I cannot deny it, I got upset when seeing that Leman Russ tanks only had three hull points. But after moving on and working through a bunch of the rest of the rules, and boy... there have been some nice things to see! (Old School here with my counterpoints: We saw A LANDRAIDER provide a pain for somebody today and I think the amount of Leman Russes you bring is deadly, especially with lumbering and the snapfire for your other weapons!)
First off it is no secret that overwatch is -really- good. It will definitely keep enemies second guessing some squads of ours, especially with the amount of flame templates we can spew out onto the field. Note, flamers are now everyone's friend in the 40k universe, best have one around. It makes even your chimera's feel a lot better with that platoon command squad with 4 of those babies inside. Make those Orcs think before they assault our chimera! (The D3 hits per flamer is sick!)
On that note, snapfire in general is an amazing new quality to the game, allowing us to fire all the weapons on a moving vehicle, and yes you only hit on 6's but today I played two quick games, and found that it actually happens more than you think when shooting that heavy bolter off your chimera. Also let us not even attempt to deny how nice it is to be able to move that heavy weapons team and still be able to fire them! (I got my ass snapfired hard today myself!)
One important note on this, when you move your squad around, and lets say, you are just moving to spread out, or move guys to the front of the line to protect your heavy weapons team in that platoon or vet squad, remember that if you do not move the HW team itself, it still will fire at its normal BS! I think everyone can agree this can be VERY nice. (I did not see that. Page Number please, my new SM friends beg you!)
Rough riders.... wow... just wow... did they get sick or WHAT!?!? Think about it, just take a nice 10 man squad of them, place Mogul with his buddies and now when we charge, we first at initiative 10, get 10 STR 3 hits (yes I know, not -that- scary but still) and THEN we get 30+ STR 6, Init 5 power weapon attacks thanks to that wonderful newly defined USR called RAGE!!!!! Think it over for awhile and look through both the codex and the new rule book and see how nice that can end up being. (Yeah, Vogrin and I can stop laughing at the Mogul now ... we will laugh at the Web Way lists in stead ... just kidding Wolfson and SeerK, we still love you ... from the cockpit of our flyers!)
Also I will again state what an important role lascannons are for our codex and fighting other armies. With the advent of hull points, the rise in armor 13 vehicles, the bonus to damage charts of AP 2 weaponry, and how great even glancing against vehicles its.
Your lascannons can be in Vet squads, company commands squads, platoon command squads, they can be in infantry platoon squads, they can be in heavy weapons squads, they can be on Leman Russ variants and lastly they can go on our ever wondrous flyer, the Vendetta. They can still mess up vehicles and are still one of the few things our friendly little termies are quite scared of, and against most of the things that have FNP (yes i know you silly blood angels on bikes need STR 10 to stop it) it kills off FNP due to double toughness. (My Death Wing may laugh at the GK now, but this makes me wear the crown of Aquilonia on a troubled brow, but that is another story)
You will also notice I did not even speak of psykers and their new powers, I will cover my thoughts on them more as I insert some into my lists, but right now I do not really feel the need to, and though some powers can be nice, I -really- want to sit down and think on how these different powers can effect my units as well as the opponents if I choose to change out the ones I am given by the Primaris Psyker. I chose not to even field one in my first two games, and was quite o.k. with it. Just because they have been expanded on, please do not feel the need to -have- to use them. After all... us guardsmen are quite distrustful of those psykers. (Que the creepy DoW librarian voice "Fear not the psyker")
This is just some things at a first, brief glance that really stood out to me for the guard, there are a ton of other things to cover, such as how fortifications and allies effect us, how the new terrain types, and mission types effect the playstyle of the game and also the enjoyment.
I will say this, I really enjoy the edition so far. There are still some dark corners that need to be swept up in the FAQ's and such, but over all this rule book was well thought out and fun to play. I am excited to get more games in the weeks to come and keep talking about the guard. It has also affirmed to me that my next assembly project is my Vendettas. I need them badly now.
Once again, if you readers have anything you would like me to cover in a post (I recommend Imperial Guard questions but hell I will give any subject a shot as long as it pertains to 40k) shoot me an email at imasentinel@gmail.com
Until next time, burn some heretics, kill some mutants, and do it always.....
FOR THE EMPEROR!
Don't laugh too hard at those WWP lists; the pure WWP assault list is obviously dead but give it a month, and I bet that those same WWP Grot bombs will be setting up to let reavers, wracks, scourges and trueborn come out and lay down some crazy amounts of fire power.
ReplyDeleteI agree, we can still see some sick shooting come out of WWP!
Delete@OST "(I did not see that. Page Number please, my new SM friends beg you!)"
ReplyDeleteLook on page 10 of the Big Arsed Book, second column second heading "which models are moving". It totally implies that if your heavy weapons dude does not move, even though everyone else in the squad did, that he can shoot at full effect.
Thanks Jim, in fact the rule specifically states that you decide which models are moving in a unit and you declare this before you move other models
DeleteTwo hull points on the Chimera'a worry me though. I'm well happy with most of the changes -especially the ones that make foot guard a more viable army choice again. But I'm gutted at how fragile my beloved Chimmies have become. I reckon I'll be moving over to a trench-warfare themed army now rather than a mech theme, albeit one with lots of Sentinels and Rough Riders to give me a bit of mobility and keep me from getting board.
ReplyDeleteI hate static-line play, it bores the heck out of me. But it looks like I may have to grin and bear it or else put the Guard I've just finished painting in storage for a couple of years.
I'll be playing a few test games with my old list on Tuesday to see if Mech Guard are less fragile than I think. But I really expect I'll be going out to buy a good few heavy weapons teams and saying bye bye to my Chims.
Chimera's have 3 hull point Lead Legion, plus you can still transport your troopers in vendettas and valkyries which are fliers and also have 3 hull points.
DeleteNow I will say you -will- want to get kind of a combo going with partial static line and then because well... foot-guard is GREAT!
AH! Thanks for the correction Steve. Three hull points still isn't a lot with AV10, but it's certainly a lot better than 2!
DeleteI'm thinking that I might keep a small Chimera contingent - but only with two small squads of outflanking multi-melta Stormtroopers. Going mostly foot and Sentinels gives me a great excuse to bring out some Ogres to counterattack assaults with though. Love those Ogres.
DeleteTake a good look at ccs abd hw teams
DeleteThis sounds like Guard will still be fun to play. I was already planning on converting up some Rough Riders, now it's moved up the list a bit. Still waiting for my book to arrive. Kinda sad to hear Leman Russes are only 3 HP though... Was really thinking they would be 4 since they're supposed to be the bestest battle tank ever.
ReplyDeletep61 says that the Roughriders hunting lance is AP3 on first use, AP4 after that.
ReplyDeleteThe rules for squadrons have changed for the better too. p77
Ya i will cover the squadron stuff later. It is a big boon seembutly, but i have to think on it some more
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