State of the Union (Heresy)

[WrathOfTheLion]

Considering Angel Giraldez got an invite to WHfest and is "collaborating" on something. Definitely something going on in the paint sphere.

Could just be painting tutorials or showcase, but this sounds like the perfect time to add some expansions to certain paint lines.

 

Notably if the SoH and IF are the big lads right now, SoH green primer and the return of some yellow spray can sounds like a start.

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

 

 

I for one don't like the gutted legion rules. Some of them have less crunch than their 9th ed chapter tactics...

 

I want my negatives to my special rule positives.

 

(I think for future as well, we can all imagine an asterisk after every comment about the leaked rules saying "based on what we've seen". )

 

I for one don't think we'll see huuuuge changes in the rules in all honesty. Like how bent and no briainer augury scanners are, making it to the 3rd iteration is pretty worrisome.

Thats a weird take. All the legions lost their downsides and a couple lost other aspects, so the sheer amount of legion rules is lower. But, they interact far more with various core mechanics, especially when combined with the special units.

 

There's absolutely more crunch to how a legions rules can be leveraged in the game now.

To me its just made the legions significantly more homogenized which I think is a negative (YMMV) now they are just different colour marines with a +1 to hit, +1 to wound or something of a very similar ilk.

 

Compared to say Night Lords who had a talent for murder, got a cover save due to being night time weirdos, but scuttled away further when they failed morale checks and went down when HQs copped it.

 

But now they'll just have +1 to wound when outnumberering a foe or something and thats it. Compared to say +1 to hit with IF bolt (....and auto or +1 to wound Blood Angels when charging etc...

 

To me without the 'negatives'..but I'd probably be more inclined to call them flavouring than massive negatives.... its sucked out a lot of soul and definitely nods toward the 9th ed 'chapter tactics' generally just adding some stat modifier of some kind.

panascope covers it well; most legions didn't have negatives. The Night Lords required their Warlord to die, which is already something you want to prevent from happening. As a night Lords player, it very rarely applied. Running away further was a bonus in a lot of cases.

 

And a lot of the newer legion rules, units, rites, and USRs come together to offer much more crunch than before. Let's use the Night Lords again:

• ATFM procs off outnumbering, pinning, or any negative stat modifiers. It also works with shooting attacks and against vehicles,
• Night fight causes -1 ld and -1 bs, as well as denying long range. It procs ATFM.
• Fear is an aura of -(X) ld. It also procs ATFM.
• Arriving from deepstrike or outflank within 6" of the enemy causes a pinning test. During the night, this would now be at -2 ld, averaging a fail against base ld 8 units. Pinning prevents reactions.
• Bloody murder is a new special rule most Night Lords special units get (and Curze gives to everyone). When charging a unit that was pinned or falling back, you get +1 to your charge and +1 attacks.
• Night Raptors and Contekar can naturally deepstrike. Terror Marines can outflank, or buy a pod for deepstrike. Atrementar will probably keep their deepstrike. Sevatar grants it to normal terminators. All of your elite units can benefit from these interactions.

If you don't want to deepstrike:

• Terror marines can infiltrate and take rotor cannons that have shell shock and pinning. Get close during the night and force pining tests at -3.
• Movement value influences charge range. Raptors get +3 to charge when targeting pinned units due to bloody murder, and ignore difficult.

 

That's a lot more mechanically than being able to cheese drop pod assault and leviathans to get 2+ cover, and then filling up on criminally undercosted raptors to drown any unit in chainglaive attacks that hit and wounded on 2s. And is something you can basically recreate with the bloody murder bonus.

 

I'll also note that the night fight range cap helps recreate the protection from long range. As does the fact that both raptors and terror marines are skirmishers, benefiting from a 3" coherency and a +1 to cover saves.

 

Only the talent for murder is explicitly written as their legion bonus, but there's a lot of rules bonuses that are implicit in their application.

Edited April 27, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[Bung]

 

 

 

I for one don't like the gutted legion rules. Some of them have less crunch than their 9th ed chapter tactics...

 

I want my negatives to my special rule positives.

 

(I think for future as well, we can all imagine an asterisk after every comment about the leaked rules saying "based on what we've seen". )

 

I for one don't think we'll see huuuuge changes in the rules in all honesty. Like how bent and no briainer augury scanners are, making it to the 3rd iteration is pretty worrisome.

Thats a weird take. All the legions lost their downsides and a couple lost other aspects, so the sheer amount of legion rules is lower. But, they interact far more with various core mechanics, especially when combined with the special units.

 

There's absolutely more crunch to how a legions rules can be leveraged in the game now.

To me its just made the legions significantly more homogenized which I think is a negative (YMMV) now they are just different colour marines with a +1 to hit, +1 to wound or something of a very similar ilk.

 

Compared to say Night Lords who had a talent for murder, got a cover save due to being night time weirdos, but scuttled away further when they failed morale checks and :cuss went down when HQs copped it.

 

But now they'll just have +1 to wound when outnumberering a foe or something and thats it. Compared to say +1 to hit with IF bolt (....and auto or +1 to wound Blood Angels when charging etc...

 

To me without the 'negatives'..but I'd probably be more inclined to call them flavouring than massive negatives.... its sucked out a lot of soul and definitely nods toward the 9th ed 'chapter tactics' generally just adding some stat modifier of some kind.

To be honest, for playing IF i the negativ of being forces to play an extra turn rarely came up maybe once in 20 games.

I doubt alot of people will miss that rule.

[Slips]

The only time it ever came up for me was if I was barely winning and we would otherwise be rolling for a T6; aka once in a blue moon.

[Gorgoff]

IW get +1S against basically everything but infantry and such things. Nice to have, for sure, but really boring. Same with IF. Strong rules don't make interesting ones. I do get the point of TheTrans. Edited April 27, 2022 by Gorgoff

[lansalt]

Valrak has posted a video with a new image of the box set. It pretty much confirms it will be an army box with 50+ minis:
 

[Noserenda]

Design-wise ive heard arguments before that sticking purely to bonus traits is a good idea because it incentivises players to remember their own shiny things, and if they forget its only to their own detriment. Its not even about cheaters, im sure most of us have missed something at some point and its a crappy feeling when you realise.

[Mango Polo]

Oh no, you mean I don't have to... to... be forced to sweeping advance anymore??

 

The indignity of it.

[Gorgoff]

Valrak has posted a video with a new image of the box set. It pretty much confirms it will be an army box with 50+ minis:

 

If those bekies don't have special and heavy weapons in their sprue I don't see why I would buy this box.

 

I don't think that "most if us" forgot their own special rules. There are people who forget that kind of thing but luckily those are in the minority.

Always having to sweep was a relict of older editions where it was indeed a drawback. But that's not a problem of the legions rule but instead of how sweeping works.

Edited April 27, 2022 by Gorgoff

[WrathOfTheLion]

Other Legions had rules to go with their drawbacks?

 

Sad Caliban noises.

[jaxom]

40k - "These corvus hammers and knightly maces are all the weapons that are left of old Caliban's armouries."

 

30k - "You get a sword and you get a sword and you get a sword!"

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

I do find it interested that quite a few of the current 'secondary' Legion traits have been offloaded to some of the Legion-specific warlord traits, which gives you some freedom to decide what flavour of said Legion you're going for especially, with the various loyalist/ traitor only options (e.g I love the traitor salamanders trait not having the restriction on destroyers)

[lansalt]

40k - "These corvus hammers and knightly maces are all the weapons that are left of old Caliban's armouries."

 

30k - "You get a sword and you get a sword and you get a sword!"

This disconnect between 30k and 40k always bothers me a bit. Why TS cannot use rotor/assault cannons in vets/terminators? Where are the crusade era Baal Predator, Dawneagle jetbikes, Sanguinary Guard, Dune Crawler... etc?

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

Valrak has posted a video with a new image of the box set. It pretty much confirms it will be an army box with 50+ minis:

 

If those bekies don't have special and heavy qeapins in their sprue I don't see why I would buy this box.

 

I don't think that "most if us" forgot their own special rules. There are people who forget that kind of thing but luckily those are in the majority.

Always having to sweep was a relict of older editions where it was indeed a drawback. But that's not a problem of the legions rule but instead of how sweeping works.

It was a drawback against units with And They Shall Know No Fear, as you'd just remain locked. You'd want to let them run, as they couldn't rally if there was an enemy unit within 6", so you'd have to escort them off.

 

But heresy never had that rule, so having to sweep was pointless lol.

 

About the new iron warriors rule being boring. It is, but so was their old rule. Kind of the theme; highly boring, highly effective.

Edited April 27, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[panascope]

IW get +1S against basically everything but infantry and such things. Nice to have, for sure, but really boring. Same with IF. Strong rules don't make interesting ones. I do get the point of TheTrans.

Iron Warriors’ rules right now are super boring though. Wrecker on their grenades has never, ever come up and getting Fearless against shooting attacks barely matters at all in a land of high leadership values. Like half the legions right now have extremely boring, bad rules. I’m glad that’s changing.

I’d way rather see everyone getting strong, relevant special rules and units that encourage unique play styles. Which is exactly what 2.0 is giving us.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Eh, the shooting fearless is actually incredibly useful. Makes you have to be shot off objectives as they can never get you to run with chip damage.

 

That being said, it really depends on your list building. If you like msu veterans or terminators, then ya, rarely important; 2 guys is most of the squad, and their leadership is higher. But, if you like troop spam in a pressure list (like I did), forcing your opponent to kill your scoring units completely to get them off the objectives is very useful.

 

But still a very boring mechanic.

[JeffJedi]

What does everyone think the smaller starter sets could have?

 

Character, 10 Tactical, 5 Terminators

 

And

 

Other Character, 20 Tactical, Dreadnought

Edited April 27, 2022 by JeffJedi

[panascope]

You’re just not liable to fail that many leadership tests over the course of a game from shooting. It seems useful but the reality is that Ld9, 10, and some variety of Fearless are very common, and especially as Iron Warriors. I think I can personally count on two hands the number of shooting-based morale checks I’ve failed or seen failed in a decade of Heresy.

I consider the +1BS that Imperial Fists get on bolters to be along this same line. It looks good on paper, but bolt weapons are bad even if you’ve got a lot of them. And to add insult to injury: Sons of Horus got a better version in Death Dealers a couple years later and immediately became one of the best legions in the game.

I mention these three legions because they sort of represent the ways in which various rulesets are changing in the new edition. The major update, the light touch, and the simplification.

Iron Warriors needed a big change, so they’ve become the ultimate anti-vehicle and fortification legion. Their new rule is strong, interesting, and sure to be relevant in every game.

Imperial Fists needed a lighter touch. +1BS with auto weapons is a nice change (especially coupled with the new Autocannon rules) that doesn’t also upend their playstyle.

Sons of Horus had a very clunky rule, Merciless Fighters, that had an odd negative synergy with their Justaerin and, even though it was easy to turn on, didn’t usually cause a major change to the outcome of combat (despite all the work you had to do for it). This has been streamlined and strengthened substantially but the new version also doesn’t totally change what you want to do.

[SkimaskMohawk]

You’re just not liable to fail that many leadership tests over the course of a game from shooting. It seems useful but the reality is that Ld9, 10, and some variety of Fearless are very common, and especially as Iron Warriors. I think I can personally count on two hands the number of shooting-based morale checks I’ve failed or seen failed in a decade of Heresy.

I consider the +1BS that Imperial Fists get on bolters to be along this same line. It looks good on paper, but bolt weapons are bad even if you’ve got a lot of them. And to add insult to injury: Sons of Horus got a better version in Death Dealers a couple years later and immediately became one of the best legions in the game.

I mention these three legions because they sort of represent the ways in which various rulesets are changing in the new edition. The major update, the light touch, and the simplification.

Iron Warriors needed a big change, so they’ve become the ultimate anti-vehicle and fortification legion. Their new rule is strong, interesting, and sure to be relevant in every game.

Imperial Fists needed a lighter touch. +1BS with auto weapons is a nice change (especially coupled with the new Autocannon rules) that doesn’t also upend their playstyle.

Sons of Horus had a very clunky rule, Merciless Fighters, that had an odd negative synergy with their Justaerin and, even though it was easy to turn on, didn’t usually cause a major change to the outcome of combat (despite all the work you had to do for it). This has been streamlined and strengthened substantially but the new version also doesn’t totally change what you want to do.

 

The only LD 10 units are ones with characters. Fearless, is in fact, very uncommon. 

 

As I said, it depends on the list. Its roughly a 15% chance to fail ld 9, and blobs of 20 can usually be forced to take around 3 tests. If you have 2 blobs and another unit, you average a failed leadership test. I had a list with 60 tacs, with a bunch of other units that I wanted to stay where they were. I would have failed a couple of ld tests a game on average, but that was never a problem. My scoring units stayed on their objectives after my opponent realized my big things were just distractions and now couldn't stop me from scoring. 

 

Iron warriors really didn't need a "big change" due to strength of rules. The rules were just extremely un-exciting. 

Edited April 27, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[panascope]

The only LD 10 units are ones with characters. Fearless, is in fact, very uncommon.

 

As I said, it depends on the list. Its roughly a 15% chance to fail ld 9, and blobs of 20 can usually be forced to take around 3 tests. If you have 2 blobs and another unit, you average a failed leadership test. I had a list with 60 tacs, with a bunch of other units that I wanted to stay where they were. I would have failed a couple of ld tests a game on average, but that was never a problem. My scoring units stayed on their objectives after my opponent realized my big things were just distractions and now couldn't stop me from scoring.

 

Iron warriors really didn't need a "big change" due to strength of rules. The rules were just extremely un-exciting.

3 tests over what, the course of a game? You don’t take repeated morale checks in a phase and in the current rules units tend to just get blown off the board, not chipped away. But this is also right to my point: it’s a boring, unimpactful rule that needed a big change. Saving yourself one morale check a game under ideal circumstances is like the definition of pointless.

 

Fearless is pretty common. You can get it on Chaplains, Command Squads, with Primarchs, with Ironfire specifically as Iron Warriors.

Edited April 27, 2022 by panascope

[Doghouse]

I finally got hold of Fafnir and Dominion to check out the scale and I'm not sure what to make of them. They are slightly taller than regular marines but far more slender and proportional to some extent, I'm a bit confused as to how I feel about them to be honest.

 

I don't think a lot of existing parts are going to work on them, stuff like the hands and heads are tiny in comparison to existing models and I can see this extending to the MK6 marines. I don't think they are the same size as the chaos marines, feels like an all new scale to me.

 

I was planning on converting Fafnir but I am not sure how now. Maybe I've been truescaling too long! :D

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

The only LD 10 units are ones with characters. Fearless, is in fact, very uncommon.

 

As I said, it depends on the list. Its roughly a 15% chance to fail ld 9, and blobs of 20 can usually be forced to take around 3 tests. If you have 2 blobs and another unit, you average a failed leadership test. I had a list with 60 tacs, with a bunch of other units that I wanted to stay where they were. I would have failed a couple of ld tests a game on average, but that was never a problem. My scoring units stayed on their objectives after my opponent realized my big things were just distractions and now couldn't stop me from scoring.

 

Iron warriors really didn't need a "big change" due to strength of rules. The rules were just extremely un-exciting.

3 tests over what, the course of a game? You don’t take repeated morale checks in a phase and in the current rules units tend to just get blown off the board, not chipped away. But this is also right to my point: it’s a boring, unimpactful rule that needed a big change. Saving yourself one morale check a game under ideal circumstances is like the definition of pointless.

 

Fearless is pretty common. You can get it on Chaplains, Command Squads, with Primarchs, with Ironfire specifically as Iron Warriors.

 

 

Yes, 3 tests over the course pf the game, per unit. A 20 model squad could take up to 6 morale tests in a given game; obviously thats not likely, so 3 is a more realistic number. And whether units get blown away in one turn of shooting comes down to a lot of factors:

• terrain density (to block los)
• terrain density (to grant cover)
• threat saturation
• your own target priority
• spacing to mitigate blasts

Usually mass removal is a result of the first and third points coming together. A good table and a good list doesn't let that happen. 

 

The rule definitely helps in lists designed to take advantage of it; I've won multiple games because of it, so I'm not sure where unimpactful is coming from. 

 

Those sources of fearless also kinda show what I mean; it's not common. There's two common sources that can grant it, a primarch, and the most overpowered rite in the game. 

[panascope]

Are Chaplains and Standards not common? Neither of those is more than 100 points to get on to the table, and the Chaplain was even included in the Calth box, making it one of the most common models around.

[Marshal Mittens]

Are Chaplains and Standards not common? Neither of those is more than 100 points to get on to the table, and the Chaplain was even included in the Calth box, making it one of the most common models around.

You can only take up to 3HQs usually though right? Seems like so much competition for a few spots?

[Sothalor]

40k - "These corvus hammers and knightly maces are all the weapons that are left of old Caliban's armouries."

 

30k - "You get a sword and you get a sword and you get a sword!"

 

That makes perfect sense. They already handed out all the swords by the time the 41st millennium rolled around.