State of the Union (Heresy)

[wildweasel]

11 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

Looking at the PDF again on my phone and, have they forgotten to put transport capacity on the Land Raiders?? 

Nope, it's there - 12 for the Phobos and 6 for the Achilles.

As for the Phobos - as far as I can tell it is mechanically identical to the Proteus Carrier in every respect so I'm not sure why they didn't just say "Use the Proteus Carrier army list entry for Phobos Land Raiders."

[lansalt]

6 minutes ago, wildweasel said:

Nope, it's there - 12 for the Phobos and 6 for the Achilles.

As for the Phobos - as far as I can tell it is mechanically identical to the Proteus Carrier in every respect so I'm not sure why they didn't just say "Use the Proteus Carrier army list entry for Phobos Land Raiders."

RAW the Phobos always uses a FOC slot, and GW probably wants to push sales of the new plastic Proteus Carrier...

[Ripper.McGuirl]

34 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

Looking at the PDF again on my phone and, have they forgotten to put transport capacity on the Land Raiders?? 

Nah, transport capacity is in the statline at the top. Phobos is 12, etc

[Aeternus]

I'm honestly just perplexed at some of the changes, or lack of changes, in these pdfs

Mainly for the NL, as Skimask has stated, bloody hell did Atramentar get crippled. I just don't understand why - it almost feels like they noticed Contekar weren't really exciting people so instead they've now kneecapped the more melee-focused elite terminators they were contenders with? I'd assume this wasn't it, but I can't think of any reasonable alternative for the Atramentar change, especially given that they had stated they designed the units for 2.0 then ported them over to 1.0 - so why have they suddenly lost WS and had their special rule drastically changed?

Maaaaaaybe they didn't want a WS5 unit to be able to hit on 2s, but the opportunity to do so is pretty fringe (given nearly every time I've got in combat with NL either the raptors/whatever have blended the enemy into a fine red mist, or have been blended in return) - so joining a combat in progress isn't as easy as people imagine , and even then it's only for a single turn. In return, you're now being hit on 3s by every other Legion terminator unit, hell even Lerneans will hit back better since their bonus is constant.

It's just...weird. Yes they have a plethora of special rules, including deep strike, and retain their access to hammers, but the last point there has limited use on a WS5 unit meant to fight other elite units, and just from the same pdf Delivers have a WS5 statline, deep strike, battle-hardened, all for five points more, and that's without even glancing at Huscarls with storm shields for 55 points more. Contekar - y'know, the sub type of Atramentar - have WS5, and they're meant to be the shooty variant!

Again, this is where it just feels like they've undertuned Atramentar in order to push Contekar - who for 5 points more come stock with better ranged, WS5, same deep strike, chosen warriors, higher LD, and option to be taken as a HQ instead of a fringe +1 to hit. Having a quick look at the maths, in a fight between the two units Contekar deal double the damage in cc - 6.5 wounds not including rends, to the Atramentar's 3.5 if they have chainglaives, then have better shooting on top of that.

So yeah, I just don't understand why. 

I find the characters also somewhat unimpressive - Mawdrym is still just less efficient than an equally tooled up primus medicae, even if he has some marginal surviveability, Kheron is sill in power armour which was irritating last edition, but doubly so now that even centurions come base with artificer (yes he still has his nifty 3++ in cc and fnp, but now with his WS debuff gone he's even more open to just being on the wrong end of a power fist/hammer/paragon blade that a praetor can take for the same price as him) but at least his weapon is now fancier, and Thole? I just dislike him :P I disliked him before when he was equally reliant on getting a rend with a sub-par weapon to trigger an attack with a budget paragon blade, and I dislike him still, given his cc gimmick is the same - a worse version of Armillus Dynat.

I'm going over the rest of the rules, there's some things which again are laughable (750 point baneblades chassis), some things which are weird (Caestus being unable to ram or deliver a 10 man terminator unit), and some things which are just...fine.

But at the end of the day, at least I don't play Salamanders...after all, WS4/BS4 is fine for a 215 point chaplain, right?

 

 

(I appreciate this is a very salty take. I just really wanted Atramentar to be decent  ) 

Edited July 1, 2022 by Aeternus

[Lyell]

1 hour ago, Astartes Consul said:

Looking at the PDF again on my phone and, have they forgotten to put transport capacity on the Land Raiders?? 

Capacity is in the statline: phobos has 12 and achiles 6

 

Edit: sorry was already explained.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Lyell

[ShadowCore67]

I feel like some of these profiles were created by people who actually care about the game and others were just thrown together by some intern trying to meet their quota.

[Cadmus Tyro]

I’m pretty happy with the inclusion of units I didn’t expect to see in my collection. Minotaurs is the heavy slot, even my macharius Omega has rules!!! 
 

looking at the malcador entry, anyone know where to find the “independent fire control” rule? 
 

cadmus 

[Slips]

16 hours ago, Brofist said:

Well, work with me on that. Why would you spend those points on a guy to attach to a scout / recon squad. For the melee weapons? You're probably not using scouts / recons for that. Shooting? Vigilator or heavy weapon guy does it better. Standing around? ... then why did you spend the points then? He really doesn't offer much right now. But he should! The concept is super sick!

Well, now that we have a PDF out, we actually have a usecase with the White Scars Falcons Claws.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Slips

[Aeternus]

1 hour ago, Cadmus Tyro said:

I’m pretty happy with the inclusion of units I didn’t expect to see in my collection. Minotaurs is the heavy slot, even my macharius Omega has rules!!! 
 

looking at the malcador entry, anyone know where to find the “independent fire control” rule? 
 

cadmus 

Can't see the independent fire control rule anywhere in either the main rulebook or the liber astartes, so I assume it'll be in the liber imperium with aux stuff? 

[Astartes Consul]

Putting the PDFs aside for a moment, saw this on Instagram and went to check for myself. The Chaos Havoc's page on the GW webstore has accidentally bee updated to include what looks like either a Land Raider sponsor sprue or maybe part of the new Predator kit?

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Chaos-Space-Marine-Havocs-2019

 

[Aeternus]

I believe that's just the Kratos sponson sprue - though will likely be used for double duty for the predator I imagine.

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/legiones-astartes-kratos-heavy-assault-tank-2022

[Astartes Consul]

8 minutes ago, Aeternus said:

I believe that's just the Kratos sponson sprue - though will likely be used for double duty for the predator I imagine.

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/legiones-astartes-kratos-heavy-assault-tank-2022

 

Ah dammit, I'm getting everything wrong today. Makes much more sense, yeah. 

[Noserenda]

I think the big question is, with 3 PDF releases are we now on  v2.03? Best get updating all the thread titles in the tactica :D 

[Lautrec the Embraced]

Ok, full disclaimer, I haven't got time to play the new edition yet so maybe my judgement is skewed but HOW is it possible that Medusa is 200 points while having, in comparison to prev. edition: less S, almost unimaginable Ap of 4 and barely Rending of 6+... But hey, more armour, brilliant I guess, gonna use it as a road block now.  I may be a bit salty cause I just finished mine :D... And when compared to stuff like Vindicator (from Leaks at least maybe it got changed in official rules) it really doesn't bode well for the Artillery

[tinpact]

Indomitus having an actual niche now is very nice. Some of the legion units look quite nice.

On the other hand, missing Hussars is disappointing.

[wildweasel]

4 hours ago, lansalt said:

RAW the Phobos always uses a FOC slot, and GW probably wants to push sales of the new plastic Proteus Carrier...

If anyone ever tries to give me static about my DT Phobos I will just stare at them until they leave in shame.

[No Foes Remain]

1 hour ago, Lautrec the Embraced said:

Ok, full disclaimer, I haven't got time to play the new edition yet so maybe my judgement is skewed but HOW is it possible that Medusa is 200 points while having, in comparison to prev. edition: less S, almost unimaginable Ap of 4 and barely Rending of 6+... But hey, more armour, brilliant I guess, gonna use it as a road block now.  I may be a bit salty cause I just finished mine :D... And when compared to stuff like Vindicator (from Leaks at least maybe it got changed in official rules) it really doesn't bode well for the Artillery

Know what's better? The Medusa has a gravis heavy bolter (twin-linked heavy bolter) that the model doesn't come with. Theses rules are a bloody mess.

[spessmarine]

Big document! Definitely not perfect, some things certainly got more love than others.
Can't honestly say I care some things like the Attack Bikes, but I wish everyone continues to not lose stuff they may have lovingly converted.

Lots to dive into, starting with Exemplary Battles, some big changes. Why ever charge IFs? What on earth did they do to the Dark Sons? Sunkillers shining.

[Brofist]

My main take away is that militia are probably not getting anything to compensate once their .pdf gets released

1 hour ago, Lautrec the Embraced said:

Ok, full disclaimer, I haven't got time to play the new edition yet so maybe my judgement is skewed but HOW is it possible that Medusa is 200 points while having, in comparison to prev. edition: less S, almost unimaginable Ap of 4 and barely Rending of 6+... But hey, more armour, brilliant I guess, gonna use it as a road block now.  I may be a bit salty cause I just finished mine :D... And when compared to stuff like Vindicator (from Leaks at least maybe it got changed in official rules) it really doesn't bode well for the Artillery

Big armor and big artillery got nerfed hard this edition in an attempt to town down lethality. Combined with lots of multi wound models its very much a direct fire edition. This is reflected in the .pdf, but compounded as the balance in the .pdf is all over the place

[Astartes Consul]

I think calling these a mess or a failure is OTT and certain units not being as strong as they were in 1.0 doesn't automatically ruin the whole endeavour. The whole point of the PDF is to provide playable rules so that people's armies aren't completely invalidated, not to be a perfectly balanced expansion to the new edition. So while this is by no means a perfect set of rules - and there are some very strange choices for sure - it is also 100+ pages of rules that fulfil the main goal of keeping existing armies valid and, for the most part IMO, give the units & characters a niche to operate in, even if they aren't as strong as before.

[Noserenda]

 

3 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

I think calling these a mess or a failure is OTT and certain units not being as strong as they were in 1.0 doesn't automatically ruin the whole endeavour. The whole point of the PDF is to provide playable rules so that people's armies aren't completely invalidated, not to be a perfectly balanced expansion to the new edition. So while this is by no means a perfect set of rules - and there are some very strange choices for sure - it is also 100+ pages of rules that fulfil the main goal of keeping existing armies valid and, for the most part IMO, give the units & characters a niche to operate in, even if they aren't as strong as before.

Its not just "Strength" though, the particularly over pointed LoW for example outright cant be used in the fairly standard 2-3000pt games, some units have radically changed in role or have glaring problems in how their mechanics operate. That and as mentioned a few times some unit types overall have been badly hit apparently in an effort to get rid.

Honestly it wouldnt be too bad if it was a mainline GW production where we could expect a tweak/FAQ in a month and egregious problems will be looked at but i think for FW thats our lot until they come up in a book somehow or we get some major shift. Id really like to be proven wrong ofc.

[SkimaskMohawk]

41 minutes ago, Astartes Consul said:

I think calling these a mess or a failure is OTT and certain units not being as strong as they were in 1.0 doesn't automatically ruin the whole endeavour. The whole point of the PDF is to provide playable rules so that people's armies aren't completely invalidated, not to be a perfectly balanced expansion to the new edition. So while this is by no means a perfect set of rules - and there are some very strange choices for sure - it is also 100+ pages of rules that fulfil the main goal of keeping existing armies valid and, for the most part IMO, give the units & characters a niche to operate in, even if they aren't as strong as before.

The problem is that they've been working on second edition for years. We didn't get a faq for 1st since 2019, and we can see very little shift between playtest editions and a piss poor legacy unit selection. A lot of the legacy rules are awesome and show a lot of insight; but a lot are complete trash like the dreadnought characters and atrementar to name a few. 

In the context of exemplary battle units, how could the reverse-engineered rules fill more niches and be more interesting than the written-for-second-directly rules?

[Chaeron]

23 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

@Chaeron it was a prime concern for cybernetica players. I had 4-5 scoring units in my taghmata lists; they were a pain to kill and topped out at 750 points

It was hard to make a terrible mechanicum list, but pure cybernetica was definitely one way of doing it. 

 

That’s fair: most of us seemed to use two sets of Thralls just to meet the requirements (and occasionally Thallax if the points allowed…). But, it was effective! Scoring matters less if you have nothing to score with - on both sides .

Edited July 1, 2022 by Chaeron
Double-post.

[Mandragola]

I think these rules are mostly good, though there are a few errors and weird things. 
 

I’m working on a Ravenguard force and I couldn’t be much happier with deliverers. Those guys are absolute beasts. 
 

Kaedes Nex is also really great. I can put him in a Seeker squad and they’ll be able to shoot characters to pieces. It’s cool he has shroud bombs too. I probably won’t put him with my Mor Deythan mostly as though operate a bit closer in. 

[Brofist]

Yeah this .pdf is pretty disappointing in terms of quality. Given what I've seen there isn't much hope for militia this edition.

Check out this quality rules writing