Friday, June 6, 2014

40K Friday - Updates for a New Edition


I always suspected this would work and it couldn't be any more expensive

Apprentice Blaster kidnapped my rulebook over the weekend and will likely be holding on to it for another week. That makes it hard to noodle over the finer points of the rules and how it might affect my armies, but thankfully the internet hysterics are keeping the debate over those finer points alive and well for contemplation.

I'm mainly interested in how I should change up the armies that are still being built. My Crimson Fists, for example, are built around a core of three 10-man tactical squads in rhinos, plus some sternguard and some predators. That's not going to change because they're built and painted. I'm not going to suddenly try to convert them to an all-biker army just because that's the hot new thing. If I wanted to do that I'd just start a new White Scars force ... but I don't ... not yet. I suspect my still-under-construction Blood Angels will become my 7th edition obligatory marine army, assuming I can get the 6th edition Dark Angels finished this year. Maybe White Scars in 8th ...

My Chaos Marines are still under construction but I finally have the core force sorted out. Chaos Lord in terminator armor, a daemon prince, 3 units of plague marines, cultists, a unit of nurgle-marked bikers led by a sorcerer on a bike, some nurgle-marked spawn, a defiler, some havocs, some obliterators, a unit of terminators, 2 units of possessed, and a helbrute pretty much fill out the force. It's all very true to the lore as all of the marine infantry units and the bikers are in units of six, Nurgle's sacred number in the background. I may add a heldrake in there to finish out the fast attack slots, but other than that I already have everything, some of it is painted, and some of it is getting painted.

Dawn breaks and reveals a defiler sitting atop the Falcon - what will Han do?

How did 7th influence this? Well, with everything scoring now maxing out the troop slots dropped somewhat in priority. I still think it's good to have 3-4 super-scoring units and I have those with 18 plague marines and 30 cultists, but the "regular" chaos marines seemed superfluous. I dropped them.

The looser force structures and increased power of the psychic phase now mean I might drop the lord or shift him and the plague marines to a separate force in order to get both the daemon prince and the sorcerer into the same battle. Before that was only possible at 2,000 points - now I could do it any point level. I also have a second Nurgle-looking daemon prince. While I was thinking about using him more for my Chaos Daemons army, it makes some sense to look into expanding that second force org and using him here instead.

Vehicles are a tick or two tougher than in sixth, though most of the benefit goes to AV 13 or 14 targets. It still makes me feel a little better about including the defiler and a helbrute or two.

Termies and possessed were not highly regarded either but since they score now I think they have quite a bit more utility than they did. Nurgle possessed (and terminators) are fairly tough and once they clear an enemy off of an objective they can now hold it and defend it too.

Not drastic changes but the new rules have helped solidify my plans. More next week.

(You can see more of the impressive lego 40k force here.)

No comments: