6th ed 40K Rumor Update

More rumor goodness for you to chew on! My comments in red as usual.

-Hull Points are in, it is stated that Ghost Arks, Land Raiders, and

Defilers each have 4 Hull Points apiece. Necrons have the ability to

strip hull points for each roll of a 6 to penetrate/glance vehicles,

making rapid-firing gauss weaponry very powerful at removing armour.

Without more information it’s tough to say how this will work. Do AV14 get the bonus we read about or just an extra Hull Point? If the damage table satys the same it means they are more easily destroyed, which stinks as they go down so easily now. Crons will be crazy though, but I think that is obvious. 

– Speaking of rapid fire, you can indeed move and fire once up to the

full range of the weapon (it is explicitly stated that Fire Warriors

can fire their weapons up to 30″ away), no confirmation on the 3x fire

for Relentless at half range though.

Big fan of this. Making infantry better is awesome, IMO.

– Assault moves are indeed 2d6″, but added together. Units equipped

with jump packs can re-roll the dice to see how far they charge.

Still don’t like the randomness, but this is infinitely better than 2d6″ take the highest. You will still have situations where you roll snake eyes to lose the game from 3″ away which will be infuriating, but you could also roll box cars from 12″ away to win the game. I don’t like random, but I can live with this I think .

– The Rage USR gives you +2 attacks on the charge

Wowzers. Death Company just got a boost. I imagine Berzerkers will have this too, so I may actually play my Khorne army!

– All flying monstrous creatures have the ability to fly 24″, doing

something called a “Vector Strike”, which is a certain amount of

automatic hits to a unit they fly over, at the base strength of the

creature.

Very cool! This adds some serious AT power to Nids and Daemons which is awesome. Not to mention the increased mobility. 

– Monstrous creatures’ attacks are explicitly AP 2

Expected, and essentially what we have now. 

– Every army must select a “Warlord” or single general to lead the

army, this leader gets an ability. They can choose between three

different types of abilities, “Personal”, “Inspirational” or

“Strategic”. They then roll on one of those charts to see what ability

it is. The two examples given were a Grand Master giving all

friendlies within 12″ his Ld of 10 (Inspirational), and a Chaos Lord

being a scoring unit (Personal, the ability itself was called

“Immovable Object”)

Looked really cool until the “roll on chart” part. Sigh. Random is not fun when it is overkill. We’ll see how it works out in application, but I think this could be cool if all the options are good, which we know they most likely won’t be. 

– Flyers are a specific type of unit, and it is somewhat unclear as to

the rules for shooting at them. Either all units require a 6 to hit

them (unless they have a special rule called Skyfire), or this is

still the case but only if those flyers move flat-out. Monstrous

creatures with the ability to Fly also get this “6-to-hit” rule.

Could be cool. Not that many fliers in the game, so I can see this being fun, but it could be abusable, too. 9 Vendettas springs to mind. We’ll see how the rules are actually worded. 

– You have the ability to buy different terrain (it even has its own

slot on the new FOC), e.g, you can buy a Bastion with a Quad-Gun

(which has the aforementioned Skyfire USR). There seem to be quite a

few options for what terrain you can buy, but naturally most of them

are typically represented by terrain kits GW sells.

This is cool, IMO. I like interactive terrain to an extent (no spooky woods, please) and especially for scenario play having Bunkers and such would be fun. For potential tournament use, we’ll have to see as if we get something like the Folding Fortress, everyone will hate it vehemently. 

– Now we’re on the topic of the FOC, the rules for allies weren’t laid

out specifically, but it is heavily implied that its not the same as

in WHFB. They refer to allied units as “Detachments”, and there is an

example of a player with a Chaos Space Marine force having some

detachments of Chaos Daemons in his army. Basically, I was given the

impression that it is far more common (and frequent) for a detachment

from another 40k army to join a larger one, than it is for a Fantasy

army to have Allies. Think more along the lines of the Storm of Magic

rules for using TK, VC, or Daemons.

Cool thematically, but if not done right: game breaking. This is my biggest worry. I would love to see mixed Imperial and Chaos armies, but not at the cost of game balance and fun. 

– Here’s a biggie: Units -can- go on Overwatch, giving them the

ability to fire upon an enemy unit which charges them, but at BS 1.

Eldar (and any other army with access to the Clairvoyance psychic

power set) can use a psychic power to give a unit the ability to fire

at their usual BS.

This could be fun, but we’ll see how it plays out. The difference between shooting at BS1 and BS4 is HUGE though. Again, have to play it to judge. 

– Monstrous Creatures have access to a special “Smash” attack,

allowing them to halve their attacks, but double their strength. It

mentions that this gives them the ability to destroy tanks more

easily.

This sounds interesting in certain circumstances. Most MCs are already closer to Str10 than not, and doubling (unless it works differently) wouldn’t be a huge benefit. Maybe they no longer get 2d6 armor pen? Perhaps it will help with ID? We need more information to be able to tell. 

– It’s somewhat hinted that AP will have some kind of affect against

vehicles. This is because part of the Munitorum dice set includes

vehicle damage dice. It specifies that some of the dice are “AP 1, AP

2, and AP 3 Damage dice”, or something to that effect.

…..well, that could be interesting? It sounds like the way we damage vehicles is changing significantly. It is hard to analyze this with any sort of meaningful opinion without knowing more. 

– 4 Disciplines of Psychic powers, basically what we were thinking in

terms of Clairvoyance, Biomancy, etc etc. There’s a chart near the

back of the WD detailing which (if any) psychic disciplines a

particular army gains access to. It’s interesting to see that a large

amount of armies don’t have access to any at all.

This is worrisome. Some armies will struggle without pyschic support (looking at you, Eldar) and with some armies not having any, it can really stink. Random powers will most likely suck in a huge, giant way. That just straight up isn’t fun. We’ll see how it pans out, but this rumors doesn’t sound cool to me off hand. At all.