DA 8.5 Codex wishlisting

[Berzul]

Maybe its just an event to put the Inquisition on high alert due to warp disturbances caused by a restless Emperor, which will lead into the Fallen coming back, the waking of the Lion, and maybe the movilization of the Adeptas Sororitas foe their upcoming codex.

 

Or maybe, they will give psykers to the T'au.

 

Who knows.

 

<Ponders interromantically>

[domsto]

Well nothing new for us on the Nova Open.

So the next WD is our last hope to get something new and remain relevant on the Tables.

[G8Keeper]

Well nothing new for us on the Nova Open.

So the next WD is our last hope to get something new and remain relevant on the Tables.

 

Aside from confirmation all factions (including DA) are getting updates as part of Psychic Awakening.  I'm extremely happy for Eldar and Sisters players today.

[Chaplain Lucifer]

Looks like after 7 pages the wishlisting steam has run out, because the conversation has shifted somewhere else.

If people want to discuss news and rumors, there is a forum above dedicated to the subject. Keep this train on the track, please.

[G8Keeper]

Hi Lucifer,  can we wishlist on the new vague rumours here or do you think a new thread is in order?  I only ask as wishlisting in the rumour threads will get them nuked?

[Chaplain Lucifer]

As long as the thread stick to wishlisting feel free to base speculation on new rumors that may arise.

I'm just trying that people keep focused in discussing the wishlisting.

If DA rumors come then we will have a separate thread for that.

As an example:

We should have here "I want X and Y for new DA codex because Z is getting something we should/could have" style of discussion instead of "Eldar are nice, Tau get cool powers, DA will have X, Y and Z"

I hope I was clear enough, it can be confusing.

[Neuralshock]

As long as the thread stick to wishlisting feel free to base speculation on new rumors that may arise.

I'm just trying that people keep focused in discussing the wishlisting.

If DA rumors come then we will have a separate thread for that.

As an example:

We should have here "I want X and Y for new DA codex because Z is getting something we should/could have" style of discussion instead of "Eldar are nice, Tau get cool powers, DA will have X, Y and Z"

I hope I was clear enough, it can be confusing.

That's fair,

 

Seeing the big sm update, how would you tweak doctrines/litanies? Would you expand interromancy or create new disciplines?

 

Personally, I don't think the supplement format fits the DA when they can have a reasonable sized codex to put it into.

 

What I'd like to see is a some form of hexagramic doctrines, or a branching tree. The idea goes that you get a choice of doctrine out of two to start, let's say "huntsman protocols" or "breacher protocols" that buff ravenwing or greenwing to start.

 

From the next turn you can pick from another set of two doctrines and so forth. This allows you to tailor your strategy based on your force comp and your opponent.

 

I'd like to see interro-chaps specialize into something better than the already awesome options from the litanies. Maybe even a whole separate branch that superbuffs deathwing units and focuses on character suppression and elimination. I feel the ez-mode out would be for litanies to be heard in 2+ or something

 

I would like to see deathwing specific warlord traits and psychic powers, something that really makes being inner circle special (maybe a "fire again" power, for 3 rounds of shooting from a dw assault!). A new ravenwing HQ librarian that has go fast powers similar to WS would be neat too.

[Berzul]

Might be a bit too convoluted and hard to balance.

 

Although I like it, I rather wish for something like

 

Protocols or Doctrines that go

 

Greenwing -> Ravenwing -> Deathwing

 

Giving at the start of the battle a bonus to the greenwing in the form of better AP, or maybe even counting as having remained stationary after moving for firing weapons (which gives as a first turn of Grim Resolve as we position infantry across the board).

 

Then, as bikes have also positioned themselves for charges and barrages of bolter fire, they summon the deathwing, giving the DW units that drop near bikes, better charges. +2, or rerolls, for example.

 

Then, next stage is Deathwing Assault where they get to roll better for their attacks, or maybe their storm bolter count as pistol 2 or pistol 4 weapons.

 

As the greenwing march up on turn one, ans bikes position to summon the DW on turn two, the DW push the offensive on turn three.

[Grimdark_Garage]

With the different elements of the DA, its hard to pinpoint an option that works like the SM Doctrines, espeically to those that may take pure Greenwing, Ravenwing or Deathwing or a mix of 2 of the 3.

 

I had thoughts some dreams of how the DA "Doctrines" may look like :

 

If your army is battle forged, all units are Dark Angels and you field a detachment where all models are Ravenwing, you gain access to the below rules :

 

Relentless Pursuit;

All units in this detachment change the weapon profile of any HEAVY weapons to ASSAULT.

 

In addition, any unit in this detachment that is not a FLYER may start the game in reserve.

During the 2nd turn, these units must arrive from reserve at the end of your movement phase.

To do so, select a table edge and place all models on to the selectable table edge ensuring they are within 3” of the table edge and more than 9” from an enemy model. Any unit that arrives from reserve in this way may then move, ensuring they do not end their move within 9" of an enemy model. Units that  enter pla in this way cannot advance but may still charge in the charge phase.

 

If your army is battle forged, all units are Dark Angels and you field a detachment where all models are Deathwing, you gain access to the below rules :

Deathwing Assault;

in the charge phase of the turn a Deathwing terminator unit arrives from reserve from this detachment, roll 3 dice and discard the lowest to determine their charge distance.

 

In addition, If a unit from this detahcment  is outnumbered in the fight phase, on a to hit roll of 6+, the attack generates an additional automatic hit. 

 

Further, If a unit from this detahcment is outnumbers or equals the model count of all enemy models engaged with it in the fight phase, the unit adds 1 to all to hit rolls.

 

If your army is battle forged and all units are Dark Angels, you gain access to the below rules for all models in your army:

                When making an attack with a ranged Plasma weapon, on a to-hit roll of 1, the model suffers 1 Mortal Wound.

 

I also had some ideas for Litanies :

 

Any Chaplain unit knows the Litany of Hate and one other Litany from the below:

An Interrogator Chaplain is always treated as having recited the Litany of Hate and may attempt to recite that models other known Litany.

 

Litanies of the Fallen :

1. If successful, when resolving overwatch, all friendly <DARK ANGEL> <INFANTRY> units within 6" make a hit on a roll of 4+

 

2. If successful, select a single enemy <INFANTRY> or <BIKER> character model within 12”. For the remainder of the battle round, any save rolls made by that unit (including invulnerable saves) suffer a -1.

 

3. If successful, the chaplain may fight twice in the Fight phase. Treat the two sets of attacks as if they were two units for the sake of initiative and consolidation.

 

4. If successful, select a friendly <DARK ANGEL> Infantry or Biker unit within 6". Until the start of your next turn when overcharging a plasma weapon, that unit ignores any wounds caused by overcharging their plasma weapon.

 

5. If successful, select a single enemy <INFANTRY> or <BIKER> character model within 24”. Until the start of the next battle round, the Chaplain may advance 6” in the movement phase and re-roll any or all dice when determining its charge if the Chaplain moves in a straight line towards the enemy model and attempts to charge that enemy model.

 

6. If successful, select a single friendly <DARK ANGEL> Character model within 12” of the Chaplain. Until the start of the next battle round, that unit cannot be targeted by any ranged attack. The Chaplain that attempts to recite this litany cannot be chosen to benefit from this Litany. 

[Neuralshock]

Cool stuff! really like those Ravenwing and Deathwing suggestions!

 

The interro-chap litanties look neat, I'd change #4 to be plasma weapons suffer no penalty to hit and only overheat on unmodified 1's. I'd tweak #2 to be just character keyword to hurt knights a bit more (lol). I'd make #3 a flat upgrade to the powerup litany, with fight twice and +2 to charge, pile-in, consolidate (immediately) against characters

 

I don't much like #5, so I propose a change. pick a character within 24'', and roll off LD at a -1 (maybe -2) for the enemy model, if you win, the enemy model cannot move for any reason.

[Grimdark_Garage]

How about rules for when Azreal crosses the Rubicon?

 

Ive had a thought of a nice rule to tie together a number of units and rules to be more concise.

Warning : the rule below do make some units a little obselete (EG: Belial)

 

Armour of the Supreme Grand Master: (name pedding :S ) 

Azreal has a 4+ invulnerable save.

In Addtion, the Armour of the Supreme Grand Master has been adapted to allow use from an orbital ships teleportarium for the bearer and his honour guard.

As such, Azreal and a single unit of Deathwing Agressors from the same detahcment as Azreal may be placed in reserve during deployment.

Azreal and any unit elected to be Azreals honour guard may be setup at the end of your movement phase following rules for tactical reserves but all models must be setup within 2" of each other. From that point on, Azreal and the unit of Agressors are treated as two seperate units.

[Berzul]

So, if the new leaked scenario, and its stratagems, is any form of soft launch for a revised set of stratagems for the chapter, I gotta say it looks nice!

 

I think that the move D6" after deepstrikw stratagem might be too costly. Not only do I think it should be 1cp for squads of 1-5, and 2cp for squads of 6+; after all this time and mant games, I think that even deathwing assault should cost just 1cp on 1-5 squads, and 2cp on 6+.

 

Mainly due to the firepower of the squad itself.

 

The high cost of the stratagem I believe is tied to the damage output of a squad firing twice in a turn.

 

But this does not take into account that:

 

1) Even with bolter discilpline rules, ypu are still talking about just S4 Ap0 D1 shots. Useful for little more than chaff killing, which will just be the screens placed by your opponent, so no real impact there.

 

2) You are spending 2/3 cp to clear a chaff squad, by recuperating a turn or two of shooting you already lost anyway.

 

In the end, you get handicapped for using the main ability of the squad (managing better positioning on turns 2 or 3 by forgoing being on the board shooting for turns 1 or 2), by having to spend a LOT of cps, to get those shots back.

 

If we get the -1 AP due to doctrines that other marines get, through a codex update, thia might change.

 

But, as it standa now, the stratagem really is more expensive than it should be.

 

And I hope the scenario that leaked is indicative of changes in this, and other ways, coming to us.

[Grimdark_Garage]

Agree with you most of that. 1CP for 5 man, 2CP for +5 makes total sense to me.

Its a great strat for the Deathwing and has me excited to put a unit of Knights in my list without a need to buff them.

 

Deathwatch assualt is a funny one. Out of phase shooting is costly and probably should be. I think its based on the fact you could bring 18 S4, 6 S5 and a missle launcher to fire in the movement phase. If it were 1CP you'd auto-use it....which is maybe why i lean towards 2CP being fair. (not great...fair :) )

 

Weve seen it before so im very confident these strats will end up in Codex V2, If not, possibly a White Dwarf Errata when it launches saying you can use them in other games. that would be a good indication as to how long we expect to wait for Codex V2.

[Neuralshock]

WD leaks hint at specialist formations, namely Caliban's reach including centurion devastators to the DA roster. What would you like to see from the other hinted synergies?

 

Infiltrators/Ravenwing: supposedly the ravenwing utilize the omni-scrambler of infiltrators to mask their presence, which would be cool if that translates to no overwatch when ravenwing charges within 12 of infiltrators. Or allows ravenwing to scout deploy along with infiltrators?

 

Incursors/Deathwing: Also supposedly the inner circle is able to patch into the visors of the incursors undetected and able to pinpoint strike when needed. This sounds like a "deepstrike within 9 inches of incursor unit while 6 inches away from enemy units"

 

I don't know too much about the hexagramic force org, but someone mentioned that the hellblaster/Centurion dev detachment sounded like a "firewing" kind of detachment. We could be getting these specialist detachments in conjunction with doctrines or as a replacement for.

[UtariOnzo]

Bringing back an updated version of the Hexagrammaton in the form of Stratagems and/or specialist detachments would be pretty damn cool

[Berzul]

Anyone dare to guess WHEN we might be getting an updated codex, should we get one?

[Neuralshock]

Anyone dare to guess WHEN we might be getting an updated codex, should we get one?

I'll play optimist and say the 2nd week in October. The new space marine codex was previewed and delivered two weeks after that

[HandsWithLegs]

 

Anyone dare to guess WHEN we might be getting an updated codex, should we get one?

I'll play optimist and say the 2nd week in October. The new space marine codex was previewed and delivered two weeks after that

 

I'd love it that soon, but realistically speaking I think we're going to be looking at early next year at the soonest. We already know that a few months are going to be taken up by sisters and the new sigmar faction and we still Chapter Approved, four different marine supplements, a handful of primaries units, the start of the psychic awakening stuff, and probably a few other things I've forgotten about in the fall still, and IIRC December is usually mostly battle boxes and other bundles so it probably won't come out then. With all that stuff I just can't see there being room in the release schedule for us

[Master Sheol]

We can wishlisting further

No DA codex and Just a WD IA article

 

What i hope for US? I would like Primaris TDA for DW and primaris bikers for RW but we Will not get them so i don't have further hopes and wishes about out codex Yes i Hope It Will bè a bit Better than the current One but knowing the poor record od decent codexes we had in 30 years of 40k i don't out my hopes on that

[domsto]

The big problem i see is that the things that make Dark Angels Special aren't that great this edition.

Namely Terminators and bikes

Terminators are just bad and Bikes are OK at best.

So they need a general Rework for those two unit Typs. Which didn't happen in the new Marines Codex so i don't think we will see some mayor improvements if a new DA Codex will come.

[Berzul]

Id argue bikes are pretty good. Terminators, yeah. Not so much.

[jaxom]

Okay, so if we take a step back and start tempering our expectations, here's my wishlist

 

The vast majority of how the Dark Angels functioned as an army, especially prior to 6th edition, has its mechanical strength and play-style based on normal Space Marine units. I don't think new, unique DA units are realistically on the board for where we are (if we use AoS as a meter-stick, we're at Stormcast book 2, i.e. 2/3 of the range). Rather, I think anything new will be based on integrating Primaris units into unique Dark Angel keywords so they can partake of unique Dark Angel equivalent to Combat Doctrines. With that in mind, here's my hype-free wishlist.

 

1) Inner Circle is added to all Masters, Lieutenants (&Talonmaster), and Venerable Dreadnoughts. Inner Circle has no inherent rules and is just a keyword.

 

2) Grim Resolve is altered along with the change in Inner Circle and ends with, "If a unit has the Inner Circle keyword, it instead automatically passes Morale checks."

 

3) Units with the Deathwing keyword have +1 W compared to their counterparts. 

 

4) There is a stratagem for giving the Deathwing keyword and +1 W to any unit with the Dreadnought keyword 

 

5) Stratagems for giving Deathwing and Inner Circle to certain Primaris units and Ravenwing to other Primaris units. I would go with Intercessors and Aggressors for the former with Inceptors and Suppressors for the latter.

 

6)  Watcher in the Dark can Deny rather than be a one-off.

 

7) Stratagem for letting Terminators fire twice if they Teleport Strike or (if there's also something like a Teleport Homer) when they are deployed at any point after the start of the game.

 

8) A warlord trait or stratagem giving  "unit(s) with Landspeeder ignore move-and-fire penalty to heavy weapons" either as an aura or as a pick-a-unit (like Necron lord) to Ravenwing HQ.

 

9) Swift Strike and Signal the Attack stratagems available regardless of specialist detachment and Signal the Attack bonus applying to all Dark Angel units.

 

11) A stratagem which lets Deathwing units ignore tactical reserves if there are Ravenwing on the board and the Deathwing unit is deployed within some distance of a Ravenwing unit.

 

10) A Combat Doctrine style boost which does not rely on having to take a mixture of Greenwing, Deathwing, and Ravenwing. I think such a boost is coming and its nature will tell us much about how the GW rules-folk see the Dark Angels and what direction they'll be pushing towards in the post-8th edition world.

Edited September 7, 2019 by jaxom

[Isual]

1) Inner Circle is added to all Masters, Lieutenants (&Talonmaster), and Venerable Dreadnoughts. Inner Circle has no inherent rules and is just a keyword.

 

2) Grim Resolve is altered along with the change in Inner Circle and ends with, "If a unit has the Inner Circle keyword, it instead automatically passes Morale checks."

 

I don't want to sound rude, but this would be useless. These units (characters and vehicles) don't do morale checks. There are some effects using the morale score, but they are as far as I know not "real" morale checks.

The only two entries that currently profit from the "automatically pass morale checks" rule are Terminators, and even they don't realy need it. They have a high morale score to begin with, "know no fear" and (would) have grim resolve. For 95% of cases this should be enought.

 

I guess someone on the DA writer team didn't get the memo that characters cant join units anymore to transfere there abilities to them in 8th edition.

The only way such a ability could work in 8th is if it would be a aura effect (maybe just units in 3" or models in 6" for not being to strong).

[Neuralshock]

The big problem i see is that the things that make Dark Angels Special aren't that great this edition.

Namely Terminators and bikes

Terminators are just bad and Bikes are OK at best.

So they need a general Rework for those two unit Typs. Which didn't happen in the new Marines Codex so i don't think we will see some mayor improvements if a new DA Codex will come.

The +1 to hit strat for terminators sounded pretty good, as did advancing bikes getting 3++. So there's hope yet

[jaxom]

 

1) Inner Circle is added to all Masters, Lieutenants (&Talonmaster), and Venerable Dreadnoughts. Inner Circle has no inherent rules and is just a keyword.

 

2) Grim Resolve is altered along with the change in Inner Circle and ends with, "If a unit has the Inner Circle keyword, it instead automatically passes Morale checks."

 

I don't want to sound rude, but this would be useless. These units (characters and vehicles) don't do morale checks. There are some effects using the morale score, but they are as far as I know not "real" morale checks.

The only two entries that currently profit from the "automatically pass morale checks" rule are Terminators, and even they don't realy need it. They have a high morale score to begin with, "know no fear" and (would) have grim resolve. For 95% of cases this should be enought.

 

I guess someone on the DA writer team didn't get the memo that characters cant join units anymore to transfere there abilities to them in 8th edition.

The only way such a ability could work in 8th is if it would be a aura effect (maybe just units in 3" or models in 6" for not being to strong).

 

I completely agree regarding morale and everything else you wrote. Currently, other characters have it because it conveys the bonus against Fallen. Based on the the White Dwarf leak, my wish is that anything Inner Circle related becomes stratagems. This could even include auto-passing morale for 1 CP instead of 2 CP (for example, when one's Deathwing are in a -5 Ld bubble). Inner Circle units could have more relevant improvements instead of being shoe-horned with a perk for a rule they don't interact with or a perk for an enemy that is rare to play against.

 

Personally, I think the entirety of the Dark Angels codex - what is stressed in the fluff, options for list design, strategies, special rules - needs reworking from the ground up. I know that's not going to happen and we'll probably be stuck with the same codex we have now with a few more stratagems and a new mono-faction perk.