40K: 8th Edition Tactical Reserves Teaser
Games Workshop is back with another rules teaser for 8th and this time it’s all about getting those Tactical Reserves involved!
8th Edition is coming with some revamped rules. Unit’s will now have all their relevant rules printed on their sheets or in their respective publication and players won’t need to reference a USR section for how things work. That means rules like Deepstrike or Outflank aren’t going to be in the “core” rulebook anymore – but don’t worry those things aren’t going away, things are just shifting around a bit:
via Warhammer Community
“There are some pretty fundamental changes to how [Tactical Reserves] work though. For a start, not every unit can be placed in reserve, so most of your army will usually deploy on the battlefield at the start of the game.
Quite a few units still have the option to join the game mid-battle though, and they use a variety of mystical or technological means to do so. While there are no longer universal special rules like Deep Strike or Outflank, many of these abilities will have common themes – so you can still expect units like Terminators to teleport down, Genestealer Cults units to ambush and Ork Kommandos to use their kunnin’ to sneak up on the foe.”
Read the Full Article HERE
As example of these unit deployment options, Games Workshop showed off the new Subterranean Assault rules for the Trygon (which also happens to be the first teaser for Tyranids so far).
Finally! The Trygon and his tunnel ability will allow a unit to join it on the battlefield on the same turn it pops-up! As a ‘Nid player with 3 Trygons, I’m pretty happy about this. Oh and in case you’re wondering about getting to charge on the turn it comes in…
“So we can see that this will be quite a powerful ability. Not only delivering the Trygon into the heart of the enemy force, but also an accompanying unit of Tyranids. And there’s nothing stopping them from charging this turn either! Though that 9″ distance to the enemy (which is common to a lot of units with similar abilities) will mean that the averages on the dice will be against you for that 2D6 charge distance. (You can always use your Command Re-roll of course…)”
Sweet! I’ll take those odds especially with a re-roll…
In matched play, things are a little more detailed and there are couple other restrictions folks should be aware of:
“This rule helps limit some of the more extreme cases of withholding reserves in competitive games.”
Interesting stuff! This Tactical Reserves rule does help cut down on some of those late game Objective Grabbers hiding off-board all game and I’m all for that. What I am curious about is how this interacts with those Reserves coming on to the board. From the Trygon rule above, it sounds like the owning player can just choose to deploy them at the end of any movement phases.
If that’s the case for all the different types of reserves (like Teleporting Deathwing, Ambushing Genestealer Cult, or sneaky Ork Kommandos) – then that’s pretty darn powerful. That also explains the hefty penalty for NOT deploying them by the third battle round…
What do you think of these new Tactical Reserve rules? Are you excited about the changes for Match Play? Let us know in the comments below!
