Kroot buffs and nerfs from the new 11th edition rules.

[Tawnis]

So, I was originally going to wait until all the rules came out to post a big breakdown, but we learned so much during the reveal show that I figured I'd post one now and do a final one next month once we have things like points, the primaries we are likely to see, and the last bit of the core rules. Here's what I've seen for the moment:

 

BUFFS:

- Leader models now remaining part of the unit is a HUGE buff to Kroot. It was always rough when we'd kill a squad that we had +1, to hit and would against and then the character survives with no damage and we lost our buffs against them. Now they retain for the whole game which is a big increase on dealing with chunky characters that had bodyguard units. 
- New Cover. With Stealth basically being always have cover, nothing changes for most of the army. However, cover was only ever relevant for cavalry against AP:0 weapons before, which were pretty infrequent. Now so long as our cavalry are toed into cover or partially obscured, -1 BS to attacks will be huge. Keep in mind though, that if a SINGLE model is fully in the open, the whole unit can be shot without the penalty, so the big 6 bricks of Rampagers may be hard to fully hide sometimes. 
- Now that battle shock causes a test to leave, our useless AoE battle shock strat might actually be used once in a blue moon. It's still pretty bad, but going from useless to pretty bad is still technically a buff. 

NERFS: 

- Discarding Mission Cards for a CP no longer allows you to replace those cards. Given how CP hungry we are, that is a reasonable nerf to our ability to access key stratagems when we get a dead objective. Less objectives will be dead now since they retain to score later, but overall, I do still think it's a nerf, though not a major one. 

 

Secondaries: Overall they look good for us and pretty easily scorable to some degree. Here's the new or changed ones. 
- Display of Might: Easy 2VP as this was often in the bag for us. You can now hold to end of your opponent's turn for 4VP instead. While risky, I think we are one of the armies most likely to be able to pull this off. Even so, I think most people will take their 2VP and call it a day, or cash it in for a CP. 
- Outflank: Guaranteed 3VP for us unless you're basically tabled on turn 5, very easy to get the 5VP for it too as we tend to spread out lots. (Have a unit within 6" of opposite board edges that are not your own.) 
- Forward Position: Hard 1st turn draw for most armies (grab the two objectives in no mans land, but not the center) and it is one of the ones you can re-draw turn 1, but that being said, I think in most games it's doable for Kroot if we get the first turn and have protected our scout moves. 
- Burden of Trust: Do actions on objectives, those units have to live until next turn. This is actually one of the harder ones for us I think. we have lots of units, but with all our carnivores giving sticky, sometimes, the objectives get left alone. Be weary of this one when positioning your army. 
- Beacon: Should be an easy 3VP for a Lone Spear and we can often snag a 5VP on it if we've pushed back our opponent and can edge them across the center or behind terrain. (Nominate a unit, it has to live until next turn, 3VP in no mans land, up to 5 if in your opponent's half.) 
- Plunder: Should be another easy one for us. Do an action in terrain on opponent's side of the board.  

I think the secondaries are pretty favourable to Kroot overall. With the ability to retain them, I think final scores will go up a bit overall and it will often come down to who can make the most headway on secondaries in the first two turns, so long as they can hold on and keep scoring into the end game as well. 

Based on everything I've seen so far, it does seem like we'll get noticeably stronger heading into the new edition. This also makes me wonder if our posts costs are going to go up to compensate. I don't think the general changes overall will be that noticeable to anyone who doesn't play Kroot though, so we'll have to wait and see. Everyone completely missed the Farstalker Deathstar that you could do when the codex dropped and it only got nerfed accidentally when broad changes hit everything else, so perhaps this is the reverse of that? Time will tell. 

 

Until then, keep hunting Kindred. 

 

P.S. Is this kind of breakdown something that you would like to see in a Youtube style instead? I've been waffling on the idea for a few years now, mostly holding back due to time constraints, but I've been considering it more and more lately.