More 6th edition thoughts..

Well its been a couple of weeks now with the new edition of 40K, I am still in the process of digesting the rules, making changes to my army lists, and best of all just having fun playing it. Part of the fun of a new edition is creating new lists with your existing armies as the rules might have made something better or something worse. In the case of my Chaos Space Marines, I have to say I just love how some of these rules actually improved the army. This last weekend, I was finally able to play a larger point game, 2000 pts in a large team game. As this was my first large game of 6th, I decided to go with my Thousand Sons with some allied Chaos Daemons (Fateweaver and a squad of Pink Horrors with the changling). As I really love some of the new psychic powers, and lets face it, the Chaos powers are really not any good anymore I decided to go with Ahriman so that I could generate 3 powers with him. Upon multiple readings of both the rule book and the chaos marine faq and the codex, I discovered that my aspiring sorcerers are all mastery level 2 (mark of tzenntch allows you to cast 2 powers) however since I could only "buy" one power for them in the codex, I could only generate 1 power for them (which sucks). Not to bad as I could cast level 2 spells and if I roll a level 1 spell, could still use my force weapon in close combat. Not to mention that on average, I would be getting a 5+ deny the witch roll unless the enemy psycher is level 1 which would make it a 4+; about time my expensive aspiring sorcerers count for something. I had Ahriman roll on the Telepathy chart as I really loved the invisibility ability I got during my last game and rolled a 6 for Hallaucation.

This power is unbelievable, it effectively shuts down an enemy unit with in 24 inches (basically they cant move, run, shoot, assault or hit in CC)if you roll between a 2-4 and since its a malediction, it auto-hits. Even though you need to roll for this, I have to say, this does seem a little OP for me. I casted this several times to the annoyance of one of my opponents as it allowed Ahriman and his squad of thousand sons to punch through a huge squad of scrabs and munch on a big squad of immortals and the Stormlord. I love the power but I feel that GW might need to nerf it a little bit like maybe allowing you to shut down a single phase or maybe having to roll to hit it or limiting it to just the player turn and not the entire game turn. It is a level 2 power so you would need a level 2 character to cast it so it does limit it in a way but most armies can get level 2 psykers. If I was lucky and generated this power along all of my squads, I could see this starting fights in a competitve atmosphere like a tournament or with WAAC opponents. Then again, maybe its a blessing against WAAC players... lol. I also ran a Daemon prince in order to have 2 flying monstrous creatures and the new vector strikes ability. As a whole, I love the idea of running flying monstrous creatures that are hard to shoot at and can hit units with their strikes and still shoot any weapons. What I dont like is how the rule reads in regards to being hit and taking grounded tests.

The rule specifically says that Flying MC's take the test if they are "hit", so I can have say a las pistol ground my MC just by hitting it. This in fact happened to me and so my Daemon prince was then lit up by 2 squads of plasma and melta toting Vet squads in Chimeras and he promptly died before doing anything. We had a discussion on this and we might house rule to say that the shot needs to wound the MC before a grounded test needs to be taken. I really hope that GW Faqs this as huge blob squads or units with a high rate of fire can knock MC's out of the sky with a single 6 rolled. I know the entry also mentions a Jink move so maybe if you are hit you are to roll your jink save and then if you fail your roll your grounded test but the rule doesnt say that. Fateweaver is fine, if I fail the grounded test he just takes his 3 up invul save but what about MC's with no invul save or a 5+ one? That just kills Nids as they dont even have an invul save to start with. Also, whats the deal of making it a strength 9 with no armor saves allowed?

The next army I would like to try is my Tau as I feel 6th really gave them a boost compared to the other older armies out there. With the differences in rapid fire, assault moves for jetpack toting troopers, the Tau are finally a highly movable force capable of laying down tons of fire while redeploying if an enemy gets too close. I will just need to finish painting the army.