7th Edition: Yet Another Opinion
There is a lot of rumors and hyperventilating surrounding Warhammer 40k 7th. The only thing more abundant then the rumors are the opinions of 7th. Time for one more.
Hello everyone. Edwin here and I wanted to talk about something everyone else has been talking about for a while now and discuss a few of the new edition rumors. Since I have started playing this hobby years ago, I have always tried to remain optimistic about everything. That being said, it is hard to stay optimistic. Not because any of the rules actually look bad, but because there is there is a lot of “The Sky is Falling!” kind of talk. I can understand concern about a new edition because change can be difficult, but people are losing their minds. That is why I want to talk about some of the new rumored changes and why I think they will be both good for the game.
Unbound armies!
I am excited for unbound armies and you should be too. You can pretty much field anything you want. This opens up everything for competitive gamers and hobby gamers alike. You can field that army that you always wanted to field, but never could because the army you wanted to run used a lot of a particular choice and you just didn’t have the slots for it. You can also exclude some of those special characters that you had to take in order to run certain styles of army. You don’t have to use Belial in a Deathwing force. You can field a nob army without having to use two HQ Warbosses. You can run Blood Angel biker army if you wanted to. You can run so many fun choices. The sky is the limit. You can also field an army of only riptides. There is a lot of talk about this and how it can break the game. We heard a lot of this talk to when they announced Flyers. A lot of people were scared of the 9 Vendetta list, but I ask you this. How many people actually saw a 9 Vendetta list? The most I ever ran across in all of 6th edition was 6 and that was in a joke game I watched someone else play. Everyone knew he was bringing it and everyone had a blast that was involved. I doubt there will be many all Riptide/Hell Turkey/(Insert Single Unit here) armies mostly for the same reason we didn’t see many all vendetta armies. They will be incredibly boring to play with and against. I am willing to risk Balance for the sake of Fun though. I don’t play Warhammer because it is balanced. I play it because it is fun. Was the FoC even balanced at times? There were some pretty big abuses with that as it was. I have faced 1000+ space wolf Thunderwolf cavalry death stars with 18 missile launcher Long Fangs at 1750 points before. People who will abuse the system will abuse it with or without unbound. I would rather have the option for more fun. Most people probably wont even use Unbound armies for much of an advantage. Personally, I play on having my Blood Thirster and two Demon Princes as a primary detachment and just throw the points I would have spent on two min groups of Bloodletters, a unit I am not very fond of, and throwing those 200 points into the Guard allies that I planned to take. That is it. I rarely filled the FoC up unless a specific slot was packed anyway and I doubt that will change much in 7th edition.
The Psychic Phase
This is probably one of my favorite new additions to the game. In 6th edition, I rarely ran psykers and often when I did, it was really a no brainer to cast anything and everything they could unless they were on their last wound. You made you test so often that other then just picking targets, there really wasn’t much thought or counter play to it. With the new system, they are having psyker power become a lot more involved. You think more about your powers and you try to play what you can do against what your opponent can potentially stop. Do you try to cast your weaker abilities to draw out dice or do you try to blow a lot up front and try to get weaker stuff off after. The variation in what can be done are incredible. I am glad to see more opponent interaction. Short of the odd psyker defense and the few deny the witch roles, psyker powers were strong and never seemed to involve the other player. The new phase changes this. It lets you be more involved in the game. You get to make more decisions. There are two things I wanted to address about this though. The first one is the idea that cheaper psykers will be really useless compared to their higher mastery level counter parts. I am all for this. Why would a level 1 inquisitor not have an incredibly hard time casting when facing an incredibly powerful Farseer or Lord of Change? I like the idea of high risk for high reward. If the power they are using is important enough to risk everything to make sure it goes off, I think you should be able to risk more to make sure it goes off versus stronger enemies. Currently, things are just too easy to do. All reward with nearly no risk even for the weakest of psykers. The other thing I wanted to discuss was demon summoning. With how things are looking, the entire demonology summoning bit looks really cool to me. It will definitely carry a good chance of risk and it will summon upgradeless demons. The powers are expensive to cast and half the powers worked well only with demons or weren’t that powerful. Sure, Ezekial summoned a Blood Thirster which is a little nuts, in both fluff and game, but this isn’t an every game thing and it was deadly to him. It is a scary model, but with the cost and risk, this isn’t something that will matter every single game. I am a big fan of the Fantasy style magic system just so long as it isn’t completely random.
The Fluff
I wanted to talk about the fluff a little. I like that they are allowing more freedom in the game. You can build any kind of fluffy army you want with this and you even have a system for it. I love the fluff for this game. It is what I like most about starting a new army is just finding out more about the fluff. That being said, I know Ezekial would never purposefully summon a Blood Thirster, but the idea of it is really cool. Using the Named Dark Angel psyker was a really bad idea, but the idea of what can be done with this newly found freedom is cool. Some things won’t go with the fluff and some things will go against the fluff, but if it is fun, I am OK with it. That is why I keep coming back to 40k, because the game itself is fun. If they make it more fun, I am all for it.
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| The Glass is always half full. Just don’t ask what it is full of. |
If you made it this far, thanks for hearing me out. I always try to remain optimistic about things and I want people to at least wait for the rules to come out and get a few games in before the calls of fire and brimstone come.
I think this may be one of the most fun editions yet.
