The following was taken from the Warhammer-community site.
Today, we’re taking a look at a few of the simple rules changes in the new rules for weapons, but ones that have some pretty cool in-game effects.
Twin-linked Weapons
If you play Warhammer 40,000 today, you’ll know that there are a lot of twin-linked weapons about. These let you re-roll to hit dice, making them generally quite reliable, but potentially no more deadly than a single weapon. In the new Warhammer 40,000, twin-linked weapons instead get double the number of shots.
This is a massive boost to a lot of units. Many vehicles, in particular, are going to be kicking out ruinous amounts of firepower – your Land Raider, for example, almost doubles in effectiveness. With its twin heavy bolters and now utterly lethal godhammer pattern lascannons, it becomes, quite rightly, one of the most powerful models in the game.
Orks as well, renowned for their habit of twin-linking for “more dakka”, gain a lot of bullets from this change. Just think about the number of shots those Waaagh!-planes will be firing now!
Combi-weapons
Another type of weapon that is changing is the combi-weapon. While in the current edition you can only shoot the “specialist” portion of the gun once, in the new Warhammer 40,000 you can either shoot both all the time, but at a -1 to hit modifier, or choose to just shoot one with no modifier. This is a pretty awesome boost in power for a lot of elite units like Chaos Terminators, Sternguard and Meganobz – no longer just one-hit-wonders with those shooting attacks.
Explosives
Warhammer 40,000 has no shortage of things that go ‘boom’. Whereas once these weapons would have used a template, in the new Warhammer 40,000, these are resolved much faster by just using a random number of shots. This represents either how many warriors are caught in the explosion, or how direct the hit is on a larger single-model target. Otherwise, these work exactly as any other shooting.
Explosives tend to work pretty well now against both numerous infantry and large individual models, but not as well against either dedicated anti-infantry or anti-tank weapons.
We’ll be back tomorrow, with some news on how Datasheets work.
Exciting stuff! What are your all thoughts on this?
20 wound Knights firing 2d6 shots at 72″ doing d3 damage with a -2 to your save. Dear god…
It’s not bad =P
Can actually hurt 2+ armor save units now. That is probably my favorite change so far of Newhammer honestly.
Yes, the AP system is so, so, so much better than the all or nothing system we have, now.
Double Battle Cannon Renegade Knight sounds really exciting if they’re still twin linked. Lol
Finally we can talk about the AWESOME improvement to Combi-weapons! How awesome is that?!
I wasn’t expecting being able to fire both, but the “unlimited shooting” change is awesome! Combi-flamers will essentially just be normal flamers that can also shoot a boltgun at -1BS.
I just hope pricing changes accordingly. One of my least favorite things last edition was a standard “combi-weapon” was the same price regardless of whether it was -melta, -plasma, or -flamer. Because somehow it made sense that a combi-flamer cost more than a regular flamer even though it could only shoot the flamer once…
So nice! It was always annoying before hand.
I love models that can do more than one thing. Combi weapons is a perfect way to add insane amounts of flavor to a list.
Combi-weapons are going to be pretty much mandatory now. Way too good to pass up on if they’re halfway priced correctly…
I was already planning to purchase some Chaos Termies and equip them with combi-plasma, so this is excellent! Though I might switch that to combi-flamer, assuming there are no penalties for -1 to hit with a flamer.
I have a shitload of chaos termies with lovingly converted combi-plas and combi-meltas. Their day has finally come…
not sure how I feel about the unlimited firing aspect, I dig the fire both part.
Loving the Battle Cannon. Was a terrible weapon in 7th, and now is a terrifying weapon in 8th! I like that it’s okay against basic infantry, but shoots up in effectiveness against vehicles/monstrous creatures. I take it “Heavy D6” means that it shoots d6 times right, each rolling to hit separately, and not one shot that deals d6 hits, right?
Twin weapons are going to be scary. Combi-Weapons are even scarier! (Hello Combi-Flamer!)
Yes, you roll the number of shots (as in AoS) then to hit for each shot. It is properly powerful, as the Battle Cannon should be!
And yes, Combi-weapons are so good, now! Really fun to use.
Suddenly my decision to arm all my veteran sgts in my crimson fist army with combi-melta & combi-plasma is looking pretty solid.
Hey Reece, can you confirm whether damage works like AoS, too? If I get one unsaved wound with a battlecannon on a tactical squad that causes 3 damage do I get to remove 3 casualties?
I think they covered that in the first weapon profile article. The one hit will do 3 damage to that model. Otherwise lascannons would be godly against everything.
Ah yes, I totally forgot about that. Thanks! I was worried for a second that it would be ridiculous.
So would you say Combis are better than special weapons now?
I’m mostly pondering the balance now since they seem strictly better than their special weapon equivalent. So either they are rarer (sternguard/HQ only?) or the prices have been flipped?
Well, I couldn’t make that judgement unless I knew how much each weapon cost, right? (And of course I actually do, I am just asking this question rhetorically). I would again advise patience until you know how much a specific weapon costs compared to other options =)
Oh no dont worry I love all the changes. The sky is rising, not falling. I’m just trying to weasel information out of you to see how they balanced it 😛
Haha, well, all in good time.
I like what they did with Melta. I was curious how they would design it to be a threat to Vehicles and monsters without making those big things obsolete, I think this is a nice compromise.
Huge mix up in weapons.
The Twin-Linked change is a tad surprising. I get the idea of wanting to make the weapon feel different with that rule. We’ll have to wait and see if maybe some characters allow re-rolls elsewhere or if that is so uncommon. Maybe more like AOS, just + to Hit Rules. I want to see what happens to Crisis suits. Haha
Personal opinion; I think this change helps high BS armies much more often than none(consistently giving BS4 huge number of hits vs occasional overkill from BS2), but i like the change.
Combi weapons being permanent is my favorite change here. I LOVE models that have options, choices to make and such. I think that’s really cool and can’t wait to see what can be done with them.
And indeed, Battle Cannon scary. lol
It seems like we have a little rule of thumb emerging:
AP1 = -4 rend
AP2 = -3
AP3 = -2
AP4 = -1
AP5+ = nothing
I like this, it means many more people are going to get at least some save. Even against a meltagun a terminator could get an armor save on 6+
Don’t forget the cover change on top of that, adding to your save. Kind of insane to think about the save’s you can get on models that used to not have any.
Well, considering all the things we’ve seen that make it look like shooting is better than ever I’d say everyone could use some better saves (only -1 To Hit for heavy weapons that move, combi’s can shoot both guns, twin weapons are now double shots, split fire for everyone, etc etc).
I’m wondering if a 6 is an autosave now? Taking a 3+ roll with a -4 iimpossible to succeed at now…
I hope not. That would make units with mediocre invulnerable saves (like 5++ daemons) pretty lackluster. Because everyone would have a 6++ invul essentially.
I’m all for the AP system allowing for more saves but if you have a gun that strong that it goes straight through, I don’t think you should still get the 6+.
I agree- a similar hope here!
Seeing as this is going off of AoS damage, I would say no. In AoS, there are many times where you don’t get a save. Sure, you can try to roll a 7 on a d6 to save your zombie from a cannon shot, but it probably won’t succeed…
I’m curious to see if we will see AP6 actually add armor. People are complaining about the OPness of mass lasguns but if it adds to the armor (to a minimum of 2+ obviously!) then it will really really tone down their usefulness. I don’t know what effect that would have in close combat. I was really hoping that my AP5 close combat attacks from rending claws would now be -1 rend in assault but we’ll see. I’d prefer a blanket modifer over “roll 6s or you lose” which is the Genestealer cult motto right now. 6 for warlord trait, 6 for psychic power, 6 for cult ambush, and 6 for rend. If I could pick 5 dice a game to be 6s I’d be unbeatable!
OPness of lasguns? lolol, that is funny. Folks need to wait till they see the rules in total before claiming that the sky is falling =)
How about I just look outside and see fog and make my own conclusions. This is a British game after all.
That works, too. =P
imo its not a problem with the lasgun in general, its the volume of dice associated with it. auto orders with first rank second rank giving 4 shots per guardsman thats the real root of it. seems like more dice to throw will be the newhammer….
Again, I would caution patience and waiting to see the whole picture before assuming one thing or another will be “best.”
It is fun to speculate though =)
Sounds to me like lasguns will now be useful. But certainly not overpowered.
Well changing twin linked to be rerolls to hit was bollocks to start with. So I’m glad they rolled that back at last. This is starting to make me want to finally paintstrip my crons and repaint them to be ready for this.
same, the whole ” I have two guns, but one of them is only if the other misses” was a little silly to me.
There’s not a situation period that I’d rather have twin linked over an additional shot.
I am going to come back and gloat that I called [large blast] = D6 hits months ago. This is the obvious way to do this. Large blasts were a super pain at the LVO. Here’s hoping that small blasts will be D3.
Battlecannon stats brought a tear to my eye.
They’re quite good =)
So my question is… the Monolith’s particle whip is currently a shorter ranged battle cannon.
Is it still a shorter range battle cannon?
Oh shit, are Defilers doing to be good again?
Defilers and tyranid Warriors are at the top of my “Crap, these things aren’t going to suck anymore” list… although maybe they will still suck, just not as much???
I mean, it depends on points, but it sounds like 8e is addressing the big weaknesses of both of those units.
If ID is no longer a thing, multi-wound infantry get much more playable, and the Defiler’s problem has always been awkward armaments combined with costing a lot for a model that can die to a single lascannon shot.
Bring on 8e, I’m really, really hyped.
Just keeps getting better and better 😀
Really like that battle cannon is now more inline with what it is in the fluff, applying a lot of damage to a relatively small area rather than just anti marine pie plates.
Can’t wait to get my hands on all those faction books and pour through them, it’s going to be like the launch of AoS but without the dread of knowing I’m in the tiny percentile actually enjoying it 😛
I like how blast weapons are high variance. You could one shot an opposing Leman Russ or miss with your only shot.
Making them better against single targets while making them less effective against clumped models seems the right mix.
The twin link change is sort of how it was in 2nd (basically the weapon fired as normal, but all hits equalled two hits) which is better. Preds with dual lascannons now hit like a freight train. Or even more so with 4 lascannons.
All of this stuff sounds great, the ultimate factor will be points though.
Just ran the numbers. For BS3, a lascannon averages .97 wounds per shot against T8 with 3+ save and a battlecannon averages 1.17 wounds.
However, the highest a lascannon can do is 6 wounds and the battlecannon can do 18.
Yes, it would seem a battlecannon is overall going to to do higher average damage in most scenarios which kind of makes sense given it’s a giant cannon that goes on tanks vs the lascannon which can be held by standard infantry.
Well, it hasn’t been as good at dealing with single targets since 2nd edition. And the AP3 always messed it up. I still like that it averages about 5 lascannon or battlecannon hits to take out a leman russ. That is awesome.
The battlecannon was a pretty good example of why the old AP and template systems sucked. Ordnance was great but it was AP3 meaning it couldn’t take out tough MCs and had no chance to explode a vehicle. And even though it’s supposed to be this gigantic, powerful blast, somehow hitting a single person with it didn’t cause any more damage than hitting them with a bolter shot….
EXACTLY
If statlines are the same as they are now, Necron Annihilation Barges are now 8 shots S7 Tesla, which means that’s a potential 24 hits if you bust out all 6s.
Might be worth taking again.
That assumes the stats stay the same, including the Tesla rules. I wouldn’t bet on any weapons before we’ve seen them.
No plasma yet, I wonder if gets hot will still be thing? Plasma could be something like the daemon weapons the Khorne big fellas can take in AoS, causing mortal wounds on 6 or more to wound but causing mortal wounds to the attacking unit on 1s to wound? Powerful, dangerous but mitigatable with bonuses to wound?
Is it just me or is the new battle cannon “feeling” more like an auto cannon?
You actually roll the number of shots then roll to hit on those shots.
I would of preferred you rolled once. Then it automatically hits D6 times.
More like an area of effect.
This is also a slight nerf for Low BS armies. Means that they will generally hit less now
Rolling number of shots first before hitting helps mitigate the randomness this is going to inflict on low-BS models. If you rolled a single to-hit for something like Orks, you would just miss completely 2/3 of the time. This way if you roll a 6 on the shots you will at least probably hit with a few of the shots instead of not even getting the chance.
Plus it doesn’t create exceptions in the rules. 1) Determine number of shots (whether random or fixed). 2) Roll To Hit for each shot. That way it works the same for every weapon. You don’t have to write in an exception on every “blast” weapon that says to roll to hit once and then that hit morphs into D6 hits instead.
If you had auto hit, then there would be effect of BS on blasts. BS effects are essential to gameplay mechanics now, see smoke, -1 snapshotting, etc. That flamers bypass BS mechanics is what makes them special.
I am really excited about scarab occult terminators with prescience on them now.
probably preiscence will exist no more 🙂
There are two types of twin-linked in the current game.
Type A is granted to imply greater accuracy, such as prescience and coaxial weapons.
Type B is granted to weapons to imply twice as much dakka is happening.
The new twin-linked rule only seems like it would make sense being applied to weapons that are currently granted Type B.
I think the current Type A weapons and abilities would just end up being a to hit modifier. Prescience could just grant +1 to hit and serve the same purpose it did before.
Prescience doesn’t actually confer Twin-Linked. Both Prescience and Twin-Linked confer re-rolls. Twin-Linked only applies to Shooting Attacks, tho, while the re-rolls from Prescience can be applied to anything that needs a To-Hit Roll.
Prescience likely won’t exist because they already said everyone is getting their own psychic powers (instead of having default book tables).
On the other hand, there’s no reason that abilities *like* prescience couldn’t exist. This twin-linked change just means that weapons that are functionally two weapons (like twin-linked boltguns which were two side-by-side boltguns) will just get double the shots.
However, there could be mechanics such as orders, psychic powers, or other special buffs that induce a re-roll To Hit or simply give a +1 or +2 to To Hit rolls to certain units.
“and now utterly lethal godhammer pattern lascannons, it becomes, quite rightly, one of the most powerful models in the game” – this has me very excited!
Which sounds great. Right now they’re not that impressive and cost nearly as much as a Wraithknight, though to be fair the latter is cheaper than it should be.
Well if your landraider is tough as nails and can shoot two sets of double lascannons (total of 4 shots) at two different targets plus all split fire any other weapons it has… that sounds like quite the improvement to me.
Plus the D6 wounds on lascannons make them so much better against multi-wound models now.
I like all these changes, super fluffy and inline with the way these weapons should be.
A little concerned for my Ork dread mob though, obviously all depends on the price hike some of these things receive, but I don’t see me getting too far across the table with some of these dmg statistics haha.
Why you guys no give Grav rules, need to know if i need to remodel my kataphrons with plasma cannons
Plasma cannons getting worth taking again sounds super exciting, actually.
We have so much time left really till it comes out(probably….maybe…..who knows), so leaving that till later makes sense. Drip feed us.
But we can speculate wildly!
I’m willing to bet it works similar to know, wounds on base save, probably -2 rend or something, and cuts you movement in half. So still insanely stupidly strong. Maybe they cut down on the shots.
Thoughts?
Less shots is my bet, personally.
The Combi Weapon change, along with the other core rules changes, has me motivated to put my AoS models on hold and get back to assembling/painting my full Dark Angels Company!
Welcome back =)
But keep playing AoS, haha, great game!