Post by yvain on Jun 6, 2014 17:43:48 GMT -5
While the rule set has not changed dramatically with the new edition, there are many smaller key changes that directly affect how to bring IG victory. This article here is a preliminary explanation on what should work and what does not work in light of these changes.
What got better in 40k and how:
The three main changes to the game that are near universal are the FOC, psychic phase, and tactical objectives. First, we will talk about the FOC chart. Unbound is obviously the talk of the town, however really rather irrelevant (no one is going to play against your 10 riptide list). For the price of four troop units you can take 6 FA, HS, Elites and 4 HQ choices. This pretty much means you have access to almost anything now even in a bound army. This is especially important as everything now scores and this is an even bigger deal than it sounds due to objectives. Overall it gives everyone a lot more freedom, which leads us into the Psy phase.
In general, spells are now harder to cast. If you have seen the math hammer results in shows that you generally need to generate double the warp charge cost to reliably get off you power. In addition, you can now deny the witch on every ability. This is pretty huge. And it makes the psychic phase almost a red herring for most builds and armies. The problem is that with the exception or grey knights, daemons, and elder most armies cannot generate enough psychic points to reliably cast more than one or two powers a turn without a significant investment. Against one of the big three, it becomes even more difficult as all of these can easily generate 15 or more dice a turn making dispelling those powers easy. So the question becomes what is better. Do I take two ML 2 Primaris psykers to twin-link my Basilisk possibly? Or should I just take a second basilisk and rely on volume of fire? While a lot of the powers appear to be game changers in this way, the new powers charts and decrease reliability of spells in general will often see you simply wasting your points (unless you get invisibility LOL). So it becomes more of an all in strategy verse a one or two psykers here and there. Simply put, unless you are bringing multiple psykers doesn’t expect to get your powers off each turn.
Lastly, we have the tactical objectives. The new mission sets radically alter the way the game is played. For those who have not played with them yet, you essentially have new ways to score victory points after each turn. Most of the cards are secure objective X. The more powerful cards are mostly kill X or cause X to happen. Complete missions and you get more cards. This increases the importance of flexibility and mobility in game. Every game I have played the VP score has shifted dramatically over the course of the game. You can go from winning, to losing, to crushing your opponent very quickly. Often times you will get objectives to score major points half way across the board meaning deep strikers and transports are almost a must. The change to objective set up is now before sides are determined every objective is places, which makes placing an objective in favorable spot difficult. It is important to point out that you score for each objective at the end of your OWN turn not the game turn. Being able to control as many objectives at the same time or at least secure as many as possible is often what will allow you to score the most. In addition, you will find it is sometimes better to sacrifice a unit to grab a far off objective if it means scoring an additional VP. This means having a mobile force or one that has a large footprint on the battlefield will be at an advantage than one that focuses on several super strong key units. The missions seem to actively work against players that field only a few power units. Things that are very expensive, but that have a small footprint like a drago deathstar or are not durable when strung out like Wraithknights or will actually work against you in most cases if you build a list spamming them.
Outside of the 3 main changes, there are been several nickel and dime ones worth noting. The worst change has been jink, which is actually better in many ways. By increasing its save to +4, a lot of things are more survivable now. If you think about it everything that would snap shot after generally always is twin-linking its weapons (bikes, Wave serpent, telsa barges). There is some debate as well, but it appears that jink does not affect passengers, which means the Ghost Ark takes no penalty for the new rules as well. So far this looks to be a pretty bad and annoying change. On the plus side, vehicles are now more durable. Even weaker ones like the rhino seem to last longer on the battlefield as well. This is a universal upgrade to most armies, because transports have become so much more important.
So who is winning and who is losing here? Eldar unfortunately have seen a rather massive buff this edition especially to the Wave serpent. They have access to the best powers and can easily dominate the psychic phase. The Wave Serpent became scoring, with up to a 3+ cover save thanks to holo-fields along with its shield. Beyond that they have warp spiders which got even better and jetbikes as well. Basically elder are going to be tough no matter what. Daemons have gotten a big buff with daemonology, however it remains to be seen more if that is completely broken or not as bad as we all think. Conversely, Grey Knights also have gotten a buff, but the focus on smaller cheaper units is going to hurt them some. Necrons have a bit of a buff to their units, but also since most of their vehicles are open topped it kind of balances out. I think they will stay mostly the same level as before. Marines and Tau will probably remain the same. Most of the buffs they have gotten are universal. Orks are still hurting, but with their new book coming out things could change. I think both Nids and CSM have gotten some significant buffs to the new edition, however more time is needed to see what happens with those armies. I think specifically things like Tryannofexs and Chaos Land Raiders are going to be making more appearances in addition to more Tervigons and daemon summoning Daemon princes. Dark Eldar will take some time to see. They are fast, but so fragile that killing their mobility is much easier than regular Eldar.
There is one additional thing worth noting about objectives that is specifically applies to Guard and to a less extent Tau. Gunline on a whole got weaker. It is no longer beneficial to put the majority of your units behind a defense line and wait. Because of the way objectives are you often find yourself repositioning to a spot that causes more points to be scored, but is otherwise disadvantageous. Guard’s superior long range firepower can easily exploit this while our relatively cheap squads and transports do the objective grabbing. It all three games I played, I could have easily shifted focus to simply tabling my opponents (and did in one case) verse grabbing more objectives. It is actually easier as players will put units in risky positions just to try to grab points. It is something to consider as the new rules seem to discourage gun lining, but guard units are so cheap and effective at it you can essentially still do both. The Tau do not have as good an access to long range barrage as we do and their units are comparability more expensive. So they can’t quite to this to the same extent we can.
Changes to IG:
The new IG book had a lot of small stealth nerfs that coming into this edition will affect us in several ways. Luckily, there have also been some buffs. Our mobility has been shot into the toilet. The loss of many of our infiltrating units and outflankers along with special operations nerf to Stormtroopers is a big deal. The vendetta lost troop capacity, which is now even worse since the importance of transports has increased. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Stormtroopers and now cheaper and move through cover helping them with their scattering during a DS. Now it may be better to deep strike them in and run them on to an objective rather than actively seeking a target. The Stormtrooper command squad with 4 volley guns, dropping in and camping on an objective killing anything that comes their way got a little better as well. The Leman Russ flat out order is also more important as a last ditch to grab some victory points. In addition, the Hellhound and its variants got an extra lease on life as a fast moving scorer, especially the HH with the new buff to burning open topped vehicles.
Artillery saw a major nerf and then also a buff to the barrage rules. Essentially now, min fire distance is a factor especially for the Manticore and Basilisk. However, due to the nature of the mission set artillery got a whole lot more important. No matter where you shoot you are essentially bypassing cover unless it is a jink save. It really allows us to strike in advance at key units holding objectives and soften them up for things to arrive later turns. Or conversely denying enemy from striking into certain areas. Because we are playing for objectives most of the game is spent with our units in the center portion of the map outside of deployment zones because of the objective placement rules. In all three games everyone had one objective near enough to their deployment zone that would be too difficult to secure. Artillery can take care of that. It seems like having a back field gunline that can strike lethally essentially anywhere on the board is a huge advantage. Especially since both the Wvyern and Basilisk are relatively cheap units. I am still disappointed by the Manticore, but it is still pretty great for what it does and there wasn’t a moment in the game that I would not have been able to fire at a target with it because everyone was so focused on the different objectives.
Our vehicles have all gotten a buff. In all three games my vehicles lasted longer than last edition. This is going to change somewhat as we see more anti-tank weapons appearing in game. However, I now have less fear of losing a Chimera to small arms fire especially when you consider cover saves. In addition, vehicles seem more likely to wreck rather than explode, which creates cover saves for your units as they jump out and takes no loses to explosion. Most anti-tank weapons do not ignore cover and its only guard and Tau that can force that. They also have less shots and more price in general. Again, the Wave Serpent is still going to be a problem with this as the Serpent Shield weapon is the one outlier. Combining this new survivability with objectives and the ISB (taurox) now has a solid goal. Because of its cheapness and reroll dangerous terrain, it is the ideal vehicle for early objective grabbing. A Taurox with something cheap like an infantry squad or special weapon team can make a good sacrifice objective grabber especially if the objective is in cover which will allow the Taurox to stay alive longer. The hellhound in a similar vein because of its speed, is a good objective grabber. It is also solid for area denial as it can double flame anything nearby or burn other units concentrating to hold a few off objective. Not much needs to be said about the new LR. They are great and will continue to be. Camo nets are awesome now especially if you field something like Pask in a pricey tank.
The infantry blob has also increased in utility. As previously stated, having a large durable footprint is a great way to control the board and net victory points. With the priest or commissar holding them in place, it is a difficult unit to remove. Conscripts and blobs can easily grab 2 maybe even 3 objectives if they are large enough claiming different ones as cards are drawn when necessary. Outside of blobs we can still field a lot of objective grabbers. More than most armies can every have hope of killing. Cheap base squads in Chimeras or ISBs supported by drop Veterans and stormtroopers are even better than before. The down side is the heavy weapon team is not as good any more. Missile suck almost as bad as heavy bolters now. The autocannon is still critical and the occasional lascannon a plus as well. I think we should be relying on tanks and Vendettas to do most of the heavy anti-tank now. Tank hunters on the autocannon can grab us enough penetrations on lighter vehicles to get that stunned or immobilized result we want.
For the other special units, a lot of them have seen some utility buff. Ratlings got a little better because as one of our few infiltrators we can get them on or near an objective clear it off with a Basilisk shot and then run them in while shooting their weapons. (again who cares if they die
). Rough Riders get a slight buff as another good way to suicide score or use them as an objective clearer. However, their price and fragility still makes me a bit wary of using them. Ogryns are still pretty terrible unless you are loading a few in a Land Raider they are still going to die. One tactic could be throwing a few into a Stormlord to help grab an objective as it continues forward. Still they are way overpriced. Bullgryns on the other hand have some sneaky uses. Tests with them have usually had them do pretty well. Standing in front of a juicy target like Camo net punisher pask is pretty great. As usually what happens is they shoot Pask, then next turn shoot the Bullgryns, then turn 3 mix their shots. Basically just ensuring whoever is behind them survives. (one day I will get endurance off on them though!) Sentinels are a little better as well. The Armored version survives much longer and the Scout is one of the few that can outflank, which again is pretty crucial.
Bottom Line:
Overall there are a lot of things different enough in small ways to change the way you play the game. It is going to take a lot of experimenting, but for the most part a lot of our stuff is better in a least some ways. It kind of feels like with the exception of many two or three unit entries, everything at least will have some utility going into a game. This is pretty nice as it lets you kind of field the army you want to field. If you have played a few games please contribute your opinions. Also if you have some assessments add them to the Tactica file Julian is compiling here: commissar.proboards.com/thread/18054/igmb-tactica-imperialis
Thanks for reading!
What got better in 40k and how:
The three main changes to the game that are near universal are the FOC, psychic phase, and tactical objectives. First, we will talk about the FOC chart. Unbound is obviously the talk of the town, however really rather irrelevant (no one is going to play against your 10 riptide list). For the price of four troop units you can take 6 FA, HS, Elites and 4 HQ choices. This pretty much means you have access to almost anything now even in a bound army. This is especially important as everything now scores and this is an even bigger deal than it sounds due to objectives. Overall it gives everyone a lot more freedom, which leads us into the Psy phase.
In general, spells are now harder to cast. If you have seen the math hammer results in shows that you generally need to generate double the warp charge cost to reliably get off you power. In addition, you can now deny the witch on every ability. This is pretty huge. And it makes the psychic phase almost a red herring for most builds and armies. The problem is that with the exception or grey knights, daemons, and elder most armies cannot generate enough psychic points to reliably cast more than one or two powers a turn without a significant investment. Against one of the big three, it becomes even more difficult as all of these can easily generate 15 or more dice a turn making dispelling those powers easy. So the question becomes what is better. Do I take two ML 2 Primaris psykers to twin-link my Basilisk possibly? Or should I just take a second basilisk and rely on volume of fire? While a lot of the powers appear to be game changers in this way, the new powers charts and decrease reliability of spells in general will often see you simply wasting your points (unless you get invisibility LOL). So it becomes more of an all in strategy verse a one or two psykers here and there. Simply put, unless you are bringing multiple psykers doesn’t expect to get your powers off each turn.
Lastly, we have the tactical objectives. The new mission sets radically alter the way the game is played. For those who have not played with them yet, you essentially have new ways to score victory points after each turn. Most of the cards are secure objective X. The more powerful cards are mostly kill X or cause X to happen. Complete missions and you get more cards. This increases the importance of flexibility and mobility in game. Every game I have played the VP score has shifted dramatically over the course of the game. You can go from winning, to losing, to crushing your opponent very quickly. Often times you will get objectives to score major points half way across the board meaning deep strikers and transports are almost a must. The change to objective set up is now before sides are determined every objective is places, which makes placing an objective in favorable spot difficult. It is important to point out that you score for each objective at the end of your OWN turn not the game turn. Being able to control as many objectives at the same time or at least secure as many as possible is often what will allow you to score the most. In addition, you will find it is sometimes better to sacrifice a unit to grab a far off objective if it means scoring an additional VP. This means having a mobile force or one that has a large footprint on the battlefield will be at an advantage than one that focuses on several super strong key units. The missions seem to actively work against players that field only a few power units. Things that are very expensive, but that have a small footprint like a drago deathstar or are not durable when strung out like Wraithknights or will actually work against you in most cases if you build a list spamming them.
Outside of the 3 main changes, there are been several nickel and dime ones worth noting. The worst change has been jink, which is actually better in many ways. By increasing its save to +4, a lot of things are more survivable now. If you think about it everything that would snap shot after generally always is twin-linking its weapons (bikes, Wave serpent, telsa barges). There is some debate as well, but it appears that jink does not affect passengers, which means the Ghost Ark takes no penalty for the new rules as well. So far this looks to be a pretty bad and annoying change. On the plus side, vehicles are now more durable. Even weaker ones like the rhino seem to last longer on the battlefield as well. This is a universal upgrade to most armies, because transports have become so much more important.
So who is winning and who is losing here? Eldar unfortunately have seen a rather massive buff this edition especially to the Wave serpent. They have access to the best powers and can easily dominate the psychic phase. The Wave Serpent became scoring, with up to a 3+ cover save thanks to holo-fields along with its shield. Beyond that they have warp spiders which got even better and jetbikes as well. Basically elder are going to be tough no matter what. Daemons have gotten a big buff with daemonology, however it remains to be seen more if that is completely broken or not as bad as we all think. Conversely, Grey Knights also have gotten a buff, but the focus on smaller cheaper units is going to hurt them some. Necrons have a bit of a buff to their units, but also since most of their vehicles are open topped it kind of balances out. I think they will stay mostly the same level as before. Marines and Tau will probably remain the same. Most of the buffs they have gotten are universal. Orks are still hurting, but with their new book coming out things could change. I think both Nids and CSM have gotten some significant buffs to the new edition, however more time is needed to see what happens with those armies. I think specifically things like Tryannofexs and Chaos Land Raiders are going to be making more appearances in addition to more Tervigons and daemon summoning Daemon princes. Dark Eldar will take some time to see. They are fast, but so fragile that killing their mobility is much easier than regular Eldar.
There is one additional thing worth noting about objectives that is specifically applies to Guard and to a less extent Tau. Gunline on a whole got weaker. It is no longer beneficial to put the majority of your units behind a defense line and wait. Because of the way objectives are you often find yourself repositioning to a spot that causes more points to be scored, but is otherwise disadvantageous. Guard’s superior long range firepower can easily exploit this while our relatively cheap squads and transports do the objective grabbing. It all three games I played, I could have easily shifted focus to simply tabling my opponents (and did in one case) verse grabbing more objectives. It is actually easier as players will put units in risky positions just to try to grab points. It is something to consider as the new rules seem to discourage gun lining, but guard units are so cheap and effective at it you can essentially still do both. The Tau do not have as good an access to long range barrage as we do and their units are comparability more expensive. So they can’t quite to this to the same extent we can.
Changes to IG:
The new IG book had a lot of small stealth nerfs that coming into this edition will affect us in several ways. Luckily, there have also been some buffs. Our mobility has been shot into the toilet. The loss of many of our infiltrating units and outflankers along with special operations nerf to Stormtroopers is a big deal. The vendetta lost troop capacity, which is now even worse since the importance of transports has increased. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Stormtroopers and now cheaper and move through cover helping them with their scattering during a DS. Now it may be better to deep strike them in and run them on to an objective rather than actively seeking a target. The Stormtrooper command squad with 4 volley guns, dropping in and camping on an objective killing anything that comes their way got a little better as well. The Leman Russ flat out order is also more important as a last ditch to grab some victory points. In addition, the Hellhound and its variants got an extra lease on life as a fast moving scorer, especially the HH with the new buff to burning open topped vehicles.
Artillery saw a major nerf and then also a buff to the barrage rules. Essentially now, min fire distance is a factor especially for the Manticore and Basilisk. However, due to the nature of the mission set artillery got a whole lot more important. No matter where you shoot you are essentially bypassing cover unless it is a jink save. It really allows us to strike in advance at key units holding objectives and soften them up for things to arrive later turns. Or conversely denying enemy from striking into certain areas. Because we are playing for objectives most of the game is spent with our units in the center portion of the map outside of deployment zones because of the objective placement rules. In all three games everyone had one objective near enough to their deployment zone that would be too difficult to secure. Artillery can take care of that. It seems like having a back field gunline that can strike lethally essentially anywhere on the board is a huge advantage. Especially since both the Wvyern and Basilisk are relatively cheap units. I am still disappointed by the Manticore, but it is still pretty great for what it does and there wasn’t a moment in the game that I would not have been able to fire at a target with it because everyone was so focused on the different objectives.
Our vehicles have all gotten a buff. In all three games my vehicles lasted longer than last edition. This is going to change somewhat as we see more anti-tank weapons appearing in game. However, I now have less fear of losing a Chimera to small arms fire especially when you consider cover saves. In addition, vehicles seem more likely to wreck rather than explode, which creates cover saves for your units as they jump out and takes no loses to explosion. Most anti-tank weapons do not ignore cover and its only guard and Tau that can force that. They also have less shots and more price in general. Again, the Wave Serpent is still going to be a problem with this as the Serpent Shield weapon is the one outlier. Combining this new survivability with objectives and the ISB (taurox) now has a solid goal. Because of its cheapness and reroll dangerous terrain, it is the ideal vehicle for early objective grabbing. A Taurox with something cheap like an infantry squad or special weapon team can make a good sacrifice objective grabber especially if the objective is in cover which will allow the Taurox to stay alive longer. The hellhound in a similar vein because of its speed, is a good objective grabber. It is also solid for area denial as it can double flame anything nearby or burn other units concentrating to hold a few off objective. Not much needs to be said about the new LR. They are great and will continue to be. Camo nets are awesome now especially if you field something like Pask in a pricey tank.
The infantry blob has also increased in utility. As previously stated, having a large durable footprint is a great way to control the board and net victory points. With the priest or commissar holding them in place, it is a difficult unit to remove. Conscripts and blobs can easily grab 2 maybe even 3 objectives if they are large enough claiming different ones as cards are drawn when necessary. Outside of blobs we can still field a lot of objective grabbers. More than most armies can every have hope of killing. Cheap base squads in Chimeras or ISBs supported by drop Veterans and stormtroopers are even better than before. The down side is the heavy weapon team is not as good any more. Missile suck almost as bad as heavy bolters now. The autocannon is still critical and the occasional lascannon a plus as well. I think we should be relying on tanks and Vendettas to do most of the heavy anti-tank now. Tank hunters on the autocannon can grab us enough penetrations on lighter vehicles to get that stunned or immobilized result we want.
For the other special units, a lot of them have seen some utility buff. Ratlings got a little better because as one of our few infiltrators we can get them on or near an objective clear it off with a Basilisk shot and then run them in while shooting their weapons. (again who cares if they die
). Rough Riders get a slight buff as another good way to suicide score or use them as an objective clearer. However, their price and fragility still makes me a bit wary of using them. Ogryns are still pretty terrible unless you are loading a few in a Land Raider they are still going to die. One tactic could be throwing a few into a Stormlord to help grab an objective as it continues forward. Still they are way overpriced. Bullgryns on the other hand have some sneaky uses. Tests with them have usually had them do pretty well. Standing in front of a juicy target like Camo net punisher pask is pretty great. As usually what happens is they shoot Pask, then next turn shoot the Bullgryns, then turn 3 mix their shots. Basically just ensuring whoever is behind them survives. (one day I will get endurance off on them though!) Sentinels are a little better as well. The Armored version survives much longer and the Scout is one of the few that can outflank, which again is pretty crucial. Bottom Line:
Overall there are a lot of things different enough in small ways to change the way you play the game. It is going to take a lot of experimenting, but for the most part a lot of our stuff is better in a least some ways. It kind of feels like with the exception of many two or three unit entries, everything at least will have some utility going into a game. This is pretty nice as it lets you kind of field the army you want to field. If you have played a few games please contribute your opinions. Also if you have some assessments add them to the Tactica file Julian is compiling here: commissar.proboards.com/thread/18054/igmb-tactica-imperialis
Thanks for reading!
