Some Notes From My First Game Of 6th

[WestRider]

Played a 1K Game this afternoon with my Guard against some Space Marines, had a few things really jump out:

- Game was Draw Mission with Diagonal Deployment. For your convenience, the corners of the Diagonal Deployment are ~15" down the short edge and ~22" down the long edge of the Table, measured from the Neutral Table Corners.

- Meching up is very restrictive. Not lethal to Mech Builds, but you need to plan ahead. Especially if you have any intention of Assaulting at some point.

- Speaking of Assault, taking Overwatch fire from a 30-strong Combined Platoon hurts ;D

- And further: Random Charge Length can really be a pain. We ended up with no successful Assaults involving two actual Infantry Units, between poor Charge Distance Rolls and Overwatch damage. At least two of those attempts would have been automatic or nearly so in 5th Ed.

- Keep your Valkyries/Vendettas Zooming as much as you can. The worst damage I took all Game was the Turn I Hovered my Vendetta to drop the MeltaVets off. One lucky PowerFist later and I'd lost over 15% of my Army.

- Conversely, Flyers that are Zooming are very difficult to kill. Once my Vendetta was down, I had a hell of a time dropping my Opponent's Storm Talon. Even with a Quad Gun in my Aegis Defense Line with a dude manning it.

- Fornicate Mysterious Objectives. Spent all Game with a Power Relay sporadically blowing up in the middle of my Deployment Zone.

- Overall impression: The Game is biased even more toward Shooting than 5th Ed was. Flyers, en masse, may be game breaking. Both pretty good news for the Guard, since we have one of the best Flyers in the Game, the only non-Flyer Skyfire Unit, and all the shooting anyone could ask for.

[Jackal-0311]

So do yo think an Air Cav force is more deadly?

[WestRider]

We'll see how things shake out, but my first impressions, combined with a lot of reading and kicking ideas around with others, is that a well built Air Cav force is going to be the second strongest Build in the Game, after Necron Scythe Spam.

Note that pure Air Cav won't work, due to the Rule about losing if you end a Game Turn with no Models on the Board. You need a solid force of boots on the ground that can hold out for at least a couple of Turns.

[Jackal-0311]

interesting...sounds like you have to use a combined arms setup...?

[emptyhat]

- Meching up is very restrictive. Not lethal to Mech Builds, but you need to plan ahead. Especially if you have any intention of Assaulting at some point.

I still haven't made it all the way through the new rules, would you mind explaining why meching up is more restrictive?

[Jackal-0311]

Jul 9, 2012 18:42:02 GMT -5 WestRider said:

We'll see how things shake out, but my first impressions, combined with a lot of reading and kicking ideas around with others, is that a well built Air Cav force is going to be the second strongest Build in the Game, after Necron Scythe Spam.

Note that pure Air Cav won't work, due to the Rule about losing if you end a Game Turn with no Models on the Board. You need a solid force of boots on the ground that can hold out for at least a couple of Turns.

And is it troops, or does a vehicle count as something on the board?

[WestRider]

emptyhat: While you're on board, it's similar. But after your Disembarkation Move, you now need to be entirely within 6" of the Access Point, instead of getting a 6" Move plus the 2" Disembarkation, plus the just under an inch for the width of the Model's Base. You can also only Disembark if the Vehicle moved 6" or less, instead of 12" like before.

Combined, it takes about 9" off the Threat Range of "suicide" Melta Units and such.

The biggest change doesn't really affect Guard that much, but it really hurts a lot of other Armies: A Unit can never Charge in its next Assault Phase after it Disembarks. This includes if it Disembarks due to the Transport getting Wrecked, the passengers then can't Charge in their next Turn. So you now need to get out a full Turn before you want to Charge, which means you have to be very careful with how you plan it.

Assault Vehicles mostly get around this, but are still screwed if the Transport gets Wrecked.

Oddly, when Vehicles Explode, Passengers are simply placed, rather than Disembarking, so they can Assault after their Vehicle blows up, but not after it just gets Wrecked.

I suspect we may be going to see some return to late 3rd Ed tactics of running a Rhino Wall up, slewing them all sideways, and disembarking behind them. Then next Turn, the Infantry start doing their thing.

The next thing is that, with Hull Points and 5+ Cover, light Vehicles seem to die a lot faster than they did in 5th. Takes an average of about 16 BS3 Autocannon Shots to kill a Smoked Chimera from the front now, compared to 72(!) in 5th Ed. You're paying the same, but getting a lot less protection for the dudes inside now.

This is exacerbated in Assaults. A bunch of Furious Charging Hormagaunts Assaulting a Chimera in 5th Ed had essentially no chance of Destroying it, especially if it was moving. Now a Brood of 8 has a better than 50% chance of Wrecking a Chimera moving Flat Out, and decent odds of getting enough Movement on the Charge to surround it and get the Squad inside as well.

Finally, Units cannot Claim or Deny (Contest) Objectives while mounted in a Transport. This is an especially big deal in Missions where you've got to deal with Objectives on the other side of the Table. No more zooming a Valk or a HellHound or something over at the last minute to Contest, you need boots on the ground to even do that, and you can't get those boots out and on the ground unless you moved the Vehicle less than 6" that Turn.

Guard get hit by this less than just about anyone else, since we don't care about Assaulting out of Vehicles in most situations, but the increased vulnerability of Vehicles and their Passengers, combined with the need to get out to handle Objectives, makes fully Mech Lists a rather more niche proposition.

@jackal: Any Models suffice.

[emptyhat]

Thanks Westrider, I hadn't picked up any of that yet

[Julian Sharps]

Fortunately, open-topped vehicles are all Assault Vehicles now, so assaulting from such transports is just as viable as it was before, it just requires a little more planning.

However, there are a few units (flamer Command Squads, Burna Boyz and Sternguard w/ combi-flamers come to mind) that make assaulting them a hazardous prospect due to the sheer number of flamers present. Unless you happen to be Space Marines, Monstrous Creatures or hordes of melee units, hitting these units in an assault will not be easy.

[WestRider]

Jul 10, 2012 11:25:12 GMT -5 Julian Sharps said:

Fortunately, open-topped vehicles are all Assault Vehicles now, so assaulting from such transports is just as viable as it was before, it just requires a little more planning.

Almost as viable. You still lose a couple inches of threat range from the way the Disembarkation Rules changed.

Note also that Assault Vehicle doesn't help if your ride gets Wrecked, since it only applies in the same Player Turn that you Disembark.

[Voidlight]

So Dark Eldar Raiders are assault vehicles? That's good news. My force is pretty heavy on them. Also, would you care to elaborate on "Night Scythe Spam"?

[WestRider]

Scythe Spam: Flyers are a pain to deal with unless you have Flyers of your own, Allied Hydras from Imperial Guard, or a truly ludicrous amount of Twin-Linked, mid-high Strength Firepower.

For 750 Points, Necrons can bring 6 AV11, 3HP Flyers, with weapons ideally suited to taking out other Flyers and most of the viable anti-Aircraft weaponry. That is insanely hard for most Armies to take out, and still leaves plenty of Points, even at 1500, for a solid force on the ground to cover the gaps in the list, Claim Objectives, all that jazz.

If they really want to, they can run 8 Night Scythes and 3 Doom Scythes at 1995 Points. That version is too badly skewed and loses hard to a couple of Builds, but there are many other Builds that just can't do significant damage to it, and will get wrecked by that kind of Firepower.

The full version, like I said, eats up too much of the list and becomes a one-trick pony, but scale it down to somewhere between 3 and 6 Night/Doom Scythes, fill in the rest wisely, and it becomes a very frightening List.

[tonba]

Air Cav will be deadly untill 6th ed codex's come out, and everyone can get flakk missiles.

I bet everyone will be getting a dedicated AA unit as well, so dont be suckered into spending bit $$ on a heap of fliers right now...

Hydras are well and truly going to make thier points back. I might invest in a few.