinking. If you bring a lord you need a champ next to him for those throwaway challenges, just as your opponents won't be bringing lonely lords in their squads...

 

Since only one challenge can be issued at a time, and your champ most likely will decimate the sergeants and commissar one by one, your lord have several nice rounds to go to town on the rest of the blob. All you really need is a throwaway character for yourself!

 

Not everyone has access to throwaway characters. I mean, we as Chaos players have it good, having Terminators with as many Characters as we like.

 

But it just feels silly when say my Lord and his squad, with one champ, get assaulted by some Tyranid Warriors and a Prime, and the prime has bone swords. He wants to kill me as much as possible, but as we are playing 6ed, I'll just issue a challenge with my Champ. His Prime will kill my Champ, but my Lord and the rest of the squad will kill his warriors. Being able to so easily shut down powerful enemy characters is immersion breaking.

 

Personally I think directed attacks in combination with LoS creates all the cinematics I could want, where characters can kill each other early or not, but where having lots of troops can overwhelm even the most heroic of heroes. But most often, the last two standing would be the hero and the villain, fighting to the death. How could that not be more cinematic than challenges, where the mighty hero has to fight some redshirt, then he has to flee because he was busy fighting a nobody whilst the arch-villan butchered his squad. Really heroic...

[Sception]

Malisteen I would like to ask you, what is better: charging large blob of orks/IG killing some regular dudes that can't hurt you like in 5th while dudes that can hurt will eventually kill your MC or charging, or killing dude that matters and then kill others that cannot hurt you?

 

This sentence... I'm having difficulty parsing it. Am I the orks in this situation? The MC?

 

Here's the deal. If you're asking about a mob of little guys charging one monster character, and the little guys have only one model that can even hope to hurt the monster, then no, I don't like the challenge rules making it so that one guy is completely worthless against the monster character.

 

OTOH, if you have a monster character charging into a mob of little guys with multiple little characters, I don't like that said squad can hold the monster up functionally indefinitely with basically no losses. A squad of guardsmen with a sprinkling of heroes shouldn't be less afraid of a hive tyrant than a squad of tac marines.

 

Also, some factions don't get babysitters for their characters. Tyranids in particular come to mind. Without babysitters, the challenge rules alone can make their hive tyrants and trygon primes and broodlords all but worthless in close combat, and how unfluffy is that?

 

And how stupid is it that characters like chaos lords need babysitters in the first place?

 

And mostly: it's just not especially fun. Just in practice, the challenge rules feel very gamey, not narrative. Whenever they're used, it feels like an immersion breaking exploit rather than building the cinematic feel they were supposedly going for. They're mostly just annoying.

[Excessus]

Why even assault them when you can have a winged guy blasting away with his 12 twinlinked shots of whatever and kill them at range? (when speaking of nids, that is)

 

Personally I don't see them as babysitters. The lord most likely won't accept the challenge of a lowly IG sergeant anyway if he had a choice, he's definitely not worthy of his attention...but that upcoming champion that climbs the ladders to greatness, he can deal with the puny threat instead...

 

 

Forging a narrative depends on how great your imagination is. The 40k world is not black and white, it's the colour at Nahum Gardner's farm outside Arkham... (the only guy who probably got my reference is myself though...)

[totgeboren]

Colours out of spaaaaaace! :o

[Odsox]

I've been using the princes as fmc all along. Seemed pretty intuitive to me that a monsterous creature that flys is a flying monsterous creature O.o

 

QFT.

 

Plus, y'know, there's a picture of a Daemon Prince right next to that ruleset. In the little rule book, at least.

 

Od.

[RapatoR]

Malisteen I would like to ask you, what is better: charging large blob of orks/IG killing some regular dudes that can't hurt you like in 5th while dudes that can hurt will eventually kill your MC or charging, or killing dude that matters and then kill others that cannot hurt you?

 

This sentence... I'm having difficulty parsing it. Am I the orks in this situation? The MC?

 

Sorry for my english.

 

Here's the deal. If you're asking about a mob of little guys charging one monster character, and the little guys have only one model that can even hope to hurt the monster, then no, I don't like the challenge rules making it so that one guy is completely worthless against the monster character.

Well I like it other way around. I hate(d) hidden fists that could hurt your IC/MC, but were immune to them. AFAIK this was main reason why MCs/ICs were unpopular during 5th.

 

OTOH, if you have a monster character charging into a mob of little guys with multiple little characters, I don't like that said squad can hold the monster up functionally indefinitely with basically no losses. A squad of guardsmen with a sprinkling of heroes shouldn't be less afraid of a hive tyrant than a squad of tac marines.

I never played against IG, but as I skimmed through internet, there is rarely more than one char in typical IG squad. Anyway point still stands: I think it is better to kill power weapons that provide morale bonuses, than have to chew through ordinary IG while PW tear your MC. In 6th you risk tarpiting when charging big blob, in 5th it meant your MC is dead. Also even if -1 modifier after loosing challenge might seem silly, for a IG it should be pretty harsh morale penalty.

 

Also, some factions don't get babysitters for their characters. Tyranids in particular come to mind. Without babysitters, the challenge rules alone can make their hive tyrants and trygon primes and broodlords all but worthless in close combat, and how unfluffy is that?

Well if nid player charges and opponent issues challenge it is only profitable to nid player. Other guys around HT/TP/BL are fearless so unit will not break and stays locked in combat ad thus you are not being shot in opponents turn.

 

And how stupid is it that characters like chaos lords need babysitters in the first place?

Well in 5th scenario looked like this: I charged someone, opponent piled-in, got his PF b2b with your lord, both sides swing, two-three dudes from opponents squad survive, PF among them. Result: Despite massacring enemy squad, my lord was dead.

 

And mostly: it's just not especially fun. Just in practice, the challenge rules feel very gamey, not narrative. Whenever they're used, it feels like an immersion breaking exploit rather than building the cinematic feel they were supposedly going for. They're mostly just annoying.

I dunno, I had great time with it, especially when some funny dice rolls occur. There is always chance for weaker char to win again the odds and create story to tell. I've seen PF berzerker rip Bloodthirsters head off, two TDA lord smacking termie champ with Bloodfeeder while champ survived for almost 4 turns and so on. All that with less than 10 games played.

[Odsox]

And mostly: it's just not especially fun. Just in practice, the challenge rules feel very gamey, not narrative. Whenever they're used, it feels like an immersion breaking exploit rather than building the cinematic feel they were supposedly going for. They're mostly just annoying.

 

I'm actually inclined to agree. My last game (Khorne Warband vs. Space Dogs) was definitely fun, but I did get a bit tired of having to remind my opponent that I didn't have anyone for him to challenge because he'd already killed them all.

 

I just don't think the declined challenge should result in not being able to attack. I never used to mind that when playing as Skaven, I embraced the cowardice and loved running away. But this is 40K, dammit. If my 10,000 year-old, daemon-taming, blood-drinking, war-born veteran doesn't feel like accepting the challenge of some squalling pup, why should he be sent to the ******** naughty corner? Just cuff the pup round the ear for his insolence and butcher his wretched packmates.

 

...not that I'm bitter about it or anything.

 

Od.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Perhaps it could be house-ruled that a Character has a chance to ignore challenges, but the first model he kills with his attacks has to be the challenger? He still ignores the challenge, but he's got to cut down the uppity whelp before he gets a chance to attack the rest of the squad.

 

Something like "the challenged model may brush off a challenge. To do so, the challenged model makes a roll to hit the challenger. If he succeeds, the challenge plays out as normal, but any excess wounds are carried over to the rest of the squad like a normal combat. If he fails the roll, follow the rules for ignoring a challenge as normal, but in addition the challenger gets one automatic hit against the challenged model, as it wasn't expecting such a ferocious attack from such an insignificant foe".

 

That way the challenged model can ignore weaker models, but puts him in danger if he simply ignores the risk they can still pose, more so if you try to brush off a combat HQ unit. Maybe make it a rule exclusive to Chaos Marines/Daemons, as we aren't exactly the most honour-bound of individuals. The enemy sergeant stands tall, brandishing his chainsword, raving about how we're an affront to the Emperor, and that he's going to purge us all. The Chaos Lord simply ignores his rant, and shoves his daemon-blade through the sergeants gut, before wrenching it out and disembowling the rest of the squad.

[Sception]

Well in 5th scenario looked like this: I charged someone, opponent piled-in, got his PF b2b with your lord, both sides swing, two-three dudes from opponents squad survive, PF among them. Result: Despite massacring enemy squad, my lord was dead.

 

Look, I didn't like that either. I like that characters can only be picked out in challenges, what I don't like is how those characters don't get much of a choice on whether to join a challenge in the first place.

 

As for monstrous creatures, they were plenty popular in 5th ed. They were the go-to HQs for chaos marines, popular choices for daemons, and the dominant army type for Tyranids, at least until their 5e codex was released, rendering their monstrous creatures significantly less points-efficient. What caused nid monstrous creatures to become less popular wasn't hidden fists - after all, there were hidden fists in 4th ed, too. It was just that in their 5th ed codex the older monstrous creatures got much less good.