Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to once again to fertilize your brain with knowledge*.
This week we had a number of exciting new announcements from the NOVA Open. There is new stuff coming out in the very near future that has a lot of people, including myself, very excited. Along with the new models, campaigns, and story lines there was also an announcement that will affect a lot of players. Games Workshop has decided to do once last update for units that they do not make models for and retire them are Legend models. These models will no longer be updated annually in the Chapter Approved book. This is, essentially, the death of the index units and I couldn’t be happier.
I know there are a lot of models that had rules for many years, and are upset about them being unplayable for Matched Play events. I have a whole army that was removed from the game when it went from 2nd edition to 3rd edition. Finally some models seem to be making a small comeback, so who knows. The honest truth is that for many armies, the index units available were not worth it. How many units of shrikes do you see in Matched Play events? I don’t even know if any of the other Xenos books lost anything because you never saw them even when in was indexhammer. Thanks to the wonderful Index chart that Games Workshop made, that just added to the confusion of building an army. We get the lovely issue of Tzaangors having a +2″ to their charge because of the brayhorn being an index option. We have the question of Dark Eldar wargear for the Archon because of the difference in default weapons. We also have the issue of a Daemon Prince with warp bolters that had people’s underwear twisted in knots. These are just some examples of the issues that the indexes have cause since Games Workshop allowed index options to be used for Matched Play after the codex was released. Since all of the codexes have been released, there really is no need for the indexes.
I do understand the frustration of having units that are no longer available for Matched Play. I have a number of Chaos lords and sorcerers on bikes that will now be demoted to just regular bikers. I know there are plenty of Ork, Space Marine, and Blood Angel players that will be missing key components to their army once the move to Legends takes place. Hopefully theses players can find something to replace the lost units. Although I do wonder if they will be gone from Matched Play forever? With the upcoming release of a number of campaign books “for every army” I would not be surprised if we got new models and new rules to replace the Legends. They may not be the exact same model but they may function in the same way or may serve your army in the same way. I can’t really see them not doing that. Sure it could easily be just a money grab, but isn’t everything Games Workshop does just a money grab? Having gone through similar things before, I have become more used to things not being available to play in tournaments. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing on my part, to be honest. In the end, I think the move of the index units, for Matched Play, has more positives than negatives. Who knows, we could end up seeing Legends Tournaments start popping up in a FLGS near you!
That’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed the read. Let me know your thoughts, and what models you will miss or hope they bring back, in the comments section. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook, Twitch, and Patreon pages to stay up to date on what we’re up to and when episodes drop!
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*Or bullshit. The result is the same