The following is taken directly from the Warhammer Community page:
Perhaps the biggest talking point at AdeptiCon this year* was the future of the game of Warhammer 40,000. Ever eager to help, Warhammer TV shared some of their recent findings with the Warhammer Studio Preview crowd, after putting peerless reporter Duncan on the case:
There you have it folks – pretty radical stuff!
All your questions answered, we’re sure…
Next up Pete Foley, head of the Warhammer Books and Boxed Games studio, shared some of his team’s current thinking on the game.
Pete:
It’s been a great six months for Warhammer 40,000. The latest batch of FAQs helped improve everyone’s enjoyment of the game and really clarified some of the key rules. And they were possible, in large part, thanks to the help of you guys and the rest of the online Warhammer 40,000 community. I think it’s really great that we’re now developing rules by engaging the community and working with people like Frankie and Reece from LVO, Mike from Nova and Hank, Greg, Chris and the rest of the AdeptiCon team.
So tonight we wanted to share with you some of the rules concepts that we’re currently working on and give you a quick peek at some stuff that maybe you’ll get to use this time next year at AdeptiCon.
3 Ways to Play
The General’s Handbook has been one of the most popular rules supplements we’ve ever released. Who’d have thought letting people choose how they wanted to play their games and giving them a clear way to do that would be so popular…? It’s pretty clear from talking to a number of event organisers, that Warhammer 40,000 would benefit from the same approach. So we’ll soon be introducing the same 3 ways to play – open, narrative and matched play – to the 41st Millennium.
Army Selection
One of the things that comes up a lot is the idea that people should be rewarded for taking thematic armies. It’s a sentiment we agree with and so we’re looking at introducing Command points. A mechanism to reward players who structure their army like their in-world counterparts, with rerolls and cool army specific rules throughout the game.
Movement
We think the Move value should come back. No more default unit types. Every model should have cool bespoke rules. Not only would that be more fun, but it’ll mean you will only need to learn the rules for your models.
Shooting
Armour save modifiers. This topic comes up almost as often as Sisters of Battle… so we’re going to bring them back. Every weapon will have its place in your army and better represent how you imagine them working in your head.
Combat Phase
Charging units should fight first. It’s just more thematic. So we’re hoping to work this out as well. It will reward tactically outmaneuvering your opponent. You can dictate the combats rather than being entirely Initiative based. You control who swings first.
Morale
Its no longer all or nothing, and it affects everyone. We’re thinking of replacing break tests with a simple mechanic. Roll a D6, add that to the number of models your unit has lost this turn, subtract your Leadership and take that many additional casualties.
Exciting stuff.
Stay tuned to the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page for future updates on the game.
I have to say, I’m actually excited about these changes. The game needs to be streamlined. People can say what they want, but no one can dispute that the General’s Handbook saved AoS and turned it from a chaotic mess into an actual fairly balanced format and a good game.
ITC has done wonders as a community based organization in trying to make 40k playable in a competitive format, and deserve a lot of credit for what they’ve accomplished in bringing the community in North America together. That said, I look forward to the changes of the new ruleset. Good things are ahead I believe.
Agreed. I encourage people to do their best to not chicken little on this and just be patient. These changes to me will be making the game dramatically better.
Armor save modifiers coming back? YES! Thank the emperor. The all or nothing system we have now means a lot of weapons are not very useful. Movement value back? Yes please, again. That stratification between units is great and you get get past some of the weird things that occur with universal values like super slow MCs. Just look to AoS for examples. It works great. The morale system is also a big win from what we can read in the article, to me. The all or nothing system of the current edition with weird, clunky rules on rallying, falling back, getting cut off, etc. are all overly complex. I love the much simpler and fairer system of simply yanking some models if you fail the check–not the entire unit in most cases–or some armies ignoring the rule outright.
Yes, inevitably people will freak about this, but I’m with you. We need to be open minded about the changes. I’m sure there will be some that a lot of people will not like or that might require people to construct their armies much differently than they did before, but that is the nature of 40k. It is ever changing.
I personally cannot wait for this as I think some of the ideas they have mentioned, and ones you reiterated, are a long time coming. Separate movement stats will be amazing. Does anyone out there actually think Guilliman will be hamstrung by a 6″ movement for example (which makes him very difficult to use in this current version of the rules?) No he will have a separate move stat which will make him much more viable in the game. Modified armor saves for certain weapons will be very nice. And this is just scratching the surface. I hope the community just gives this a chance as a whole.
Yeah, folks are going to freak out for sure, change is scary. But I feel so incredibly optimistic based on what we’ve seen so far, I seriously can’t wait to see more!
Optimism is an important virtue for this. I am so elated to play test all of my armies! My brain is on overload right now….Dark Eldar….ooooo possibly good again? Tempestus Scions!!?? awesome because they don’t care about combat so they melt you with plasma and melta!! I imagine the modifier for melta and plasma will be sweet!!
Blood Angels! Oh man first attack and furious charge…Jump packs are good again as they can charge and auto strike first! damn son
All good in my opinion!
I’m looking forward to it. I went from 2nd Edition to 7th edition fifteen years later (I missed not playing all those years). This seems to be a step back toward 2nd, in a good way. I’m looking forward to it.
Change is good. It shakes things up. And I’m really looking forward to things like Morale being simplified.
This is great. 40k has needed to take some pages from AoS for a while now.
If they change only one thing let it be the psychic phase. I don’t see how anyone could ever have thought the current pointlessly convoluted system was better than just rolling a leadership test, but I look forward to it being simplified!
Overall, I am very excited for this.
They modeled it off Fantasy’s magic system, which was long touted by WFB players as being “more tactical” than 40K’s psychic powers.
Of course, it turns out a lot of people didn’t actually play WFB, with the magic system being one of the reasons they stopped…
To be fair it’s modelled on a version of the magic in WHFB (6th edition… when we were already at 8th) that was already outdated when introduced to 40k. For some reason they removed the neccessary limits and made armies be able to generate even more dice to break the system even more than it ever was in old editions of WHFB…
Generating lots of warp charge dice isn’t what makes psychic powers in 40k broken; a Librarius Conclave doesn’t need more than six or ten dice to just absolutely ruinous to a game, and in many cases a single spell (Invisibility, Shifting Worldscape, etc) can be more than enough to destroy things. Even the most prolific of demon lists don’t generate much about 20 dice in the majority of turns, and if you capped things at 12 dice (the way WFB did), you would still see a lot of the same kind of thing.
My point is you made it sound like people thought the 6th edition WHFB had a good magic system and I don’t think anyone suggested that. But what they had in 8th with the limits of max 12dice and max 6 for one spell made it a tactical mini game of drawing out spells that they completely disregarded when moving it to 40k.
That the spella themselves were too powerful is a completely different matter…
No, that’s exactly what people were saying- there were quite a few WFB players who seemed to take it as a point of pride that the 6/7/8E magic systems were “better” than 40K’s psychic systems at the time.
Also, the “draw out enemy denial dice” is definitely a thing in 40K also, it’s just that the way dice generation works many armies don’t really have the chance to actually _do_ it. But if you see two psychic armies go head-to-head, there actually are quite a few decisions that need to be made in terms of how you push your own spells through and how you counter enemy spells.
(Just to be clear, I’m not saying that the 7E psychic phase is well-designed or anything, only that its flaws don’t lie in a lack of decision points during the game.)
There’d be more strategy to the 7e psychic phase if a) denial wasn’t a total crapshoot, and b) invisibility and a couple of other powers didn’t make “what should I save all my denial dice for?” a stupid question most of the time.
Yeah, the real problem is that there are some psychic powers that are so strong everything else is an also-ran in comparison; 8E Fantasy also struggled with this issue to some degree. Having such incredibly swingy powers also be generated randomly only makes things even worse.
One thing to remember: if the armor save modifiers are anything like 2E’s version, they make Power Armor a LOT weaker, because suddenly you aren’t rolling that 3+ so often anymore, but more likely a 4+ or even a 5+.
Obviously we can’t know for certain how it will pan out at this point, but 2E (and AoS) both give us that same lesson- armor just don’t go as far as it does in current 40K.
Khorne terminators with 2+ on 2d6 was cool
In 2e, this mostly meant that marines still wanted to use cover.
For better or worse, the situational value of cover in 7e is one of the things I find confuses new players the most about 40k; it makes intuitive sense that infantry behind a wall should be safer than infantry in the open, but against small arms most med/heavy infantry don’t really care.
I agree completely with this. It doesn’t matter that I have the best armor in the galaxy, standing partially behind a wall should mitigate some small arms fire, instead of just melta or las weapons. I just hope they are cautious with this and don’t go overboard with the bonuses.
Yeah, the problem is one of added complexity. AoS does a decent job of it by simply having cover still factor into your armor save, so cover is always better unless you have 2+ armor against Rend 0 weapons anyways. But it’s more complicated in 40K, where shooting is more of a thing. We’ll see how they choose to handle it, I’m definitely curious to see exactly how they bring mechanics over.
I too am encouraged by this news, but I am also wary because of GW’s track record designing rules. However, my main concern is the rending useless of our codices and supplements. I mean, as great a read as the Gathering Storm has been, will I ever get to field St. Celestine or Belsarius Cawl again? How will the chapters operate? Will we still get Chapter Tactics, or will they all be rolled into Command Traits and now everyone is a vanilla marine? I’ve spent a great deal of time and money into the game, and all of the game isn’t broken. I don’t want GW to fix what works, just fix what doesn’t work. I think they can streamline both the rules and game play without completely gutting the rule set and starting over. I guess I am cautiously optimistic. I encouraged GW on their FB page to be cautious with armor saves and movement. It could be broken too easily.
When Fantasy switched to AOS every codex was provided free of charge as a pdf, with Forgeworld following about 6 months later. It is true your old codices will be obsolete, but you will have rules to play your army! If they follow the model set by AOS, then armies will be sorted into general allegiances (perhaps the command points talked about earlier) which dictate which armies may ally. And if you are playing open play, then you can field whatever you want with no restrictions.
a few things im hoping for coming from the AOS side
1. grand alliance books (including a FW unit book), with all the rules for a low price. save the bulk of story for the individual battletomes
2. bigger monsters that slow down and become less lethal as they take wounds (one of my favorite rules in years)
3)back and forth deployment
With changes this big, I think they’ll have to start by releasing the stats of every unit as a free download like they did with AoS. At the very least, they’ll need to include them all with the rule book.
I actually like alternating activations in the assault phase a lot, in AoS; 40k assault is largely determined by dice, with a few little quirks that veterans know how to exploit. AoS melee has more interesting decisions being made by both players.
I also dig how most of those large monsters in AoS just have a ton of wounds, rather than nigh-impenetrable defenses. Makes fighting one less swingy; they take damage more predictably and it’s easier to estimate how hard you need to hit one to kill it.
Is Adepticon streaming anything? I found the Warhammer Live channel but do they have their own twitch channel?
I think it is just GW streaming on Twitch.
I’m very excited about these potential changes! It seems most of them are going after systems that are far too much about duality.
1) Armor saves – either you get past them or you don’t. That leaves you in a feelsbadman situation a lot of the time when your weapon is either AP2 or it isn’t.
2) Movement – Just because Necron warriors and daemonettes of slaanesh are both infantry doesn’t mean they should have the same movement rules. You can eschew all the added special rules like Fleet and SnP and just give them a unique movement value as a much easier representation of this (what a radical thought!)
3) Leadership – the system with multiple dualities. If you have ways to ignore morale – good for you, you can ignore half the game mechanics! If you don’t have ways to ignore morale – you better hope you don’t fail your LD roll by 1 because it might mean you get swept entirely or you run off the board entirely just because you barely messed up a test.
All of the above seem like they’re going to get smoothed out much more in 8th edition vs the current edition where you hit very big power spikes from being in one group vs another.
Agreed on all counts.
I hope terminators go back to armor saves on two dice
3d6
3d6
: )
Returning save modifiers makes me hope cover modifiers will return as well.
Losing save modifiers and movement rates were tghe two things I hated about 3rd edition. Glad to see them return. I’m not sold on chargers swinging first, makes Initiative fairly unimportant like it was in fantasy. I always liked that wrinkle in 40k.
I’m not sure about the “always going first” when you charge, but I do think charging armies should be rewarded more than they are. Maybe just a +X to your iniative when charging? So if two models are the same then the advantage goes to the charger which makes some sense. Right now there are some assault units with not-so-great initiative which means there’s a decent chance you charge someone and just die. Takes a lot of the fun out of being an assault army.
Pros and Cons, right? As an Ork player, or Nid player charging into cover (or Dark Eldar for that matter, lol) the In system sucked. Didn’t matter if you played well, you always got shafted. With choosing who swings first with charging you have more control over it and the aggressive player is rewarded which feels right to me with a melee army.
And remember, all we have right now is that one sentence, there may be layers to the rule that change how it works in application, you know? We’ll have to wait and see.
Space Marine tactical squad charging into cover? Go for it you’re fine – you’ve got grenades.
Dedicated assault units like Tyranids, daemons, and Dark Eldar? Haaaaaa. Initiative 1.
Makes total sense 😉
I know, right? Haha, dedicated melee units should be good in melee….
I thought the extra attack was a nice bonus. I never cared about going first as an Ork as long as I could still be effective. It was dumb on fast units like Stealers and the like though.
I just know that in Warhammer most players barely even remembered what their I stat was because it came up so infrequently. Having a high I in 40k was a nice way to give weedy armies like Eldar a nice defensive boost that they never had in Fantasy. For instance, Orcs charging Humans or Elves was identical. They swung first and hit and wounded the same. Seemed poorly done.
We’ll see how it goes.
I agree, save modifiers is SO good. SO good. It means all weapons have a place. I like you, did not enjoy that change at all leaving 2nd ed.
YES. Creates real debate. A gun like heavy bolters which might be -2 to the save now have much more value compared to a scatter laser with no save modifier. I haven’t run the numbers but against MEq being able to force a space marine to save on a 4+ (I’m assuming marines go back to 2+ saves) vs a 2+ and only wounding on a 3+ vs 2+ and one less shot means you actually want to think about it. (not that any unit has options for both weapons OBVIOUSLY)
Also, I hope cover modifies to hit rather than provides a save. I always thought it was absurd that marines in cover weren’t better off against lasguns than marines in the open. Total suspension of disbelief.
Cover saves are honestly just really work from a versamilitude PoV all around.
If you have decent armor, cover doesn’t help you against basic weapons like lasguns or bolters. It does help you against powerful weapons like lascannons or missile launchers. But not against other powerful weapons like scatter lasers or autocannons, which will chew you off the board like a woodchipper whether you’re in cover or not.
What?
There’re so many rules from 2nd edition which were eliminated which I’d love to see return. The Movement stat, for one. I hated making everyone move the same (Not to mention rolling to Run. I vastly preferred just moving double your Movement when you ran). Armor save modifiers are another. I just hope that Terminators have a good enough save that they go back to being the nigh-unkillable gods of the battlefield that they’re supposed to be (I’d love it if they had a 1+ Save, so that they’re totally immune to basic arms fire like lasguns and autoguns, and so can only be killed by weapons which inflict modifiers).
One thing I’d like to see return, though, is the ability for units to be able to target multiple enemy units with their firing. I remember a time when a Leman Russ Battle Tank with a Battlecannon, hull-mounted Lascannon, and two sponson mounted Heavy Bolters made perfect sense because A) Each gun was able to fire at full BS (As opposed to the silliness we have now, where if the tank moves then only one gun can fire at full BS while the rest of the guns have to Snap Fire), and B) Each gun was able to fire at a separate target. It makes no logical sense why the guy manning a Heavy Bolter would feel like he HAD to fire at the same target the guy manning the Battlecannon is firing at. Especially if the Battlecannon guy is firing at a Wraithknight while the Heavy Bolter guy can clearly see a squad of Fire Dragons moving up on them.
Likewise, remember the days when Tactical Squads were actually TACTICAL? Where you could stick a Lascannon in with them and not be forced to fire your Bolters at the same target the guy carrying the Lascannon is firing at? Those two things are something I’d really like to see return.
Good memory ! Agree 100% on splitfire needing to return.
I’ve never played anything but 5th edition on, so wasn’t aware of those previous rules, but if the new armor saves are like what you mentioned (and good) I’ll be happy. This makes me a bit more optimistic. It seemed there used to be a bit more common sense in rules design then than there is now.
In some ways, 2nd Edition was so much better than what we have now. In other ways, it was worse. I’m hoping we get the best from 7th and 2nd. I’d say that I’d hope for the best from other versions, but those are the only two editions that I’ve played.
Ypu know, there’s a reason that they abandoned a lot of those rules. It’s because they add time and complexity to the game- 2E was a game of fighting like twelve Marines versus fifteen Eldar, and it still took two hours to do.
Not sure if this is something that can be publicly talked about yet, but do you guys know anything from GW on a tentative timeline for 8th? A few months? A year? Yesterday?
I do not know, sorry.
Here at Adepticon though, they made it sound like these changes were not too far off.
I read somewhere that it’s coming in June-July this year.
Rumor is GW shops all have special events on 3 consecutive weekends in the middle of June. So likely June 10, June 17, or June 24.
There are a lot of aspects of AoS I like but the biggest problem are the double turns which can be crushing.
I am really excited for these changes. Although if I was still competitive I shutter at the thought of learning every rulebook and unit idiosyncrasies. As of right now knowing all the rules for 40k is like training to Doctor after 7+ years of school you still don’t know everything.
I don’t think random initiative would work in 40k as it does in AoS as 40k is a shooting game (mostly) where AoS is a melee game (mostly), but we will see what happens. I’ve actually come to really enjoy the random initiative in AoS but I agree, I would not want it in 40k.
And yeah, 40k is too complex right now, I agree. AoS is easier to learn but the complexity is still there once you get better at the game.
Agreed. I’ve been banging on about random initiative being good in AoS for far too long but it wouldn’t work in 40K. Also at a base level it makes the skills needed and the army building ethos very different for each game, and that’s just more interesting.
The big reason random initiative would suck in 40k is the prospect of eating two back to back shooting phases from Tau or Eldar or gravMarines, really.
Same reason as in AoS, basically.
Great news! And GW poking fun at themselves (“Who knew!?!”) is always a welcome sight.
I love their new attitude! SO much more personable.
LOL! It’s like they’re making fun of the kind of GW employee who said not that long ago that 80% of their customers are people who buy models for display purposes only, and don’t actually game with them.
That video was awesome! All my drop pods are deploying like that from now on!
Armour modifiers could be interesting if they work differently from 2nd edition. It was more difficult to hit stuff back then.
Drop pods now count as guided D weapons upon arrival from reserves lol. Literally…they’ll destroy the table
Reece, I’m freaking out.
I agree with balance and simplifi but I don’t want Age of Sigmar in space.
Also, I’m sorry but surely there can be NO circumstance in which a Guardsman moves faster than a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh or a Primarch!
We already have AoS. We don’t need a science fiction clone!!
No reason to freak out.
And that Guardsmen already moves faster than anything that doesn’t have grenades if he is standing in some tall grass and they charge, lol.
Anyway, don’t fixate on some of these rules sneak peeks, they’re out of the context of the bigger picture. Wait till you’ve played it a few times, I am willing to bet money this will be a massive improvement for not only us vets but for the game as a whole.
REECE I’M FREAKING OUT JUST A LITTLE BIT, MAN.
WHAT IF WE’RE ALL JUST HALLUCINATIONS OF A PINBALL ABOUT TO FALL PAST THE LAST BUMPER, AND WHEN HE WAKES UP WE WON’T KNOW WHO WE ARE ANYMORE??!?
There’s no circumstance now where that can happen, either. So what makes you think movement values in the new edition will change that?
Also, what part of “AoS in space” don’t you like? Pretty much all 4 of the above changes started in old WHFB or early editions of 40k. Sure, Sigmar also uses those mechanics but that’s no reason to blindly hate them. Sigmar is actually in a pretty decent spot now that they have the 3 ways to play. I don’t see how bringing that to 40k is going to ruin any fun. Just because some of the changes mentioned are similar to systems used in AoS doesn’t mean the entire game is turning into an AoS clone.
This stuff has gotten me so much more excited about the future of 40k. It was the game that really got me into this hobby, but lately I have been very discouraged by it overall, preferring AoS to it. Playing 40k as it is now just depresses me because I know it could be so much better. Now I love everything I am reading and may want to dust off my old 40k armies again. I hope someone from GW is reading these comments because people here seem to have am much more level head than elsewhere on the interwebs. It’s a really refreshing community, Reece.
Thanks! Yeah, FLG has it’s flare-ups from time to time but honestly, the average reader here is pretty mature in the way they behave. It’s nice.
These changes will be great once folks get used to them, IMO. People just need to be patient and approach them with a level head, and remember everything we’re seeing is being taken out of the context of the entire game so far.
I was a little disappointed about 3 ways to play. I feel like much of 40K’s problem was the attempt to make all games Apoc games. I don’t like playing 1,000 point Apoc games.
Personally, I don’t even enjoy 10,000 Apoc games. So one of my major wishes for 8th was a return to a separation between Apoc and normal 40K.
40k already has three ways to play in the 7th ed book =) It is just not so clearly spelled out, but if you look in the BRB, it’s all there.
And there is no real difference between Apoc and 40k anyway, just what models you use. It’s the same game. If all of the models have similar rules that are written for the same scale, the distinction becomes nothing more than a holdover form ye old days. I for one, want to use the big, cool models! So long as they fit in with the other models in the game, bring it on, I say.
Oh hell yeah, I hated when Apocalypse being thrown into normal 40k happened. Some of my friends (Tau and Imp Guard players) absolutely loved it, however they like playing these armies because they like winning… rather than me where I don’t like Apoc (or even vehicles for a thematic approach) using Grey Knights. So when having a game of Infantry and MC based Grey Knights vs a Baneblade and Leman Russ line and still winning is so much more of a winning buzz than just who survives battle cannon.
I have such a strong dislike for Apoc that when I ever roll and get Vortex of Doom (which is almost never) I treat it as S10, because Str D is confusingly moronic in my eyes!
7th or 8th Ed. for BAO? 🙂
I’m stoked for these changes.
Don’t know when or if 8th is coming out, we’ll have to wait and see!
Fantastic stuff, all of these are going to go a long way to making me excited about 40K again (still like it now, but lost steam over the last year, but save modifiers and simple but actually game effecting morale! Woop!), particularly as it might mean new rules for everything like the start of AoS which I kind of think 40K needs.
Bringing in the 3 ways to play it looks is a no-brainer, I can maybe see why having points and competitive play being it’s own distinct thing would freak people out a bit but I actually think it helps create a far more fluid and interesting competitive scene, just look at how GW have been responding to AoS with rules and points changes easily because the matched play element is separate.
Also awesome to here you guys have been helping Reece and Frankie along with others. Having community people input is fantastic and is working wonders for AoS, knew that trip here to the UK couldn’t have just been to discuss LVO stuff 😉
I think having three distinct ways of play categorized and listed, helps stave off the competitiveness a bit. For instance, if the two players agree on a narrative game and not a tournament level game, then they know it’s just for casual fun and not a uber-cheese slugfest. It’s a written reminder, if you will, that there is more than one way to play the game. A necessary reminder for some players, I think, who don’t know how to dial down the competitiveness on their own.
In all honesty, I haven’t touched my 40k stuff in about a year and a half and as of quite recently was working to sell off my Tyranids and crisis suit focused Tau (riptides are dumb) armies. 40k just wasn’t fun anymore with power discrepancies so rampant and so much built around either making an unstoppable force or an immovable object. I know these changes won’t necessarily bring everything into perfect harmony, but a complete revamp gives me enough hope to maybe hold on to what I’ve got for now.
Might still sell it all off to build GK though.
If it was just these tidbits in a vacuum I’d be interested but not as excited as I am. This combined with the fact that they’re working with tournament and league organisers, and the genuinely stellar job that I think GW have been doing with AoS (you could put down basically any army in AoS and have a good game) make me hopeful 🙂
Will orks be able to ork better than a pack of wolves?
I’m meh on the “strike first on charge” bonus simply because the game already favors speed/bikes over infantry enough already!
One thing I’ve tried experimenting with in the past is a to-hit chart that compares Ballistic Skill versus Initiative (representing anything from knowing when to duck/keep a low profile, to outright bullet-dodging). Rather than cover being a binary “strike last unless grenades”, cover would give an initiative modifier to units inside it.
I’m assuming they will make disordered charges then go to initiative. However, when I see a giant monster charge through terrain and they strike last? I really think the strike first when charging will help this. I mean, a daemon prince of slaanesh,,,with wings, charging imperial guard troops through terrain will strike them last….It just feels….(using Reece’s word,) clunky..
Excellent news! They also need to repoint everything at once like in the Generals Hand Book and release Alliance/Faction books to consolidate the book spam.
Summoning and free shit needs to be curbed. Summoning needs to cost points and so do formations like in Age of Sigmar.
Remember all this from Rouge Trader. It had it’s pros and cons. Always liked the unique unit movement stats. Terminators save on might save on 2D6 but move 3 inches. Guess we’ll see.
The moral system they are proposing is a little concerning to a guard player like myself would love to see an in depth explanation of it because as of right now it looks like it won’t hurt armies like space marines.
If it works like AoS, if anything it’s harsher towards elite troops; in AoS, you roll a d6 and add the number of casualties you suffered, then subtract the unit’s bravery and remove models equal to the difference as guys run away from a losing fight.
I was pleasantly surprised that the Ground Marines are quite susceptible to it; their bravery is low enough that they’ll lose a guy or two to battleshock if they’re getting smacked around enough.
A lot depends on exactly how it works; if they make SM bravery arbitrarily high, or make ATSKNF confer immunity to battleshock (or whatever the 40k version is called), neither of which would shock me, then yes; it’ll be yet another edition where Space Marines don’t have to know or care about the morale rules. But hopefully, they won’t do that.
You’re suggesting that morale hurts Space Marines currently? ^^
“Won’t hurt armies like Space Marines.”
I mean because basically ignoring the current morale system by auto-regrouping and not being able to be swept is really hurting marines as-is…
If anything my experience playing against my guard buddy I would think he would welcome this change. No more losing one too many guys and then his giant unit of foot soldiers runs off the board because he rolls a 7 on the fallback and one guy’s toe goes off the board.
“No more default unit types. Every model should have cool bespoke rules. Not only would that be more fun, but it’ll mean you will only need to learn the rules for your models.”
The last bit is the exact opposite result of the first bit. The only way you “only need to learn the rules for your models” is if all armies more or less share the same rules, just in different arrangements. At the very least they need to share the same rule structures.
Every model having unique rules means that I need to learn every model’s rules to play well and to design an army decently….
I am optimistic but have reservations. I think the movement change will be beneficial over all, however, I fear they will make troops like Firewarriors move extremely slow because they “want to shoot” rather then move around. While I think that makes sense. Being an aggressive Tau player with breachers and the like, it makes me nervous I will be put into a gunline army even if that is not how you want to play.
Also, tbh, I hope eldar take a back seat in 8th.. I want to play my army without having to sit down and explain myself, my play style, why i am not running the latest cheese net list; All to try and convince my opponent to play me and that we will have fun doing it!
Obviously we can’t say one way or the other right now. Hopefully all our dreams come true 🙂
The lack of AP on a lot of their weapons (scatter lasers and Warp Spiders) is one thing that will definitely drop their power level a bit. Not that it’s enough to totally tone them down by itself, but other armies weapons that are maybe AP4 or AP5 will get better by comparison because they’ll modify armor saves. Whereas right now they can get away with the lack of AP because it doesn’t matter if you’re AP3 or AP- if you’re attacking something with a 2+ save.