8th Edition & BA

[Code 187]

Am I missing something or could this have been solved with a limit of 1IC attached to any squad (and therefore only allowing one set or buffs)? Going to miss my old faithful habit of having Dante or a captain going in the midst of the Honour Guard squad (though presumably they can still de facto be part of it by staying next to the squad)

[tkni]

So, er, here's hoping librarian dreadnoughts remain characters...

[Slothysaur]

The no joining units was the one thing I was worried about (that and chaos rolls from AoS) but the way they described it kind of makes it sound not too terrible. I'm still a little worried that all my Gathering Storm characters are going to be much harder to use in a "mono BA" list if Celestine and friends won't be able to buff or tank for units (though I full well expect them to be more balanced now). All in all I'm not as negative about this update as I thought I would have been, but it for sure is not what I've been most excited for.

One thing that Gunzhard said did spark a little worry though, the whole thing of "Independent Characters" and how they will work with transports. I really hope I don't need a separate Stormraven for Karl if he can't fly in with the rest of "his" Terminator squad. Granted this is a 7th Edition mindset and I feel like GW does have it worked out already, just have to wait and see.

[vahouth]

According to this article https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/09/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum/

Sniper rifles will allow us to pick out enemy characters. 

Also Leman Russ is toughness 8, 3+ save and has 12 wounds.

[NTaW]

Fingers crossed on Land Raiders being T10 W15 Sv2+

 

....but definitely not holding my breath

Edited May 9, 2017 by NTaW

[Xenith]

By "Leman Russ" do you actually mean Leman Russ, or a Leman Russ. Important distinction!

[Panda_Saurus_Rex]

By "Leman Russ" do you actually mean Leman Russ, or a Leman Russ. Important distinction!

 

 

Its the Guard article, so it means the tank.

[vahouth]

Fingers crossed on Land Raiders being T10 W15 Sv2+

 

....but definitely not holding my breath

In the Unit Profiles article they mention:

 

 don’t be surprised if you see larger vehicles like Land Raiders and Imperial Knights with dozens of wounds.

 

Dozens of wounds?

Could it be that the Land Raider will have at least 24?

[Jolemai]

It was said a while back that if there's a model then there will be rules for it in the next edition. This doesn't bode well for our Shield of Baal units as they lack models.

 

(And no, Karlaen technically doesn't have one as it's sold as a TDA Captain.

[Panzer]

I have to admit, so far, I'm seeing 3 things that I very much do not like.

 

1. Universal Split Fire.   Deciding how your squads would be outfitted and then how you would pursue your offensive strategy is one of the things I love about this game.  Everyone having split fire just puts it into easy mode and takes some of that thinking/strategizing away.

 

2. Anything wounds anything.  Again, I liked the fact that you had to take a well-rounded list to deal with all types of threats.  One of the reasons I stopped playing Necrons was how powerful they were, and how easy it was to just Gauss everything down.  Now, effectively, all armies have Gauss Technology.  Is there any reason not to go with volume fire now? Throw enough dice out and you're bound to end up with some 6's. 

 

3. Battle Shock.  Not loving this concept so far.  Will ultimately reserve judgment, but I'm not hopeful about it.

1. I disagree there. I don't think it will take any strategy out of the list building. In fact I believe it'll add some since it makes a lot more weapon options in tactical squads viable and you can actually give squads multiple different weapons to be able to take care of everything at least a little bit or still go all out and dedicate them to one task. It only adds options and more options means more thinking has to go into list building and target priority during the game.

2. Just because anything can wound anything it doesn't mean it can actually deal with anything. You'd need almost 500 Bolter shots to destroy a Morkanaut. I welcome anyone who thinks he can win any games against me with just basic infantry.

 

3. It's hard to get used to, I admit. However I do think it will make the game more fluent without taking away much so ultimately I'm fine with it.

 

Yeah, but what difference does it make if every army's leaders provide "buff bubbles".   Don't get me wrong, I love Sang Priests and hope we get a FnP and/or WS buff bubble.  But since characters won't be joining units, I expect almost all of them will provide some kind of aura effect.

 

It's another thing I don't like, and I don't understand their thinking.

According to article, characters joining units is/was bad because: deathstar units and unthematic pairings? (the example given was Ravenwing / Thunderwolf)

 

How does this change that?  If characters now give aura buffs we run the risk of not just 1 but MULTIPLE deathstar units since multiple units can claim multiple buffs from multiple characters.  Nor does it solve the problem of unthematic pairings since (absent other information), we're still going to see Ravenwing/Thunderwolf combos...assuming that's the netlist cookie of the month)

 

I just don't get GW. Instead of focusing on the problem and solving it (in this case, a lack of playtesting and forecasting on how a powerful character can buff units, and thus writing rules/point-cost correctly, or a thorough examination of how allies work), instead they break some other rule which in and of itself wasn't the problem. 

Aura abilities will be combined with keywords. That way GW has a LOT more control over what unit can get what effect combinations.

[Dont-Be-Haten]

According to this article https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/09/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum/

Sniper rifles will allow us to pick out enemy characters.

Also Leman Russ is toughness 8, 3+ save and has 12 wounds.

By pure speculation; drop pod armies will be king. You take 10 man devastator squads, drop pod in, combat squad if you still can. Shoot away the bubble wrap to make the HQ the closest model, then bring the rain with >1+ wounds weapon profiles. You break the opponent in the alpha strike.

 

You could also disembark in such away that you could split fire bolters into the bubble while simultaneously shooting your heavy weapons into the HQ because you positioned in such a way that the big guns are closer to the HQ than the bubble.

 

I believe one of two things will happen. HQ's will be able to play ride-a-long in transports but will be treated as seperate units with disembarking or, they will be given their own personal transport tank. Again speculation. But we will definitely see the double-bubble tactics in full spectrum to attempt to mitigate HQ's being sniped. Sniper rifles just became extremely powerful imho because being able to kill <10 wound Has will theoretically be the early game tactic to win before your opponent can do anything.

Edited May 9, 2017 by Dont-Be-Haten

[Panzer]

 

According to this article https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/09/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum/

Sniper rifles will allow us to pick out enemy characters.

Also Leman Russ is toughness 8, 3+ save and has 12 wounds.

By pure speculation; drop pod armies will be king. You take 10 man devastator squads, drop pod in, combat squad if you still can. Shoot away the bubble wrap to make the HE the closest model, then bring the rain with >1+ wounds weapon profiles. You break the opponent in the alpha strike.

 

Coincidentally, I believe one of two things will happen. HQ's will be able to play ride-a-long in transports but will be treated as seperate units with disembarking or, they will be given their own personal transport tank. Again speculation. But we will definitely see the double-bubble tactics in full spectrum to attempt to mitigate HQ's being sniped. Sniper rifles just became extremely powerful imho because being able to kill <10 wound Has will theoretically be the early game tactic to win before your opponent can do anything.

 

By pure speculation: bubble wrap won't be that easy to shoot away and those Devastator squads will get charged next turn making them pretty much useless for the rest of the game. :D

 

Really tho, that's a lot of points just to kill a HQ and it probably won't help much against the really mean ones like Guilliman etc. And that's only if they aren't in a transporter during deployment in the first place anyway.

Plus since they say they playtested quite a bit I doubt they would overlook something THAT obvious if it were any thread to the gamebalance.

 

Sniper Rifles will definitely become a very interesting choice against armies with less durable buff HQs tho!

[Xenith]

95% sure they would have play tested drop pod armies

[durdle-durdle]

If sniper rifles gain the ability to target characters and squad leaders on (not just a 6), I'll have to pick up some scout snipers. That sounds great.

[vahouth]

Unfortunately GW history is riddled with rules abuse so I'd be lying if I said that I'm not afraid of the Eldar sniper cheese that is almost guaranteed to come.

Something tells me that even Tau markerlights will be able to paint a huge bullseye on our characters for their whole squads to shoot.

Edited May 9, 2017 by vahouth

[Indefragable]

I think Independent Characters that are actually Independent will be a boon. Being able to influence multiple units at a time and such. Also makes a bit more sense with "challenges" if they exist in 8th.

 

As others have pointed out the keywords thing will be huge. Space Marine > Blood Angel > Death Company, and is forth.

 

I actually kinda like the Battleshock thing so far. I thought it was weird until someone mentioned the idea being that a unit takes 3 wounds, and then 2 dudes break off to carry their wounded buddies to the medevac point off the table. That actually makes sense. For non-Astartes armies you can picture people throwing down their weapons and getting the warp out of dodge when they've seen half their unit vaporized.

 

I think it adds far more depth to combat as well since 7th was previously about making melee units just powerful enough to kill a unit in 2 Turns (wipe them on your opponent's Turn), now you have to decide between going for mega blows, getting stuck in, trying to get your enemy to break off, etc... let's see what 8th brings

[Dont-Be-Haten]

 

 

 

According to this article https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/09/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-astra-militarum/

Sniper rifles will allow us to pick out enemy characters.

Also Leman Russ is toughness 8, 3+ save and has 12 wounds.

By pure speculation; drop pod armies will be king. You take 10 man devastator squads, drop pod in, combat squad if you still can. Shoot away the bubble wrap to make the HE the closest model, then bring the rain with >1+ wounds weapon profiles. You break the opponent in the alpha strike.

 

Coincidentally, I believe one of two things will happen. HQ's will be able to play ride-a-long in transports but will be treated as seperate units with disembarking or, they will be given their own personal transport tank. Again speculation. But we will definitely see the double-bubble tactics in full spectrum to attempt to mitigate HQ's being sniped. Sniper rifles just became extremely powerful imho because being able to kill <10 wound Has will theoretically be the early game tactic to win before your opponent can do anything.

By pure speculation: bubble wrap won't be that easy to shoot away and those Devastator squads will get charged next turn making them pretty much useless for the rest of the game. :D

 

Really tho, that's a lot of points just to kill a HQ and it probably won't help much against the really mean ones like Guilliman etc. And that's only if they aren't in a transporter during deployment in the first place anyway.

Plus since they say they playtested quite a bit I doubt they would overlook something THAT obvious if it were any thread to the gamebalance.

 

Sniper Rifles will definitely become a very interesting choice against armies with less durable buff HQs tho!

I don't know man. I'd be will to throw a unit away if it netted taking out bubble wide buffs. And that one HQ may cost less but the tactical advantage of taking that unit out far exceeds the utility of an expensive suicide unit. And we don't fully know how command points could interact with deep strike alpha assault etc.

[Panzer]

 

Something tells me that even Tau markerlights will be able to paint a huge bullseye on our characters for their whole squads to shoot.

I actually hope Tau will be able to do something like that with their Markerlights. For appropriate cost of course. Being able to let a unit snipe characters for just 1 Markerlight would be ridiculous.

But they kinda need something seeing as shooting generally gets a lot weaker in 7th (less likely to ignore armor, high Strength often only wounds on 3+ instead of 2+), their big suits will most likely get the degrading treatment and a lot of the special gimmicks they have access to are now part of the core rules for everyone.

However it's pretty hard to make proper assumptions without knowing all of the core and faction rules.

[Morticon]

Ive gone from mild curiosity with this edition to incredible excitement. 

I just cannot wait.  

It may be wishlisting, but I'm convinced we're going to get a host of SM stuff too.  Grav, possibly - but the budgie and the hawk.....would make perfect sense. Along with the other bits and bobs. 

[SM1981]

The only part that confuses me is... transports. Does that mean we'll need a separate transport to get Characters into battle or are they just walking slowly across the table?

They aleady said somewhere that multiple unit's can board the same transport as long as:

1) The vehicle has the capacity to hold that many models.

2) The models boarding it are of the same faction as the vehicle itself.

 

So if (and I'm pulling numbers out the air here) a rhino can take 10 models, you could drop a 5 man assault squad, a priest, a libby, and 3 whatever's into that tank to give them the buffs when they disembark, even though the models are not technically one unit.

Edited May 10, 2017 by SM1981

[Charlo]

Ive gone from mild curiosity with this edition to incredible excitement. 

 

I just cannot wait.  

 

It may be wishlisting, but I'm convinced we're going to get a host of SM stuff too.  Grav, possibly - but the budgie and the hawk.....would make perfect sense. Along with the other bits and bobs. 

 

If we get Cataphractii there will be a Lightning Claw squad on my painting table rather sharpish.

[RedemptionNL]

One of my biggest hopes for the new edition is that we get 'rolled together' with the regular SM (and just get a BA Chapter Tactics + keep our own BA specific characters units like how it already is for UM characters or BT Crusader Squads) and we finally get official access to stuff like Cataphractii Terminators, Contemptor Dreads, Landspeeder Storms or Stormtalons.

[Xenith]

 

Ive gone from mild curiosity with this edition to incredible excitement. 

 

I just cannot wait.  

 

It may be wishlisting, but I'm convinced we're going to get a host of SM stuff too.  Grav, possibly - but the budgie and the hawk.....would make perfect sense. Along with the other bits and bobs. 

 

If we get Cataphractii there will be a Lightning Claw squad on my painting table rather sharpish.

 

 

It's when they leave the table that matters :P

 

Claw Tartaros is slightly better, chain fist cataphracts all the way!

[Panzer]

Honestly with the keyword system we don't need to get rolled together with C:SM chapter. Those units probably just get the Imperial and the Space Marine keyword and we'd be able to use them as well even if they don't get the Blood Angels keyword.

I'd actually like the opposite more even. Let us become even more different compared to codex compliant chapters. I want to be a special snowflake like the Space Wolves! :D

[Xenith]

Honestly with the keyword system we don't need to get rolled together with C:SM chapter. Those units probably just get the Imperial and the Space Marine keyword and we'd be able to use them as well even if they don't get the Blood Angels keyword.

I'd actually like the opposite more even. Let us become even more different compared to codex compliant chapters. I want to be a special snowflake like the Space Wolves!

 

From what I see, Wolves will be rolled also. I mean, their ...claw units are just assault marines+ with or without packs, the long fangs are just devs+. They need a page saying devastators, assault marines or unit whatever with the 'SW' keyword get bonus x y and z, then a page for each datasheet of unique units, and have them all keyworded.

 

That said, SW have been space marine +++ over 9000 for over 20 years. I dont know how much things will change.

Edited May 10, 2017 by Xenith