Last week was FULL of Teases for 8th edition! Here is a quick summary of the 10 biggest changes so far!
#10- Individualized Movement Values-
Gone are the days of generic class movements! Every unit now has an individualized movement profile as part of their basic stat line! Expect your Eldar and Tyranids to be swift of foot, your towering giants taking great strides, you hulking monsters to shamble on and your vehicles to move like they look. The fact that everything will move at individual rates will not only add a new tactical dynamic to the game and a strategic consideration to list building, but it will create a narrative yet unseen in the game. I am building an army with 80 horses myself! Just imagine that thundering down the field!
#9- Mortal Wounds are here-
Now we have had things that ignored all armour and invulnerable saves before, but it is nice to see that mechanic formalized and streamlined in the shape of Mortal Wounds. The only hope is that they don’t become too prevalent or us abusive as 6th edition Strength D, especially when considering the changes to vehicles!
#8- Weapon Damage Profiles-
Every weapon gets a new profile, and with that an expanded mechanic to help balance the utility of all weapons as well as make them feel like the should. They all now have a DAMAGE PROFILE! What is cool about this is it is a per hit profile. So far we have only seen 4 weapons, but you can clearly see where they are going with this. Certain weapons are really go big or go home, such as the lascannon. Sure it can do 1 hit, but up to D6 wounds. What is really nice about this is that weapons used to tend to be good against vehicles OR monsters, but never really both. NOW you differentiate are weapons good against BIG THINGS or LITTLE THINGS. Add on top of this the new armour penetration system, where AP applies a modifier to an armour save rather than outright surpassing it, and you have a truly new dynamic shooting system.
#7- Cover Modifiers-
Cover Saves are gone, long live Cover! Cover now applies a modifier to your armour save, which is particularly great when coupled with the above bullet. It makes weapon selection and employment considerations a much more involved affair, and it further increases the narrative while streamlining the game. Imagine that lascannon mentioned above. Before it used to have a 50% chance to be absorbed by random bricks and stones of a ruin. Now if will just punch through the wall, albeit it at a weaker power increasing your chances of survival. This just makes sense, where as cover that would negate a shot, such as the current system, really should just be LOS blocking.
#6- Changes to WS and BS-
The BS change is one of the best and most logical things done yet. Since it was never an opposed roll anyway, why was it this weird opposite system where a lower # meant you had to roll higher? A straight up switch to a “Roll this or more” is great. WS to it now handled this way. How this interacts fully with combat and assault is yet to be seen, however it should speed up the game if nothing else.
#5- No More Initiative-
One of the more contreversial changes thus far, initiative is no longer in the profile. Instead, charges will now go first and there is a new system of command points that can be used to change the order in which combat occers. As for the WS change, this has yet to be seen in the full context of Close Combat under 8th edition, but it truly is a major shakeup and makes getting the charge off yourself all the more important.
#4- Units can voluntarily fall back from combat-
This is going to make a huge change to the way the game is played and units are deployed. Wave and bubble tactics will prevalent early on at least, but it really means gone are the days of unfun tarpits or endless slugfests. Anything that keeps units moving adds to the tactical dynamism of the game, and this contributes. There are some drawbacks, the falling back unit cannot advance (the new run), shoot or assault, BUT the unit they ran away from can be shot at by other units, which seems slightly unbalanced right now. HOWEVER I think we are going to see something with either some automatically triggered attacks when people do fall back, or stuff like OLD SCHOOL sweeping advances come back where units can move into successive close combats (or at least within 1″ of an enemy, which disallows them from shooting all but pistols). Something will be there I am sure.
#3- No more Strength D-
The D table and Str D is gone, but so is the characteristic 10 cap, so we may see D weapons become S11 or more. This should really help rebalance alot of armies, especially when you consider this in terms of the Weapon Damage Proiiles as discussed above.
#2- Streamlined Psychic Phase-
No more warpcharge, no more dispel pools. Each psyker now has his own listed power and number of powers he can cast, and each of them do it on a 2d6 test, with each power having a minimum to pass. They can still be dispelled by other psykers within 24″, but the prevalence of lopsided psychic phases, where one army has 30 dice and the other side has 3, so only one player is ever casting powers and the other player is helpless to stop them, is completely gone. it always rubbed me wrong how one sided this phase could be. It also stops the practice of just buying nobody psykers as batteries for monstrous ones like Magnus. However, it does mean that highly psychic armies will still feel that way and still have great utility and dominance of that phase. It just won’t leave your opponent feeling helpless and left out.
1- DREADNOUGHTS HAVE TOUGHNESS-
Okay, I guess all vehicles do. BUT DREADNOUGHTS DO. Its like The Long War predicted. It just makes walkers far more effective and balanced in comparison to Monstrous Creatures. With this news all vehicles now have the same profile as all other models, but they now have a progressively diminishing strength as the take damage. My only hope is that there is still some way to differentiate from Armour facings, because I felt that made sense and really made vehicle maneuver and shooter maneuver for arcs of fire on tanks a very important tactical element of the game.
Honorable Mention- So not a change to the game, BUT A LIST BUILDING APP FROM GW IS IN DEVELOPMENT. This is HUGE news and will really make rules updates easier to roll out and aid greatly in access to the game. And (Hopefully) since it is by GW, it SHOULD be Accurate. It will at least have inaccuracies promptly fixed.
f you are not one to walk the beaten tactical path, then come check out more articles like this on Sepulchre of Heroes, home of the 9th Legion. You can also find there plenty of other thoughts and discussions on the hobby and Warhammer 40k, particularly Blood Angels. We feature ample hobby content in painting and kitbashing and cover several GW specialist games such as Battlefleet Gothic and Blood Bowl.
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