The wait is finally over! The Spring FAQ is here.
What do you think of it so far? Going to make the game better or do you think the mark was missed on a few? Let us know!
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Feel a bit mixed about this one. Rotate Ion Shields is limited to 4++, which I think is great. However, Deathwatch have lost SIA with Beta Bolter Drill. I really don’t think this nerf was needed, as they are not exactly an overpowered faction on their own.
Yeah, some of the DW rulings are a bit weird.
Yeah, I don’t think it was that overpowered with them. It’s nice to get clarification that you can use the Teleportarium stratagem with units containing Bikers.
Sigh, guess I need to update some of my Deathwatch reviews yet again 😉
Lol, yeah, it never ends =P
I think DW still gets a nice advantage, you’re dropping a squad of storm bolter vets from teleportarium a lot of the time anyway, so they’re usually in RF range.
And they still have a nice advantage at range with Bolter Drill against low armor-save chaff.
It was a nice few months with both, though. We’ll always have the memories
I feel like SIA with Bolter Drill was a bit too strong- it basically just erased all non-vehicle units that you could point at, and on a model with a 3++ to boot. Made it virtually impossible for most armies to win a shooting war against Deathwatch.
Only getting SIA on regular rapid fire ranges isn’t exactly what I would call a huge nerf. Oh no the deathwatch that probably shouldn’t be standing still can’t double tap at 24 inches if they stand still anymore!
Yeah, I’m not sad about this rule. Watching 30-boy squads be deleted by a single round of shooting from a single unit of Deathwatch did feel a bit much.
It evens out. The Deathwatch are great against hordes and infantry, but really struggle against Vehicles. They might delete your unit of Boyz, but your battlewagon is going to be pretty safe for a while.
Fly back in assault phase is really nice 🙂
Yeah, it is!
Yes. I no longer have to suspend my disbelief that the guy with a jump pack or gribbly with wings would really “charge” by hand over hand crawling up a wall.
I think that was a fair compromise. Nice to have Jump Packs jump over screening units to get to the good stuff behind now.
I agree. The beta rule was pretty clunky.
re: the Bolter Discipline – that’s fine, but man, at least give marine vehicles chapter tactics – there is just very little reason to take most marine tanks
I wonder if the issue is that some tactics do very little for a vehicle (SW, BA tactics) and some do a lot (RG, DA tactics), but the point cost is the same. But, I agree, be nice if they’d apply, and maybe at least some chapters would field tanks.
It seems that they feel it is too powerful for whatever reason, or possibly they dont have the time to go back and test all the interactions or maybe they dont get that many complaints about it?
The problem with the “too powerful” or “can’t test it all” theories is that many other “sub-factions” in the game have EXACTLY the same bonuses. Want to know how powerful the RG tactic is on vehicles? Look at Alaitoc Eldar. Salamander tactic too strong on vehicles? I don’t know, how does it work for Deathskulls that get the Salamander ability, only it works for Damage rolls too, AND a 6+ Invul, AND Objective Secured, and on ALL on their vehicles too?
As a Space Wolf player, I really think those traits should apply to vehicles, even though it would provide very little benefit to me personally.
Craftworlds are not Space Marines. While the effect is the same, the units it has an effect on are very different.
I think it is a solvable problem, but just saying “it’s the same I don’t see an issue” is completely ignoring the actual complexity of what needs to be considered.
I’m just not objective enough nor experienced enough with non imperium armies to really make strong case other than that I want it because it would benefit me ?
Looks like the FAQ did what it needed to do. Bravo rules team.
Same thing with the Ynarii rules that have been leaked (but Reece can’t talk about).
Why not just change the rotate ion shields to a 4++ for Dominus Class Imperial Knights only. I don’t really think the other variants were an issue. RIP Questoris Class armies.
T8 24+ Wound models going to a 3++ just isn’t good for the game. I brought a House Raven Crusader against a buddy’s IG army and just literally walked all him after nuking all his tanks by Turn 3.
Personally, I think a 4++ is still too much for a T8, 24+ wound model, but I’m sure I’m in the minority there.
What it might mean is seeing more CP spent on the other Imperial Knights stratagems, since they probably won’t be needed as much for Rotate Ion Shields any more.
You’re not in the minority.
Yea, even with 4++ the knights will not go down easy, but there is limit of how much they can nerf it before it become unusable.
I would prefer to make them have have invul in melee, than to be used from AM armies to soak damage.
Yeah, totally agree. Knights never should have had the ability to go to a 3++, it’s just not good for the game and it sure isn’t fun, either.
Did Grey Knights really need a nerf?
YES. Everyone was saying those grey knights were just so OP. I can only hope this means they have a new update codex or a white dwarf in the future. Maybe when they address the Inquisition the GK and custodes get some thing.
Frankly… I’m a little shocked ‘Boots on the Ground’ wasn’t updated to interact with AIRCRAFT instead of the Flyer Battlefield Roles.
Otherwise, I’m a little surprised that AIRCRAFT are still counted when determining which is the closest model for the purposes of targeting CHARACTERs.
Wonder if those changes where looked at at all, or if it was slated and didn’t get in there or something?
I’m SUPER happy with everything else, should be a good 6 months of 40k!
I wish my Heldrakes could score – they miss out on hard to hit so giving them scoring back would atleast be nice.
Heldrakes don’t get the AIRCRAFT keyword since they don’t have a minimum move distance. Read that paragraph again! They can score objectives.
They do not gain the Aircraft keyword, but still have the Flyer battlefield role and thus cannot hold objectives.
Exactly! Feels like AIRCRAFT was the perfect keyword to tie into ‘Boots on the Ground’ and CHARACTER targeting to finally put the wonky 8e Flyer interactions to bed…
Seems odd that while they’re soaring up in the sky at supersonic speeds that they no longer disrupt your movement, but still pull your aim away from that dude/dudette screaming and running at you in an open field 50 feet away… 😛
Lol GK got nerfed for no reason, with two Chapter Approved and 3 FAQs it seems like GW will only nerf gimmicks and only touch the bad armies when they get a codex as neither FAQ or CA have done anything for them in terms of fixing the underlying issues of poor rules but then CSM got a new codex and all the old legion traits still suck so its not like a new codex will actually fix anything.
The CSM Codex is an update not a new codex so they only added in the new rules and such to the existing book.
Ok but that still leaves the question of where will GW fix GK ot Necrons or SM that arent using Guilliman? Not in the FAQ (like you said last time), not in CA since point costs are not the main issue and its not like GK got suddenly better when their infantry units went down by like 3pts and its not going to be fixed with an updated codex just as the CSM book proved.
It seems like according to GW certain armies are perfectly fine regardless of how many disagree or how much feedback they receive.
Necrons are actually doing quite well now. Not top tier, but they are performing far better than people give them credit for. We had a 5-1 Cron player at LVO, for example.
Grey Knights though, really are struggling =(
And I would bet GW is aware of issues like that you just have to be patient. They may not look to something like an FAQ to fix some of the bigger issues, that’s not really what it’s for.
How does this affect spore mines summoned by sporocysts? Do they still get the hive fleet rules (e.g. Leviathan) since their rules state they inherit the keyword on creation? Or are they now exempt from hive fleet rules?
Q: If a unit is added to my Battle-forged army during the battle,
is it ever considered to be part of a Detachment?
A: No, units that are added to your army during the battle
are never part of any Detachment (this means they will
never benefit from any Detachment abilities).
Units created after the battle do not benefit from detachment abilities. They will have any appropriate keywords, but not the traits that go with them.
Can someone smarter than me explain the aircraft rule. A model can move within 1″ of enemy aircraft, and can move across them and their bases but cant end up on top of another model or base and then cant end the move within 1″ of enemy models.
I would count the aircraft as an enemy model, so you cant end up within an inch – I am not seeing how the enemy aircraft is excluded as an ” enemy model” . Some sites seem to be interpreting it as you can end within an inch of enemy aircraft.
I might just not be comprehending it properly, however.
You can’t finish a movement within 1″ of an aircraft unless you’re charging it. It is still an enemy model; you can only “pass over” an aircraft in the same way that Fly models can pass over enemies.
Thanks. That’s how I saw it too. I should learn to ignore the commentary from a few of the repeat offender sources I visit.
Except is says right in the aircraft rule that you can move within 1″ of an enemy aircraft
It says that you can pass within 1″ of them _while moving_, but also says that you cannot end within 1″ of them (or any other models.)
Love this FAQ. Now if they could just get rid of the mixed saves in Eldar Guardian units I could die happy lol
As RAW is confusing, yes. RAI is you can ignore AIRCRAFT, ending your movement within 1″ and passing beneath them, but you cannot ignore anything else.
So, AIRCRAFTS are not blocking movement anymore, but anything thats not an AIRCRAFT still is
The rule explicitly states that you cannot end the movement within 1″ of any models. Aircraft are still models.
A bit disappointed they did not clarify the Renegade Trait rule in Vigilus. The first sentence brings into question if your entire army needs to be from a Renegade Chapter to select a Renegade Trait. I have been flamed for pointing it out elsewhere because people seem to skip over the fact it sets up a condition. The exact wording is:
“If your Chaos Space Marine army is taken from a Renegade Chapter, you can either use the rules presented in Codex: Chaos Space Marines (e.g. they can use the Legion Trait ability and gain the Dark Reavers trait), or you can use the rules presented in this supplement.” It then goes on to say the normal verbiage about units in a Chaos Space Marine detachment getting the Renegade Trait if they are from the same Renegade Chapter.
Everyone is skipping that sentence, which appears nowhere else in the game. To me that sets up a condition that to select from Codex: Chaos Space Marines or the rules in Vigilus Ablaze, your ARMY needs to be from a Renegade Chapter, which would mean for example you can’t take a Red Corsair battalion with a Black Legion supreme command and an Iron Warriors Spearhead.
I had hoped they would clarify exactly what “your army” means in this context as it’s pretty huge if you can’t mix renegade chapters and traitor legions, but they did not and nearly everyone I talk to skips that sentence and goes right the second one.
As an individual who has only played mono imperial knight lists in ITC for the last 2 years (I don’t use the castellan and my army lists usually consist of between 4 and 8 knights), I’m not a fan of the changes to the “rotate ion shields” stratagem. Knights lack defense in every aspect besides their invulnerable save. We have very little psychic defense (a relic limited to house hawkshroud that ignores psychic induced mortal wounds on a 6+), we don’t have objective secured (also limited to a relic, so a unit of 2 crusader models has priority over the giant robot with toes bigger than their damn torsos), and we have no defense in melee (seeing as the invulnerable save is nullified in melee except when using, surprise, another relic) and anything charging a knight is going to have a weapon that outright ignores that armor save. I had no issue with rotating ion shields being a max of 3+, in order to get that, the knight is question had to be equipped with the iron bulwark trait, and in a mono knight army, my opponent would just leave that one alone, so it rarely made any difference at all. They could’ve just stated that the stratagem improved their ion shield to a max of 4+ IF they weren’t in an imperial knight super-heavy detachment, as opposed to further nerfing mono imperial knights.
T8 barely means anything considering how powerful nearly everything else is. As stated, the armor save is almost always ignored in melee. The only anti-deep strike defense we have is limited to one of the house stratagems, not to mention many other stratagems that are locked away based on your allegiance choice and household choice.
To give you an idea of their lack of defense, I had a game at the Battle for LA GT that not only hammered home my point, but was immensely demoralizing, up against Eldar soup and I lost 4 knights (out of 5) in the first turn, after my opponent seized the initiative from me. He used psychic to allow his dark reapers to shoot out of phase, destroying my knight warden. During the shooting phase, his hemlock wraithfighter and crimson hunter exarch damaged both of my Armiger Helverins, his dark reapers then shot again at my Knight Gallant and Armigers, severely damaging the Gallant and killing both Armigers, then his shining spears shot and charged the Gallant, finishing it off. If that doesn’t scream Eldar OP/Knights lack of defense, I honestly don’t know what does.
Sorry for ranting, I want to win in ITC, but I want to do it my way, I don’t want to have assemble the cheesiest list while toting around 3-5 different codex’s/white dwarfs. That’s not fun at all.
That Ynnair cheese you encountered is gone as soon as the May White Dwarf hits the shelves. It’s net positives all around.
Glad to hear that, While I imagine the changes will bring different eldar combinations to the table, I can only hope they’ll be more fun to play against.
I hate to be mean but if you’re arguing that an army of T8, 24+ wound models with a 3+ and 5++ base are squishy….well, then you really have only played mono Imperial Knights. Because brother, let me tell you, that ain’t squishy at all. Try playing any other army…
I’m well aware they’re not squishy at all, and I have played other armies (I have 10 other armies, really too many for my own good). Strictly based on my experiences, I feel they lack the various defenses that most other armies have easy access to without having to use one of your valuable relic or warlord trait slots (without picking up some allies from another codex). My abysmal rolls aside, I just find it very demoralizing when I lose half or more of my army in the first turn when they’re supposed to be very tough and hard to kill, I can understand losing one in the first turn, that’s understandable, but 4 out of 5 on the first turn? That really shouldn’t happen.
I hear you man, and I wasn’t trying to be insulting but you also can’t base your judgement of an army based off of one bad experience. I mean, it’s factual that Knights are far tougher than almost any other unit in the game, that’s not up for debate. It sounds like your opponent just rolled fire and you rolled ice cubes.
No worries, I took no offense at all. While I’m aware I can’t base my judgement of my army off one bad experience, it mostly comes from a large number of lost games and other unfortunate experiences with exceptionally bad rolls. At this point, I’m thinking I have very poorly weighted dice, and am currently working on finding perfectly weighted dice. Any ideas on where to look?
Yeah, I use Casino Dice for that exact reason: they’re as close to perfectly balanced as you can get. You can buy them online (they’re quite expensive, FYI, but IMO totally worth it).
So, big honesty? Your dice are probably fine. Everyone thinks they have “bad luck” because human perceptions are super-flawed and can’t accurately assess how probability works.
That said, Knights (and other large single units) are very vulnerable to bad runs of dice, which certainly is a problem for them. But that’s the flip side of them being able to roll a bunch of 3s and shrug off every gun in the enemy army for a turn.
Mono-Knights have a lot of flaws, but durability is not one of them. Playing mono-Knights or triple Knights and Guard allies are some of the most demoralising games of 40k I have ever had.
I play mono-Deathwatch and my army simply lacks the tools to deal with more than one Knight in most games. It generally takes the firepower of my entire army, along with all my CP and luck to take down a Castellan. If my opponent has another 2 Knights on the board, my army simply melts away the following turn.
Don’t forget that Questor Mechanicus Knights also have a 5+ FNP vs mortal wounds strat for 1cp. They are incredibly tough and can withstand a ton of punishment.
you didn’t need 3-4 codex to win a major event in ITC, you just need IK+IG 🙂 Now no reasonons to blame gw cause they nerfed castellan+ion shields, that list dominated for long long time, is time to put an end.
Overall, I think this is great. Castellan, Deathwatch bolters, Jinx… been wrecked by all those.
I feel a bit bad for Rich Kilton’s Orks. Mobbing up Stormboyz and the Da Jump/Mob-Up/2″ inch charge tricks were kinda his jam.
But I’m super jazzed about the fact that I can now Warpath or Fist of Gork a unit, and THEN Da Jump it. Aw yeah.
Yeah, true. Also means you can’t escape tremor shells by using Da Jump which is big.
Yeah, and many factions don’t have alone the damage output to bring down your mono knights.
Ynnari was certainly overpowered before the White Dwarf Index Ynnari, but a pure Deathguard or Thousand Sons player (sure there are many more examples, but as a Chaos player these are the ones I know the best) could rant the same way about your mono Knights than you about the Ynnari
And if you have been playing 40K for long, you must already know how GW runs, shifting periodically the meta to force people to buy
They don’t change things to “force you to buy”, truly. You can believe me or not but I promise you that that is not what’s hapenning. They make design choices because they believe it makes the game better. We can all agree or disagree of course, but that really is their motivation.
agree if they want “force to buy” they wouldn’t put in codex units you will never use, they should put only OP units so u are forced to buy tons.. and some codex shouldn’t ever exist cause they are overall weak.
Interesting changes basically a 8.XX edition change. I think they hit Eldar a little too hard especially with the Ynnari changes coming. Now many of our units are overpriced for what they do as they are pointed for Ynnari. The combo of Doom, Jinx, flyer nerfs, and Ynnari nerfs should knock Eldar (the current builds) down to low tier 2 or tier 3 from the mid/bottom of tier 1. Which means to top players they really are unplayable now (we already saw many top players abandon Eldar for greener pastures before the nerfs). If extra actions are a problem then Guard orders should be the next up to the plate to be hit by the nerf bat as they are the only (or one of the few armies) that get extra actions without spending CPs (think fight twice, fire and fade, etc.).
What makes you think units were pointed for Ynnari?
Also, mono-Eldar is and will remain quite good. They’ve done well all edition.
Maybe, but at LVO the first pure CWE was around 110 place and we had pure AM, TAO, orc at top 15, necron, sm, custod, daemons at top 30.
Not true, my teammate Ray got 65th with pure CWE going 4-1-1 and just went 5-0 last weekend, beating Brandon Grant on the way to the top, with pure CWE.
Many of the lists that were “Ynnari” in the top spots were actually mostly CWE with just a few units using the Ynnari rules. They could easily transition over to pure CWE and perform comparably.
He was using pre nerf Ynnari with DR and still beat him only with 2 points. I have explicitly looked to find pure CWE list at LVO and the results showed that other mono codes performed much better than them.
Yeah, he did. For some reason I thought he was pure CWE but I was wrong.
However, I am willing to bet we see of these players switching to pure CWE doing quite well now that Ynnari are changed.
Well looking at “pure” CWE lists (which means no Ynnari really) lately they almost always contain lots of flyers, rangers, serpents, reapers.
Shining Spears were only useful in Ynnari lists cause they were basically a short range shooting unit that relied heavily on beeing able to fall back after they killed something. They went up in points continuesly cause they dominated in Ynnari lists yet are not that great in any other or undercosted (Though for Ynnari they were).
Same applies to the Castellan actually. I don’t think with 600 Points he was undercosted and really needed to go up to 100. I think that kills that unit in all but very friendly games. What made it strong was the 3++ rotate ion shields, cawls wrath + raven combo. Especially cawls wrath that thing is just a design flaw cause without that thing… The castellan is not that great and certainly not 700 points great. And I don’t even have one. The Krast Crusader is now even better. It does not rely to heavily on Strats and can dish out serious dmg to vehicles yet is much cheaper.
On a sidenote:
I really hoped they would fix Eldar rangers abillity. They had one of the absolute best infiltrate abillities in the game. And as its worded differently from SM scouts and does not fit with turn 2 reserves it was changed to just deepstrike. That sucks I would have loved to see them just as scouts – after all they are the most sneaky bastards in the galaxy besides ork commandos.
That’s the thing though, CWE have so many amazing units that people brush past. I won our cross county league championships here with pure CWE, using Biel-tan and all infantry with 1 of every Aspect warrior unit in my army and no vehicles other than 2 War Walkers. They are so good, but people get tunnel vision and just copy each other. That book is seriously spoiled for amazing options.
Hey Reecius, I’ve recently been running a similar Aspect heavy list and was surprised by how effective it can be. Have you written any articles about how you run your list? I’d be interested to read about it.
I did a write up about my list that won our cross county league here on the blog a while back, yeah. Probably just do a Google search.
But yeah, they’re SO much better than they get credit for. Banshees for example, are an all star unit for me and most people say they aren’t good. Mine are frequently my best unit. I also use the Avatar of Khaine and he’s awesome even when he doesn’t even make it into combat! I think a lot of folks get stuck on just looking at kill power or whatever and forget that this is a game of movement and model placement.
Not arguing with that. I love the book and diversity you can field with it. I frequently run 2×10 DA with Asurmen in 2 Serpents. Splash in a Spiritseer and its pretty fun. I don’t run a lot of aspects as I lack the models other then Spears, WS and DA but that is an esthetic choice more then a playstyle one.
But I am sure that in a pure CWE Army the Spears didn’t need the recent point increases. Reapers are fine now and I am kinda glad Ynnari like that is gone cause double shot reapers were still a pain in the ass if you did not have an artillery with you and could have gotten the hammer for that again (I think they are now fine points wise).
Eldar will still be top tier, in one form or another. This isn’t even close to enough to push them out of the top tier.
Exactly. That book is easily one of the strongest single faction codexes in the game, no question.
I was just talking about Aeldari as a whole, but yeah, Craftworlds and Drukhari are both extremely strong books. I’ve numerous times come up with “pure” armies of both of them entirely on accident, because they practically don’t even need allies.
So I can understand Orks not being able to mob up except for Boyz, but changing the Loota rule to rolling each time you select them to shoot for the number of shots seems a little knee jerk to me. Question – rolling the Str each time you use the Shokk Attack gun….. does that mean you keep the same number of shots if you shoot it again with a stratagem?
No. The change to the SAG means you now determine the strength before choosing your target, so no more S10 at infantry and S3 at knights. It’s a quality of life change.
Still got to roll strength and shots each time it fires.
I play Tau and GK, mostly. I just don’t understand a world in which GW saw fit to buff tau but nerf GK. (both slightly, but still)
Pretty good FAQ overall.
Eldar soup nerf very needed.
Castellan 3++ to 4++ needed but the extra 100 points and weapons is too much.
SM vehicle nerf was REALLY needed *cough* because landraiders, rhinos and preds are SO strong.
I especially love the GK nerf, we all know how devastatingly powerful the GK meta is for the otherwise fun tournament scene.
Besides the usual geedub brain dead cretin-written codexes like sm and gk, the faq was actually very good for overall game balance. At least for the usual power codex soup meta crowd.
..as for the weaker codexes, as usual for 2+ years now, who cares anyway, model sales rule so f*ck them!
Keeping up this good work and we might yet see some fun and balanced inter codex gaming in 30-40 years from today. I´m positive about the 40k tabletop future! I´m looking forward to dusting of my gk and half the sm collection in the future retirement home with the other ol´timer gamers.
The tomato boss is back! Rejoice!
Didn’t you swear you were never coming back? You tease.
So thankful they nerfed that killshot stratagem. Having the ability to use a stratagem you’ve invested 600+ points into is TOO OP! 😛
The change to Eldar psychic powers was long overdue. It was simply too powerful in mixed Aeldari armies, giving too many benefits to Drukhari as they stated. Almost every other psychic power in the game is limited to a single Faction in its effects, and Aeldari are still going to be super strong even with the new limitations.
100% agree. Doom is easily top 3 best powers in the game, arguably #1, having it apply to other armies was just a bit much.
Overall a very good FAQ. I just don’t get why they needed to delay for a whole month. Pretty much all the major changes were to rules issues that were obvious a year ago.
Really good FAQ overall, if peppered with some baffling decisions here and there. Finalized Bolter Drill, fixing aircraft, un-fucking flying melee and reviving Harlequins (though they got the Solitaire nerfed for some reason), Castellan nerfs (would’ve liked them steeper but anything’s good), all nice. Loota bomb nerfed, tough but fair, Lord Discordant can have traits, let’s go, Deathwatch nerfed SiA + Bolter Drill, also fair. Wording on the Tau FAQ may mean Volley Fire would apply to full range? Just a goof I’m sure but I know some would argue the RAW is there.
Having looked at the Ynnari leaks it’s hard not to feel like the Craftworld spell nerfs were specifically meant to incentivize some of the Ynnari abilities, which would’ve been fairly pointless otherwise. GK nerfs, okay, I get these are “consistency” nerfs rather than “these things are overpowered” nerfs (2++s are getting stamped out everywhere, except for IG Crusaders, thanks Crud), but it almost comes off as malicious at this point — damn near every FAQ has seen fit to nerf the undisputed worst faction even further.
Yeah, I can see why they decided to go after the 2++ out of completness’ sake, but to give the faction nothing else in return is rather damning. Of course, they have also said that an updated codex is on the way for GK, but given how the updated CSM codex went I don’t think I have high hopes for that.
Did anyone notice the Armourium Cherub nerf in the space marine faq?
Yeah, a bit of a shame. It wasn’t like the Marine stratagems are crazy overpowered anyway.
The list of reasons to take Devastators is not exactly overflowing the page.
Yeah, that was a bummer. One of the few cool tricks the Marines had available to them =(
While I really liked this FAQ, Grey Knights need a White Dwarf codex rewrite ASAP :-/
Also no one’s really mentioned it, but the change to the Assassin strategem was a really, really good balance fix. Way too good and auto include at 1 CP, now it requires a little more thought at 2 CP.
Terrible FAQ