New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[Brofist]

12 hours ago, Joe said:

 

Anuj wasn't the lead for 2E - Andy was. He's still very much the project lead by all accounts. Neil Wylie is still there as well. So that's 2/4 from 1E (Andy Hoare, Neil Wylie, Alan Bligh and John French), and 2/2 from 2E in terms of senior staff / project leads.

 

Anuj's main contribution to 2E before leaving was Liber Mechanicum, which he's tried to distance himself from a few times on social media. 

 

I remember him talking about how good it was and blow harding about it on socials. Then it released and suddenly everyone realized he was Heresy Matt Ward.

[BitsHammer]

54 minutes ago, Brofist said:

 

I remember him talking about how good it was and blow harding about it on socials. Then it released and suddenly everyone realized he was Heresy Matt Ward.

Ward had good internal balance but weak fluff and while all his books were roughly balanced against each other that meant they were all at least a half step above everyone else.

 

Nah the Mechanicum book is more like the slop job Cruddace did to Nids.

[Brother Sutek]

50 minutes ago, BitsHammer said:

Ward had good internal balance but weak fluff and while all his books were roughly balanced against each other that meant they were all at least a half step above everyone else.

 

Nah the Mechanicum book is more like the slop job Cruddace did to Nids.

Ward was horrible for fantasy and yes I agree his fluff was just atrocious.  Cruddace and his 8th edition Tomb Kings book earned him my greatest dislike,  so much that I forgot that horrible Nid book! 

[Brofist]

I'd like to retract my previous statement- sounds like he's Heresy Cruddace

[Lord Marshal]

Tactical Status rules preview.

 

Quote

Pinned stops you from moving, Suppressed makes your shots fly wide, and Stunned hampers your reactions. There are many ways to inflict these statuses on your foes, which typically involve testing one of the new Advanced Characteristics. There are tokens included in the Saturnine box to mark units under these effects.

By adding more ways for attacks to affect a unit, Tactical Statuses breathe new life into weapons that might previously have been left behind in favour of raw killing power.

 

Flame weapons benefit greatly from this new system, and they bring us neatly onto our fourth status: Routed. This is where the old rules for Morale find a new home, and much of its conditions will feel familiar – this Tactical Status will most commonly be applied to a unit that has lost combat or suffered 25% casualties in a single phase. Routed units move towards their battlefield edge and may run off the table entirely. The new Panic (X) special rule – found on most flame weapons and other similar pieces of wargear – can also inflict Routed should they successfully wound as part of an attack.

 

In addition to their unique effects, Tactical Statuses all apply a cocktail of common drawbacks to the unit they affect. Charges become Disordered, troops fight last in most combats, and they are unable to capture objectives. Units test on their Advanced Characteristics – Cool for Pinned, Suppressed and Stunned, and Leadership for Routed – at the end of their turn to see if they recover.

There’s more detail that we won’t dig into here, but that’s Tactical Statuses in broad strokes. You get a whole handful of plastic tokens in the Saturnine box that help you track who has which Statuses, and it’ll be second nature before you know it. Come back later this week as we take a look at the new weapon characteristics and see how your favourite guns have changed in the new edition.

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:06 PM by Lord Marshal

[BitsHammer]

Some highlights:

 

[Orange Knight]

This game is looking good but I really don't like markers and what not. The more of that we have the more tedious things get.

 

But I am open minded. I'd love to know what characters I can attach to Saturnine Terminators and if they can act as a unit for a Primarch...

[Nephaston]

Neat, but this is like these tiny appetizers in an moderately expensive restaurant, while I'm sitting here on an empty stomach.

[arnesh88]

I like the idea of most Flame weapons getting Panic (X) (Salamanders bias here). First thing that came to mind was Dawn of War 1 inflicting a lot of morale damage, making it easier to kill units and take less damage, and can only recover when they fall back from combat long enough. So, I think that's a neat callback to include.

 

While making things a bit more complicated, I do think breaking up the old Pinning into Pinned/Stunned/Suppressed is a step in the right direction. Pinned was usually difficult to pull off, but there were ways to make it easier. And when it was, it was way too good, completely shutting down units.

 

REALLY crossing fingers that when they go over weapon profiles later this week, they also explain how that works vs vehicles to finally settle how vehicles work, because that's another thing I'm nervous about with the changes. Because it wasn't listed as one of the "Top 5 Rules Changes", it's a total coin toss of how it works.

Edited Wednesday at 02:33 PM by arnesh88

[Bradeh]

I think these are great changes, morale and status effects should matter in war games. Can GW balance it though? That's all that matters. A lot more to work with now. 

[firestorm40k]

Fortunately I still have the dice from Epic 40k/BFG which I can use to represent the statuses, without having to pay at least part of the 'hobby tax' GW have enforced on existing players (new books & tokens) 

 

(that's if I even bother playing the new edition, which at this point is almost entirely based on whether or not Imperial Fists still keep their Castellan Consul type - I've a horrible feeling GW are going to introduce the same 'no model = no rules' policy they have for 40k. If they do that, I won't be able to use my army as it's lead by a Castellan which I had to convert as there's no official model, and that'll be me done with the game ) 

Edited Wednesday at 02:55 PM by firestorm40k

[Nephaston]

3 minutes ago, firestorm40k said:

I've a horrible feeling GW are going to introduce the same 'no model = no rules' policy they have for 40k. If they do that, I won't be able to use my army as it's lead by a Castellan which I had to convert as there's no official model, and that'll be me done with the game ) 

Counterpoint; from what we've seen of the Isstvan V booklet they include a "building this unit" box thing. So at least for this edition we have the vague sanction of GW to convert stuff that doesn't have a model yet.

[01RTB01]

13 minutes ago, firestorm40k said:

Fortunately I still have the dice from Epic 40k/BFG which I can use to represent the statuses, without having to pay at least part of the 'hobby tax' GW have enforced on existing players (new books & tokens) 

 

(that's if I even bother playing the new edition, which at this point is almost entirely based on whether or not Imperial Fists still keep their Castellan Consul type - I've a horrible feeling GW are going to introduce the same 'no model = no rules' policy they have for 40k. If they do that, I won't be able to use my army as it's lead by a Castellan which I had to convert as there's no official model, and that'll be me done with the game ) 

So a single model existing or not will determine if you play a whole edition of a game? Tis a touch extreme?

 

From what we've seen already they're keeping more freedom than 40k 

[01RTB01]

9 hours ago, Brofist said:

I'd like to retract my previous statement- sounds like he's Heresy Cruddace

In fairness to Andy, he's incredibly passionate about the games and having had several conversations with him over the years I don't get the comments on here.

 

2.0 was a much better game than 1.0 and did away with the atrocities of first edition. 

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

This game is looking good but I really don't like markers and what not. The more of that we have the more tedious things get.

 

I accept it as a trade off for a certain level of complexity in rules... because my brain can't track things like it used to.

[firestorm40k]

24 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

So a single model existing or not will determine if you play a whole edition of a game? Tis a touch extreme?

The core of my army is two 20-Marine tactical squads and two 10-man Heavy Weapons squads. The Castellan gives Heavy Weapons squads 'Line', so I don't need to get more Tactical squads for that. As it took me the best part of two years to get all those painted, I don't really fancy having to paint a load more stuff just to make my army 'legal' or workable. 

[jaxom]

17 minutes ago, firestorm40k said:

The core of my army is two 20-Marine tactical squads and two 10-man Heavy Weapons squads. The Castellan gives Heavy Weapons squads 'Line', so I don't need to get more Tactical squads for that. As it took me the best part of two years to get all those painted, I don't really fancy having to paint a load more stuff just to make my army 'legal' or workable. 

Oof, yah I can see that. I wonder if the new army composition rules are aimed at preventing this? That is, specific consuls existing is no longer required to have such a force work.

[Wibbling]

Hullo jaxom, I rather liked the Death Guard, especially Mortarion's nature and how the Emperor cheated him and run the same - the passage of 'Bolter, melta and flamer' has me run with three heavy weapon squads with those armaments. 

 

I appreciate Workshop are being cagey for prep and marketing terms but does anyone else hope they'd publish the 'month' of release, if not be pinned to a specific day?

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

2 hours ago, arnesh88 said:

I like the idea of most Flame weapons getting Panic (X) (Salamanders bias here). First thing that came to mind was Dawn of War 1 inflicting a lot of morale damage, making it easier to kill units and take less damage, and can only recover when they fall back from combat long enough. So, I think that's a neat callback to include.

 

While making things a bit more complicated, I do think breaking up the old Pinning into Pinned/Stunned/Suppressed is a step in the right direction. Pinned was usually difficult to pull off, but there were ways to make it easier. And when it was, it was way too good, completely shutting down units.

 

REALLY crossing fingers that when they go over weapon profiles later this week, they also explain how that works vs vehicles to finally settle how vehicles work, because that's another thing I'm nervous about with the changes. Because it wasn't listed as one of the "Top 5 Rules Changes", it's a total coin toss of how it works.

The aim is to make more weapons relevant on the battlefield by fulfilling different roles. It spices up the game tremendously. Previously you would just load up on raw killing power (e.g. Plasma weapons) and aim to obliterate the opponent totally.

[MARK0SIAN]

I’m cautiously optimistic about giving more weapons a role to play, they’re right when they say that lots of them get ignored in favour of raw killing power, especially if you have to pay points for them. 
 

My only concern is that they’ll overdo it. Yeah it’ll be fun for the player who’s inflicting all these various effects but I don’t think anyone will find it fun if most of their army isn’t acting normally for a lot of the game. 

[jaxom]

1 hour ago, Wibbling said:

Hullo jaxom, I rather liked the Death Guard, especially Mortarion's nature and how the Emperor cheated him and run the same - the passage of 'Bolter, melta and flamer' has me run with three heavy weapon squads with those armaments. 

Oh yes, and I’m looking forward to see how all the fun war cri- I mean extreme sanction weapons work in the new Tactical System world.

 

Urg another year or two until I can work on my XIV Legion army again.

[Brother Sutek]

3 hours ago, arnesh88 said:

I like the idea of most Flame weapons getting Panic (X) (Salamanders bias here). First thing that came to mind was Dawn of War 1 inflicting a lot of morale damage, making it easier to kill units and take less damage, and can only recover when they fall back from combat long enough. So, I think that's a neat callback to include.

 

While making things a bit more complicated, I do think breaking up the old Pinning into Pinned/Stunned/Suppressed is a step in the right direction. Pinned was usually difficult to pull off, but there were ways to make it easier. And when it was, it was way too good, completely shutting down units.

As a Death Guard player with quite a bit of flamerthrowers...I agree!

[Mogger351]

1 hour ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

The aim is to make more weapons relevant on the battlefield by fulfilling different roles. It spices up the game tremendously. Previously you would just load up on raw killing power (e.g. Plasma weapons) and aim to obliterate the opponent totally.

That's not to say that won't still be true, reducing return fire by it not being there is still often a bigger boon than a hit penalty etc.

[Son of Rawl]

I just want to see how you build an army, and how the allies matrix works. These are sounding like the biggest changes in 3.0, but they will be drip feeding everything else till we get to that part. We will probs get a whole article of how Balistic Skill works before that, which will more than likely be the same, just reworded to justify a new book.

[Brofist]

Panic seems pretty strong! Unless they changed the way units fall back, that one is effectively removing a unit from the game while the others are debuffs. Not to mention what happens if the unit reaches the edge of the table.

 

  

4 hours ago, 01RTB01 said:

In fairness to Andy, he's incredibly passionate about the games and having had several conversations with him over the years I don't get the comments on here.

 

2.0 was a much better game than 1.0 and did away with the atrocities of first edition. 

 

Oh I wasn't talking about Andy. He's been super humble and considerate.

 

Balance was def better in 2.0, but it also had huge holes too, the later army books and supplements in particular. Poor army balance in those, broken missions in print... a return to tradition perhaps? I still largely enjoyed it, but I'm also not going to defend Anuj after he bragged about the Mech book, for example.