Games Workshop has given us another preview leading up to the release of 8th. Come take a look at the latest on teleporting and reserves.
Warhammer Community just revealed how teleporting and reserves are going to work in 8th edition, let’s see what they had to say.
In the new Warhammer 40,000, as today, keeping some units in reserve is still a very important and potentially powerful tactical tool.
There are some pretty fundamental changes to how they work though. For a start, not every unit can be placed in reserve, so most of your army will usually deploy on the battlefield at the start of the game. This means that they will be contributing to the battle from turn one, but will also be a target for the enemy – so you’ll have to work out how to best utilise those early turns.
Quite a few units still have the option to join the game mid-battle though, and they use a variety of mystical or technological means to do so. While there are no longer universal special rules like Deep Strike or Outflank, many of these abilities will have common themes – so you can still expect units like Terminators to teleport down, Genestealer Cults units to ambush and Ork Kommandos to use their kunnin’ to sneak up on the foe.
As an example, let’s take a look at the special rule for a Trygon, a unit famed for its unusual method of deployment, tunneling up under the enemy army:
So we can see that this will be quite a powerful ability. Not only delivering the Trygon into the heart of the enemy force, but also an accompanying unit of Tyranids. And there’s nothing stopping them from charging this turn either! Though that 9″ distance to the enemy (which is common to a lot of units with similar abilities) will mean that the averages on the dice will be against you for that 2D6 charge distance. (You can always use your Command Re-roll of course…)
Editors Note: the average charge distance on 2 D6 with a re-roll is indeed 9″ (old Fleet rule BRB pg 164), so Command Points may be a bigger part of the game that we though.
In matched play, there are a few additional restrictions to deployment methods like this, which you might imagine, can get very powerful very fast when used by multiple units across a single army. Matched play games use a special mission rule called Tactical Reserves.
This rule helps limit some of the more extreme cases of withholding reserves in competitive games. So, while it’s totally possible to have an all Deathwing Terminator army, for example, you can’t use the teleport rules on all of them in matched play. (Though we do think a narrative game where the entire Deathwing teleports in on the first turn to take a Chaos bastion would be pretty awesome.)
One of the main changes we’re seeing is the limit to the amount of troops you can have in reserve. But the big news is that their are no more universal special rules like Deep Strike or Outflank. They did however say that many of the abilities will have common themes though, so that’s a bit of a relief.
With the Subterranean Assault special rule for the Trygon, and the explanation of Tactical Reserves, we’re starting to see a bit of a trend that if you can’t get your units out under a certain requirement they will be considered destroyed.
These rules are definitely going to have you rethinking what you want in your reserve, and how fast do you want to bring it on to the table.
Check back with us tomorrow when they go over vehicles and how they will play out in the new 8th edition.
What are your thoughts on the new teleporting and reserves rules? Let us know in the comments below.
