So not going to lie, I have gotten pretty lazy in the posting department. I have been swamped with real life issues but in the end I will say that laziness is the real reason I haven't posted in a while. So I had started this long sequence of articles to cover the traitor legions book but since the announcement by GW last Saturday that 8th edition is coming, I decided that I will curb that post until their new rules come out. Instead I am going to talk about what we know so far with regards to rules in the new edition of 40k.
Before I begin I will tell you that 7th was starting to get a little stale for me. Not in the army building department as I consider myself a whizz in chaos space marines (at least what I want to play anyways) but the abundance of rules, formations and let's admit it, the brokenness of some of the armies made it so that all I ever wanted to do was to play in narrative games. I still do some tournaments however they are local ones as it gives me a chance to play several games at once with people that I know. Big tournaments I tend not to go to as I really dont want to deal with armies that make the fluff bunny inside me throw up a little (im looking at you tau/eldar armies, superfriends, etc). But enough of that lets dig into what we know of 8th edition.
I was fortunate enough to see the live Q and A session that GW did this last Monday. To say it wasnt exciting is an understatment, there was some key points that GW made which is making 8th edition sound like everything is getting thrown out and a new system is being created which is clearly borrowing from AOS. This is good and bad as I really dont want the game to be entirely AOS in the future. So lets take a look at these key points.
Armor values are now gone -
wow is this a major change, so all models including vehicles are getting toughness and wound values. The era of armor values, the era of single shotting a tank are now over. Dreads are now viable not to mention my maulerfiends. Knights will now be as tough as Wraithknights etc, etc. This is huge people and something which will help us see more vehicles on the battlefield.
Shorter game lengths -
Ok this is awesome. I have always preferred small games as I really want to get in as many games as possible during gaming sessions. The 3-4 hour games just wears thin on me and smaller games kind of fixed this. Smaller games however have the issue of limiting you what you can take so I would prefer games that play just as fast as small games but still allow you to take all the toys you can or at least give you the option of taking more then you could in say a 1000 point game but still have the game length of say 90 minutes. This I believe should be a priority as its hard to get new players interested in the game if it takes you over 4 hours to play just one game.
Flat to hit charts -
This is just cool and borrows heavily for AOS. All models regardless of opponent WS hit at a certain number. We have seen the charts for space marines already and so for both shooting and melee, will hit opponents on a 3+. No more comparing weapon skill just roll your to hit number and you are done. This also makes it easier for new players as they just need to remember there models stats to get started instead of trying to compare a WS chart.
Movement stats - the return of the movement stat for all models. This I will be honest im not sure about. Its easier to memorize flat stats for types of models but now we will have to remember stats for all races and models. Some examples that were leaked by GW was Terminators moving 4, space marines moving 5, etc. I will need to see how this goes once the edition comes out.
Armor save modifiers - ok so this is new to me. I know that it was around for 2nd edition and was part of Necromunda and now part of Shadow wars Arrmeggedden. What i like about this is that all weapons will now seem to have a difference between them and also all will have a chance to hurt models. No more tanking on 2+ as bolters will now add a 1+ modifier and so will need to save on a 3+ instead.
Free Core rules - enough said, who would have thought that GW would be giving us free rules? This I dont mind them borrowing from AOS as free core rules just like with other games out there will make it easier for new players to get started. The days of buying 150.00 of rule books at least to get started is over.
As stated, i dont want just 40K to be all AOS, I'm ok with borrowing from it but I still want 40k to be different enough. All in all I am super excited about the new edition and cant wait to get my hands on it and start gaming.
