Tuesday, May 27, 2014

FAQs are live ! also, eldar buffed further.. like seriously Dafuq

FAQS are live people, go take a look. Looks like lots of things got nerfed pretty solidly including helldrakes, rune priests (space wolves in general).. etc

Based on my reading of this, no more 4+ shut down of psyker powers, and good bye space wolf specific psyker powers. No more jaws etc. 

I could be wrong though on this, as it seems the FAQ part may not be the most clear. The FAQ instructs to replace the third sentence of runic weapons with "furthermore a model with a runic weapon adds 1 to deny the witch roles". Looking at the space wolf codex the runic weapon rule on page 36, the sentence it's actually replacing is " A runic weapon is a force weapon". So I guess it depends on where the rule starts, as the first two sentences are actually literally fluff. Unless that's a comma not a period at the end of that sentence, which I doubt, as "Furthermore" is capitalized.  So, I think the intention is clear, but the rules lawyers out there.. have at it.

So... Thoughts on that? GW SNAFU?

Second edit, so as pointed out below by Hudson, I misread the FAQ change for the SW- I read the first part that stated the SW FOC would now follow the book one (and thus thought what I said below), and completely missed the following rule change, which allows two HQS per FOC slot, so disregard that. Todays just not my day apparently!
Also huge changes to space wolves FOC, no more double rune priests etc.


So, for salt in the wound, Eldar ghosthelms act exactly the same as they do now. So, if Eldar perils, they can just basically ignore it.

So Edit here, people pointed out to me I was incorrect about this, but leaving it in so comments make sense still (in italics) Additionally, runes of warding got a huge buff, it now adds +2 to the deny the witch roll. Which means it can be used even to deny blessings.

I think runes of warding just became auto-take.

That also means, my previous post was spot on. Good bye other forms of death-stars. Your powers will be to unreliable to get off.

Behold, now it is the time of the Eldar!

Prepare yourselves for beaststars and seer councils.



Other misc: Gloom prisons for necron are now +2 to deny the witch, otherwise pretty much the same
CSM - Helldrake nerf, now a hull mounted gun, meaning no more 360 arcs of fire.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

New edition thoughts - In the grim dark of the future, there are only Eldar.

So I notice a lot of idiots are posting/cheering about how Deathstars are going to go away, specifically beast-stars, seer council etc. Notably on BOLS and Faeit....

My description of those people should tell you what I think of that.

Invis + Fortune = "I Win".

Invis, to those who have not yet read the book, means you have to snap fire at the unit, and can only hit them on 6's in CC.  It's stupid, because as far as I can tell, ignore cover doesn't remove invis. So having to snap fire is atrocious. It also means blasts / template weapons can't be shot into them.... (as its not a snap fire). Then you can't assault them, because you'll hardly touch them. Meanwhile, they'll play with you just fine.

Give those two powers to an army that can assault turn 2, and throw tons of attacks, have reliable invulns, have plenty of IC's to spread around abilities or break away to kill shit, and a lot of psyker levels, and you've got a recipe for super death stars.

Seriously invis is stupidly good. What were they thinking?

A lot of people are championing the return to MSU - They are wrong. Vehicles are slightly more durable than they were previously, but the gains are uneven in each army. Wave serpents benefited immensely, while rhinos only slightly improved. So your scoring MSU'd vehicle army is only slightly more durable than it was in 6th (unless you play wave serpents of course).

 It's nice to know that those AP3 and worse guns won't insta-gib a vehicle. But, all that requires is a few weapon swaps to get back to the status quo. Prepare for a lot more AP2/AP1, or S6+ torrent to simply glance stuff out.

Vehicles needed more hullpoints, or 6+ invuln saves (representing armored systems.. or whatever take your pick), not just booming on a 7+. It's a helpful change but not the best.

Seer councils / beast stars weren't having a problem tabling people in 6th, MSUing your units isn't going to really change that, it just means that the seer council or beast star might include more wave serpents to boom your vehicles (as they do it quite easily and reliably), and less wraith knights (As cover saves are dumb now). Or just a few more anti-tank ranged units.

It's also a thing, that you can summon your own daemonic allies (at least atm, we'll see with FAQS), so you can rush that more durable than ever death star across the board, and it can summon more units, to help kill whatever it might be facing.

And because your MSUing, that deathstar player knows you won't have your own deathstar to oppose theirs. So they can toss their stuff forward and go full bore into you, and summon daemons every turn to bolster their army, allowing them to hunt down your squads efficiently and effectively.

I will tell you, that some deathstars are going to disappear real fast. This is very unfortunate as before we had a sort of balance occurring, with several deathstars able to nock each other out, so at least it wasn't monolithic.

Forget that for now. In the grim dark of the future, there is only Eldar.

Centurian stars, ovesa star, these will be gone. Ovesa isn't legal anymore (unless faq'd otherwise by GW), and centurian stars relied on either having a buff commander for ignore cover, twin linking, etc, or on psyker powers, which will now be much harder to get off vs. a seer council player who can toss all their dice with no fear of retribution into shutting down your crucial roles. Do you as a tournament player, really want to risk your death star getting its shit pushed in by someone who can shut down your crucial buffs 1/3 the time. Not to mention, Centurian stars will rely on throwing a lot of dice to get the powers off, risking perils! Something Eldar don't fear.

I saw someone pointing out that Eldar players won't want to risk their armor save improvement powers because of the new casting things...

So what?

A re-rollable 3+ and/or 4+ is still good.

Additionally the changes to how cover saves work (standing in terrain by itself is no longer cover), means MC's and weak troops are now super easy pickings for ranged attacks.

For those who missed it, being obscured by difficult terrain is now a 5+, and being in any part of a ruin (but not necessarily obscured) is a 4+.

So armies with good troops, or good transports to hide them in will be vastly improved. Armies without.. well. GTFO? Especially with the proliferation of barrage potential from imperial armies and.. Eldar.

So expect to see -- Seer council w/ wave serpents; Beast Stat w/ Wave serpents; Cheeky drop podding marines (which will go away just as quick, as they realize helldrakes are still going to rip them a new asshole, not to mention the previously mentioned armies will have no problem shredding them once they adjust to bringing some more anti-tank guns to nock down their stuff).

I was hoping IG would be awesome. Now I don't think so. The change to invis is just to much, a solid deathstar like described above can simply come across and kill them.

A lot of people are looking hard at GK to problem solve this. It's an interesting idea, but ultimately I don't think it will pan out. GK's are not going to win an assault fight vs. seer council or beast packs, and they're not going to shoot them down if they have invis. So it'll really depend on if the GK player can roll enough dice to cancel the Eldar players power. That's some chancy shit tbh. Especially if backed up by wave serpents the elder player with some careful target priority can quickly reduce the number of dice the GK player can toss to block powers.

In case you all missed it, template/blast weapons no longer work based on ruin levels. It's simply models under the template. So those of you hiding under skyshields, that doesn't work anymore. But it also means spreading your troops across ruin levels to protect against them is more or less pointless. Also barrage now comes from the center of the first landing spot. So if your models were standing in some difficult terrain that obscured them from the front, but not from the rear (where our hypothetical blast has landed), despite standing in terrain, no cover saves(unless in a ruin). So that's kind of a big deal.


Friday, May 23, 2014

Huzzah RTT results! Also new edition today... thoughts on that at some point

So!

We had our Huzzah Hobbies RTT last sunday. Results here -- > http://app.torrentoffire.com/#/tournament/Huzzah-May-RTT/1/leaderboard


No one brought any crazy beat-face lists (ovesa stars, cent stars, etc). And the predominant armies were SM and IG.
The top table ended up being orks w/ nob bikers vs. foot slogging daemons (with no fmc's or fateweaver!) so. To give an idea of how "non-competitive" the armies were... (they were pretty competitive tbh, the surprise factor at dealing with nob bikers alone coupled with bwagons meganobz is enough to throw off a lot of peoples strategies).

The last game ended up being a nailbiter (quite literally), and came down to a few dice rolls at the game end, which could have easily swung it either way. So congrats to Eric and Kevin!

We went a little silly on the terrain, see the pics. For whatever reason, I've never seen an event that had river or water activity. So I bought some and slapped it down on the table. People seemed to enjoy the themes on the tables, so that worked out well. May continue it into the future.

I've also noticed a lot of our more casual players have been substantially stepping up their game, be it from competition levels or otherwise. So that's been really encouraging. It seems most of the regular attendees are more or less coalescing at a similar skill-level, and its more luck / army matchup now that decides rather than any complete blowouts.

As far as 7th, most of the new rules / rumors are out. It seems it won't be the earth-shaking devastating mix-up's which were prophesized. More like 6.5. However, key differences on scoring, Tau basically taking a sucker punch to the nuts, and other small tweaks are going to see a radical mix-up in lists.

So far- without the book in hand, based on what I've seen (and discussions I've had with others (MVB etc), it seems Eldar will come out the top dog, or at least a close toss-up to IG. Wave serpents are now ridiculous, and seer-councils got a fairly substantial buff.

I've seen some retarded pairings posted over on BOLS, but I expect that the meta is going to shift, a lot.

Why?

Tau buff commander based armies will no longer be effective. No more battle bros for them. This means cent stars etc will have to rely on psyker powers to get their abilities off; and things will be a bit more unreliable. I'm not sure how the denial dice work yet (if they are buffed by your mastery level, or just D6 winds of change). But if buffed by mastery level, forget about using pskyer powers vs. elder, who will chuck ass-tons of dice to deny it.

Even if D6 based, a opposing player could easily save all their D6 dice to deny that crucial ignore cover roll, and have decent odds of doing so.

Eldar also don't have to worry about ze perils, because of ghost helms. So, they want fortune? Chuck as many dice into it as they want... oops perils? oh well!

Unless they FAQ that of course, we'll see.

So expect to see Eldar top dog. Daemon FMC is going to go to a shooty based only variant, but is likely to have lost a bit overall, especially with the change to assault.

Depending on how FAQ's etc go, ovesa star may go away, if the buff commander really can't join to ovesa and company.  I expect tau will stick around as broadside spam w/ riptides backing them up is still super super good. Just, bye bye ovesa star (based on rumor that IC can't join MC).

Necron lose out huge if that rumor is true, spyder star no longer is legal, and that was .. such a good and fun build.. seriously.

Ok, enough rambles, we'll have the rulebook within hours, so can post legit non-rumor based thoughts then!




Tuesday, May 13, 2014

40k RTT This Sunday May 18th @ huzzah hobbies

It looks like the warm and awesome days are finally here! Shame there isn't a place to play 40 outside in a large group.

Just wanted to let everyone know that our last 6th edition RTT will be held this Sunday at Huzzah Hobbies as normal. www.huzzahhobbies.com

Registration starts at 10am, and games begin at 10:45. If you are going to be late please call the store at 703-466-0460 and let us know. Pre-registration is not a requirement.

Entry fee is $15, and covers a pizza lunch and two drinks. The remaining cash is rolled entirely into prize support.

1850 pts.

We allow stronghold assault, but with the caveat that no networked systems, D-weapons or AV15 buildings are legal. Escalation is not legal. If you want to bring forgeworld please email me ahead of time with your units rules so I can decide if its ok. (for the most part it should be cool). All dataslates and formations are legal. Formations have a provision that they are a special slot 0-1, so no more than one formation for an army.

Note that next month, pending our review of the new 7th edition, there will be a necessary revamping of what's allowed and what isn't allowed.

Monday, May 5, 2014

40k new edition leaks


Click here, try not to hyperventilate or panic.

http://imgur.com/a/Kbyu1#1


So heres the big changes

1) unstructured or structured. This looks like a quasi-come the apocalypse. We don't know for sure. It looks like bonus's for staying in an FOC, and nothing for breaking it.

So is this good for tournament play? Probably not at all. Will it be banned by exactly all of the tournaments? Yes. Expect every event to post that they only allow structured FOC's. So that will solve this little issue.

2) New ally matrix - we'll have to see how this plays out, as we know nothing more than that it's new.

3) Psyker phrase - This sounds like a cut and paste of the magic phase from fantasy..

4) New missions - This is good. GW is thinking more and probably seeing other games for inspiration. They are a bit random in implementation, but will probably be fun. Expect for tournaments to not come near them though, as they don't make for good missions in an event. As you generally want everyone on roughly the same mission at the same time.

So, no change.

So, basically out of the 4 posted changes

3 - Will either not change the game as events will over-rule them for consistency / standards
1 - CHANGES ALL THE THINGS! But we don't have enough rules for implementation to be upset. However if its anything like fantasy... (which its probably a cut and paste of that).. I expect a lot of upset players.