Warhammer 40K: Leagues of Votann Codex Discussion
On paper the Leagues of Votann are coming out the gate STRONG. How strong? They could be the epitome of Warhammer 40k 9th edition.
If there was one army in all of Warhammer 40,000 that summed up 9th edition in a nutshell that could quite possibly be the Leagues of Votann. They are 9th Edition in its final form. If you took some of the “best” features of 9th from across the range and genetically stitched them together into one army, that army would come out short and stout — which is what the Leagues are all about.
Leagues of Votann Codex
Goatboy has his own thoughts on the army — many of which you can see in the video above. There’s a few rules that I wanted to highlight here. That’s because if you’re going to go up against the Leagues of Votann and you don’t know about these rules then you’re about to be setup for some serious “gotcha” moments.
Judgements are a new army-wide ability from the Leagues of Votann. They get toss around like candy and work like markerlights as they are essentially a “debuff” on the unit that makes the Leagues attacking them do better. Only they don’t require a unit to “shoot” them so you can’t miss with them. And they also have an even better mechanic, imo. Not only do they turn unmodified 6, 5, and 4s into auto wounds (depending on the number of Judgements the target unit has) they also cause the to-wound roll to count as a 6. That’s important for later.
The other army-wide rules you need to know about is Void Armour. This stuff is good. Each time you attack a unit with Void Armour you cannot re-roll the wound roll OR the damage roll! That’s huge. It also reduces the AP of attacks by 1 down to a minimum of 0. That’s ALSO good. The first part just seems like a direct counter to every army that’s got tons of re-rolls out there. And in 9th edition, that’s just about every army.
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It’s not just their army-wide rules either. Each League has their own set of League rules, too. Depending on which one you sign up for you’re unlocking particular playstyles and options for your Leagues of Votann army. The combos are pretty obvious when you sit down and read through them so that’s …nice? The real bonkers thing is pretty well summed up by Goatboy in the video. Basically, this feels if you had a slightly slower T’au army that shot the same (if not better), with Psychic Powers, and it still had an Assault punch at the same time.
So yeah…it’s good.
The biggest downside that we’ve seen in the army right now is that it is real slow. Playing against them on an open board is just going to be a shooting gallery. But, if you have terrain (like a regular table) and force them to play the objective game you can pull the off a win. They don’t have great secondary objectives and because of their lack-of-speed you can really “bully them” on the tabletop. Out maneuvering them is the real key to victory — if you can avoid getting shot off the tabletop to start.
The Leagues of Votann actually seem like a good army overall. They aren’t overly complex so that’s good for new players, too. They are tough and forgiving plus they can compete in every phase of the game. The book does feel a little light on the number of units and lack of characters — but that can be fixed later. They are also “aggressively” pointed (as in they seem a little cheap points-wise) so you’ll be able to field quite a bit.
As of right now we’re only skimming the surface of this army. But even at a cursory glance this army is pretty solid and will shake things up to a degree. Shooty armies in the game aren’t new. But the Leagues take on things is enough of a change to make it play different from the others. The Squats are back, baby!
Once this army gets the rest of it’s models released…look out!
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