Many players have already commented on the devastating Aeldari D-Cannon profile that was shown off during GW’s preview game of 10th Edition, and one tournament has even pre-banned Aleldari as a faction from their first 10th Edition event. While banning an entire faction from tournaments probably isn’t the greatest solution, something will need to be done to tone down indirect fire in 10th Edition. This problem won’t be contained to a single army either, as we have already seen plenty of other indirect fire units previewed with plenty more to come once the full indexes are released. While the Aeldari and their Fate Dice mechanic may be the biggest offenders of indirect fire coming in too strong for 10th Edition, indirect fire as a whole is going to be too strong to remain the way it is at the launch of 10th.
To state the problem simply: there is no downside for taking indirect fire units. In 9th Edition GW came up with a pretty elegant solution to the problem that was indirect fire by giving the firing unit -1 to hit and the target unit +1 to their save from indirect fire. This led to units who would otherwise be obliterated having a chance at surviving even concentrated indirect fire. While it did take GW a few Codex releases to finally get indirect fire to a place where even the scary shooting profile of Desolators indirect fire did not have the ability to wipe whole units out from behind obscuring terrain, the solution they ended the edition on seemed like a perfect rule to transition into 10th Edition.
Unfortunately, the indirect fire nerf did not complete transfer over to the new edition of 40k. In 10th Edition the -1 to hit penalty for shooting indirect remains, but there has been a separate rules change that affects the playability of these units. With the new rules, Heavy weapons get a +1 to hit if they remain stationary. This +1 to hit completely negates the penalties GW was attempting to place on indirect fire since, in almost all cases, an indirect fire unit will not move the turn it shoots. Getting to shoot these indirect fire weapons at their standard Ballistic Skill seems bad enough, but there are even ways to buff the effectiveness of indirect fire as we have seen in the D-Cannon datasheet.
The second downside of indirect fire is that the target gets the new Benefits of Cover rule in 10th Edition which gives the targeted unit +1 to their save. The problem with this benefit is that it does not stack with the +1 save the unit already gets if it is in cover, and my guess if if your opponent if shooting indirectly at something than it is in cover. In 9th Edition, a unit target by indirect fire would receive not only the +1 save from being in cover, but it would also receive an additional +1 to it’s save for a cumulative +2. With indirect fire weapons on having to deal with a +1 save to their targets I truly hope these weapons are without AP.
Now before anyone reading this claims that I am shouting that the sky is falling, let me be clear, it isn’t. There is just the metal shrapnel of indirect fire raining down on our units. There are certainly some balancing factors that I believe GW has implemented to try and counter some of the super high offensive output that we have seen in many of the faction previews. First, a lot of factions seem to have ways to get models back for units at the low cost of zero points. If this is prevalent enough across the entire game that indirect fire is a tool only for taking out minimum sized squads hidden on home objectives I would be completely happy. Second, a lot of the missions, both Primary and Secondary, that we have seen previewed seem to incentivize moving toward the middle of the table. If a player’s points are completely tied up in expensive indirect fire units, and they cannot play the mission, then maybe the factions who can pile on the indirect fire will choose not to build their army that way in order to better accomplish the missions and score points.
If you are looking to grab some of these problematic indirect fire units, or some fast moving close combat units to frustrate those players who run 9 Aeldari Support Weapon Platforms, FLG has all of your 40k needs over on their webstore!