40K: New Shooting Phase Teaser…
Games Workshop takes aim with more teaser info in today’s 8th Edition Update: the Shooting Phase
Whether it’s bolters, plasma, missiles, bio-plasma, acid, poison darts, fusion/melta blasts, pulse charges, shuriken, fire, spikes, or goo–every army in 40K has some kind of shooting. And today, the folks over at Warhammer Community have given us a look at what shooting will look like once the new edition hits. It’s not that different from what you know now, but there are a few key changes…
via Warhammer Community
“You also can’t shoot if there is an enemy with 1″ of you. The exception to this rule is pistols. Models with these hand-held firearms can shoot at the closest enemy target in the Shooting phase, even if they themselves are locked in combat! This is going to make characters with pistols <cough-Cypher-cough> incredibly deadly up-close.
When picking a target, you won’t be able to shoot enemies that are in combat with other units, much like the current edition. However, you can fall back from combat in your Movement phase, allowing other units to fire at your opponent at the expense of your own actions this turn. Expect to see cunning generals deploying their armies in waves to take full advantage of this.
Heavy weapons are worth talking about too. These no longer snap fire if you move, and instead they have a flat -1 to hit modifier for moving units. This applies to all models with heavy weapons, vehicles included. There are a few other factors that affect hit rolls too – smoke launchers on a vehicle, for example, have the same effect of -1 to hit.”
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Want more? Read the whole article at Warhammer Community
All in all, shooting doesn’t seem like it’ll be that different from what it is now. Though it is interesting to see that heavy weapons have a flat -1 penalty to hit, even if mounted on a moving vehicle. I guess in the Grim Darkness of the 8th Edition, suspension/stabilizers stopped working as well as they had before.
“Your aim is getting thrown off by those speedbumps!” “Sir those are Orks” “I KNOW WHAT I SAID!”
Other changes include armo(u)r saves being modified by weapons–or as they talk about in today’s article, by cover. In the new edition, cover will be a bonus to your save, but one that only applies to certain types of units. The example they give is that only Infantry can get a cover bonus to their armo(u)r save from being in a crater.
This makes me wonder if there will be different rules associated with each kind of terrain–or more likely, to each kind of unit. Infantry can claim cover from X kinds of terrain, vehicles from Y, and so on. One thing they point out though, is that if your weapon brings down the save value enough, you still just damage them. So you can shoot someone through a wall.
And some weapons ignore cover outright. I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
What do you think of the new save dynamic? Of the new shooting rules? Will Cypher *finally* feel worth it?
