Warhammer 40K Tabletop XXX: Imperium After Dark

[Renegade Paladin]

Faeit 212 has those Sisters rumors, with a bit more than Drasius posted (including how to activate Acts of Faith). Take with salt.

[Blackhawk748]

Funnily enough the Orks will probably have a bunch of 4+ armor vehicles, so the at least arent allergic to Grav


@ Sisters leaks: That activation system is utter and complete gak And the Acts themselves are not impressive at all.

Acts of Faith
Roll a D6 at the start of each of your turns. On a roll of 2+, one unit
from your army with the Acts of Faith ability can perform an Act of
Faith chosen from the following list. Some abilities may allow you to use
more than on Act of Faith in the same turn; when this is the case, a
different unit must be chosen to perform each Act of Faith.

On a slight plus side, we can get Imagifiers to let us use more than one per turn...on a 4+. This is stupid.

Continuing the stupidity is that the Penitent Engine costs more than a Dreadnaught, even though the Dred has guns and better stats.

And i just realized that Sisters are only allowed 2 alternate weapons per unit, not the usual scaling. So lame.

[Tome]

Yeah, those Sisters leaks seem very disappointing. Fortunately they aren't accompanied by images so we can still hope they're bull.

Disappointing to hear that Grav is still king.

[Voidhawk]

Full photo leak of all Blood Angels datasheets, and all Space Marine stats and points costs.
A Rhino is 70pts. A Drop-pod is 103pts. Hot damn.
EDIT: If you're a Successor Chapter, you can't use any named characters. Is this the first time GW has tagged rules to paint schemes? This is going to be the most ignored rule they ever written.

[Blackhawk748]

Yeah, those Sisters leaks seem very disappointing. Fortunately they aren't accompanied by images so we can still hope they're bull.

Disappointing to hear that Grav is still king.

The comments are freakin stupid too. They're all like "Why are you saying AoF suck? Its basically the Ynead thing on a 4+ instead of when a unit dies, and everyone said that was OP"

I have never heard anyone say that Ynead was OP and they seem to forget that Sisters are basically a freakin Horde army, so you'd need like 10 Imagifiers to cover you entire army. So freakin dumb, i hope its wrong.

[Renegade Paladin]

Full photo leak of all Blood Angels datasheets, and all Space Marine stats and points costs.
A Rhino is 70pts. A Drop-pod is 103pts. Hot damn.
EDIT: If you're a Successor Chapter, you can't use any named characters. Is this the first time GW has tagged rules to paint schemes? This is going to be the most ignored rule they ever written.

Hey, Whirlwind launchers actually do stuff now!

[Bobby Baratheon]

Also of note is the fact that Razorbacks are 5 points cheaper than Rhinos. Barring some advantage for Rhinos other than the extra 5 transport spots, expect to see more Razorbacks with 5 man squads now that all transports are assault vehicles and even heavy bolter Razorbacks can contribute meaningfully.

Also, now I can factor in meltaguns, multimeltas, plasma cannons and missile launchers into my calculations from a few posts back.

EDIT: They are now included, along with the points cost for each weapon. At some point I'll include the other frequently seen weapons (autocannons, etc) as well as wounds per shooting phase per point for each weapon, and maybe look at how each does against T7 and T6 vehicles.

Interestingly, loyalists get Reaper Autocannons now. Was this a thing previously?

[Adrastos42]

Hey, Whirlwind launchers actually do stuff now!

And predator autocannons, too!

[LeSwordfish]

If you can charge from Drop Pods, damn straight they should be triple the price.

[Bobby Baratheon]

And predator autocannons, too!

Predator autocannons doing 3 damage feels like a big deal. . . That's potentially really deadly for light to medium vehicles and MC's.

Also of note, the assault cannons have exchanged Rending for an additional two shots, which is a decent tradeoff in this edition where everything has pseudo-rending. Twin linked assault cannons seem like a decent bargain at 35 points, as you're getting 12 (!) S6 shots with -1 AP, which has a lot of potential for destroying infantry and vehicles alike, as you're going to wound anything T11 and below on 5's and anything T5 or below on 3's, which seems like a good place to be. I might have to pick up a few tl assault cannon turrets for my razorbacks.

On another note, LR Crusaders seem positively murderous now. At 12", they get 24 bolter (28 if you get the storm bolter) shots and 12 assault cannon shots, and 2d6 frag cannon shots. Considering that all the weapons can fire at different targets and that land raiders can move and shoot without penalty, a multimelta would be a good pickup as well, as you can use your hurricane bolters/frag cannons to annihilate infantry while using the multimelta and the tl assault cannon to put the hurt on vehicles. The frag cannon has the same S and Ap as the assault cannon (and auto-hits), so it could also potentially help kill vehicles through volume of attacks.

[Renegade Paladin]

Also of note is the fact that Razorbacks are 5 points cheaper than Rhinos. Barring some advantage for Rhinos other than the extra 5 transport spots, expect to see more Razorbacks with 5 man squads now that all transports are assault vehicles and even heavy bolter Razorbacks can contribute meaningfully.

Those points costs do not include wargear. You pay 65 points for the Razorback hull and then I imagine must buy a heavy weapon for the listed points cost. In the final calculation, the Razorback isn't going to be cheaper; for instance that heavy bolter Razorback is going to be 82 points after buying the twin heavy bolter.

Edit: Speaking of wargear points, the Predator autocannon is only one point less than a twin-linked lascannon.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Those points costs do not include wargear. You pay 65 points for the Razorback hull and then I imagine must buy a heavy weapon for the listed points cost. In the final calculation, the Razorback isn't going to be cheaper; for instance that heavy bolter Razorback is going to be 82 points after buying the twin heavy bolter.

Edit: Speaking of wargear points, the Predator autocannon is only one point less than a twin-linked lascannon.

True - I missed that. However, 12 points for a tl heavy bolter seems a very fair trade over a rhino if you were already going to use 5 man squads, and some of the other potential weapons for Razorbacks (lascannons, assault cannons, etc) seem to be pretty killy for their cost. Razorbacks aren't going to be cheap, I guess, but they seem like a decent way to up your dakka for a reasonable price (especially if they're T7/8 wounds like the Rhino).

[Blackhawk748]

Am i the only one finding the points cost on Wargear weird? There seems a lot of not base 5.

[LansXero]

Whats weird is that they haven't announced an Army Builder, which seems like it will be very, very useful with all these finicky points costs.

[Voidhawk]

Full Tau leaks. Though the photos are rather low quality.

[Renegade Paladin]

So going through the BA leaks and adding points values, Terminators are back to being really expensive, even more than they were in 5th. Base cost for 5 Terminator bodies, 5 storm bolters, 4 power fists, and a power sword on the sergeant (bare bones as it is now) goes 224 points. A Predator with a single autocannon goes for 151 before sponsons. I believe we've found their method for getting 1500 point games to average about 90 minutes; just make everything cost so much that the armies are significantly smaller.

[Requizen]

Sieze the Initiative is officially back in as is random turn length. Two things that don't precisely break the game, but are annoying as heck.

[Wraith]

EDIT: If you're a Successor Chapter, you can't use any named characters. Is this the first time GW has tagged rules to paint schemes? This is going to be the most ignored rule they ever written.

They.... kind of did this in 6th, although they approached it from the other way and gave you a caveat to ignore it. Before the Chapter Tactics of 7th were introduced, what Space Marine Chapter was defined by what Special Character you took; if you took Calgar, you were granted his Special Abilities and were by extension playing Ultramarines, if you took Pedro Kantor you got his Special Abilities and thus were nominally playing Crimson Fists, because those characters HAD to be your Warlord.

Unfortunately, this was in the same book that ALSO said "feel free to paint your models however you want and rename these characters to suit yourself, there's enough Chapters in the Imperium that some overlap between equipment and special skills is going to be inevitable", so the amount of multi-coloured Pedro Kantors, in particular, stick out on my memory as being A Thing for quite a while.

But, yeah. GW wanted you to get stuck with Character + Rules = Paint Scheme, but they didn't try very hard at it and almost no one capitulated, especially with the Codex: Space Marines book. The two Angels of Death books were generally treated with a bit more cooperation in that regard, but only because it was harder to disguise a specific non-Codex Army List (ie, Death Company or Ravenwing) as a customised Chapter.

[Drasius]

So going through the BA leaks and adding points values, Terminators are back to being really expensive, even more than they were in 5th. Base cost for 5 Terminator bodies, 5 storm bolters, 4 power fists, and a power sword on the sergeant (bare bones as it is now) goes 224 points. A Predator with a single autocannon goes for 151 before sponsons. I believe we've found their method for getting 1500 point games to average about 90 minutes; just make everything cost so much that the armies are significantly smaller.

Then just play larger games if you're unhappy with a "small" army? The constant points reductions has meant that a 1500 game has gone from 20 marines, a tank and a character to 60 marines, 12 transports, 15 scouts and 2 characters and possibly a few other sundries as well. While putting lots of models on the table is nice, I think we have to accept that the more models you put on the table, the longer it takes to play as that's a fairly basic sort of thing. Who knows, maybe the "standard" points level will rise to 2k or even 2500 is people want to use the same amount of models as now. Hell, the "standard" points for 30k is 2.5 - 3k, so why not have a different points "standard" for 40k? Every edition has seen the "standard" creep up to the point where you're starting to get into the same issue that WFB had where you need an exorbitant amount of models to play lower points games.

[Vaz]

They.... kind of did this in 6th, although they approached it from the other way and gave you a caveat to ignore it. Before the Chapter Tactics of 7th were introduced, what Space Marine Chapter was defined by what Special Character you took; if you took Calgar, you were granted his Special Abilities and were by extension playing Ultramarines, if you took Pedro Kantor you got his Special Abilities and thus were nominally playing Crimson Fists, because those characters HAD to be your Warlord.

Unfortunately, this was in the same book that ALSO said "feel free to paint your models however you want and rename these characters to suit yourself, there's enough Chapters in the Imperium that some overlap between equipment and special skills is going to be inevitable", so the amount of multi-coloured Pedro Kantors, in particular, stick out on my memory as being A Thing for quite a while.

But, yeah. GW wanted you to get stuck with Character + Rules = Paint Scheme, but they didn't try very hard at it and almost no one capitulated, especially with the Codex: Space Marines book. The two Angels of Death books were generally treated with a bit more cooperation in that regard, but only because it was harder to disguise a specific non-Codex Army List (ie, Death Company or Ravenwing) as a customised Chapter.

They did it in 3rd, 4th and 5th as well, only without the caveat.
It was often ignored. Not sure how this is novel, or why people are up in arms about it.

It's also literally the baseline of the Horus Heresy. No issues.

[Forum Explorer]

Then just play larger games if you're unhappy with a "small" army? The constant points reductions has meant that a 1500 game has gone from 20 marines, a tank and a character to 60 marines, 12 transports, 15 scouts and 2 characters and possibly a few other sundries as well. While putting lots of models on the table is nice, I think we have to accept that the more models you put on the table, the longer it takes to play as that's a fairly basic sort of thing. Who knows, maybe the "standard" points level will rise to 2k or even 2500 is people want to use the same amount of models as now. Hell, the "standard" points for 30k is 2.5 - 3k, so why not have a different points "standard" for 40k? Every edition has seen the "standard" creep up to the point where you're starting to get into the same issue that WFB had where you need an exorbitant amount of models to play lower points games.

Yeah, I know 9th age has much large points costs, but that's more to have better balance in costing things out. The standard games simply are larger.

[Drasius]

Yeah, I know 9th age has much large points costs, but that's more to have better balance in costing things out. The standard games simply are larger.

And I suspect that's what the aim of GW is, to try and get a better balance for 40k. Sisters got a huge discount on battle sisters (12 --> 9), Fire warriors got a discount (9 --> 8), Vanilla marines went down (14 --> 13) so it's not all about points hikes, just costing things more appropriately (hopefully). Until we get a more solid grasp on how it all goes together, we still can't say what's strong and what's weak (though Tau seem to have been bopped with the nerf bat pretty hard from initial impressions, but my tanks seems to be a bit better, so I'm less affected). Hopefully the new costings mean that infantry are viable like they've tried to do for the last few editions (with very little success).

[LeSwordfish]

Sieze the Initiative is officially back in as is random turn length. Two things that don't precisely break the game, but are annoying as heck.

If I may, I think Random Game Length is important for balancing purposes: if the game has a fixed endpoint then going second is immensely powerful, because you get a whole turn without your opponent being able to respond in any way. This mears that I'm objective-based games, fast objective grabbers and second turn is nearly an instant win. Random game length forces you to treat every turn as if the game might continue - so you can't just throw all your Scouts out of cover and onto the objective, because your opponent might get a chance to shoot them off.

[Bobby Baratheon]

Minor notes from the Blood Angels leaks:
-Just noticed that Combat Shields now give a 5+ Invulnerable save. Will that be a not-pointless upgrade? Hmm.
-Crozius Arcanum is no longer identical to a power maul, and has one less S and does 2 damage
-The whole bit about chainswords having a special thing with an extra attack now appears pointless, as Combat Knives (and presumably other basic ccw for other factions) have the same ability. Should have just given them -1AP or 2 Damage, GW. They're still depressingly vanilla for a chainsaw sword.
-There is no reason to ever take a Power Fist over a Thunder Hammer for non-characters, since they both cost 20 for said models. PF's do D3 damage while TH's do 3, and are otherwise identical. The huge reduction in points for other power weapons makes me feel like PF's could have at least been dropped to somewhere in the 15-18 range, but they are cheaper than in 7th.
-Storm bolters feel worth it for 2 points, as they double the bolter's firepower. Models with the option for storm bolters other than Termies will probably have better options.
-Combi-weapons seem pretty sweet, especially for characters with a 2+ BS as they can fire both options (if you really need those two bolter shots lol) and still hit on 3+.
-Wrist-mounted grenade launcher has AP1, which seems like a typo unless they really wanted it to improve enemy armor saves
-Shotguns add 1 to strength if within in half range, which could be interesting for aggressive scouts. You would get to wound MEQs on 3's, which is something, I guess. No AP makes me think that will be useless for models it would have been useful against (T4 MEQs), who will just save those extra wounds. 10 Scouts could pump out 20 S5 shots, though, which could be useful to take a wound or two off vehicles in a pinch.

[deuterio12]

Also of note is the fact that Razorbacks are 5 points cheaper than Rhinos. Barring some advantage for Rhinos other than the extra 5 transport spots, expect to see more Razorbacks with 5 man squads now that all transports are assault vehicles and even heavy bolter Razorbacks can contribute meaningfully.

5 points cheaper before wargear. A twin-linked heavy bolter will add 17 points to the razorback's cost.

[Drasius]

Minor notes from the Blood Angels leaks:
-Just noticed that Combat Shields now give a 5+ Invulnerable save. Will that be a not-pointless upgrade? Hmm.
-Crozius Arcanum is no longer identical to a power maul, and has one less S and does 2 damage
-The whole bit about chainswords having a special thing with an extra attack now appears pointless, as Combat Knives (and presumably other basic ccw for other factions) have the same ability. Should have just given them -1AP or 2 Damage, GW. They're still depressingly vanilla for a chainsaw sword.
-There is no reason to ever take a Power Fist over a Thunder Hammer for non-characters, since they both cost 20 for said models. PF's do D3 damage while TH's do 3, and are otherwise identical. The huge reduction in points for other power weapons makes me feel like PF's could have at least been dropped to somewhere in the 15-18 range, but they are cheaper than in 7th.
-Storm bolters feel worth it for 2 points, as they double the bolter's firepower. Models with the option for storm bolters other than Termies will probably have better options.
-Combi-weapons seem pretty sweet, especially for characters with a 2+ BS as they can fire both options (if you really need those two bolter shots lol) and still hit on 3+.
-Wrist-mounted grenade launcher has AP1, which seems like a typo unless they really wanted it to improve enemy armor saves
-Shotguns add 1 to strength if within in half range, which could be interesting for aggressive scouts. You would get to wound MEQs on 3's, which is something, I guess. No AP makes me think that will be useless for models it would have been useful against (T4 MEQs), who will just save those extra wounds. 10 Scouts could pump out 20 S5 shots, though, which could be useful to take a wound or two off vehicles in a pinch.

- IIRC, the combat shields are 2 points. That's a huge upgrade over a 6++ for 5 points in 7th.
- I like that the crozius is different, gives the chaplain a bit more feel and some extra punch against multi-wound targets that he and his friends should be fighting
- I suspect that the combat knife thing might be BA only to try and make them the assault legion chapter
- The Fist/Hammer thing does seem odd. Hopefully a errata comes out to drop the fist to ~15 points will be forthcoming
- I wonder if doubling the shots coupled with the change to the wound table will be sufficient to "fix" one of the main issues of tactical termies? Doesn't feel like it, especially if their points have gone up by ~50 points, but hey, will have to wait and see
- I did the maths a while back and shooting the bolter portion of a combi is very often a bad idea since the majority of the work is being done by the special weapon portion of the gun. Still, it's a nice option to have for only 2 points more than the special weapon only version of the combi.
- I can't help but notice that the stupid 30th annivresary marine gun is a 0 point upgrade.
- Shotguns might be useful if you were planning on doing the BA CC thing. Jump out of a transport 3", move 6", advance d6", fire your str5 shotguns and then charge 2d6" Could be a nice bully unit against stuff like devastators.

[LeSwordfish]

- I did the maths a while back and shooting the bolter portion of a combi is very often a bad idea since the majority of the work is being done by the special weapon portion of the gun. Still, it's a nice option to have for only 2 points more than the special weapon only version of the combi.

It's going to kick ass for combi-flamers, since they hit automatically, so even if the bolter is less accurate it's still free shots.

- I can't help but notice that the stupid 30th annivresary marine gun is a 0 point upgrade.

It looks as if things that are "basic" guns - bolters, pistols, etc - are 0 points and included in the cost of the model wielding them. As such, hopefully said Space Marine is a notch more expensive than the others.

[Theodoric]

Kind-of bummed that Tau Battlesuit squads apparently all have a minimum size of 3. Really hope they'll change that after feedback since it doesn't really fit with my model collection as it is. I've got a few spare old suit kits lying around, but building an extra Bodyguard just because they arbitrarily bump up the minimum squad size sucks. Screw that. Also, monats were neat.

[Blackhawk748]

They.... kind of did this in 6th, although they approached it from the other way and gave you a caveat to ignore it. Before the Chapter Tactics of 7th were introduced, what Space Marine Chapter was defined by what Special Character you took; if you took Calgar, you were granted his Special Abilities and were by extension playing Ultramarines, if you took Pedro Kantor you got his Special Abilities and thus were nominally playing Crimson Fists, because those characters HAD to be your Warlord.

What i find incredibly annoying (if its true, it was in the "leaks" after all) Is that the Sisters Orders are just whatever you call your army. Their example was Order of Expensive Models and We Need Plastic Sisters, and that just serves as your tag for you army. Apparently there are no rules other than that.

If that is true i am gonna be so pissed.

[Theodoric]

What i find incredibly annoying (if its true, it was in the "leaks" after all) Is that the Sisters Orders are just whatever you call your army. Their example was Order of Expensive Models and We Need Plastic Sisters, and that just serves as your tag for you army. Apparently there are no rules other than that.

If that is true i am gonna be so pissed.

Why? Do all the specific orders need to have tailored rules right at launch for them to mean anything?