Warhammer 40K: Indomitus Stormshield FAQ
Games Workshop answered a messy rules conundrum with the latest FAQ for those new style Stormshields.
Last week Abe brought up the issue with the new wording on the Stormshields in the Indomitus Box. Just to recap the problem had to do with the wording on Stormshields:
“The bearer has a 4+ invulnerable save. Improve the bearer’s Save characteristic by 1.“
The reason this was worrying is because of how armor save work:
- AP modifies the die roll, not the save characteristic.
- The modified die result has to be lower than the save characteristic to fail.
- An unmodified (or “natural”) roll of 1 always fails.
If this stayed the way it was written and Stormshields all changed to this new phrasing then it would have been possible to get multiple units with a 1+ save. To be fair, GW did have a statement on their Facebook page that essentially said, “Hey, don’t use those rules for units outside of the box.”
But this was kind of a quick band-aid and we knew that GW would have to make some type of official change in a place that would be easier to find besides a Facebook message – somewhere like their FAQs. Which they did. And now we have the official word on how this should work.
Edge of Silence FAQ
If you were playing with just the rules presented in the box then the “updated” Stormshields didn’t really change things. However, once you started playing with the options in the codex, things started to get weird. Thankfully, with just a few word changes, GW stopped the impending doom before all those Thunderhammer/Stormshield Terminators could teleport to the tabletop and wreck your games.
“The bearer has a 4+ invulnerable save. In addition, add 1 to armour saving throws made for the bearer.“
On top of that, GW also pointed out in the second paragraph of the Designer’s Commentary that the rules that appear in the Edge of Silence only apply to the units within – meaning Codex: Space Marine Stormshields are still using their current rules…for now.
Will we see the Stormshield update get rolled out to other units in Codex: Space Marines or other Stormshields? I think it’s only a matter of time – let’s just hope the rules writers make sure to change the wording before it gets past the playtesters this time.
Yeah…that could have been pretty bad. Smash Captains would have become nigh unkillable!
