40K 6th Edition Analysis (Update: Grenades and a link for the math behind fleet USR changes)

Taking my cue from Madwars' 6th edition post I am going to post my comments in his post in its own post for ease of access.  The following points have been or will be addressed below.  I will tag the title with an update for when I add more.  (The stuff in green I have not posted about yet.)

1. Movement through difficult terrain

2. The random charge distance
3. Character members of squads and challenges
4. Lots of Universal Special rules
5. Melee weapons now have AP values
6. Movement and shooting
7. Target Priority based on the direction of fire
8. The charge and Overwatch fire from the unit charged
9. Falling Back
10. Vehicle damage, movement and disembarkation
11. Flying abilities of certain models
12. Fliers in general... lots of rules on this
13. Pyschic Powers
14. Warlords
15. Terrain (living, mysterious, and purchasable)
16. Grenades and using it on MCs and walkers.
17. Missions, primary objectives, and secondary objectives.
18. Change to reserves.



 Lets begin:

1) Moving through difficult terrain

What? I didn’t see any change there.

2) Random assaults distances

It seems like an unnecessary change but not a terrible one. The average assault distance will still be about 6 inches and with fleet maybe even better because of the reroll opportunity, which is a plus for tyranids, eldar, dark eldar and all of those speedy groups (fleet is going to require more thought see USR section later or its own post depending how confusing I can make it). Overall assaults have taken a hit but we will talk about that as we move down the list.

Update: A post over at 40konline.com explains the math behind fleet and charges. I am right about fleet (see #8). Check it out by clicking here.

3) Character challenges

Hate it! Hate it so much. Way too unbalanced for a game where there is such a high degree of variability between the different armies. For example: Autarch vs. Mega-armored Warboss… wait not even a warboss lets go ‘ard Nob with a powerklaw. Autarch has to do 2 wounds to a 4+ save nob while the nob has to do 1 wound to my feeble autarch to instant kill. Lets compare point investments here… autarch 110ish, nob 45ish… hmmm… wait… what?

Another thing that bothers me is the all-encompassing degree with which the challenge system works because it’s not just for the leaders it is for every unique model in the unit. The idea of a Space Marine captain calling out a IG sergeant is ridiculous. Even the idea of two sergeants calling each other out seems excessive and diminishes the truly great challenges that this mechanic really should be about. If this mechanic does deserve to be in the rules it should be limited to only the unique characters that way it’s not a bother to me because I think the prebuilt unique characters are BS anyway.

Lastly, to punish a model for refusing the challenge because they are going to get their asses handed to them just seems to add insult to injury. It’s a bad mechanic and should be excluded altogether. If the point of this absurd mechanic is to make me care about the special people in my army then maybe we should head back toward 3rd edition and allow for way more customization of the special characters. Hell let me build my own unique character. That would make me invest way more than this silly rule.

4) Lots of USR

I think that this is pretty standard. They seem to do this with every edition where they add a bunch more USR then use them for the first couple of codices then they get bored with them and create a few more unique rules for one army then the same author writes another codex and copies the idea. Then when 7th edition comes out we will have a few more USR to get all of the copied rules between the codices standardized.

On the USR changes: Snipers got better with precision shot (challenge me will you?), rage got better as you don’t have to charge closest enemy, fearless is better because of the changes to assaults, Acute Senses makes absolutely no sense for the what the rule actually does, Skilled rider is actually useful now, and Gets Hot effects vehicles now which I really don’t understand the concept other than to piss on plasma toting vehicles.

On New USRs: I don’t get the point of Hammer of Wrath attack, Strafing run seems like it will be cool, Blind sounds scary but will probably be underutilized for a long time, It Will Not Die and Rampage seems like a tyranid traits that others are going to get now.

5) AP values for melee weapons

For the vast majority of weapons and units it really doesn’t matter much but 2+ saves got a shit ton better. Mega armor, Terminators and Carnifexes just got really scary. Plasma, Lascannons, snipers, and rending are going to be in high demand.

Lets count the close combat weapons that the Eldar have to get through 2+ armor…. Scorpion exarch power claw. Add in the ridiculous challenge system and guess who is never going to get to use it? Hmmm I wonder …. But… harlequins with rending might work for a one assault phase at 150% of the cost of scorpions. Lucky me.

6) Movement and shooting

Wow… just wow… what a huge increase in power to shooting especially rapid fire and no blast heavy weapons.  With the changes to rapid fire a plain 10 man squad of imperial guardsmen can now move their normal move fire their weapons up to their maximum distance. Add in Fire Fire Fire order and you have 18 shots, 9 hit, 3 wounds, 1 dead black templar at essentially 30” (6+24) x2 for the squads that are shooting at them x2 again for the two turns they are running at my gunline that is 4 dead black templars. Then they get close enough to assault at 18” away (6+12) with fire fire fire that is 28 shots, 14 hit, 5 wound, 2 dead black Templars x2 for the two squads firing at them then overwatch comes in with 19 shots, 3 hit, 1 wound, 1 dead space marine.
Between regular shooting and overwatch a 9 man lasgun squad and 1 sergeant can pump out 47 shots in one turn. Add it up that is 8-9 dead Black Templars before (hell, if) they hit my gunline. Then there is the best part … the only draw back to rapid fire weapons is that I can’t assault and get shot before doing so… damn.. what am I to do? I think I will just keep shooting.
Imagine rapid fire on something that can actually hit and has a good strength; gauss flayer death indeed. I don’t like the change at all. Seems very broken and the advantage to assault weapons is essentially meaningless now.

Snap shot is essentially meaningless with a 17% chance to hit; although now I won’t feel bad about moving my infantry squads with heavy weapons because I can still roll dice pointlessly.

I like being able to move some models in a squad and not others and still have those that did not move count as stationary still may be helpful in many cases especially to avoid focus fire.

Focused fire is a tricky idea for me to wrap my head but I think it is really going to hurt low save horde armies like IG combined squads, boyz herdz, and gaunts.

7) Target Priority based on direction of fire

I assume you mean removing casualties based on the direction of fire. It matters now how you position your models within a squad and it makes sense with the addition of the move some of your unit rules but it really doesn’t go with the challenges system. The rules seem to focus on the cinematic aspects of the battle and the challenge system wants the all powerful leader. So removing casualties from the front means that your leaders will have to scurry at the middle/back of the line. That is not very awe inspiring or cinematic.

The “look out, sir” rule is a work around to get your leader models up front but it’s not very effective. In fact when you get down to it only encourages your character models to attempt to be the only one in the squad remaining. I will probably place the leaders in the middle of the squads and when it comes down to taking saves for my characters I will try look out, sir with the ones from the back.

The real catch to this is what it does to charging.

8) The charge and overwatch

Assaults got majorly downgraded in this edition because of not just overwatch but also removing casualties from the front. It works out differently for the different groups so lets look at a couple of examples.

Exhibit A) 10 man space marine squad assaults a line of 20 ork boys. 20 ork slugga choppas boyz that is 20 overwatch shots that hit lets round up and say 4 times on average, wound 2 times, and kill 1 space marine. In my experience when there are charges they are never in a straight line but instead there are one to three models up front and everyone else is trailing behind. So in this case the space marine squad will lose 1 model so maybe but not likely lose between ½ inch and 1 inch on the charge. So to maintain the 6” charge from the previous edition they will have to roll a 7 the most likely outcome.

Exhibit B) 10 termagant squad assaults a line of 10 dire avengers. That is 20 overwatch shots that hit 4 times, wound 3 times (rounding up), and kill 3 times. So using the same experience where there are one to three models up front and everyone else is trailing behind the termagants just lost 3 models and probably 1 to 2 inches on their charge roll because of the one inch diameter of the base size plus about an inch spacing between the ranks. So in this case the termagants will need at least 8” to maintain the 6” charge from the previous edition which is less likely.

Ah, but you may say hey the termagants have fleet so they can reroll both or one of the charge distances dice. Yes, indeed that is correct, but they are using the rule not as an advantage but as a way to keep these armies from getting screwed on the charge only some of the time instead of all of the time. In fact I would say that fleet is worse this edition than last because the average assault distance in 5th for a fleeting infantry was about 15” (6+3+6) in this edition it is 13” (6+7).

Update:  A post over at 40konline.com explains the math behind fleet and charges.  I am right about fleet.  Check it out by clicking here.

9) Falling back

 Aside from them taking out the no retreat rule I don’t see much change here. Post your thoughts, Madwars.

10) Vehicles

 There are some good and some bad changes on these new rules.

I like the changes to movement and shooting, the snap fire rules for movement, that they took away the defensive weapon rules, Fast skimmers are truly fast now as they can cover potentially something like 30”, and the changes to squadron rules.

I don’t like hull points, the effect of stunned and shaken results on passengers, all of the disembarkation rules, and the change to chart modifiers for AP2 and AP1 weapons.

Overall I think it makes regular vehicles (by which I mean AV 10-12) much weaker while heavy vehicles remain pretty much the same as heavy vehicles received the extra hull point on top of their higher AV. I say this because of the glancing taking out hull points where multi shot weapons tend to be lower strength and thus able to hurt the regular vehicles much more reliably than the single shot, high strength weapons. This edition really seems to focus on volume of fire instead of quality of fire.

As an example take a heavy weapons team of autocannons shooting at a Falcon Grav Tank’s front armor. They should be able to take it down in at least 2 turns with the bring it down order because that is 6 shots, 5 hits (rounded up), and at least 2 glances. So that is nearly a 200 point model that lasts two turns and was lost to a unit that costs way less than half of that.

11) Flying Monstrous Creatures

They have gotten a lot better with the increased move and the vectored strike attack, still being able to shoot, and being able to avoid being effectively shot at before assaults. Their special attack against flyers is great and very effective.  One could argue that it is the most effective anti flyer unit in the game at the moment.  Very scary stuff.

12) Flyers

Like them but don't love 'em. Especially now while very few people have skyfire units but as more new codices are put out more units will gain skyfire units and flyers will only be average. I can see the new space marine entry now; "And they shall know no limits" allows space marines to assault zooming flyers.  By the way hate the description of zooming.  Why not flight, strafing, or something else less childish?

Hover mode is way too risky for flyers with their generally low to average AV and position that you need them to be in for unloading of troops. I think there will be a lot less of flyers being used as transports.  Evade and On Going reserves are 2 things that are not what the seem but we need to look at them in regards to the two types of flyers. Am i missing something?  Do other flyers only hit other flyers with snap shot rules too?  That seems strange but should make for some interesting dog fights.

While not specifically stated in the rules there are two very different types of flyers and I am not talking about hover mode. One is standard fighter craft like the valkyrie/vendetta and dakka jet and then there are the bombers of which I can't think of any currently produced by GW other than Ork bomma.  In my assessment of the rules bombers have the advantages right now because they are more survivable.

Lets have a look at the two:

Fighters: Being able to unleash a vast amount of fire power at full BS will make them powerful hunters of tanks and infantry depending on the weapons load out. The amount of fire power these things can put out is scary but ultimately they will be very vulnerable once skyfire becomes an ability or upgrade as they redo the codices because of the amount of time the flyer will spend with its rear armor facing part of the enemy. If you want it to be more durable then you could evade but then you are only diminishing its effective use as described above because of snap shot.  You could try to avoid being shot by leaving the board edge and use the on going reserves rule, and that will be a viable tactic for flyers especially if its loaded out for tanking hunting and you have already passed the tanks you want to shoot (I am looking at you vendetta), but you will have to sacrifice a turn of shooting.

Bombers: Same as fighters with a huge amount of weapons to fire in the shooting phase but they get their special bombing attack after they move.  The types of bombs that will become available will be the real determining factor with the effectiveness of the bombers but for the one model that I am aware of, the ork bomma, the rules seem oriented to eliminating medium infantry but if and when they start including anti tank bombs in the game watch out because the bombers will really come into their own.  They are more durable because they can evade and still drop their bomb.  They can even be untouchable by exploiting the on going reserves rule and drop a single bomb every turn on a flanking enemy unit or in support of one of your flanks by positioning the bomber just right so that as it enters and moves their full 36” it is allowed and still able to use its bomb attack and then have fly off the board edge.  Then repeat until it runs out of bombs or targets to bomb.  Imagine a bomber with out flanking and you can conduct untouchable bombing raids at the center some armies lines. Interceptor with skyfire are the keys to stopping the bombers.  As far as I know nobody has interceptor rule right now. 

13) Psychic Powers

The general rules seemed fine enough until I started to read through the powers and the FAQs.  Simply, I am conflicted on the whole thing. The warp charge rule is a bit pointless because you know that when they begin to update the codices they will start to include unique special items that will increase the power psychic mastery levels or items to diminish the power levels of others within a certain amount of distance. 

As far as the different categories, Nova is the best type of power but focused witchfire is awful.  I’ll summarize nova with some arithmetic: Deep strike + nova attack = win! Witchfire is on the other side of this coin because there is only a 27% chance of sniping the target you intended with the power not that its awful, it’s still better than precision shot, but if I am going to use a focused witchfire power I want a little more certainty than 27%. 

Some of the specific powers are great and very powerful and others are not so much.  As far as the different psychic spheres they all seem useful to the different types of armies except telepathy.  I really don’t see anything redeeming in telepathy because either the power is too weak or too expensive in regards to warp charge points. 

They seemed to try to balance the range of difference between the powers with deny the witch and random power selection.  Some armies will benefit greatly from these changes like Space Marines and Tyranids then there are those that will see little benefit at all like Orks or Eldar.

Imagine if you will a reroll for a devastator squad’s missed lascannon shots, or a squad of assault marines with fire shield, a unit of terminators with endurance, a hive tyrant with Iron Arm, and you begin to see the problem as these things are way overpowered.

Now imagine orks.  Wait they don’t get anything and I really don’t understand that at all because the new set up with randomness seems very orkish to begin with but whatever.  Although I will say that even though they don’t have access to warp powers if we look at the Necron codex we can see some of the psychic powers being represented in other rules like mind shackle scarabs, deathrays, and some tesla weapons.

Eldar, oh my poor elves in spaaaaaace.  Okay, they get divination and telepathy powers now, half of the options that space marines and imperial guard get even though the Eldar are supposed to be the most psychically potent race in the galaxy.  Whatever, at least the powers should be good, right?  Oh good I can get two of my old powers in one, if I roll well.  If I don’t then I get something worse or default back to the gimme power at the top, which isn’t bad and something I usually take but what if I have already chosen that power once already or took it as my second power then what do I do?  There is very little in telepathy that makes it worthwhile because the really good one is the focused witchfire rule.

The power selection I think is too random especially for a group, like the Eldar, that depends on their powers to help their armies survive instead of armies that use it as another hammer to smash things down with.  There is only a 17% to, at best, 20% chance for a power that is needed is too much risk.  As an example lets look at an Eldar army. A staple for all non-cheesy special character lists is a farseer with 2 of the following 3: doom, guide, or fortune.  In the psychic powers choice that would typify the best case would be to roll a 2 or a 5 on the divination powers.  Worst case would be to have a 6 and a 1.  At the very least we would have the default power but we would still be stuck with a dud for the other power and would have wasted the selection. For now it is fine because we still have the option of taking the codex powers. However, when the powers are redone and if I am wrong on having army specific powers being added and we’re stuck with the rulebook powers, some armies are going to be hurt. 

14) Warlords

I bet you think I am going to say that I hate it and you would be wrong!  Ha! This rule is great because unlike psychic powers I have a choice. Unlike psychic powers, which tend to be integral to the functions of my armies, this rule just throws in a fun little extra into the mix.  There is still the randomness factor for rolling the power like psychic powers yet it is unlike psychic powers in that all of the options within a category are about equally useful.  Even if each one wasn’t useful in some way I didn’t build my army on the idea that I needed to get a certain one.

You’re probably thinking, “you pissed all over psychic powers for essentially being too random.  You are contradicting yourself!” I say eh no to that.  Random can be interesting.  Random can be fun.  Random can force people to think out of the box.   Random isn’t any of those things when you f$@k with something I need.  The last game Jonny and I played we used the death world rules in the April or May’s White Dwark (I feel like such a dork when I get them) and it was the most interesting and fun game we have played in a while but the randomness didn’t change my army or how it would function even before the game began unlike the psychic powers’ changes.

Depending on how the roll turns out it may give another way to use the army that you may not have thought of trying or using before.  This can be great for an army in progress because you might not have the money to go out and buy the new great unit out there or you may be slow in building your army.  The warlord trait will let you try different things out with the same tired units you have been using.

In the narrative driven games that we typically play it is a characterful addition and can be a way to drive the narrative itself to represent the potential for an inspirational moment of brilliant command, the unstoppable fury of “da biggess an’ da strongess,” or an act of desperation for a commander corned like a rat. I can even see this as being the beginning step to GW releasing some campaign rules like they had in the third edition book in a White Dwark feature or even its own supplement. 

  

15) Terrain

There are three types of terrain in this edition and I think they all add a different element to the battle and certainly adds to any narrative driven game that you may be playing.  For competitive game groups these different terrain rules could be maddening because of the sheer randomness of the situation.  Good thing I am only a little competitive. 

The best thing about this set of rules is that you and your opponent don’t have to play with them if they don’t want to or can include a little or a lot.  Living terrain provide for some interesting but unbalanced additions for the game.  Living terrain is very cinematic and really involves and invests players in the action of the game.  Hiding behind a fuel dump may give you the save but what if it blows up?  Awesome!  However, the rules for such a thing are imbalanced.  For example, a squad of guardsmen hides among a bunch of barrels they gain their standard cover save but then boom!  The barrels explode and the results are 6 under the blast marker, that’s 3 wounds, 2 dead.  Now take a squad of space marines same situation where the same number, 6, are under the blast marker and it would take 4 explosions to equal the damage wrought on the guardsmen.  This is unbalanced and rewards players that chose the more durable armies like space marines, necrons, and chaos. 

The living terrain rules do it right when there is an equal chance, no matter the armor save, of groups to be killed.  By making the rules rely on dangerous terrain rules or some other equalizing factor it makes it less punishing to play non marine forces. 

Mysterious terrain function is a nice piece of random insanity to really waylay the best made plans or possibly save an army from destruction.  Most of the mysterious terrain rules are mundane like fireblood and industrial ooze, while others are powerful, like iron bark forest and overgrown spine thorns, and others are just plain fun, like brain leaf fronds and hyperslime.  The nice part of this set is that it doesn’t have to be every piece of terrain it can be one or two pieces in key places on the battle board.  If you don’t like the rule don’t include any of the specified terrain. 

Through all of the internet chatter that I have seen so far this is the one that gets the most attention, is the purchasable terrain.  They can be nice additions to an army and again certainly adds to the narrative, cinematic aspect of the game where all kinds of missions can be designed based around these inclusions.  Depending on the mission each can add a valuable piece to any army but the one piece of terrain that, right now, is a must include for virtually any army that can expect to see flyers is the aegis defense line with the quad gun.  For relatively cheap in points you can gain what few armies currently have, skyfire.  It’s almost absurd that it even includes the Icarus lascannon because the quad gun is such a no brainer.  In addition to gaining the unbelievable performance of the quad gun the aegis defense line because a static fire base to insulate your most power shooters, including tanks or artillery, from incoming fire.  The more I think about it the more powerful and mandatory the aegis defense line becomes. 

The greatest thing I like about the new terrain rules are the modeling and conversion options are so numerous and plentiful that only your ability is the limit to what can be constructed.  Sure you can buy most of these terrain options from GW (at a fresh price increase ranging from 30% to 40%) through their terrain lines and I’m sure more will become available as time goes by for the different, albeit just popular armies.  I already know what one of my first terrain projects will be for my proud THeXian soldiers; a count as aegis defense line modeled along the lines of the snow trenches from the battle of Hoth. 

16) Grenades

As I continue this masturbatory post I will now address grenades.  Altogether the rules are okay but not great.  It seems odd that they include these rules now as most of the newer codices have, since the end of 4^th edition, infantry units with some kind of grenades as standard.  Just as a prediction I am going to say that most grenade types are going to become an additional point cost as an option, like 3^rd edition, in future codices. 

Otherwise the new grenade rules seem fairly balanced between the time investment in conducting a grenade attack in lieu of shooting for some arimes but not all.  A frag grenade for a space marine is mostly a waste but for a guardsman it is pretty good as you have an equal chance to wound with your lasgun but have a chance at wounding more of the enemy than you would with the 2 shots with the lasgun. 

The investment in time is limited because only one attack may be made with a grenade.  Imagine if every model could make a grenade attack; that would be a huge mess and a huge investment of time during a game to figure between 10 and 20 blasts per squad during a game. 

Additionally, it is about time we weak squishy groups have a way of hurting those big nasties that other armies have and invariably send into our very soft and squishy lines to wreak havoc on us.  Especially, now because of challenges we will probably see a lot fewer power fists in most armies and we will need a way of dealing with the monstrous creatures, dreadnaughts, and walkers. 

Please excuse the quality as I am slightly inebriated.  Why?  It’s a Wednesday of course.  Wait, I mean tuseday.