Warhammer 40K Tabletop XXX: Imperium After Dark

[Turalisj]

I know its way early, but I propose for the next thread title: flamers are the new hotness.

Played a game of 8e yesterday, incendine combustors on kastellan robots completely smoked terminators.

[Blackhawk748]

I know its way early, but I propose for the next thread title: flamers are the new hotness.

Played a game of 8e yesterday, incendine combustors on kastellan robots completely smoked terminators.

Glad to hear that. I've got a full Mob of Burna Boyz that have been dying to light something up.

Edit: More good news for Burnas, we can shoot with them and then use them in the ensuing Melee. We can actually use our Power Swords blowtorches.

Though upon further inspection the Burna is Assault d3 while normal Flamers are Assault d6 for some reason.

[Tome]

Mmm, I've been doing some math and flamers? Really are the new hotness, for Tau at least.

Things to expect from Tau in 8th, based on some math and theory:

• Few missile pods or ion weapons, because they're super expensive and limited by low AP and middling strength. Hope everyone magnetised their broadsides and ghostkeels!
• Lots of fusion, backed by maybe a few railguns. Possibly some plasma, just because we need something for killing termies and marines.
• Ghostkeels, pathfinders with rail rifles and commanders are all nice and killy for their points.
• Longstrike, railsides and Stormsurges look okayish. Not sure how they'll work in actual play though, I'll have to give them some practical tests.
• Stealth suits and drones combine speed with better numbers than most of our units, meaning you'll likely see them as objective grabbers.
• Riptides and Crisis teams got prohibitively expensive. Flamers are good enough that you might see Crisis teams with them anyway.
• Commanders with four guns are the killiest things we have by a fair margin, thanks to BS2+ and a comparatively low price point. Expect Commander-spam lists.

[Turalisj]

Yeah, kinda annoyed my crisis heavy Tau are hurt hard by points.

[Tome]

Yeah, kinda annoyed my crisis heavy Tau are hurt hard by points.

Saaaaaame. And they can't even be troops any more.

I hope the codex/first round of errata makes crisis suits a bit better. Mostly cheaper, killier or able to be taken in smaller units.

[DaedalusMkV]

Mmm, I've been doing some math and flamers? Really are the new hotness, for Tau at least.

Things to expect from Tau in 8th, based on some math and theory:

From my own theorycrafting, a big ball of Fire Warriors supported by a Fireblade and an Ethereal also seems to be an extremely efficient method to get huge amounts of firepower out of a small number of points. Four ten-strong Strike Squads, a Fireblade and an Ethereal is less than 500 points and packs 120 S5 shots rerolling 1s To Hit within 15". Since you only need to have one model per squad in range of the Fireblade and Ethereal, it's not at all hard to pass along the bonuses to a lot of Fire Warriors.

Luckily, I happen to own 40 Pulse Rifle Fire Warriors, an Ethereal and a Fireblade, so I think I'm pretty set on that front. Add Longstrike in a Railhead and a Railhead buddy for him and we're still below 1000 points and have a solid firebase capable of dealing with a very wide range of threats efficiently. Season with Fusion Blasters and Plasma Rifles to taste, along with the ubiquitous Ghostkeels.

The units I'm finding really interesting in Tau right now are Vespids and Sun Shark Bombers. Vespid Neutron Blasters are Assault 2 now, and Vespids are extremely fast, decently tough and not too expensive. They might actually be something that serves a real purpose in Tau lists these days, since a whole bunch of S5 AP-2 shots on a fast platform is nothing to sneeze at. Meanwhile, the Sun Shark has the ability to utterly devastate squads of tough Infantry with its bomb and packs a lot of S7 shooting with two Missile Pods and four Ion Rifles, all on a blistering-fast platform that costs less than 200 points. Neither is just blatantly excellent like Ghostkeels or Commanders, but both do seem to have the potential to be very effective these days.

[Bobby Baratheon]

I realized today that Dreadnoughts now benefit from Azrael's Lion Helm. Seriously considering making a Dreadnought wrecking ball list (with 3-5 dreadnoughts) with 4++ saves all round. The dreadnoughts can provide basically total cover to Azrael (thus protecting him from snipers) while being cheap and shooting things up with assault cannons while marching up the field. Heck, I could even throw in a Techmarine to keep things healing while not being too expensive. Once it gets to melee, it would wreck things up. If it gets shot to crap, it worked as a distraction for my other units.

Also the new rule that objectives are claimed by the number of bodies is stupid. Why are six grots better at holding an objective than five terminators? That almost necessitates having hordes to claim objectives.

Transports got a huge nerf as well. They can't even really do their job properly now, and I only really anticipate using Rhino's rarely and using Razorback as cheap fire support that doesn't take up slots for other, better things.

[Tome]

Mmm, a big blob of fire warriors does look nice and killy. It's not very fast though, and probably difficult to protect now that first turn charges and consolidating into combat is a thing again.

Kroot bubblewrap might be making a comeback.

Or grav drones everywhere, if you bring lots of min Pathfinder units.

Tempted to pick up a sun shark now. A pity the razorshark is still terrible.

[Blackhawk748]

I realized today that Dreadnoughts now benefit from Azrael's Lion Helm. Seriously considering making a Dreadnought wrecking ball list (with 3-5 dreadnoughts) with 4++ saves all round. The dreadnoughts can provide basically total cover to Azrael (thus protecting him from snipers) while being cheap and shooting things up with assault cannons while marching up the field. Heck, I could even throw in a Techmarine to keep things healing while not being too expensive. Once it gets to melee, it would wreck things up. If it gets shot to crap, it worked as a distraction for my other units.

Also the new rule that objectives are claimed by the number of bodies is stupid. Why are six grots better at holding an objective than five terminators? That almost necessitates having hordes to claim objectives.

Transports got a huge nerf as well. They can't even really do their job properly now, and I only really anticipate using Rhino's rarely and using Razorback as cheap fire support that doesn't take up slots for other, better things.

The sillyness continues. Someone on Dakka just pointed out that Stormboys are better than normal Boyz in almost every possible way now.

Stormboyz, 8 points for M 12" Slugga Boyz that can Advance and Charge with no support (yes you may lose a few, but still)

Meanwhile boyz are 6 points for a M 5" unit that doesnt do anything the Stormboyz can't except maybe have a few Rokkits in it.

Im looking at this and thinking that the Green Tide is gonna have an awful lot of Jump Infantry in it now.....

[Bobby Baratheon]

Or just a lot of Weirdboyz. Da Jump, combined with 'Ere We Go (that's still a thing, right?) is just amazing.

"Hey, uh, both of these Weirdboyz are using Da Jump. So now there's a Meganobz blob and a huge Boyz blob right next to your most valuable units. Also, I can reroll the charge dice."

My blob of Ork boyz might see the light of day just to do this. Would serve as a nice little distraction for the rest of my army.

[Tome]

Or just a lot of Weirdboyz. Da Jump, combined with 'Ere We Go (that's still a thing, right?) is just amazing.

"Hey, uh, both of these Weirdboyz are using Da Jump. So now there's a Meganobz blob and a huge Boyz blob right next to your most valuable units. Also, I can reroll the charge dice."

My blob of Ork boyz might see the light of day just to do this. Would serve as a nice little distraction for the rest of my army.

Rule of one, only one Da Jump per turn.

Orks need some more tellyportas.

[JNAProductions]

Or just a lot of Weirdboyz. Da Jump, combined with 'Ere We Go (that's still a thing, right?) is just amazing.

"Hey, uh, both of these Weirdboyz are using Da Jump. So now there's a Meganobz blob and a huge Boyz blob right next to your most valuable units. Also, I can reroll the charge dice."

My blob of Ork boyz might see the light of day just to do this. Would serve as a nice little distraction for the rest of my army.

Rule of One. One Weirdboy casts (or tries to cast and fails) Da Jump, the other Weirdboy contemplates his navel or something.

[Blackhawk748]

And now we see why the Rule of One is stupid. Especially since the other power, Warpath, is totally fine spammed over an entire army.

Seriously, that Rule of One is just killing multiple Psykers.

[Voidhawk]

Or just a lot of Weirdboyz. Da Jump, combined with 'Ere We Go (that's still a thing, right?) is just amazing.

"Hey, uh, both of these Weirdboyz are using Da Jump. So now there's a Meganobz blob and a huge Boyz blob right next to your most valuable units. Also, I can reroll the charge dice."

My blob of Ork boyz might see the light of day just to do this. Would serve as a nice little distraction for the rest of my army.

Rule of One. Except for smite, you can only cast each power once each turn. So the unit of Meganobs can be in your face turn one, but the others will have to wait their turn.

EDIT: Ninja'd three times.

[DaedalusMkV]

Mmm, a big blob of fire warriors does look nice and killy. It's not very fast though, and probably difficult to protect now that first turn charges and consolidating into combat is a thing again.

Kroot bubblewrap might be making a comeback.

Or grav drones everywhere, if you bring lots of min Pathfinder units.

Tempted to pick up a sun shark now. A pity the razorshark is still terrible.

Well, charge anything in the deathball and you take 120 Pulse Rifle shots, still rerolling 1s. They only hit on 6s, so the really scary stuff won't be too bothered, but that's still enough to remove a few models and make the charge much less reliable. And if that charge fails, whatever tried it is going to be too busy dying to get around to killing anything in melee. And even if they do pull it off, they probably just got rid of maybe two Strike Squads in exchange for their best alpha-strike. Just fall back anything in CC with them and blast the offending melee dudes to pieces.

I don't think Kroot are very good in this edition. 1 S4 attack hitting on 3s isn't bad per se, but Kroot die if you look at them funny and still cost almost as many points as Fire Warriors. Wrapping your cheapo units with slightly cheaper units seems like a waste. The whole reason the Strike Squad ball is good is because it's so cheap, after all, and if the enemy wants to rush at it they're kind of playing into your hands considering how much better your shooting is within 15". Just take more Fire Warriors if you're concerned about losing your front units to enemy charges. Or grav drones, yeah. They're pretty cool now, along with all the Pathfinder specialist drones. +6" range for your Pulse Rifles on a whole bunch of Fire Warriors is pretty great.

Yeah, nothing changed with the Razorshark. The Sun Shark was always the one verging on playable (I though my Sun Shark was actually pretty good back in 6th edition, to be honest. 360' fire arcs on all its guns was a pretty big deal), and nothing has changed there.


Another interesting thing I'm thinking about is pairing Broadsides and Sniper Drones. Keep them close together and abuse the Sniper Drone hit allocation rules as hard as you can. Opponent shot a Lascannon at the Broadsides? Take it on a Sniper Drone, waste the whole shot. They shot Bolters at the Drones? Take it on the Broadsides, they won't even notice. It basically means that no matter what the enemy shoots at them, it's hitting a target it's less than good at killing.

Frankly, Tau are looking very interesting in the new edition. Lots of cool synergies to employ and much more variety in functional strategies than there were in the past. Just... Don't try to bring Riptides to the table. Man did those things get murdered in the edition change.

[JNAProductions]

Casualties are taken out by the DEFENDER, so killing people on Overwatch won't usually make a charge harder.

[Cheesegear]

Seriously, that Rule of One is just killing multiple Psykers.

...and they saw that it was good.

[Blackhawk748]

...and they saw that it was good.

Well they just kneecapped TS, Tzeentch Daemons, and Snakebite players.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Okay, I must be really out of the loop here but where are you all getting the rules from? Thing launches on the 17th right AFAIK

[Blackhawk748]

Okay, I must be really out of the loop here but where are you all getting the rules from? Thing launches on the 17th right AFAIK

Rule of One was an official leak, everything else is unofficial leaks via pictures.

[Cheesegear]

Well they just kneecapped TS

Not really. You can still cast Smite as many times as you want, and Thousand Sons' Smite is even better than normal.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Rule of One was an official leak, everything else is unofficial leaks via pictures.

Ah, cool.

As I recall you no longer roll for powers in 8th so Rule of One does prevent any issues cropping up from a given power being too strong. Let's face it, you just know that competitive players gravitate towards "the only power you ever need to cast" thinking.

And as Cheese alluded to throwing multiple mortal wounds around is a viable option if you happen to run a lot of psykers.

[Blackhawk748]

Not really. You can still cast Smite as many times as you want, and Thousand Sons' Smite is even better than normal.

Wooo *twirls finger* Just about every TS player i've seen so far has said they will have 3 Sorcerers, tops. And most are saying only 1 (who will be Ahriman) cuz spamming Improved Smite just isnt worth the 100+ points the Sorcerer is gonna run.

Im rather annoyed that we Orks lost Power Vomit and Zzzap. Those were two witchfires that were actually worth using, and that says something.

[Cheesegear]

Im rather annoyed that we Orks lost Power Vomit and Zzzap.

That's what hurts more. It's not the Rule of One that hurts, it's the fact that there just aren't that many Powers worth casting, and the ones that are, are potentially game-breaking, and shouldn't be cast more than once.

"I want to cast as many garbage Powers as I want." - that's Smite.
"I want to cast the game-breaking ones more than once." - no.

The only thing you lost was variety. Which is fine, because there were too many Powers in 7th and a whole bunch of them were terrible. Buffs in 8th Ed. are done using Characters and Abilities. Not Psykers. Oh noes. The game changed.

[Blackhawk748]

That's what hurts more. It's not the Rule of One that hurts, it's the fact that there just aren't that many Powers worth casting, and the ones that are, are potentially game-breaking, and shouldn't be cast more than once.

"I want to cast as many garbage Powers as I want." - that's Smite.
"I want to cast the game-breaking ones more than once." - no.

The only thing you lost was variety. Which is fine, because there were too many Powers in 7th and a whole bunch of them were terrible. Buffs in 8th Ed. are done using Characters and Abilities. Not Psykers. Oh noes. The game changed.

My problem is, is that the Rule of One is far to indiscriminate. Cast Da Jump multiple times? I can see the problem. Cast Eadbanger or Warpath multiple times? How is this a problem? 'Eadbanger is a, possibly decent, single killshot, and just make Warpath not stack with itself.

[Cheesegear]

My problem is, is that the Rule of One is far to indiscriminate. [...] Cast Eadbanger or Warpath multiple times? How is this a problem?

Because it's easier to make one Rule to rule them all.
Blanket rules are indiscriminate. They prevent the game from being broken, and perhaps, sometimes, they hurt armies that they're not supposed to.

But, if you really want the rule changed, if you really want something done about it, if you really want answers that I obviously can't give you because I'm not part of the game design process...
There's a thing that GW does now. Started in 2016 just after a certain survey's results came out saying that players really wanted company engagement and clarification of rules...
I forget what it was...
Umm...

Also, Smite does Mortal Wounds and Thousand Sons do it even better. 3 Sorcerers max is probably about right, considering what they can do.

[Requizen]

Played two games today. Quick thoughts:

Game One opponent was a Ravenwing Deathstar. Black Knights (couple units) huddled around Sammael and a Darkshroud with an Apothecary and a Banner for +1A. Tore through everything and while -1 to hit everything doesn't seem big, it actually is quite damaging. Was surprised at how powerful this setup is. He ran it alongside a Knight, but I honestly think he would have been better served with another unit or two of Black Knights around another Darkshroud to smash two sides of the table at the same time. Lost narrowly after some poor rolling and positioning, though killed all but 9 of his models. Tied on points, lost to FB and StW.

Game Two opponent was Dark Eldar, multiple units of Reaver Bikes and 5 Venoms. Holy crap he had a lot of shooting, and it was all extremely fast. Not an optimized list, though, I won handily after blobbing over all the objectives with my Infantry and blitzing up the board with Wraiths and the Nightbringer, holding him back until he finally cleared it on bottom of T3, but I'd already cleaned up a good portion of his army as well.

I tried a few things:

-Cryptek-backed Warrior blobs are great, they just eat shooting. Not as invincible as before, but people really focus on taking them down all the way to prevent RP. Smart, but I'll take an entire army's worth of shooting on my cheapest models and be ok with it too.
-C'tan Nightbringer is strong but still really should be careful. I threw him out solo in both games and regretted it. 4++ still isn't great, even with 8 Wounds. Worked better when paired with Wraiths (not as fast as them but still pretty fast) than just standing behind Warriors.
-Wraiths are still good. Haven't changed a lot actually - don't expect them to kill much but also don't expect them to go down without a fight. I think the AP-1 is better than Rending honestly, and hitting on 3+ naturally is a blessing. The new wound chart also is a boon, since you're never wounding on 6+ without some sort of shenanigan.
-Doomsday Ark, not sure on. Very strong, but we played on really terrain dense boards (as I think you're supposed to) and there was plenty of times I had to take a less than optimal shot so I didn't have to move. Comparable to 2-3 Heavy Destroyers, but honestly the mobility may just be way better.
-Monolith was... I dunno. I may have just used it wrong, but it did nothing. It's better than before, because I actually got to put it down on turn one and shoot things, and it survived multiple turns, but man, 4+ to hit is just garbage. How do Tau do it? Oh yeah, by having way more shots and ways to get boosts/rerolls. One game isn't indicative, but I'm really hesitant to put it down again.
-Deathmarks were also odd. S4 AP0 guns suck, but for 100 points getting DS and the chance to plink out some MWs? That's not terrible. It's not great, sure, but it isn't the worst thing in the world. Super cheap and the ability to pop up and threaten sides is interesting, but maybe not amazing.
-Crypteks handing out 5++ makes them autoincludes. Seriously, watching Warriors shrug off Plasma is a hoot.
-Heavy Destroyers are... expensive. Chunked down a Knight super easily, and blew up a Venom in a volley, but 75 for a single shot per turn is hefty. Again, this really depends on how heavily the meta goes towards spamming big things like Knights, WKs, or Nidzilla lists. I can see myself bringing 6 easily, but I can also see myself bringing none.

Next games will be on Wednesday probably, gonna try out Night Scythes I think. Dropping before movement and no longer forcing snapshots makes me a bit more iffy about taking them, but I can see really good things from plopping down 10 Immortals. There's also the hilarious idea of putting 20 Flayed Ones in a Night Scythe for even better surprise violence than their regular deployment. Flayed Ones in general will also make an appearance, I think, as will regular Destroyers or Tomb Blades.

The C'tan + Wraith "star" is pretty interesting - Wraiths now are amusingly one of our cheaper options (they only went down a bit, but everything else went up) and they can deliver Nightbringer/Deceiver to combat quite nicely. Fast, killy, though expensive. Still, I think it's better overall than Warscythe or even Shield Lychguard stars, which are super slow and can just get cut down before they get across the board.

Necrons still are wildly between low shots/high damage and moderate shots/moderate damage, with no real mass damage shooting unit, more focused on attrition. But we're good at it as well, and a lot of the changes benefit us quite a bit.

[Voidhawk]

Okay, I must be really out of the loop here but where are you all getting the rules from? Thing launches on the 17th right AFAIK

Check your PM inbox.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well they just kneecapped TS, Tzeentch Daemons, and Snakebite players.

2 Weirdboys is still a lot of weirdboys and doesn't suffer from the rule of 1 at all.

Tzeentch and Grey Knights are the ones who are stuffed limited to spamming boring shooting attacks.

Though Thousand Sons shouldn't really have more than 3 non-champion level Sorcerers anyway unless Magnus is around to force them into a larger force. Having to split the spoils three ways is bad enough.

[Cheesegear]

Tzeentch and Grey Knights are the ones who are stuffed limited to spamming boring shooting attacks.

That's the actual complaint I'm hearing. "Psykers are boring now."
Sure. It's valid. But I've also been playing a game for the last ~2 years where pre-game rolls and the Psychic Phase has taken more time than any other segment of the game, because there were too many Psykers on the board, where the player has too many options, and too many choices and too many dice to roll.

Complexity isn't always good. Neither is simplicity.

GW went from one to the other, and I'm not even bothered. Because regular, 'boring' Characters are now the ones to hand out buffs, rather than Psykers.