40K 9th ed

[MexicanNinja]

I look forward to the changes.  It's apparent this is going to be much more mobile than we've seen.

I also believe transports are going to make a come back.

I don't think DE are out of the running as a viable army.

Terrain is going to matter and i strongly believe that armies who are more mobile and have the ability to rapidly redeploy across the battlefield are going to excell.

I say this because it looks like LoS blocking terrain is going to make game play interesting.

I'm excited to see how the game will progress.  At least GW is giving 40k much better love and support compared to AoS.

[blackvigil]

Watching the Twitch stream...

Overwatch now requires that you spend 1CP to shoot. They mentioned all other abilities, like the Tau's ability to help out, only triggering once the CP is spent to shoot. They mentioned a veteran ability called Cool-Headed that lets a unit shoot Overwatch without spending the CP. Some units will have this by default. I assume this will be the case for current units that are specialists at Overwatch right now. 

Defensible Terrain makes your overwatch hit on 5 if you "hold steady". It also allows you to "set to defend" to get +1 to hit on the next Fight phase.

This was an intentional buff to Combat Armies, so they aren't always mowed down as they charge.

This is all coming from Stu Black.

[PumpkinHead]

That is crazy. Not sure why that was a major point that needed revisiting.

[blackvigil]

I agree. I liked over watch. Shooting armies will be pretty hosed this edition, but they had their dominance. 

[Brother Glacius]

A bit premature to render such a verdict without knowing the rest.

[InfestedKerrigan]

8th was a shooting edition. Saying shooting is hosed due to a change in Overwatch is just...

[Ish]

Improvements to Overwatch via Orders, Chapter Traits, Stratagems, and Relics will pop up in the codices of Tau, Imperial Guard, and Spess Mahreens approximately three weeks after 9th Edition goes live. Probably something like:

Quote

Armaggedon War Veterans (1/3 CP) Before deployment, pick one (1 CP) or three (3 CP) unit of Astra Militarum Infantry from your army. That unit gains the Cool-Headed rule.

[blackvigil]

17 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

8th was a shooting edition. Saying shooting is hosed due to a change in Overwatch is just...

I've been watching every twitch stream or VOD with the developers. They have literally said that shooting was too prevalent, so they wanted to make changes so that it wasn't as dominant. I'm not claiming Overwatch is the deathknell... But they have done a lot to reduce the power of shooting, this is one more thing. Terrain blocking line of sight, cover assisting with saves against shooting buy not against charging units, etc. There are lots of things. This is just a big one. I don't have a gunline army, so it's not a huge deal to me personally, but it's sad for my wife's tau.

[Ish]

The problem wasn’t that shooting was too good for “shooty armies,” it was that it was too good for all armies. Factions that should have played with a blending of shooting and assault coughSpaceMarinescough were opting to lean hard into gun-line lists.

This seems like a much better design paradigm: Universally nerf shooting in general rules, then boost the shooting of a specific subset of factions via supplements. 

It’ll be rough for Tau and Imperial Guard for a few months, tops. 

[Inquisitor66]

Meh, most armies that relied on charging had ways to ignore overwatch.  Maybe now they won't feel compelled to take those options and I'll get to use overwatch a little.

[SigurdBC]

Also with terrain being line of sight blocking there is a great chance that smart players will plan to charge enemy units from behind LOS blocking terrain thereby canceling out overwatch, assuming that overwatch in 9th will still require line of sight. Not sure if the devs discussed that in the post above. 

[SigurdBC]

Nevermind. It looks like the overwatch strategem isn't reliant on LOS to be used which seems weird to me since overwatch has always needed LOS in previous editions. 

[Inquisitor66]

It says normal shooting attack, I assume this needs LOS

[Ish]

1 minute ago, SigurdBC said:

Nevermind. It looks like the overwatch strategem isn't reliant on LOS to be used which seems weird to me since overwatch has always needed LOS in previous editions. 

I wouldn’t put too much stock in these snippets. It’s perfectly plausible that the LOS requirement* is still in the actual rulebook, they just didn’t put it in the preview. Remember, these articles are marketing hype, not the final product.

* They also never discuss range limits.

[blackvigil]

55 minutes ago, Ish said:

The problem wasn’t that shooting was too good for “shooty armies,” it was that it was too good for all armies. Factions that should have played with a blending of shooting and assault coughSpaceMarinescough were opting to lean hard into gun-line lists.

This seems like a much better design paradigm: Universally nerf shooting in general rules, then boost the shooting of a specific subset of factions via supplements. 

It’ll be rough for Tau and Imperial Guard for a few months, tops. 

I think you've nailed it. Shooting was too good overall. They needed to nerf it across the board, then carve out exceptions for specialist armies/units. My hyperbole and sarcasm wasn't translating. 🙂

[Munkie]

No (limited) overwatch is good for Dark Eldar.

We have a relic to cancel overwatch, but as whined about above, it's on our slow HQs which can make coordinating charges tricky.

The usual method is to charge with something least likely to die to the overwatch (often an empty transport) then charge with something that matters. I don't mind overwatch happening, but I'm glad we won't have the same unit over watching multiple times if they kill the first target. Killing one unit is good enough!

[Mulgrok]

The new rules making close combat more effective and limiting overwatch will probably just push space marines further into going all in on aggressors and centurions.  A few units with a billion shots and strong punches that mitigate the weaknesses and amplify the strengths.

[Ish]

If we’re lucky, we’ll see a return to ‘only Troops score, no if’s and’s or but’s, just Troops, we mean it: just Troops.’

[ZeroStride]

Well, from what we've seen (at least that I've seen) it's: Hold one, hold two, hold more. So Objective Secured is definitely a thing, and then all of the bonus objectives we've seen have been that, "give up an action" (? wording) thing, and then in addition the scoring in your command phase only, so I think Troops might be more important than previously.

Note that, there's no "kill one, kill more" but that instead holding is even more important. It may not be literally "only troops", but it seems like you'd best sort out the things that hold objectives, and Ob Sec is a thing, and you'd also best sort out units that you can sacrifice shooting/whatever-an-action-is for to score.

Edit: Also, the "score in your command phase" starts to address the thing that "kill one/more" did in ITC format. For Kill Team, we adopted the "kill one/more" primary rule because the "hold one/two/more" along with the available Arena secondaries lead to an incredibly boring format, with several factions simply not being able to reasonably compete. I think that this "score in your command phase" will likely serve a similar purpose while not overly-favoring killing. Should be interesting.

[StygianArcanum]

I would assume that with the changes to Command Points and things like the Loyal 32 no longer being a thing, you'll be able to score with more than just troops, but the latter will still have ObSec.

[Ish]

My problem with Objective Secured was that they introduced a thousand and one ways to bypass it. Effectively rendering it meaningless as any player who didn’t want to bother with the “boring” “tax” of Troops would just tailor their list to take advantage of one of the ways to bypass it.

Maybe I’m just being a grumpy old grognard, but I think the core game should be designed to heavily incentivize basic grunts over silly elite niche armies... and I say this as someone who has spent many years playing silly elite niche armies: Armored Company, Deathwing, etc. 

[MexicanNinja]

All this talk about "unstoppable" charging armies is crazy.

Have you all forgot about screens?  Poxwalkers, cultists, conscripts, grots, etc.  

If you play a gunline with no screening units, that's on you.

Also, don't forget that you can shoot into combat with your "big toys" now.  If you play monster-mash or mechanized lists then your enemies better destroy whatever they touch.

Ask yourself this question.  How many times did an opponent charge something just to shut down the shooting?

Then ask the following question.  How many times will my opponent charge my monsters and/or tanks knowing i can shoot them in my shooting phase?

[Lord Hanaur]

No one is "forgetting" anything.   Change comes hard for most players and gamers are some of the worst when it comes to it so they are giving you bite sized chunks to mull over, knowing that if they dumped it all at once it would meet coodinated resistence and so they are splitting up th news into parcels we can slowlt start to assimilate

 

[Ish]

GW could announce every copy of the new rulebook would include a cashiers cheque for £10,000 and a massive number of “fans” would take to the internet to complain that their bank charges a currency exchange fee.

[blackvigil]

Missed the asterisk at the bottom, which is an important clarification. No more declaring crazy multi-charges.

* In the new edition, your charge roll has to be sufficient to reach ALL of the units you have declared a charge against, otherwise your charge is unsuccessful and no models are moved.