40K BREAKING: The Big FAQ Is Here – Big Changes To Reserves And Stratagems
It’s here folks, the second Big FAQ for Warhammer 40K. Hot off the internet, and full of new changes for every faction, the Big FAQ seeks to keep your games of 40K fun and interesting. Come see what’s changed.
That’s right folks, the Big FAQ 2 is here, let’s see how the sequel holds up. There’s a lot of changes here–first off, the Beta Rules introduced in last year’s Big FAQ have been weighed, measured, and for the most part, not found wanting. Changes like Battle Brothers, Psychic Focus, and Targeting Characters continue to apply, with Battle Brothers getting an official printing in this year’s Chapter Approved.
Now all Imperium soup is full of detachment-sized chunks
But you’re here for the big changes. There are a couple of big things being looked at in this FAQ, notably Stratagems and Reserves. Let’s start with Reserves.
via Warhammer Community
The new Tactical Reserves rule reads as follows:
So from now on, you have to have at least ha.lf your army on the board at the start of the game, you also can’t get anyone in from reserves on your first turn. This alone is huge, but then you only have two turns to bring in your reserves. If you don’t bring them in turn 2, and don’t bring them in turn 3, they’re destroyed. So you’ll have to be much more purposeful with them–I’m not sure exactly how much this changes your reserves–you can still drop in where you need to on the enemy’s side of the board, unless they’re deployed to deny you reserve coverage.
Accompanying this change are some changes to the way things like Raven Guard and Alpha Legion Infiltrators worked. All the units that used to get to set up before turn 1 wherever now instead get a free 9″ move. So you’ll have to be more careful about positioning.
The other big change is to Stratagems. They’re getting nerfed across the board–with many Stratagems seeing an increase to point cost and a few particular changes that seem designed to bring them back in line. For instance, Chaos Daemons’ Warp Surge can now only buff your invulnerable save to a maximum of 4+, and Agents of Vect now requires you to have members of the Kabal of the Black Heart on the table, as well as costing 4 CP now. It also can’t negate before the battle begins stratagems.
Stratagems in general are getting harder to spam. And the Tactical Restraint rule sets out to keep armies from generating more CP than they know what to do with.
Now you can mostly only regain one command point per battle round, whether you’re getting it back from your own abilities or to steal them from opponents. And that’s per battle round too, so if you get a command point on your turn from Kurov’s Aquila, oh saint of the Loyal 32, you’ll not be able to snag one when you use a Stratagem on your opponent’s turn. And so on.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for Stratagems in this second Big FAQ. Understanding how valuable the first turn can be–and how losing half or all of your army on turn 1 doesn’t make for fun or interesting games at all–a new stratagem is here to help players on the second turn get off the back foot.
This seems like a useful ability to rely on. If you’ve deployed carefully and rolled a 1 on your initiative roll, again, at least you’ll be somewhat protected from your enemy’s first turn assault. Of course the best way to do this is to not be there, but only half of your units can do that now. So try and stick the other half of your army behind LoS blocking terrain and guarantee your survival.
At least through turn one.
Those are the big changes and beta rules. Most of the other Codices, including the Space Wolves, have also gotten an update today, so be sure and check those out at the 40K FAQ repository.
Read the Big FAQ 2 here
What do you think of these changes? Do they fix the problems? Make them worse? How would you change things–let us know in the comments.
