40K Deep Thought: Deep Striking Needs Some Danger
I love 8th edition, but Deep Striking has gotten too tame for the game’s health.
Let me ask you a question – does your pulse quicken when you deep strike units?
Even a little?
I bet it doesn’t.
“Brothers, we will be arriving exactly 34.87539 feet from the heretics!”
But that is a VERY new phenomenon, that you new 8th Edition players take for granted. For decades and many previous editions, dropping units onto the board mid-game was fraught with peril and outright mortal danger.
It was also a heck of a fun time.
Back in previous editions, deepstriking units had to deal with:
- variable turn of arrival from reserves
- random deviation in direction and distance
- the change of losing models or outright destruction based on your final location
- not being able to charge the turn you arrived
Oh, how I remember you… Let’s dance baby!
Now some may say that it was TOO random and dangerous, in earlier editions and I can see that case being made. But I think 8th has made it way too predictable and safe. Mid-game arrival is a HUGE advantage for a unit, as it prevents you from being destroyed before you get to where you need to be. In exchange for this ability, you traditionally had to risk some safety.
But 8th has turned this arrival technique into a completely choreographed activity. When players are pre-measuring the unit’s deep-strike location down to the millimeter to shoehorn exactly into that teensy pocket within an enemy army, you know something has gone very wrong.
It’s been a long while…
I would gladly like to see at least some of the danger added back into the technique for the sake or variety as well as to give the designers some tools to make things like drop-pods useful again. Imagine if you has to roll for deviation, or couldn’t charge the turn of arrival by default, but that these things were mitigated if you used model-based transports like pods.
It would add a nice risk reward system back into the game and get some models back off the shelves and into the game.
And if there is anything I want more of in 40K – it’s risk-reward decisions and more model variety!
~What do you think of the current state of deep-striking?
