Goatboy’s 40k: First 8th Game Thoughts
Goatboy here again and I got my first game of 8th is last Thursday against some Tyranids. Just how good is it?
I had a lot of fun, stuff died a lot, and I felt like the game played very cleanly, quickly, and fun. That is the big thing I got from the new edition was that it felt good. It felt like how my first game of AOS after the Matched points game. I only had one real question in the game due to how we thought about the older editions, but looking at the walk through got it figured out. For those wondering – it was about the consolidation part of the fight phase and if you consolidated after finishing your units fighting. The answer is yes – which means you can get within an inch of other units and cause some multi assault issues.
First Impressions
The big things I noticed with this edition is that it is very fast, very aggressive, and players who control the movement phase will win more then static armies. I really think this edition pushes movement over the other games as you can’t just sit there and pound the enemy with your bullets. You need to move, get involved, take over objectives, and hopefully win the game. The removal of templates, pulling wounds from anywhere in the unit, and just overall brutality of assault/moral means the better moving and placement player should come out ahead. It’s a good thing too as while the game is full of “combos” this isn’t a game of oops I won because I got the perfect set of rolls. This is a game where you have to get all your machine parts to work together and efficiently deal with your opponent.
Biggest Winners
Any army that needed some love to be competitive in 7th edition is a winner. Orks feel like they should. You can either go into a mob mentality and bring the Gork side of your Waaagh out. They have a lot of amazing characters, amazing auras, and just an overall synergistic vibe that the army needed. You can even fulfill your Mork side of things as there are a ton of sneaky stuff in the book too. Kommandos sneaking up the sidelines and burnering your opponent with “free burnas”. Heck you can even create a decent Kan Wall army full of robots, Klaws, and pissed off Grots left to clean up the mess.
Necrons feel really strong too and looks like their Identity has come back to the front. They feel a heck of a lot more fluffy with their Reanimation protocols as well as relying on their “leaders” to actually lead them with their Auras. They also have some tricky stuff to bring to the table with some nutty first turn assaults, great speed bumps with Scarabs, and even some really powerful shooting. They took some of the things they lost from 6th to 7th edition, brought them more in line with their fluff, and added some future hints with the Dynasty Keyword showing up in their states.
Vehicles seem to have gotten a lot better as the switch to a wound characters gives them a lot more survivability as well as the shift towards the cool abilities MC had. They shoot 360 degrees, can fire a lot of weaponry, do some decent damage, and no longer fear the brown noise that is the Grav Cannon nearly as much. I still want to make a massed Maulerfiend army as well and I am just waiting on what actually comes out from FW and any upcoming “fixed” codex releases.
I really like the detachment set up with a lot of options to create any type of army. It also has some locks in army building for matched play with everyone needing some kind of “faction keyword” to allow them in the army. This keeps some weird things from popping up and still let’s GW build “alliances” and other things for the future. Overall there is a ton of good here and very little “bad”.
The Command Points are interesting and a powerful one is the ability to allow one of your units to “fight” first before your opponents other chargers. My test game had me pull the trick on my opponent to try and kill 2 Carnifexes with a Dreadnought and he pulled it on me to get his massed blob of Genestealers to go right after Typhus swung. I had to swing with Typhus to keep him alive and so my opponent crushed my poor Pox Walkers with massed Genestealer claws. Genestealers are no joke now and Nids seem to be set up to do very well in this new edition.
The “Issues”
Speaking of Bad the things that bother me is that there is a lot of lost flavor in the Psychic phase. There are some really strong spells – but it feels like we could have had more. The limited spell options as well means that the most common spell is going to be a movement/assault out of turn spell and massed smites. I think those bits lists are going to be more annoying then good – but there could be more. The missing Chapter Tactics/Legions/Clans/Dynasty’s are annoying as I feel Marines and CSM need a bit of flavor help from them. I think Marines hurt more due to losing some of the stuff that makes them special and Chaos Space Marines finally got some but now lose them. It does get me excited to think Orks, Necrons, and Tyranids will get some flavor along those lines as well.
There are a few typos in the books. Most of the Characters have a clause that says only one can be taken – except for one. The Saint doesn’t have that clause so you could per RAW have a lot of the Emperor’s Personal Daemon running around. I know these books are stop gaps and designed to get people playing and not be the finished “army” product. Chatter is in a few months will see a slew of books come out to help fill in people’s armies. And I do applaud GW for putting out all of this in a fairly cheap package for consumers. It also seems FW has their books pretty cheap and it might be the first thing I buy digital due to the nature of shipping, time, and how much I want to see their rules.
Current Good Army Thoughts
Any army with decent large unit # troop/unit choices. I think Big Units with the ability to grab multiple things in Combat will be very good. Anything Big, Tough, and having access to good Auras will be strong. Necron Warriors, Plague Bearers, Daemonettes, Pox Walkers (Kinda), Berzerkers, etc – will be strong. I just think big massed bodies will cover the table, block things, and cause a lot of issues.
Characters with good movement that can hide behind units. Chaos Space Marien Daemon Princes might have lost their Tactics and Daemon Powers – but they do have less then 10 wounds, fly, and can be set up for 7 attacks rerolling to hit (they let people of their Legion reroll 1’s and they hit on 2+’s so they will most likely smack you for 6-7 hits). Add in the ability to have Smite and most likely a decent extra power like the double move one and you got yourself a stellar monster character. I get the feeling a large Thunder Wolf Army utilizing the Cover Spell from Rune Priests to give massed super doggies a 2+ armor save will be a big pain in the butt.
Cheap Imperial and Chaos keyword troops will be especially powerful. I can see a lot of “battalions” for Chaos filled with Nurglings and a big blood of X Daemons. I am betting Sisters of Battle might show up in a lot of Imperial armies as they get access to more guns and other interesting options.
There will be a lot of 3 Knight plus small X units. The Current thing is Magnus and 3 Renegade Knights. I think Knights are ok and most of the time those types of armies find it hard to win the mission. Scarabs are going to be mean at eating them and anything else that can get in their way and just be a pain in the butt. I want to test some 3 Knight builds but think we can look at some Massed troops and other options instead of dumping a ton of Points into Magnus. There will also be 8 Daemon Prince builds as well but again a block of Stealers, Zerkers, etc can catch them as Fly doesn’t let you not get assaulted. It just lets you get out of combat so you can shoot again.
Right now I am pretty dang excited with the ATC being my first 8th event. It will be the Wild Wild West with everyone trying different things and the meta just starting to set up. Of course whatever works there will most likely shift again as new books and pieces come out. I just expect it to be a lot of fun with weird stuff and the chance to play all kinds of armies.
~How have you liked the new books? Do you think your army will stay decent?
