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Why 8th Edition is Already Better Than 7th?

marine 40k 8th edition space wal hor

Another editorial and verbal lambasting of those who deserve it in this latest piece by JStove as he answers why 8E is already better than 7E.

Will 8th Edition be better than 7th? Will your armies be functional have more to operate with? Will 8th ruin Horus Heresy? Well, according to JStove, no it won’t and you are worrying for no reason. Let’s see what he has to say.

JStove here and I’m taking a break from my regular schedule of writing slapstick 40k satire to take on the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about since GW started leaking 8E. Everybody’s worried about how their army is going to change, but nobody seems to worry about how awful 7th edition is right now.

Elephant in the room

There’s a great quote from Satan in Paradise Lost where he says, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” Normally I’m down with Satan because I’m a Chaos Marine player and I hang out in space hell all day. However, not so much as of late. Some corners of the internet are losing their minds (not surprised, it’s the internet) over the changes. They somehow seem to believe that the familiar hell of 7th is better than the unknown heaven of 8th. For them, the promise of change is not better than the devil they know.

Here’s a list of reasons why 8th edition is already the best edition of 40k, based on stuff in 7th that’s freaking awful.

FORMATIONS
They were a cute concept that’s gotten way out of hand. Does anyone even play with a standard detachment of 1 HQ and 2 Troops anymore? What about the armies that have been rendered non-competitive because they don’t have formation bloat like everyone else?

UNIT TAX
The only thing worse than formations is having to play units in formations that you don’t actually want. The biggest joke I can think of is Chaos Bikers in the KDK formations and the Chaos Warband. I freaking hate those bikers. I don’t want them; even when I can mark them Nurgle and make them T6. Those three amigos on those blasted bikes keep me up at night when I’m writing lists, because I hate the idea of writing models into lists I don’t want to build, paint, or use.

three-amigos-chaos-chaos-bikers-in-kdk-deal-with-it

FREE SUMMONING
Remember that time when whoever bought the most demon models won? 7th edition remembers. Roll dice and put your wallet on the table, kid. This game’s not about strategy but who has more credit cards.

ETERNAL BULLCRAP
The instant death rules in 7th edition suck. You know what solves them? Lascannons doing D6 damage. It was absolutely freaking awful that if a model rode a bike, or had the mark of Nurgle, or bought a fancy shield that he suddenly got too fat for a lascannon shot to kill, and he could just stand in front of his army and take invulnerable saves like a champ to protect his homies. I am not gonna miss that. If that captain fancy pants and his too-cool-to-wear-a-helmet head stands in the front and eats a krak missile now, he’s gonna feel it. It’s nice to see a future where independent characters will be independent characters and not 200 point invulnerable bullet sponges that bounce wounds around their unit to keep their army alive.

LIST STAGNATION
Every imperial list has Coteaz.
Every traitor list has Fateweaver.
This is going to be temporary of course. Power-value units are still going to exist and people are going to figure out what they are and use them, but I’m looking forward to reading tournament reports that don’t have Baldy and Big Bird on every table.

big-bird-fateweaver-another-list-with-fateweaver-ill-never-be-special

VEHICLE RULES ALWAYS SUCKED
They got really close to fixing them with hull points. Really close. They were still garbage though. Now that vehicles have wounds and a toughness value and anti-tank guns do multiple wounds, your tank will actually die in a way that involves math, strategy, and prediction based on observable laws of probability. As opposed to, you know, rolling hot rends on an assault cannon or lucking into a juicy six on the damage table with a lascannon shot from heaven.

8E WILL BE SIGMARIZED
That’s not bad, because once GW actually started to think and give stuff points values, AoS started to look like a pretty great game. So really, 40k is just going to be a better version of AoS from the future. I can live with that.

BALANCE BETWEEN SHOOTING AND MELEE
All the changes so far are looking like there’s going to be actual balance between shooting and melee. We’ve seen some devastating stuff like random numbers of hits from weapons that used to be blast and template, lascannons that do D6 wounds, and double shots at half range with twin linked guns, combiguns with infinite gas, and heavy weapons firing while moving. On the other side of the aisle, we’ve also seen charging out of transports, transports charging in to soak overwatch fire, pistol shots in melee, Demonettes with always strike first, and Wyches that can stop their victims from fleeing from a fight. Overall, it’s looking like gunlines and assault lists are going to have viable options.

thinking-gw-8e-sigmarized-gw-thinking-for-once

TRUESCALE MARINES WILL FORCE EVERYONE TO REBUILD THEIR MARINE ARMIES
Just kidding, they won’t. Honestly, with the rules we’ve seen so far, I don’t even think they’re that good. They have a 30” bolter. You know who has better guns than that? Sternguard. I’d rather have 1 wound Sternies with special issue ammo and combiguns than 2 wound marines with 30” bolters. Unless those Primaris Marines pick up some real hotness or are amazingly efficient in terms of point value, I’m not seeing it. As a side note, I’m painting up tiny, little anemic Rogue Trader Marines on 25mm round bases. Why you may ask?? So all the truescale crybabies that think Primaris Marines are the second coming of Sanguinius can choke on my 30 year old beakies.

8E WILL RUIN HORUS HERESY
No. There’s only one thing worth saving about 7th edition and it’s the fact that none of the things that suck about 7th are in Horus Heresy. The PDFs are still online, and you’ll still own your leatherbound Forgeworld books. Nobody with a resin army is going anywhere. I have 2 Calth boxes worth of marines, a Caestus assault ram, a Typhon, Grave Wardens, and 2 talons of Contemptors. That’s not even a lot of stuff as far as 30k armies are concerned. I’m not going anywhere and neither is any other 30k enthusiast. As a matter of fact, if you’re naive enough to believe that 30k is going to evaporate because of 8E and that we’re all going to adopt it overnight, throw your army up on ebay. I just got paid and I’d love to get some cheap Rhinos and Land Raiders to fill out my roster.

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About the Author: Jack Stover