Thursday, May 22, 2014

7th Edition is upon us!

Well, I haven't purchased the new book yet and it will probably be another week before I do, but I have read a lot about the changes from 6 to 7 and here I want to discuss some interesting (to me at least) things.

Terrain-Specific rules
What I mean by this is apparently each piece of terrain that GW makes now has a corresponding set of rules to go with it as opposed to something more general.

I think this is also fine going forward so long as they still include some general rules for non-GW terrain as well as include rules for their new kits in the box with the model kit.

New Psychic Rules
The introduction of a phase is of course a big deal as I have said in a previous post.  This new phase and how Psykers and their powers work in 7th is beneficial to the game IMHO.

I at first didn't think this would be good, they were just copying and pasting straight out of fantasy battle and being lazy for some reason.

The more I have read and thought about it though the better it seems.

Having a Phase means all of the casting and dispelling happens at the same time during the turn.  And all of the rules should hopefully be on the same page in the rulebook.  Both of these things should speed up the game.  Unless you knew the rules by heart in 6th, it would take a while to page through the rulebook and FAQs to find out if say a witchfire could be cast out of a transport's fire ports or if a blessing would effect a unit inside the vehicle.
The blessings happened at the "start of the Psyker's movement phase" and the witchfire was in the shooting phase.  Splitting this up between phases meant that you would have to think more about positioning and go through the rulebook to find out if you could move and use the witchfire or not and whether it could be shot out of a hatch.
Also the phrase "start of the Psyker's movement phase" could be interpreted as start of the player's movement phase so before anything else happens or at that specific model's phase implying each unit or model has its own set of movement, shooting and assaulting phases.  This means that you could move a unit and then cast the blessing from the Psyker.

Now with one phase this is solved because everything happens in this phase, not spread throughout the turn.

The rules surrounding Casting and Perils of the Warp make it more likely that while the Psychic Power that you just need to cast will happen but it also makes it more likely that you and perhaps those around will die.

The dice pool is used to take as many dice as you want and roll them to get 4 pluses.  The more powerful a spell the more 4 pluses need to be rolled.  You take the amount of dice out of your pool that you want to try and take the test and roll them trying to get the amount of 4 pluses required.  This allows you to take as many dice as yyou want to ensure the spell works.  The problem is then rolling double 6 or double 1s increases dramatically.  So the possibility of dying is greatly increased.

I am encouraged by the new Psychic phase in addition to the following:

Objective Secured
Everything can hold objectives now.  EVERYTHING!  That means my 10 man assault terminator squad can, as can Scout Sentinels or Rhinos.
The best part about 7th however may be the Objective Secured rule.  It means that only a  unit (which if it has a dedicated transport also gets this rule) that has this rule can contest an objective held by another unit with this rule. Troops are the only units with this rule built-in.
Now I can hold the objective with my terminators, but if you grots show up and sit within contesting range of that objective they count as holding it NOT the terminators.

Wow, this rule along with the previous Psychic changes and this next rule:

New Vehicle Damage Chart and its Effect on Passengers
1-3 means almost nothing.  4 is again no big deal.  5 is weapon destroyed; again so what. 6 is Immobilized (possibly painful but again its not destroyed.) Only on a 7 is the vehicle exploded.

Also when an effect happens to the vehicle if the squad inside passes a LD check they are fine.
No no more having the passengers automatically do nothing the next turn because their tank got shot.

These two changes make vehicles much stronger and a fully mounted army is very viable and tougher than it was in 6th.



Combine the last three rules changes listed above and MSU is back and can compete against Deathstars or other super powerful 6th ed armies.

I am quite happy about this since my Minotaurs are essentially MSU.

Also my Iron Warriors may make a strong comback because of vehicles.

I am quite excited to get my hands on the new book!

Until Next Time.....

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