Hobbitron Posted May 3, 2017 Report Share Posted May 3, 2017 Source: Unit Profiles Quote Today is a big one guys – we’re talking about how profiles are going to work in the new edition. The profiles for the current version of the game have been a part of Warhammer 40,000 for over a decade now, and for the most part they worked pretty well, though there were always a few anomalies or things that didn’t work quite as you’d expect. In the new edition, the rules team were keen to have the profile work harder – to better distinguish between the different units so that, for example, Eldar will run faster than Guardsmen, and Hormagaunts run faster than both. One big change is vehicles. These now use the same profile system as everyone else. As you’ll see though, their stat lines are much above what you might expect from a standard infantry trooper. Wounds, for example, are not capped at 10, so don’t be surprised if you see larger vehicles like Land Raiders and Imperial Knights with dozens of wounds. This means that there is no differentiation between monsters and vehicles, so you now have a standard system to compare between, for example, a Carnifex vs a Dreadnought. Speaking of Carnifexes, large monsters like them also have a lot more wounds now. There are also no Super Heavy Vehicle rules, as such. With the stats going above 10, the system is now an increasing scale, which means models that previously fell just shy of super-heavy status, the Gorkanaut for example, can now punch at the appropriate weight, and become much more survivable. So, without further ado – let’s look at some stats! Here, we have 4 examples from the most iconic Warhammer 40,000 army – the Space Marines. You’ll see that the stats are still recognisably Warhammer 40,000, but with just a few changes. We’ve gained a Movement stat in exchange for a Initiative stat. With charging units now striking first, movement and co-ordination of your assault army becomes a big factor. You can also see that WS and BS are now standard rolls (Ballistic Skill sort of always was), though you can expect modifiers to both of these stats from in-game effects. Strength and Toughness are still with us, and still use an opposing value principle (so much higher Strength will still wound on 2+, low Strength will wound on a 6+), and these aren’t capped at 10 any more either. Wounds is a big one. Expect a lot of models to get more of these. As you can see here, the Terminator has twice what he has now, and Guilliman has more too. Don’t worry though – stuff still dies quickly, with powerful weapons dishing out multiple damage with each hit – but you will, as always, need to shoot the right gun at the right target to get the best effects. Source: Weapons Quote Yesterday we took a look at the profiles of units in the new Warhammer 40,000. But that is, of course, only half the story. The other half is the weapons they wield. Like units, these have had some pretty big changes, but are still recognisably the weapons you know and love. Let’s take a look at three classic examples: the iconic boltgun, flamer and lascannon: Damage is a big change. This stats effectively lets a single hit deliver multiple wounds to one model. So, as we can see, the bolter does a single wound per hit, and so is optimised for shooting models that have a single wound themselves, whereas the lascannon, one of the most powerful man-portable weapons in the game, kicks out D6 damage, allowing it to blast chunks off large vehicles and monsters and kill light vehicles and characters in a single hit. Against something like Guardsmen or Orks though, this formidable damage output will be wasted. The AP system is changing too. Rather than a binary yes/no on saves, the new Warhammer 40,000 uses modifiers – the lascannon will punch easily through power armour, while the bolter and flamer are, again, best deployed against less durable, more numerous targets. Lastly, you can see that the flamer no longer uses a template. However, when in range, it causes D6 hits that do not have to roll to hit, and this applies even against units of a single model – this can be devastating, especially when used in large numbers <cough-Burna-Boyz-cough>, trust us when we say we may be entering the age of the flamer as the go-to special weapon of infantry squads the galaxy over – let the galaxy burn! The rules team behind the new game have taken the opportunity to rebalance a lot of the weapons in the game, and with the new armour modifier system and removal of the cap of 10 on Strength values, we’ve made sure that every weapon has its use on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium. D weapons, for example, are gone, and instead there is a scalable Strength and damage that matches the effectiveness you’d expect from every weapon. Source: Movement Quote Movement has always been key to Warhammer 40,000 – positioning your units for optimum arcs of fire, advancing to claim objectives or just plain-old charging across the battlefield into combat! Movement in the new edition will be very familiar to players of the game today, but the rules team have taken the opportunity to improve a few elements. In the new edition, every model has its own Movement characteristic. This means that, rather than every model moving 6″ unless specified otherwise – things like Terminators will advance slowly and inexorably, while Harlequins leap and bound, and bikes and speeders zip across the battlefield. Some units will have a minimum move too – this mostly applies to flyers, who can’t stop. Again, this is much like the rules today, but every flyer will have their own minimum and maximum move value, to represent the fact that swift fighters will naturally be quicker than a lumbering bomber. Running has been rolled into the Movement phase now, too. You can “Advance” when you move by rolling a dice and adding the result to your Movement to go a bit faster at the expense of shooting. This applies to all models – infantry, vehicles, bikes – everyone. By including this roll as part of your move, the game speeds up, as you no longer have to move models in both the Movement and Shooting phases. Other than that, the movement rules are pretty much what you’d expect today – no moving though enemy models, unless you can fly over them, and no walking through solid walls – logical stuff. Oh, there was one last thing. If you’re in combat at the start of your turn, you can Fall Back by moving away from the enemy. You’ll lose the ability to advance, shoot or charge that turn, and crucially, enemies will be able to shoot at you! This does, however, open up a vast range of tactical options for armies like the Astra Militarum, who will now be able to effectively deploy in firing lines, with each row falling back from any assaults in good order (if they survived) while the unit behind them fires at the attackers. It goes both ways though – if you have a dedicated assault unit that specializes in killing infantry (like Warp Talons) your opponent will find it much harder to pin them down in combat with heavily armoured units for the entire game. Source: Psychic Phase Quote The Psychic phase for the new Warhammer 40,000 has changed a fair bit. Previously, each of your psykers would generate warp charge for your pool. This worked pretty well in most games, but in very psyker-heavy armies, it often meant that some psykers sat around not doing a whole bunch, while one or two mega-psykers (we’re looking at you, Magnus – you big warp charge hog) had all the fun. In the new system, the Psychic phase has been re-worked from the ground up. Each time you pick a psyker, you can cast as many spells as their datasheet states (which would previously be the same as their Mastery Level) and there’s a simpler, two-dice mechanic for casting, you just need to beat the warp charge value. The more potent the power, the harder it will be to cast. Enemy psykers will then have a chance to block these powers if they are within 24″, and again, the mastery of the psyker will dictate how often they can block a power each turn. The new system is much more scalable – meaning that the phase works well at any size of game, with any number of psykers running around. Perils of the Warp is still there of course. It wouldn’t be Warhammer 40,000 without the chance of accidentally having your mind eaten by a Daemon and your soul sucked into the psychic oblivion of the Warp while your body exploded in a multifaceted explosion of etheric ichor…Every faction will have its own psychic lore with a range of thematic powers. In addition, every psyker knows the Smite power: Mortal Wounds are a new mechanic too – these cannot be saved by any means and punch straight through thick armour and even invulnerable saves! Ouch. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbitron Posted May 3, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 3, 2017 Source: Shooting Quote It’s a big one today folks, as we take a closer look at the Shooting phase. This phase will be very familiar to anyone who plays today, but there have been a few tweaks and improvements to the rules. We’ve already seen the profiles of our miniatures, so we know that we’ll be hitting on a fixed Ballistic Skill (a bit like you do now) and we’ve also seen a little about how weapons work – multiple damage from powerful weapons, and armour save modifiers, for example. Today, we look at some of the other rules of the phase. When you select a unit to shoot, much like today, they can all fire their weapons at the enemy. You can’t shoot, however, if you Advanced this turn, or if you fell back from combat. (See our movement article for details on these.) You also can’t shoot if there is an enemy with 1″ of you. The exception to this rule is pistols. Models with these hand-held firearms can shoot at the closest enemy target in the Shooting phase, even if they themselves are locked in combat! This is going to make characters with pistols <cough-Cypher-cough> incredibly deadly up-close.When picking a target, you won’t be able to shoot enemies that are in combat with other units, much like the current edition. However, you can fall back from combat in your Movement phase, allowing other units to fire at your opponent at the expense of your own actions this turn. Expect to see cunning generals deploying their armies in waves to take full advantage of this. Heavy weapons are worth talking about too. These no longer snap fire if you move, and instead they have a flat -1 to hit modifier for moving units. This applies to all models with heavy weapons, vehicles included. There are a few other factors that affect hit rolls too – smoke launchers on a vehicle, for example, have the same effect of -1 to hit. The last big change we’re going over today is cover. Currently, cover saves give a blanket save to all units, and one that only comes into effect if the shot would otherwise ignore their armour. In the new Warhammer 40,000, cover is a bonus to your armour save. Critically, this ability often only applies to certain types of unit. For example, only Infantry gain the bonus of cover from a crater. This interaction works quite nicely with the modifiers to armour saves of certain guns, and means that when someone is trying to hide behind a wall or barricade, if your weapon has a high enough armour penetration, you can shoot them through a wall! There are also a few weapons that ignore this bonus cover to armour effect – such as those wielded by Chaos Noise Marines and a Leman Russ’ nova cannon. Source: Charge Phase Quote We’ve heard about movement, psychic powers, and shooting. Today we look at the Charge phase. Charging in Warhammer 40,000 is how you get your units into close combat to use all those awesome looking exotic combat weapons to hack, slash and otherwise obliterate enemy units. The basic mechanics of this phase are very similar to how they work now. You can select any unit within 12″ as the target of your charge, and your units will move towards them 2D6″. Enemy units still have a chance to hit the charging unit with overwatch, provided that they are not already in combat. Just as in the current edition, overwatch is a hit on a flat 6 – all pretty familiar so far. In the current Warhammer 40,000, you need to reach base contact. In the new edition, though, you only need to come within 1″ of an enemy, which in practice means that compared to the current charge range, you get an extra inch. You also can’t move within 1″ of an enemy you didn’t declare as the target of your charge, so if you want to engage multiple units, you’ll need to brave the overwatch fire of all of them. Overwatch can also be fired multiple times per phase, but as soon as the unit is engaged, they will no longer be able to fire back. So, the Charge phase keeps most of its current mechanics, with only minor amends. Source: Fight Phase Quote Let’s get down to the best phase – combat (unless you’re a Fire Warrior…sorry). This is part of the new Warhammer 40,000 with some of the biggest changes. We’ve already seen in our article on unit profiles that Initiative has gone. Instead, the priority for striking is based on the previous phase, with those units that completed a charge swinging first. There’s a definite emphasis on making charging into combat effective – these units have gotten all the way across the battlefield, they’ve braved enemy fire and overwatch, and now they’ve finally made it into combat – they will at the very least get to swing. Units that activate gain a free 3″ move towards the closest enemy. This can be used to get within 1″ of other enemy units, if you’re cunning, dragging more foes into the melee and preventing them from shooting next turn, even if you didn’t charge them directly (giving them no chance to overwatch). Enemy gun lines will need to be careful about how they position their supporting units, so as to avoid getting dragged into the fight too. Following chargers, players take it in turns to activate units across the board to fight – this can get quite tactical, as both players need to choose the combats where dealing maximum damage will be important to them, while trying to limit enemy retaliation on their valuable or fragile models. There are a few units that can interrupt this sequence to attack out of turn too – Tyranids with lash whips and Slaaneshi Daemons, for example – and it can also be influenced by Stratagems (more on these soon) if your army is Battle-forged, all of which add a nuanced level of tactical depth to the phase. Players will have much more influence over the outcome of combat now, rather than purely the stats of the models involved, both in their own and in the opponent’s turns (though we still wouldn’t expect Guardsmen to triumph over a unit of Khorne Berzerkers any time soon – fix bayonets!). Another thing we have seen is that hit rolls are now fixed. This has the effect of making dedicated combat units generally hit on a 3+, while models representing the most competent warriors of the 41st Millennium (Guilliman, the Swarmlord, Ghazghkull Thraka, to name but a few) will now hit on 2+! Close combat weapons (which we’ll look at in more detail in future) also gain new rules – some will slice through armour easily, while others will hit with enough force to cause deal multiple wounds that can cripple or kill even powerful enemy models. Across the board, these changes lead to combats that are more deadly than ever. Generals who successfully coordinate a battlefield-wide charge will be rewarded with a phase of utter carnage, while their opponent will have to work hard to minimise taking damage, and carefully consider their retaliatory options. Expect combats to be hard-fought, bloody, and tactical – just as they should be. Source: Morale Quote In the 41st Millennium, morale plays a vital role. Battles can be won and lost by the brave actions of a few stubborn defenders, or defeat caused by the panicked flight of key elements of an enemy force. Morale has always been a part of Warhammer 40,000. In the past edition though, it did often seem that in a lot of games it could be largely ignored – so many units were immune to its various effects. Where it did apply though, you had to take a lot of tests – it was conceivable that a unit might have to take over half a dozen Leadership tests in a turn, which had the effect of bogging down the game. The new Morale phase is simple, and only happens once per player turn, at the end of all your other phases. It will apply to almost every unit, and represents warriors fleeing the battlefield, dying from the psychic feedback shockwaves of their allies, or retreating with injured or fallen brethren. There will be very few units indeed that will not feel its effects. The mechanics are simple – any units that suffered casualties in a turn must take a Morale test at the end of it. You just roll a D6, add the number of models from the unit that have been slain, and if the number is bigger than the unit’s Leadership, the unit loses the difference in additional models. That’s it! No units falling back, no regroup tests – all that is gone. You can see straight away, this will be pretty brutal and mean units that suffer high casualties in a turn stand to lose a lot more come the Morale phase if they roll poorly. Conversely, single-model units (like many vehicles) won’t have to test; as they are units of one, there are no other models in their squad to lose. There are a few things that can help you out in this phase. A Chaos Dark Apostle, for example, allows all nearby units from the same Legion to use his Leadership. Or, you can use some units to make your opponent’s tests more difficult – the Hemlock Wraithfighter, as an example, decreases the Leadership of enemy units by 1 if they are within 12″ (which equates to one additional lost model on every failed test). Source: Battle-Forged Armies Quote Battle-forged armies will be familiar to Warhammer 40,000 players today – it basically means that all the models in your army are part of a Detachment or Formation. That is still largely true in the new Warhammer 40,000, but with a few changes. The biggest of which is… wait for it…<puff of smoke> Formations are gone. That’s right, no more Formations. But don’t panic! If your army is built using Formations right now, you’re going to be fine. In their place are a dozen new game-wide Detachments that are available to all factions. These are flexible enough that all of your current forces can be fit into them to form a Battle-forged army. The advantage of these is that all factions now have an even playing field of list building mechanics, rather than some having loads and some having to stick with the trusty Combined Arms option for every game. These detachments are made up of a combination of 9 unit types, which will look very familiar to anyone who has played Warhammer 40,000 in the past two decades. Some you’ll recognise from Space Marines company markings and the classic Combined Arms detachment of today, plus Lords of War, Fortifications and the new one – Flyers, now with their own slot. These Detachments come with a few benefits and restrictions. The most common restriction is that all units in a single Detachment must share a faction keyword (Tyranid, Blood Angels or Imperium for example). The most common bonus is that, depending on how optimised your army is for the logistics of war, you’ll get Command Points to spend. We’ll cover exactly what these can do for you soon, but trust us when we say they are incredibly useful if used wisely, and you generally get more of them if your army is a well rounded and balanced force. Here are a few examples: These are just a taste of the options available. Battle-forged armies can be used with or without points, and we fully expect gamers playing matched or narrative play games to use these in most situations as they tend to create effective armies on the tabletop that also fit the background and lore of the setting. Matched play actually has a few extra rules too, designed for competitive events, which organisers can choose to use when setting the rules for Battle-forged armies – limits on the number of separate Detachments is one example. Source: Large Models Quote Today we take a look at the biggest models in the game, and how they’re going to work in the new edition. There are a few big changes here, though we covered some of them a little when we looked at profiles. Like the three units we’ve seen already, every model will be using the same profile system, so everything will have Wounds, Toughness, Strength, etc… This includes all vehicles. We’ve also gotten rid of specific rules for Gargantuan Creatures and Super-heavy vehicles. Instead, these units will have a suitably impressive statline, but still play by the same rules as everyone else. This also means that those units that previously sat just shy of Super-heavy status, and missed out on bunch of special rules because of it, will now be appropriately killy and durable. You’ll soon see that some of Warhammer 40,000’s biggest hitters have A LOT of Wounds, high Toughness and a good save. The biggest Tyranid monsters now have over a dozen wounds, where Imperial Knights have over 20! This makes them almost infinitely survivable against small arms fire, but means that high-power weapons that can take chunks of wounds off at a time (lascannons, powerfists, battle cannons, etc) can take them down relatively quickly when brought to bear in force. Gone are the days of a lucky first-turn meltagun blowing up your Land Raider. (A squad of them will still ruin its day though…) There are almost no weapons in the game now that can instantly kill these big guys, so there will be no shortcuts to dealing with them – you have to get your hands dirty and take those Wounds off. This can make big models very powerful, but there is a counter mechanic in the rules. As these large, powerful models take damage, their combat effectiveness starts to degrade. The best way to show you this is with an example. Here we have a Mork(or possibly Gork)anaut (as requested by Stacy from our Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page): Whoa, so – with 18 Wounds at Toughness 8, this guy is a tough cookie to crack – able to wade through bolter fire untroubled and requiring a lot of heavy weapons shots to take down. You can see, though, as it gets to the point of only having half its Wounds left, this walker starts to get less effective – it will move slower and its attacks will get more clumsy as servos are fused, and sensor arrays fail to register. At 4 Wounds left, it’s all but crippled, though its shooting output will be undiminished – so it starts as a combat wrecking ball at the beginning of the battle, crashing through enemy lines, and ends up as more of a semi-mobile shooting fortress at the end of its life. Different vehicles will be reduced in effectiveness in different ways too – some will get worse at shooting, some will slow down, and some some will become less effective in melee. Source: Infantry Quote Yesterday, we looked at the biggest models in Warhammer 40,000, and how devastating they can be. Today, we’re going to look at the little guys. The new Warhammer 40,000 will give infantry a chance to shine. There is stuff you just can’t do very well with vehicles, bikes and walkers, like hold ruins, use cover effectively and swarm the battlefield in numbers to claim every objective. One thing that is certainly going to help infantry out is the fact that everything can harm everything in the game. We’ve heard already that characteristics don’t cap at 10 anymore, so the old 10×10 strength vs toughness table was in for an update. In the new edition, there’s a simple but elegant system to find out what you need to wound: So, you can see that while even the humble lasgun has a chance to take down the biggest foe, you’ll need a lot of small-arms fire to really threaten the big stuff. We’ve already seen the profiles of a Space Marine, a bolter, a lascannon and a Gorkanaut, and now we know all the steps to work out just how such a Shooting phase might go. Some quick maths tells us that we’d need over 500 bolters firing at that Gorkanaut to bring it down, whereas you’d need just over a dozen lascannons. So, while you might occasionally chip the odd wound off with bolters, lasguns or shootas, you might find that your standard infantry guns are better used elsewhere. Not a problem though, because in the new Warhammer 40,000, models in a squad can fire at different targets. So, this means your Tactical Squad can have your boys with bolters deal with that onrushing Hormagaunt horde, while the flamer bathes a nearby Lictor in prometheum fire, and the squad’s krak missile takes an opportunistic potshot at that onrushing Carnifex – just as you always imagined they should! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hobbitron Posted May 3, 2017 Author Report Share Posted May 3, 2017 [Reserving this space for more updates] 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted May 3, 2017 Report Share Posted May 3, 2017 [Reserving this space for future whining] Also, thanks. ? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted June 11, 2017 Report Share Posted June 11, 2017 The new edition of Warhammer 40,000 lands in stores in just 6 days.| Over the past couple of months, we’ve learned a lot about it in dozens of articles about the game, the setting and the factions. In case you missed any, or if you just want something to read while you eagerly await your copy of Dark Imperium, here’s a quick recap of where you can find all those articles: The New Warhammer 40,000 New Edition FAQ The Galaxy Map Three Ways to Play Weapons Movement Phase Psychic Phase War Zone: Armageddon Shooting Phase Charge Phase Fight Phase Morale The Great Rift Battle-forged Armies War Zone: Cadia Large Models Infantry Characters Weapons – Part 2 Datasheets Points and Power Levels War Zone: Damocles Stratagems The Indomitus Crusade & the Dark Imperium Tactical Reserves Vehicles Close Combat Weapons Stronghold Assault Transports Cities of Death A Forge World Datasheet Missions Primaris Space Marines The Ultima Founding Choosing Your Army War Zone: Ultramar Battlezones A Vision of the Far Future Faction Focus: Chaos Space Marines Astra Militarum Craftworlds Chaos Daemons T’au Empire Drukhari Imperial Knights Tyranids Death Guard Orks Genestealer Cults Space Marines Necrons Thousand Sons Imperial Agents Harlequins Ynnari Warhammer 40,000 Vox-cast The Rules The Sculptors The Background The Army Painters The Art Primaris Space Marines: A New Breed of Hero New Warhammer 40,000: Primaris Space Marines Primaris Space Marines FAQ Primaris Space Marines: Gaming The Ultima Founding Dark Imperium: Unboxed Death Guard: Faction Focus: Death Guard Dark Imperium: Unboxed 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted June 12, 2017 Report Share Posted June 12, 2017 Would've liked to seen more teasers for future Primaris Sets and FW Primaris wip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted June 12, 2017 Report Share Posted June 12, 2017 I'm excited that the new detachment keyword system allows you to run 2 different HQ Dreads and 6 or 7 different unit entries of Elite Dreads. Pretty nifty, I'd say. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WestRider Posted June 12, 2017 Report Share Posted June 12, 2017 8 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said: I'm excited that the new detachment keyword system allows you to run 2 different HQ Dreads and 6 or 7 different unit entries of Elite Dreads. Pretty nifty, I'd say. Oh, yes. I'm definitely gonna be running all-Dread Armies at times here! :D 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfestedKerrigan Posted June 12, 2017 Report Share Posted June 12, 2017 Runnin Libby Dreads and Furis alongside Murderfang and gang....in a single FOC, foc yeah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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