Having seen some of the reactions to the ‘unbound’ army lists reported to be allowable in the forthcoming 7th Edition of Warhammer 40k, a lot of people are saying one of two things. An Editorial by Tim Kaye.
On the on hand, you’ve got the people saying “The sky is falling, it’s going to be the end of 40k for me”, and on the other hand there are those who say “This is not the end, it’s getting annoying hearing that the sky is falling”. Now, this has got me thinking: why do people find themselves in one camp or the other on this?
Then I had a brainwave which made me see the whole thing in a different light: it’s entirely subjective how you see the potential outcome of getting rid of the force organisation chart. Imagine you’re a relatively new player, you started 40k a year or so ago. You have a Space Marine army based around the Battleforce box and another tactical squad kit,say maybe a couple of units of elites, a nice basic HQ and a couple of tanks. A basic ‘starter army’ of 1500 points.
Only trouble is, you don’t live in a big city or somewhere with a big gaming scene. There is your local store, but the last time you went in there, some guy who said “You should be honoured, kid, this is my Tournament list I’m letting you play against here”, then proceeded to put three Riptides down on the table, along with some other special Tau battlesuits which didn’t seem to actually do anything except help those Riptides eliminate half your poor Space Marines in a single turn. You’ve been there a few times since and it seems all the guys who go there on games night are equally hardcore.
All you want to do is play some games where you actually have a reasonable chance of winning. Your cousin sometimes comes to visit and brings his 40k stuff and it’s great fun. You both have a blast forging a narrative and you each win as much as you lose. You save up your money and buy yourself a new kick-ass unit and a super-awesome HQ. Next month in the store you actually do it, you squeak out a narrow victory against Mr ” Oh, no, I don’t play ‘normal’ lists”. You feel great, you know that with a little planning, strategy and luck, you can win against these guys. Things are alright.
Then you hear the news: there is a new edition on 40k coming out and they’re going to let people use whatever units they want. In two months time, that guy could have six, or even more Riptides on the table. How can you possibly compete with that? You have no interest in playing tournaments, but no other place to play. Is it really worth bothering with, just for the few times you and your cousin can have your awesome ‘floor wars’ in the school vacation? It just doesn’t seem fair.
These are the people I really empathize with. These are the people for whom it really must feel like the sky is falling. Like getting your driving license and then discovering that everyone is switching to driving backwards! I consider myself to be extremely fortunate. I am spoilt for choice when it comes to gaming clubs and groups in my local area and I have the opportunity to play all sorts of types of games of 40k, from testing my mettle against tough tournament lists, to custom narrative scenarios with fluffy, balanced lists and everything in between. I feel very fortunate because even if the sky is falling, It won’t hurt me. Not everybody is so lucky though.
Timothy James Kaye
It definitely will be important to be a part of a group with a like-minded approach to the game. The game definitely requires a pre game discussion with strangers to determine what you both want out of it now.
The Malefic Daemonology chart leaked today. That is going to definitely shake things up. You can spawn a ton of Daemons if you have access to multiple psykers *IG, Daemons, potentially Eldar (As wrong as that sounds)*
I hope GKs get access, so I can troll people. I’ll take a librarian and roll for the possession power, but instead of summoning a daemon I’ll make an oversized Draigo model. Let the trolling ensue!
Bonus points for any modeling of “Warp Dust” 🙂
where is that chart?
http://talkwargaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/news-daemonology-leaked.html
Yeah, that table looks so unbelievably unfluffy and terrible without more information to clarify it. Out of context that looks like such an obvious cash grab, though, wow.
“Sacrifice” is unbelievable. Warp Charge 1 (which if the rumors are true you need to roll one 4+ for each charge required)
And you chump a conscript for a Herald with a Portalglyph or Grimoire?
If he (and his portal) dies can you keep grabbing a new one with another Glyph/Grimoire?
Damn!
We’ve never had mid game access to war gear before so not sure how that’s going to work.
That seriously just sounds stupid to me at this point, lol! Might as well call that psychic table the: buy daemons table! haha
Ah well, we’ll see how it pans out.
Haha yeah. 19 farseers, 2 warlocks, 59 psychic powers at 2000 points. Going to get 9 of the greater daemon ones most likely. Turn your 2000 points into about 3800 first turn. Sounds fair.
Brutal! Haha, but, we don’t know how the new Psychic Phase works, the basic mechanics have probably changed so I doubt it works that way, now.
Well, I’ve got a bunch of daemonettes from 3.5. Time to summon them with m AM and make people RQ? :,(
My two cents. Why the hell is everyone and their mother suddenly getting 6-7 riptides for? Is that plays warhammer some deep down king of power gaming whose soul purpose is to bend over and spread open their “eye of terror” and let out crap all over peoples good time? All I have heard about since they announced this is 7riptide,or 5 wraith knights, or some other dumb crap that no one will ever really see. Amazingly, no one had talked about deathwing without belial. No one has talked about blood angel bike armies. No one has talked about a mega armor nob force. No one has talked about all the fun options. They just talk about the crap someone decides they can ruin peoples fun with. The tournament crowd wont even try this kind of crap. It is spoken like unbound will be the cheesiest thing ever and someone out there will cheese with it. They won’t have any friends, but they will cheese. Here are my entire plans for unbound. I am running a blood thister with 2 demon princes for a main detachment and running guard as allies. This means I don’t actually need blood letters to run my thister and his two lackies. The extra points doesn’t cheese, but gives me more fun guard options. That is probably close to what ever everyone else has in mind too. Not cheese, but fun.
Err is everyone that plays
There are a lot of cool combos that can come out of this, for sure, but a lot of folks really are (justifiably) worries about the possibilities unbound armies represent.
I just read a rumor that they cannot contest objectives if the objective is being held by a unit (all units are scoring) that is from a battle forged army. Assuming a lot of things, including this rumor and the demonology chart above, it would seem taking an unbound army would have some serious weaknesses.
All “Troops” units in a Battle-forged army get the same “Objective Secured” rules as the Gargoyles in Skyblight when facing an Unbound list.
I saw that, too. That means if you go Unbound, you are going for the tabling.
Really only wiping out the Troops is all that is required.
Though if the Battle-forged list takes the “Buy Daemons now!” powers that might be easier said than done.
Yeah good point, spawning troops all the damn time might be crazy. I wonder how the psychic phase works in total, it sounds like it is getting changed a lot.
Since tau and eldar already shoot everybody off the table, I don’t think Unbound will be that big of a deal in that regard.
It seems like this post should be titled “Just Because The Sky Isn’t Falling On You, Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Falling On Someone”
Judging by it’s content anyway. 🙂
That was what it was meant to be titled! I made a boo-boo………
I can change it.
I would totally play 6 riptides if unbound becomes a popular thing. Cheap, easy to paint, easy to learn, and I love the models and I would always feel like I had a chance to beat most lists. I play blood angels and sisters among my friends, but there’s no point in bringing those to my local gaming store, might as well play by the rules to win big or lose big.
As long as you can no longer attach ICs to Riptides, I’d be OK with it.
Been playing 40k for 13 years. Easily 10’s of thousands of dollars of models that I spent an unknown amount of time lovingly painting in my display case(s) and this is the first time in a long time that I’m thinking about selling not-small portions of it to play other games.
Our group is extremely skeptical about 7th. We travel a lot to play, and if all armies become is who can summon the most daemons… I’m going to be a little upset. And I LOVE daemons.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are sharing that fear. We will just have to hang tight and see what happens.
I highly doubt all armies are going to have access to it. GKs? Heck no. On top of that, remember the ally charts. Another thing this reminds me of is the Imperial Knights. Everyone was worried that everyone could take them and that they would be all that we would see. That didn’t happen. I think Daemonology is going be limited to Chaos armies and maybe and allies of convenience to those armies. Possibly desperate allies. Also, you have to expend 3 warp charges to summon, so that is something to think about.
Am I reading Cursed Earth wrong? It says (normally to 4+) and then goes on to say it can stack with other bonuses. So … 2++ anyone? Do I have that right?
Appears that way, yeah.
Though they likely intended 6th edition to not have stackable powers, their awful wording made it so that people largely allow stacking of powers. We can hope that the new rulebook is clear – you can only benefit from the power once. Bam. No 2++ rerollable allowed.
Y’know. Im going to take this in stride. I will not worry about a thing, in the end it is a game.
It just upsets me the primaris power is WC 3. Kinda a bummer TBH. Most of my guys cant get up to ML3.
But I must admit I do worry. I dont have the money to change games or armies on the fly. I worry about 40k because what if it does crash and burn?
With the need to roll a 4+ for each charge now (as opposed to using 3 charges to auto cast) There’s a good chance the restriction of not getting powers with charges higher than your mastery might be removed.
Well, we don’t know what ML3 even means right now. I think it means you need 3 successes on a psychic check to get it off, and you pool all of your dice now to get powers off.
We will see though, definitions are changing.
Wait, wouldnt that make ML worse?
Oh well, Im just happy that the latest rumors make it cheaper
I’m actually optimistic about the new edition but for a reason I don’t think many people realize. It is clear from the leaks, white dwarf, and interviews that games workshop want to make the game have more options that players can choose to use. That is 7th edition will codify that players are to make an agreement before the game what type of game they will play unbound battle forge ect.
My optimism is that this will spur TO’s to exercise more control in what is and is not allowed in their events. It has been the case that TO’s have avoided making these choices because there was no basis in the rules for them and it always felt arbitrary. Now making those type of choices will be expressly called for in the rules. 40k might then become like fantasy and MtG which expressly bans certain things to make tournaments more competitive and more fun. How well this edition goes will depend on the communities ability to reach consensus on how to play the game and people accepting that some will choose to play it differently than they would like to all the time.
I will be somewhat annoyed on a personal level if my cultists become dust collectors as they are useless other than mandatory troop choices.
Good point!
+1
a very good point.
Is it weird I am actually excited about 7th Ed. It will be the first time I have considered returning to the GrimDark since my Alpha Legion became lame. I guess I just want to use my thousands of dollars of dust collectors. Hope is a terrible thing though.
We’d be happy to have you back!
Agreed, I’d put my trust in the TOs over GW any day, just the fact that many of them have podcasts where they explain their design decisions and answer questions is far more than we’re used to.
Reecius, what do you think of people being able to play fluffy Chaos stuff now?
Ahriman
Lvl 3 Sorc with familiar
3x thousand son squads, each with Sorc
20 cultists
Crimsons slaughter possessed lvl 3 sorc with re-roll and divination
2 squads of possessed squads with mark of tzeentch
Couple of Tzeentch-themed heldrakes + some anti-tank
With the 1. on the daemonology roll, you are making the two squads of possessed troops 3++ all the time. With ahriman you can infiltrate them at the start of the game. This army has 13 + d6 dice every round. You can summon a crap ton of daemons all game. All your shooty troops have 4++ and AP3 bolters.
Chaos I think will benefit a lot from this but, we need to see all the rules first to really get the truth of it.
That sir is the definition of a straw man argument.
Color me intrigued. First off we only have the wicked cool powers. the ways to deny them sound manifold. Also we haven’t seen perils yet. That could be a game breaker.
Anyone else curious how the Farseers Ghosthelm, Runes of Warding and Runes of Witnessing plays into this? I should probably repost this question, when we know more about the perils of the warp table… 😉
All Psykers except Tyranids will have access to Daemonology. Daemonology also has two branches of which we’ve only seen Malefic. There’s another branch called Sanctic.
The bit on the new psychic phase is what catches my interest though. It gives some details on how it will work. I’m curious as to what defence armies without psykers will have since the wording suggests you need a psyker to use warp charge to deny the witch or nullify an opposing power. Not that I’ll mourn the loss of a 1/6 chance to deny the witch but something is better than nothing.
It’s here for those that may have missed it.
http://talkwargaming.blogspot.com/2014/05/news-40ks-new-edition-details-leaked.html
This is what the WD knights also said. Pretty sure it’s meant that anyone can play with it for now… Until the actual rules hit.
In interested to see how the Talisman of Arthas Moloch works for the Farsight supplement. How would you get the 4D^ bonus if you have no warp charges to begin with? Maybe im speculating too much and it will be exactly the same. Who knows?
Reecius we need a podcast! Its been over a week without my fix!…Hope you enjoyed the holiday
This is a really great article and you honestly hit the nail on the head. I think the tourney scene will fix the rules to bring some balance back to the game. However, what percentage of all sales are represented by diehard tourney fans that go to all of the major events…bet it is incredibly small. The average gamer as you pointed out has a few models and plays the game with some of his mates without any real idea of what the national meta will look like. All of a sudden the rule book says take what you want and things start getting wonky in the home games and egos get bruised 40K gets shelved and these players move on. In addition, the players who lack a regular game and will travel may find that the places they go to are using unbound armies and they get tired of traveling to find out tall the guys at xyz gaming store are running either their 8 wraith knight list or 27 riptide list…gee glad I drove two hours to play against this garbage…this guy now stops playing too. IMO when this garbage is included in the core rule book, it is going to hurt the hobby as whole. You may not see it on the national tournamnet aka I read 40K blogs all day scene, but the interest in the game is going to decline.
Can’t believe I just wasted my time reading this >,<
I can’t believe you added the torment of posting as well. Your day must be truly ruined.
With that cursed earth power, Warp Talons might actually become playable. It does seem Chaos will benefit a lot from this table, which I appreciate. Also, even if everyone has access to the table, I don’t think many people will take from it. I suppose the primaris may be popular, but it definitely isn’t cheap. I, personally, am reserving all judgement until I have a book in my hands. However even with that said, I still think there’s a good chance it won’t be nearly as bad as everyone always says a new edition will be. We’ll get through it.
Here’s my article:
Communicate with your opponent. Discuss the type of game that you’d like to play.
If you show up to a store cold, wanting to catch a pickup game, that’s your call.
It’s not GW’s responsibility to arrange your match. They’re giving you more flexibility to play the crazy fun games most people want.
I don’t want to have a negotiation with my opponent each time I want to play a game. Can’t we just have a standardized, well-tested, rule set?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JnMByJVUow
So FoC armies get a variety of “Command Benefits”, not just objective secured. The pictures in the youtube only show 2 blocks of benefits, but hopefully there’s a decent variety for fluffiness sake and rocking triple-tides or double douchestars.