6th Ed. Army FAQs posted!

Fuck man, my Huskblade!

Here here!

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?
categoryId=1000018&pIndex=1&aId=3400019&multiPageMode=true&start=2

IG is as strong as ever.. the Vendetta is just out of control.  Not to mention Deathstrike just pours down S10 Large Blasts with not reduced damage, and the Hydras have Skystrike and don't allow Jink saves.

SW Frost Weapons are now only AP3, except for the Frost Axe which is basically a Power Axe.  A few things changed so that Ragnar's Wolf Howl can only effect SW models, and Arjac has to issue and accept a challenge whenever possible.

BA loses the ability to Scout Smoke their Baals, most of their buffs like FNP and FC can only effect friendly BA models (no Allied bullshit), Red Thirst ICs can only join Death Company and a few weapon changes (like the Chaplains using Power Mauls).

DE definitely saw a nerf in Huskblades and Agonizers as they are now only AP3.  Razorwing and Voidraven both lose Aerial Assault so the only one who has it is the Ravager.  Allies cannot use the webway portal, and  you definitely cannot assault when your units come out of them.  On the bright side, you can now FF against Dangerous Terrain tests.

Dark Eldar in 6th Ed.

Don't nerf my Huskblade!

These are my predictions for what will happen to Dark Eldar in the next edition.
I haven't been wrong about predicting what will happen to an army over editions for a very, very long time, so I don't think that'll start happening now.

Below, I will list my sources, then talk about how this will effect the Dark Eldar army.  I don't think I'll cover the Space Marine armies because the entire warhammer internet has exploded about all the possible things that can happen to Space Marines.

Anyways, my sources:
http://www.frontlinegaming.org/2012/06/26/6th-ed-rumors-and-confirmations/
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=112662

I guess the biggest question is:  Will Dark Eldar be better or worse next edition?  Well, let's go over a few details and then I'll let you guys figure it out.

Let's start it off with...

Jinking
If a Fast Skimmer moves at all, it gains a 5+ cover save.  If it goes Flat Out, it gains a 4+ cover save.
Does this make Flickerfields useless?  A little, but FF is an invulnerable save that can still save things from flamethrowers, close combat attacks or anything that ignores cover saves.  However, I will say that I'll be dropping FFs from all my vehicles and keeping the Night Shields instead.  I've always been a fan of Night Shields, so there you have it.



Speaking of which, Pre-measuring.
Since you can pre-measure everything in the game, how does this effect how players choose targets for Night Shields?  I don't think it changes anything.  If you're out of range, you're out of range.  If anything, it helps you as the DE General to better navigate outside enemy threat ranges.


Fast vehicles can move 6″ and fire all weapons and fire 2 primary weapons (the rest Snap Fire) at 12″. They can also make an addition move instead of shooting.  Fast Skimmers can move an additional 18″ (30″ total)
Since I'm assuming that the dual SCs on the Venom are two primary weapons, I'm going to say that this is fine for now.  Now if only one counts as primary, then we got a freaking problem.  However, Fast Skimmers being able to move 30" around the board is quiet huge.  That's a lot of room to move around and I'm very happy to gain more mobility.  If you have Aethersails on top of this, you're looking at up to 42" of movement.  That's insane.


Cover is now 5+ all over the place.
This hurts more expensive, fragile armies like us, but overall it was needed.  Just stay in your paper planes and jink all day.

Obscurement is now only 25% covered, but is only a 5+ save.
It's very easy to get 25% cover with our vehicles and units.  If you don't have a cover save from jinking, being obscure or turbo-boosting, you're playing the wrong army.

Night Fighting can happen in any game (on a 4+) and if rolled will continue until the roll is failed at the start of a turn (Night Fighting limits weapon's max range to 36" with anything over 24" counting as "Shrouded" and getting a 2+ Cover Save. Any model over 12" away counts as having the Stealth USR).
Night Vision - Ignore Night Fighting.
Our entire army has Night Vision.  Fuck you Necrons.


AP2 now gives +1 to the damage chart.  AP1 gives +2.
Our Lances got more powerful.  Heatlances got ridiculous.


Raiders, Ravagers, Voidravens and Razorwings have 3 Hull Points, Venoms have 2.
Raiders and Ravagers are now more durable than the Venom with all things considered.  I still don't think the Flyers will be worth their points, but we'll have to see considering they can move 18" and shoot.  Flyers can only shoot 2 of their missiles now per turn, so that's a slight nerf to their damage potential.  I don't see Jinking mentioning Flyers, so here's where our Flickerfields come into play.  A BS1 model shooting at something with a perm 5+ Invul can get pretty good pretty fast.


Charge moves are 2D6”, added together
Fleet and Jump Infantry may reroll a single D6 for the distance
Fleet no longer lets you charge after running, but reroll run distance.
We lose an average of 1" of our threat range when charging on our units with Fleet.  However, we can now move, shoot and charge while keeping our Fleet bonuses.  It's kind of a toss up here, but I don't think it's a big deal.  Consolidation is now 3", but our units are small so this might be OK.  Overall, our charging prowess got nerfed.


Units may Fire on Overwatch when charged
They may shoot at attackers at BS 1 prior to being assaulted
Wyches hate being shot at while they assault.  This can be pretty painful for us considering we're extremely fragile.


There is no glancing anymore, glancing hits just inflict Hull Point damage.
Haywires all day, every day.


Feel no Pain - Now 5+ and is only prevented by Instant Death.
I never really played with Wracks and Haemonculi stuff, but I see this FNP change as a good one.  You can't be removed by AP1, 2, or Power Weapons anymore.  The only thing that can kill you is ID (double strength).  This applies to our Pain Tokens as well.  Speaking of Pain Tokens, Furious Charge no longer adds +1I when charging, only +1S.


Power Swords are AP3.
That means our Huskblades and Agonizers can't do jack shit vs. Terminators or 2+ armor in general.  That also means if a SM Captain issues a challenge in CC against our Archon, we might as well bend over and cry.  I'm really hoping they make Huskblades AP2 and Agonizers AP3 for game diversity.


Units can only disembark after a 6″ move
Unit can move afterward
units disembarking has to be BtB with the exit point
This means you can't fly 12" up with a Raider, jump out 2" from the tip of your craft, and Fleet D6 and then charge 6" anymore.  Now the Raider has to fly 6", you get out from craft's exit point (I'm assuming open top will be any point of the vehicle), and then move 6".  That's 12" total, not the 14" free that you had before.


If your unit cannot harm their close combat opponent (Wraithlord) with any weapons, you may choose to automatically fail the morale check (unless you’re fearless).
No Haywire vs. Dreadnoughts?  No problem!


Calvary & Beasts
Move 12″ in the Movement Phase
Fleet
Calvary treat terrain as Dangerous, but aren’t slowed by it.
Beasts ignore terrain completely!
No more to be said about this.


Eldar and Dark Eldar are Battle Brothers (highest level of Allies).
This means we can take a Farseer with Runes of Warding for Psychic protection, or cast Doom for our Huskblade and Splinter weapons, or an Autarch for +1 reserve roll on top of the now 3+ on turn 2.



That's it for now guys, going to sleep.  Overall, I'm pretty excited for 6th Ed. because I think we get better overall.  The Venom spammers might not like it, but I'm pretty stoked.  Shit, I might even buy a Razorwing and see what happens.

6th Ed. Ramblings and Predictions

I will have the book this weekend.

First, my sources:
http://www.heresy-online.net/forums/showthread.php?t=112662
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?t=22683

I don't want to go too far and deep into this, but I have some predictions for 6th Ed. that you might or might not agree with.  Please, feel free to chime in and let me know if any of this is incorrect.

Lets start with some of the things I noticed.  Please excuse me if this is unorganized, but I just wanted to write some shit and get it out of my head.  There's a lot of info here, so open up the two threads I linked above so you can follow along.

Also keep in mind that I'll be talking from a DE, SW, BA player's perspective, as well as touching upon GK, Tyranids and other armies I find interesting.  I will use bold and italicized to cover army specific stuff.


Night Vision ignores Night Fighting.  This is good because Night Fighting can happen in any game now apparently (on a 4+).  It changes a little bit, like max range being 36" and anything shooting over 24" gets a 2+ cover save.  Dark Eldar ignores this.

Acute Senses get to re-roll Outflank.  Space Wolves like this.

Rage is now +2 attacks on the charge, and some sources say it has no movement penalties?  Looks like Death Company will be getting a buff.  This is probably in preparation for Khorne Berserkers.

Jink looks like a 5+ cover save for Fast Skimmers and Jetbikes if they move at all.  That means Dark Eldar Flickerfields will only be good when sitting still.  If they go flat out, those models get a 4+ cover save. Eldar players must be shitting their pants right now because every one of their vehicles just got Flickerfields on top of Energy Shields and Holofields.

5+ cover is everywhere now.  Most things provide a 5+ (to include shooting through units, being inside of craters and being partially concealed) though Ruins give 4+.  Lesser degrees of protection makes MEQ easier to remove (greater answer to Paladins), makes it reasonable to kill Guardsman in cover, but makes more elite armies suffer more (Eldar).  Vehicles and models now get cover saves if 25% of the model/unit is covered instead of 50%.  Looks like DE vehicles will be getting cover saves everywhere now:  25% cover is easily obtained, Flickfields out in the open and standing still, or 5+ cover from Jink just because you moved.

New USR named Hammer of Wrath makes it so units attack at I10 hitting at regular strength.  BAs will like this because it works with Jump Infantry.  Not sure if this benefits from Furious Charge or whatnot.


Zoom - a Flyer USR that keeps the flyer from ramming, tank shocking, being rammed, being tank shocked, must move 18" if at all possible, may turn up to 90* before moving, can move upwards to 36". It may still fire 4 weapons when moving at these speeds. If the flyer ends up moving off the table due to the Zoom rule it may roll to come back on the next turn.  Vendettas looking really good right now at 130 points.  Not sure about the Voidraven yet though.  The Stormraven also looks pretty good with its ability to fire so many weapons.  Considering now units need 6s to hit flyers (unless you have a special rule that allows you to use your regular BS), this is pretty huge.


Random charges are in with 2d6 on the charge.  Fleet allows you to reroll the run roll or the charge roll during a turn. No longer allows you to run AND assault in the same turn (as that'd give a unit with this rule a 24" threat bubble under the new rules).  Paladins with 2d6 to charges seem ridiculously scary, especially with Relentless staying the same.  You can now move 6" shoot everything, then charge up to 12" away for 18" threat range on Paladins after shooting.  Fleet looks like smaller distances overall, so less mobility but greater success at getting the charge.


However, units consolidating into combat now happens before units get to strike, and the range of consolidation has been reduced to 3".  That means that although things like Paladins can potentially touch you from 18", not many of them will be in combat.  This applies to all units assaulting.  Combine this with things like Overwatch being able to Snap Fire and the lead unit before he gets into combat might mean no units can actually reach combat.  Hmm..


Feel No Pain is now 5+ and can only be prevented by Instant Death.  This means that Power Weapons can no longer kill FNP units reliably.  ID is the only way to really get rid of them.  This looks to be a copy and paste 5+ Regeneration from Fantasy, but there's nothing in 40K that removes it.  Looks like a buff overall to FNP because now you can't remove them with S7 AP2/1 fire.


Preferred Enemy is now re-roll all 1s for shooting and close combat, both to hit and to wound.  Wolf Priests got better, and Hive Tyrants with Old Adversary (6" PE bubble) definitely got better.


All close combat weapons have AP values now:

Powersword: AP3, gives user 5++ in CC
Poweraxe: +1S, AP2, I1
Powerfist: 2xS, AP2, I1
Chainfist: 2xS, AP2, I1, 2D6 vs. armor
Powermaul: +2S, AP4
Powerlance: +1S & AP3 on the charge, AP4 otherwise
Lightning Claws: S User, AP3, Melee, Shred, Specialist Weapon
Forceweapon: AP3
Force Sword S User, AP3, Melee, Force
Force Axe S +1, AP2, Melee, Force, Unwieldy
Force stave S +2, AP4, Melee, Concussive, Force

Does this honestly mean you can't harm Terminators with Power Weapons that's not a I1 striking weapon?  'cause I'm seriously worried about things like Paladins now (between this and the 2d6 charge range).  Maybe the reduction of overall cover save to 5+ will be even this out.  More importantly, what does this mean to Frost Blades, Huskblades or Boneswords?  A codex FAQ MUST be shipped upon 6th Ed. release.


Overwatch and Snap Fire.  Snap Fire allows you to fire weapons you wouldn't normally be able to fire at BS1 (heavy weapons, sponsons on a tank that has moved and fired it's main weapon....more information will be available on the exact details upon the release of the rulebook). Blast weapons may not snap fire.  Overwatch states that charged units able to shoot may do so using the Snap Fire rules. Templates hit d3 times, blast weapons may not be fired. This can only be done once per unit per turn.  Looks like Orks will be loving this shooty change.


Shooting now only works against models the unit can see, with the enemy unit taking saves from closest to furthest, only pulling casualties as models fail their saves. This will likely slow games down, but should prevent other wound allocation cheese that occurs.
Shots from Overwatch also allocate wounds this way and can prevent a unit from successfully being able to assualt due to taking enough wounds that the first rank doesn't reach the unit.
Regardless of the number of hits actually made, you can only wound and kill models that are in range of your weapons.
No Half Strength blast templates vs vehicles. Templates now do full strength hits regardless where the center hole is.
Independent Characters and Snipers may allocate wounds to visible models in range with rolls of 6s to hit.
Grenades may now be used as a shooting attack.
Unit Leaders (example: Battle Sister Superior) and Independent Characters benefit from "Look Out Sir!" save versus shooting to prevent from taking wounds.

Sounds like a better change overall, although I'm worried how much this will slow the game down.  A lot of rules lawyering I see with this one.


Vehicle Hull Points and damage:

When a vehicle is glanced 1 Hull Point is removed for each successful glancing hit. When a vehicle suffers a penetrating hit a Hull Point is lost and then a roll on the vehicle damage chart is made (+1 for Open Topped, +1 for AP2 and +2 for AP1, no penalties for AP-): 1-2 Shaken, 3 Stunned, 4-5 Weapon Destroyed, 6 Explodes!). When all Hull Points are gone the vehicle becomes a wreck.
Most vehicles have 3 Hull Points, however some have 4 (examples: Soul Grinder, Land Raider, Ghost Ark, Monolith) and others have 2 (examples: Vyper and Ork Buggies).
Overall, a better change for vehicles, but I'm unsure whether or not I like what this means for Dark Eldar.  Does the 5++ offered from Jink justify the 2 Hull Points and higher damaging weapons?  This makes vehicles riskier, which is a great change, but sad for my paper airplanes.

Disembarking can only be done if the vehicle moved 6" or less and must be placed within base contact with the access point and then moved upwards to 6" from the access point. No more 8"+ bubble from the access points when disembarking.
Huge nerf for the likes of Orks and DE who relied on jumping out of their vehicles from 2" after moving 12".  I need to see the rules for Open-top vehicles, but this worries me a lot as a DE player who likes Wyches.


Psychic Powers.  There's a lot of them, so I'm not going to bother posting it.  They're in the links above.  In a nut shell, if your army doesn't have a Psyker or solid Psyker protection, you're pretty much boned.  A 6+ to save as Psychic protection doesn't justify getting nuked repeatedly by these abilities.  Orks, Dark Eldar, Tau, I feel bad for you.


Allies
Perks/Penalties based on trust level between two armies. Some armies can't ally with certain other armies and Tyranids aren't allowed Allies.
Can NOT ally with your own army to break the FOC.
Allies require you to take 1 HQ and 1 Troop choice before taking any other options. May take an additional Troop Choice and up to 1 of any non-HQ choice from the Ally's army.
Looks like a nightmare for game balance, but we'll see how this plays out.


There's some other rules out there, but for now, I'm done.

300pt Dust Warfare Recap

Yes it did.

I played a 300pt game of Dust Warfare on Tuesday and it was quite enjoyable.  As most of my BRs are more self-reflection and bullet point analysis these days, this will be short and to the point.  I'll talk about some of the stuff I found interesting and tactical mistakes and good plays that happened during the game.

First, the army lists--

My 300pt Axis force had..
PU: Implacable = 15

C: Heavy Kommandotrupp + Lara = 64
1: Axis Gorillas + Markus = 48
2: Heavy Recon Grenadiers = 30
3: Battle Grenadiers (+Pzshrek) = 20
4: Battle Grenadiers (+Pzshrek) = 20
S1: Sniper Team = 12
S2: Medium Pz Walker-B "Ludwig" = 40
S3: Medium Pz Walker-B "Ludwig" = 40

My opponent (Chris) had:

Combat Platoon
C: Ranger Command Squad
1: Ranger Combat Squad
2: Ranger Recon Squad
3: Ranger Weapon Squad
S: “Pounder” Medium Walker
S: “Steel Rain” Medium Walker
S: Observer Team

Elite Platoon
C: Ozz 177
1: Heavy Ranger Assault Squad
2: Heavy Ranger Attack Squad
3: Heavy Ranger Tank Hunter Squad
S: Sniper Team

Ozz 177 attached to the Heavy Ranger Assault Squad.


Game Summary:

• Some key notes to point out here about faction playstyles:  Axis likes to entrench and play defensive, utilizing their long range firepower to whittle down and destroy the enemy.  The Allies like mobility in the form of jumping tanks and infantry while using close-ranged tactics to lay on the hurt.
• We went with the competitive mission builder to select our mission and my opponent, Chris, got to go first when picking.  The mission eventually turned into Eliminate the Enemy (Kill Points), which I forced and he went for Close Engagement (for 2 scenario points).  Close Engagement means I wouldn't be able to bring my long range advantage to bear.. or did it?
• After terrain was setup, I noticed that the center of the board was literally a kill zone.  There was hardly any cover, maybe 2 pieces of hard cover, and the rest of the map had ranges of soft/hard cover as well as LoS blockers from ruined buildings.  I chose to setup most of my units in close proximity to each other while Markus and his battle monkeys took shelter out in hard cover and out of LoS from his Sniper unit.
• Initiative went to me in the first round of combat because I rolled "low" and had fewer dice to roll initiative because of my smaller pool of units.  The first thing I did was use one of my orders in the Command phase to shoot my Ludwig at his Pounder.  I managed to do 3 solid points of damage to it as he was unable to save any with his armor value of 4.  He only has 1 more health left but he has his Ranger Command Squad next to it.  That squad also had a mechanic in it.  My second course of action was to use my Sniper team to counter-snipe his Sniper.  I put a wound disallowing cover or armor saves onto his Sniper team and he was forced to pull the spotter.  Without the spotter, his Sniper will be needing 5s to deal damage instead of 1-4.
• This round was absolutely brutal as the true sense of unit lethality was brought into the light.  Since the deployment was relatively in short distance, I was able to move my heavy MG units (Lara and the HQ unit and Heavy Recon Grens) into firing rang of two of his units deployed in buildings.  With tons of dice to throw down from 16", Soldiers 2s just can't take much firepower even in hard cover.  After Lara and her unit fired, the Ranger Command Squad loses 3 guys out of 5 and the Heavy Recon Grens mow down another Ranger squad.  With Suppression markers on both squads, Markus and his unit of battle-frenzied apes charged across the battlefield and ripped the RCS into pieces.
• Winning the initiative seemed huge at first, but the more I realize it, I think it was a deployment error that caused such losses.  One of the things that kept coming up during the game was the lack of a valid target via LoS.  If you can't see a model in the unit, if that unit gets shot at and killed via forced wounds or something, the model that can't be seen can't be pulled as a casualty.  In a mission like this kill point mission, players might be able to constantly hide the last remaining model to deny the enemy victory points.
• Another thing that's huge is not allowing your enemy any reactions from giving them suppression.  If you shoot something first and give them a suppression marker, your assaulty units just get so much better.  Think of it like covering fire, as long as enemy units are keeping their heads down, they don't have time to react to something like steroid-driven super apes.
• Speaking of the apes, I think I'll be taking them in every game that I can.  Markus has 6 wounds and with Soldier3 and cannot be suppressed, he can literally soak up enough damage to cover the squad twice over. Markus had something like 4 wounds towards the end of the game and he just kept on trucking.  His Charge ability also gave his apes insane coverage of the battlefield.  In close quarters fighting, he was able to jump from place to place (literally) and rip limbs off of his victims and beat them with it.
• Reactions are huge in this game.  I think Chris used his reactions quite well in some circumstances where he was able to evade damage and deal damage decisively.  Once, he Jumped in with his AT Ranger squad and put some serious damage on the rear of one of my Ludwigs.  On my unit phase, I declared Sustained Fire from one of my Battle Grenadier squads onto his ATR squad and he just jumped away!  I wasted my turn with them basically and because they were just standing there, they were susceptible to damage from other, shorter ranged units that were closing in on the flank.
• Another good reaction that Chris pulled off was when I left hard cover with my Heavy Recon Grenadiers.  He simply shot them to shit with his Heavy Ranger Attack Squad (2x 30cal MGs each) as a reaction after I ended my movement.  Since I left cover, the damage was greatly amplified and I took serious damage (losing 2 out of 3 dudes).  I got him back with Markus and his apes though, since his reaction marker means that he couldn't react again on my unit phase.  Later in the game, one of his Soldier2 Ranger squads left cover to shoot at Lara's HQ unit and she just lit them the fuck up on reaction.  Four twin MG44s shooting back at Soldier2 units with Burst activated is just all kinds of hurt.
• Burst weapons are fucking ridiculous.  Denying cover in a game with high lethality is a great way kill units like crazy.  Those Allied UGLs are insane.. I gotta watch out for that.
• Indirect fire from artillery pieces from an Observer Team is pretty cool.  It basically allowed Chris' tank to fire unopposed the entire game because I was unable to get to him and draw LoS.  I might need to look into some Nebelwerfer options of my own.
• Marching is a great way to save some units from that's taken severe damage.  Since when you march, you basically ignore terrain, 12" goes a long way to hide your units behind buildings and out of LoS.  For each model you save, that's an entire unit your opponent gets no points for.  I think in this case, shooting a unit with multiple units would be better than trying to annihilate it because you'll probably force a good number of wounds, plus the fact you'll give it multiple suppression markers.  The more markers a unit has, the higher the chances he'll break once his unit dwindles in size.
• Snipers definitely make up their points with good placement.  Winning initiative on the first turn allowed me to take down his spotter and render his Sniper battle ineffective.  Not only was I able to neutralize his Sniper unit, I was also able to take down a Heavy Assault Ranger with them before they got mowed down by MG fire from his jumpy 30cal dudes.  Still a great use of points imo, as it allows the player who has the Snipers to control shooting lanes and take down more, heavily-armored troops.
• Even though I killed a bunch of models in the first turn, I lost initiative for the rest of the game.  I think clever use of cover, reactions, forcing suppression markers and unit preservation is more important in this particular mission.  This of course means that target priority is really important and you can never be too gracious on the amount of firepower you want to poor into a unit.  I think shooting it till it dies or is combat ineffective (in games other than KP) is king.

Been playing Diablo III

Addiction is bad.

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, but I've been playing a lot of D3 lately.  I have a Monk in pretty good gear but I'm still getting hammered in A3 and 4 Inferno.  I do quite well in A2, even though I do die some times.  A1 Warden and Butcher farming can only go so far so I'm definitely hoping for more dual wield possibility.

Here's some pics of my Monk's stats:

These stats are with Enchantress buffs.

My skills look like the following:

Concussive + Resolve is king.

And here's a pic of my gear:

I need better resists.

I also played some Dust Warfare last night (300 pts), so I'll write up a short recap/BR of it in a little bit.