Hopes for the new legions imperialis book

[Interrogator Stobz]

My NZ order is completed, now I wait for the nerfbat. 

TBH I'm not overly concerned with point changes, as long as the structure/options in the formations don't change too much.

Edited August 23 by Interrogator Stobz

[Crablezworth]

So https://www.chaosbunker.de/en/ has some good articles and pics of the new kits and a review of the new book

 

https://www.goonhammer.com/ has a review of the book and 3 other articles breaking down different army lists

 

 

So it would appear the 5 new kits previewed are the only new units in this book. No new solar aux units sadly. 

 

As expected the weakest of the new units are sadly the vindicator and typhons, its not their fault its that whoever did the rules still hasn't realized siege weapon exists and nothing has it yet. The whirlwind rules look pretty great, but the scorpius less so. The mastodons are surprisingly affordable points-wise, the home brew rules i made had them at 165pts, the official ones are 130pts, with 3 wounds and 2 voids. Their melta array is pretty deadly too if anything gets close. The cerberus look deadly, they get 3 shots so even one will be quite scary if it gets in range. 

 

A general good change is its appears super heavy tanks are now 3 wounds. I think this will make a lot of people happy, I would have been just as happy with 1+ saves but at least with this they can take more of a punch in cc if they find themselves mired in it. The other good news is all the malcador chassis are now 2+ armour, which really really shakes things up for them. The downside is, somehow, the dracosans got even more expensive but gained a wound, I guess to bring them in line with other malcador chassis tanks. 

 

Ogryns got more expensive and are now 2 wounds. I think this is a good start, it doesn't fix rend but at least they're more resilient while being basically half the attacks. They're also bulky now, which is a mixed bag. It's good from a fluff/realism stand point as they're way too big to fit in arvuses or dracosans. But that leaves them with basically only infiltrate, and without going on a tangent about infiltrate that's a bit unfortunate. Again from incentives but also because there are no caps on infiltrate. I get that they can't fit in transports but I don't get how that makes them particularly wealthy or able to conceal themselves en masse. 

 

Drop pods and dread drop pods went up in points which is good, as did havoc launchers for rhinos, they now cost the same as multi meltas. Contemptor dreads lost the ability to take leviathan dreads but gained an extra dice on kheres and apparently their inv save got better from 6 to 5, which is significant. Palisade pods are now their own detachment. Scimitar jetbikes got faster going 12 now, speeders got faster as well going 11, they also seemingly got rid of the weird loadout restrictions which is great. 

 

Mechanicum are largely untouched, they did thankfully up the cost of triaros from 15 to 22. They also for some reason are forcing tech thralls to start at detachments of 5, I guess they didn't sell enough triaros... ugh. I could be mistaken but I believe ursurax now have rend which is cool. 

 

Titans largely gained a wound and in some cases more voids, all but the warlord and warmaster titans got a bit cheaper as well. Not much change to weapons, plasma blast still no blast but got another dice. Warmaster went up 100pts. 

 

Knights got cheaper across the board, armigers and moirax are now their own detachments no more tied to the hip of larger knights. Magaera lost blast, somehow (ugh). Armigers got insanely cheap, its sorta nuts. No idea if they fixed their scale yet, still trying to find out. 

 

 

Overall, I dunno man, its not that I don't think most of this is likely good in the overall scheme of things, but its a lot of money to still be cleaning stuff up from 2 years ago, and still have no light armour for solar aux. I don't think its the end but like, this book is all business, It's unquestionably good as a gaming aid, but it doesn't have anything from any of the campaign books in terms of missions or new rules like deadly fog. It's also coming on the heels of book 4, which itself had 4 full army lists and they could have easily done the changes they just did for titans and knights then, like 9-10 months ago at this point. It's not that there isn't a lot to like here but there's still some questionable stuff like not addressing point costs for some of the mech bots, in one case actually going out of their way to make domitars worse. They still haven't given the thanatars very much pointed upward plasma mortar barrage. I don't think its over, but it would seem we'll be right back to 60 dollar books with a handful of new units whenever the next book drops in 9 months or whatever it is we're expecting now.