Post-release roundtable: what worked? what didnt

[Hear da Lamentation]

 

 

+1 to hit does not give you immunity from gets hot.

If you roll a 1, its a 1 and gets hot applies.  It doesn't become 2. Its the dice roll result of the natural 1 that counts.

You MAY get to re-roll that dice, but that's another matter.

The game mechanics of 40k has always worked this way. It hasnt changed.

 

Nope. Thats the way it used to work and the way it frankly should work, but according to the FAQ you check after modifiers are added.

 

TBH, they way they have FAQ'd the rerolls and modifiers simply doesn't work. The order of operations is literally un-resolveable the way they have stated it.

Link to this FAQ please, because I believe Stabby is correct, and you are not.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the posts. For me the above says you roll to hit, if you get a 1 (or choose to reroll a 2) and then get a 1 it gets hot and you die.

That's not an auto pass, that is a 1 in 36 chance if dying.....

 

HDL

[Hear da Lamentation]

Ah! I have misunderstood. So the reroll 1s doesn't give you immunity, but the +1 to hit does?

 

It means firing both combi weapons - bolter and plasma isn't a good idea (with the -1) or does that only apply to the bolter?

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

No the modifier comes after the dice roll and the plasma death comes after the modifier. Order of operations is as follows:

 

1. Roll dice

2. Make any rerolls (if applicable) (base success on unmodified skill or save)

3. Add (or subtract) modifiers

4. Resolve hits and other effects based on result.

 

Ninja'd me with your correct HDL. But gunna leave tge order of operation up because tgeres alot of confusion over this.

Edited June 23, 2017 by jbickb

[Hear da Lamentation]

Yeah sorry about that

[Hear da Lamentation]

This really makes over charging plasma stuff REALLY risky.

It also could be a game changer for fielding Lukas.

 

HDL

[Nrthstar]

I'm really curious, has anyone run Logan sled yet?  I am playing a "fun tourney" this Sunday, and I am down to Logan on sled or teleporting for my final changes.

[Wolf Guard Dan]

I'm really curious, has anyone run Logan sled yet?  I am playing a "fun tourney" this Sunday, and I am down to Logan on sled or teleporting for my final changes.

 

Sir I think you've volunteered yourself to take the plunge. Let us know how it goes. 

[Nrthstar]

 

I'm really curious, has anyone run Logan sled yet?  I am playing a "fun tourney" this Sunday, and I am down to Logan on sled or teleporting for my final changes.

 

Sir I think you've volunteered yourself to take the plunge. Let us know how it goes. 

 

 

So after much debate, and because I know my local meta is brutal, even in this "Fun Tourney" environment, I am going to run Logan teleporting in.  I'll play the sled very soon though.  Between AM, Tau and Eldar that I know I'll be up against, I am already taking a big risk of an almost all Assault army, and I know I will have fun no matter what, but it's more fun to see Logan get in than just blown off the table turn 2.  That and I was 20 points over the limit, and had no where else to pull points from without crippling a unit.

 

Quick rundown:

 

Logan

Arjac

Bjorn

7 WGTDA 2x hammer, asscan/pf, dual claw, (I forget the rest now)

2x Wulfen squads, with 2x hammer, 2x axe, 1x claw

2x BC in Rhinos, kitted

1x GH on foot, holding rear objectives, pretty barebones.  Claws need to charge, GH can defend better

 

 

I strongly believe in Long Fangs, but I think you need 3 squads, instead of the two I've been running to really do enough damage in 1 turn, which is key.  That and when I play LF, even though they can move and shoot, and reroll 1s, they still became a line anchor, as high vantage points are really beneficial to them to see the whole field, and i want to run very mobile list.

[Hear da Lamentation]

I'm interested in how you've loaded out the WG termies. I think they need a lot of SS to survive.

 

I'm interested to see how they do too. I'm still not convinced in their survivability.

 

I assume you plan on teleporting then, Arjac and Logan all together?

 

HDL

[Freman Bloodglaive]

Storm shields benefit terminators when they are hit with AP-2 or better weapons, Cataphractii AP-3 or better, and regular invulnerables AP-4 or better. At AP 0, or AP-1 they're not gaining anything from the invulnerable save. Off the top of my head, it's mainly melta and chainfists that give AP-4, so most weapons of concern will be AP-2 and -3. What is the likelihood of being hit with that sort of weaponry in the average game? Are people going to spam plasma this edition? If so, unless they're going high power, terminators are wounded on 3+ and have two wounds to get through.

 

Previous edition the chance of taking a wound (basic terminator) was 5/6 x 4/6 = 20/36. Now (low power) it's 4/6 x 4/6 = 16/36, then they have to do it again.

 

On the old storm shield models it was 5/6 x 2/6 = 10/36. Now it's 4/6 x 2/6 = 8/36, again requiring a second shot.

 

Certainly they could fire full power, which returns to the original probability, and they probably will, but that carries with it the risk of deleting their own units.

 

Plasma spam is, admittedly, probably going to be a thing in 8th. They look like very good all purpose weapons now.

[Hellrender]

It is quite easy to overcharge and spam plasma. Most basic heroes either give rerolls of 1 to hit, or plus 1 tp hit. This means plasma wounds on 2+ and of you fail the save it instagibs a terminator.

 

I had my first game yesterday. Ca 750 points. Purely for fun against a completely new opponnent that was chaos. She won in objectives.

 

My take ways:

 

Intercessors are very meh. Didnt do much other than soak damage for a cheap 100 points. But because they are only 5 models they lost the objective easily even though they were full strengt. Better to take 5 wolf scouts or grey hunters

 

My grey hunters i dont know about. They got focussed by 1 round of shooting from the chaos terminators (2 combi plas, 1 combi bolter and 1 reaper) not in rapidbfire, but still killed 4.

 

However their damage output was decent. The plasma did a lot of work with bjorn nearby (supercharge everything). The wolf claw and power sword were okay, but missed 1 of 2 attacks each time.. So overall didnt have as much impact as simply more plasma.

 

Relic contemptor with kheres, chainfist and graviton blaster is awesome. I mean awesome. The kheres was fun to just dripple wounds eith from T7 or lower, the graviton was also fun.. But mainly becauae of the d3 damage if the target has a 3+ save.

 

The chainfist though. Wow. Amazing. When it reached combat with its 4 attacks i wasnt to impressed. But then it swung. 2+ to hit. 2+ to wound (against T7). No armour save allowed (-4 ap). 4 damage each.

 

Hit all. Wound all. 16 damage!! Rhino was gone in 1 turn. So was the maulerfiend the turn after.

 

The relic also has a 2+ save and T7 which means it is pretty much immuune to small arms.

 

Last is bjorn.

 

He is a beast. Soaks damage like a sponge with its 5++ fnp like save. True claw is amazing. His aura is very nice too if nearby lots of plasma. And his assault cannon is just njce to roll 6 dice, but overall not that effective.

[Hear da Lamentation]

Storm shields benefit terminators when they are hit with AP-2 or better weapons, Cataphractii AP-3 or better, and regular invulnerables AP-4 or better. At AP 0, or AP-1 they're not gaining anything from the invulnerable save. Off the top of my head, it's mainly melta and chainfists that give AP-4, so most weapons of concern will be AP-2 and -3. What is the likelihood of being hit with that sort of weaponry in the average game? Are people going to spam plasma this edition? If so, unless they're going high power, terminators are wounded on 3+ and have two wounds to get through.

 

Previous edition the chance of taking a wound (basic terminator) was 5/6 x 4/6 = 20/36. Now (low power) it's 4/6 x 4/6 = 16/36, then they have to do it again.

 

On the old storm shield models it was 5/6 x 2/6 = 10/36. Now it's 4/6 x 2/6 = 8/36, again requiring a second shot.

 

Certainly they could fire full power, which returns to the original probability, and they probably will, but that carries with it the risk of deleting their own units.

 

Plasma spam is, admittedly, probably going to be a thing in 8th. They look like very good all purpose weapons now.

It's not just plasma. Take a scan through space marine equipment for anything -2save or more. Then look at how much damage they do. And that's just marines.

 

There is a shed load of stuff out there which will wipe a termies 2+ save.

 

HDL

[Gherrick]

AP -1 I found to be extremely meh so far, since cover effectively negates it. I suggest giving bjorn the twin lascannon, and let him focus on the harder targets.

 

Also, a unit of 5 WG with jump packs and combi-melta IMO are perfect for striking down any hard target that is difficult to target with your longer range weapons (eg long fangs).

Edited June 25, 2017 by Gherrick

[Hellrender]

Well, the real reason Bjorn is a beast, is because he is effective the whole game long. Plant him behind a unit, and he can't be targeted. And snipers will barely scratch him. He buffs units around him, and your whole army with the extra command point. 

 

When he finally does get targeted, he has T8, a 3+ and a 5+ FNP like save. But by that time you should be in close combat, and hopefully you have charged using his 8'' move. True Claw really makes a mess of things, again minimizing what he will get in return. My favorite HQ so far. But i feel the lascannon makes him very expensive. 29 points more than the Assault Cannon. Sure he gets extra range, but he trades quantity of shots, something i feel is hard to get by.

[Gherrick]

AssCan vs LasCan is about overall effectiveness. I found the 6 shot AssCan far less effective overall than a lascannon, and even though it is 6 shots vs 2 (twin version), the hit and damage vs save results has (for me) always been in favor of the LC. AP -1 is just not enough of a penalty to really impact saves.

[Brother Hellion]

Okay I've gotten to test out my GH five man plasma heavy squad and frankly they did well against ten Chaos Champions from the iron warriors. They were able to take out quite a few of them (my opponent was strangely rolling six's more then usual), although I'd advise against having them charge into combat unless your opponent is seriously hurting. 

[Hasuro]

Played 3-man Carnage ~70 power level narrative mission yesterday, space wolves (me), ultramarines and chaos space marines.

My Bjorn survived simultaneous combat with basic dreadnought, two honor guards and five vanguard veterans with shield/hammer allaround, while keeping also vindicator locked (blocked him - got no path to leave for two turns).

After that, with 1 wound left, he rushed to center, where Guilliman was just killed second time by melee chaos defiler, charged towards this dreadful daemon engine and killed it. And lost his last wound via explosion.

 

I found dreads of all sorts to be actually really deadly.

[Chaos Lord Tom]

I Had a 40 PL game yesterday againt SMC and Daemons.

 

Plasma heavy 5man GH squad with WGPL combi plas are nice, helped me finishing the Daemon Prince to secure the win. I had another one with only one plasma and a plaspis, should have run both as one squad (I went for board presence but the "light" plasma squad didn't do much

 

I had success with my 5 skyclaws with 2 flamers along with WGSL combi flamer that I DS in his deployment zone in cover. The ability to fire, charge, then fall back and fire again in my next turn is really good.

 

Long fangs with 3 ML and 1 HB did good against a 10 pack fleshounds (god these are so painful) and mainly did a good job pummeling one side of the board, denying my opponent any serious action.

 

My warboss was Ragnar, I should have taken a wolflord as I found that I didn't want my GH to go Melee as Plasma shooting was so useful. The abilty to reroll 1 is so good with plasma.

 

It was good fun, I look forward to playing my TWC and wulfens shortly :D

[DanPesci]

This really makes over charging plasma stuff REALLY risky.

It also could be a game changer for fielding Lukas.

 

HDL

 

I played my first two games this weekend,

 

first was with my admech so wont speak of such things here (but i managed a win, woo).

 

2nd was with my wolves against my mate who took deathwing (we were just playing the 'awlays war...daft power level stuff', not matched play..as we were just getting used to the rules).

 

Overcharging plasma when up against 2 wound terminators is a must. There was twice id forgot to say i was overcharging before i rolled, and both times it would have made a huge difference to the shooting (as your to wound goes to a 2+ against anything T4 AND it causes 2 damage..so you can potentially drop twice as many terminators, especially when they arent ALL rocking SS).

 

So risky yes, but against certain stuff definaltey worth it.

I also had a WL on TWM  staying within 6" of my two plasma GH units all game, which massively reduces the risk due to being able to reroll 1s. 

 

On a related note, the wolf lord was still very good. Had him with SS/TH he failed his first charge, but went on to kill belial and 3 terminators, whilst providing that lovely 6" reroll bubble.

 

The new TWC...were ok. They don't hit as hard but are more survivable. They charged a squad of Deathwing termies, did no wounds (i only hit once, with 3 powerfists ) but then saved all the wounds put back on them on their SS.

 

Annoyingly they had a librarian charge in, take the last wound off 1 guy, and then the squad failed their morale, which killed off another TWC model who was on full wounds.

 

Morale is savage against units with multiwound models in it. Same thing nearly happened to my kastelan robots in the other game I had (luckily they had ld10, TWC do not!)

 

 

All in all though. Good fun games, relatively quick desptire the amount of new rules we were getting used to.

 

And two victories over the dark angels for my first two games. haroooooooo.

Edited June 26, 2017 by DanPesci

[Brother Hellion]

I Had a 40 PL game yesterday againt SMC and Daemons.

 

Plasma heavy 5man GH squad with WGPL combi plas are nice, helped me finishing the Daemon Prince to secure the win. I had another one with only one plasma and a plaspis, should have run both as one squad (I went for board presence but the "light" plasma squad didn't do much

 

I had success with my 5 skyclaws with 2 flamers along with WGSL combi flamer that I DS in his deployment zone in cover. The ability to fire, charge, then fall back and fire again in my next turn is really good.

 

Long fangs with 3 ML and 1 HB did good against a 10 pack fleshounds (god these are so painful) and mainly did a good job pummeling one side of the board, denying my opponent any serious action.

 

My warboss was Ragnar, I should have taken a wolflord as I found that I didn't want my GH to go Melee as Plasma shooting was so useful. The abilty to reroll 1 is so good with plasma.

 

It was good fun, I look forward to playing my TWC and wulfens shortly

 Yes, my plasma heavy GH idea is catching on!

 

Long fangs are really good with MLs now. 

 

TWC are more survivable if you give them storm shields, like survive multiple rounds of combat against abbadon survival. Wulfen are still great shock troopers but easier to kill when caught in the open by close range fire.

[Kuro_Ryu]

Played a 1500 point game against eldar the other day. I decided to make use of my new primaris marines so they formed the bulk of my army

 

I took

Logan

Wolf Lord in gravis

2xPrimaris Lt

1xPrimaris Ancient

6xWGT 1 PS/SB, 1 PF/AssCannon, 4 PF/SB

5xWG on foot

5xGH on foot with a plasma gun

2xIntercessor units

1xHellblaster unit

 

This was also my first game of 8th so I'm still getting used to the ruleset.

 

Things I took away.

 

Teleporting terminators are big and clever, I managed to drop them on the back corner of the board and walk across the eldar back line crippling a large dire avenger squad on entry and then moving up to hurt his reapers

 

The rest of the army I set up and simply walked forwards with. Logan's reroll aura was useful. Wolf guard ended up being expensive meat shields for Logan though so next time I'm gonna field them a bit better or find a cheaper meat shield.

 

Intercessor did a good job of not dying. The caused a few casualties with their bolt rifles with the help of nearby lieutenants and wolf lord but nothing spectacular. Their main strength was not dying and so denying the eldar their soul burst ability.

 

My hellblaster squad got crippled early on by reapers so I didn't really see their full potential

 

Logan is a beast. Mid game the eldar made several charges, throwing Yvraine and the visarch at Logan, the visarch failed his charge and I used the counter strike command to get the first attack on Yvraine hitting her for 9 wounds and killing her outright. Next turn Logan charged the visarch and did the same to him. So the combination of his aura abilities and combat prowess make him pretty damn impressive.

 

After this my opponent conceeded the game. I didn't get to see how my wolf Lord did against solitaire.

 

I did forget to use my ancients ability the couple of times that the odd marine died near him. But between him, Logan and the small size of my squads nobody took losses from morale that game.

 

Overall nothing underperformed outside of my own tactical mishaps. Logan and surprise terminators stood out as game changers. The gravis Lord is very close ranged and so suffers from doing little when walking across the board beside buffing nearby marines. Primaris marines are tough against regular arms but die easy when addressed with the right weapons, such was the case with hellblasters vs dark reapers.

Edited June 26, 2017 by Kuro_Ryu

[postxhumanity]

I played my first game of 8th on Saturday and I think the best general advice is to forget what you knew about past editions, because 40k has changed. As SW players we have a few expectations that we need to unlearn. That Tau don't want to charge us, for instance. I'll give you an example from my game this weekend.

 

Tau turn: A  Devilfish charges my unit of 10 Blood Claws and Ulrick. It didn't really do any damage and I managed to get in a few wounds.

SW turn: Fighting a Devilfish in melee wasn't the best use of Ulrick and my BCs, but I didn't want to fall back, since they wouldn't be able to do anything for the rest of the turn. Besides, then they'd be exposed to fire from the rest of his army as well as the Devilfish. So I stayed in combat and managed to deal another few wounds.

Tau turn: The Firewarriors and Cadre Fireblade inside the Devilfish disembark about 2" away from my guys, then the Devilfish flies out of the combat, leaving my unit just as exposed to Tau fire as if I'd fallen back during my turn. My Bloodclaws get blown off the board. Ulrick survived, he's seen worse.

 

What I'm getting at is this. I'd read the rules for 8th edition. I knew vehicles could charge, I knew a unit with the fly rule could fly out of CC, I knew that access points aren't a thing on transports --that Firewarriors could disembark anywhere within 3" of the Devilfish, even if my BCs were in blocking the ramp in the back. I knew these rules because I'd read them. But I didn't expect any of those things to happen because this wouldn't have happened in 7th. The Tau  have never wanted to get anywhere near close combat with Space Wolves. Did 8th edition turn the Tau into a close range, melee army? No, of course not. But a Tau player who has left his expectations from past editions behind may see the benefits that can come by charging. We need to be prepared for these kind of changes. In short, don't let your expectations for past editions carry over.

[Valerian]

Logan is a beast. Mid game the eldar made several charges, throwing Yvraine and the visarch at Logan, the visarch failed his charge and I used the counter strike command to get the first attack on Yvraine hitting her for 9 wounds and killing her outright. Next turn Logan charged the visarch and did the same to him. So the combination of his aura abilities and combat prowess make him pretty damn impressive.

 

Did your opponent have another Fight that they prioritized over the fight between Yvraine and Logan?  I'm asking because the Counterstrike stratagem only works after your opponent has activated and fought with at least 1 unit.  

[Kuro_Ryu]

 

 

Logan is a beast. Mid game the eldar made several charges, throwing Yvraine and the visarch at Logan, the visarch failed his charge and I used the counter strike command to get the first attack on Yvraine hitting her for 9 wounds and killing her outright. Next turn Logan charged the visarch and did the same to him. So the combination of his aura abilities and combat prowess make him pretty damn impressive.

Did your opponent have another Fight that they prioritized over the fight between Yvraine and Logan? I'm asking because the Counterstrike stratagem only works after your opponent has activated and fought with at least 1 unit.

Yes, they activated a different unit first. So I jumped in with Logan after that. Probably a mistake on their part since none of the other combats were as critical.

[PeteySödes]

A few more games this weekend. I have no idea how to deal with Astra Militarum/Tempestus scions right now. 50pr/1k points on a 4x4 table my opponent takes 50 strong units of conscripts and deep striking plasma command squads, he can just daisy chain to the obj and use the same strat to hide the commissars.

 

At that size of game i feel like my hands are tied a bit unless i want to tailer a list specifically against it.  Anyone had any luck against this stuff?