6th Edition Beeing a Boss

It has happened! Ladies and unicorns of all ages! 6th Edition has finally hit us and turned our worlds upside down. Chaos has followed this edition like a lifelong partner. Lists which were cookie cutters before are now naught but dust in the wind. Units which have never seen the light of day are now running rampant around gaming tables worldwide. Personaly i had the pleasure of releasing Ezekiel out of his shoebox in which he spent a good 4 years while 5th edition made him more of a burden than a boon. Primaris psykers are also seen here and there nowdays which is news to me...and ofcourse broodlords now have becomes amazing if given biomancy.


So i would like to start by saying that anyone who claims to have learned 6th edition is a liar and a ruffian, because to learn a set of rules so different from what we are used to requires more then a month. However people are begining to get a hang of the direction in which the game is headed. I will not lie to you, i have played a maximum of 15 games of 6th edition since it came out, and most of those games were with experimental lists which took advantage of the allies FoC.

And where as alot of people will complain and praise the new edition i would only like to point out the things that i have expirienced in the games that i have played in hopes that our readers will learn from my mistakes and avoid making them by themselves.

Psychic Disciplines

The one great thing in my opinion that came with 6th edition, are the psychic disciplines. As a Dark Angel player i have always been sour that almost all our power armored brothers had powers that actualy did something other than took space on a page in their codex, well now with these awesome babies, were back in the psychic arena! Our Grand Master Librarian Ezekiel is only a psyker mastery level 1 space marine, but he knows 3 psychic powers, which means in essence he can have an arsenal to deal with any situation. 

Anyhow , one could argue that psychic powers are random and thats a downside for sure, but even so, the primary psychic powers which can always be swapped for no matter what you generated are amazing! Divination is a blessing that you cast withing 12 of the psyker to unit and it lets them reroll all failed rolls to hit, consider putting the psyker with another HQ and a unit of TH/SS termies and casting that, youre looking at a hit re-rolling deathstar!

Or perhaps the one where you force youre opponent to roll 3d6 and subtract their Ld from the roll, and take the difference as wounds with no armor save allowed.

My point is that the new powers have brought more utility to outdated armies and given them a chance to participate in theatres of war, where before they could not.

Playing VS. the Tyranids

A greater portion of the games that i have played were against the Tyranids, and since they were the army that was portrayed as weak in 5th id like to throw in my 10 cents and say: No more!

Broodlords with biomancy are mean...combines with the fact that they get to reroll the 2d6 when charging from Fleet they have the potential to be one of the most impressive units. In one of the games i played i was facing 2 units of genestealers with 2 broodlords, they managed to reduce my toughness to 2 and my strength to 2 as well. And this was my deathstar unit of Belial , Ezekiel and command squad with thunderhammers. Needless to say, Belial and Ezekiel were now prone to instant death from Str 4 gaunts as well as genestealers, and their strength was 2 (x2 due to thunderhammers). As you can understand genestealers are a force to be reckoned with when they are used to full potential in sympony with other units that the Tyranids have. Flyrants are one of those threats, assaults from ymgarls are another since they can assault on the turn they arrive from reserve, and of course the ever prevailant Hive Guard that ignore night fighting rules.

Another interesting development is the FNP changes, as well as the Fearless that they all have due to synapse. No longer will Nids lose combat by 10 or so wounds and lose the remaining models due to "No retreat" saves. FNP that can be given to anyone and is only negated by instant death weapons make the tyranids have saves from weapons like bolters and flamers. This would suggest that horde nid armies could be viable , but then again i have not played against any so i cant really talk on the subject.

Reserves & Scout & Outflank

In addition to Deathwing i have always played with bikes, be it as Ravenwing or as White Scars, and im greatly disappointed at what has been done to bikes through alteration of the Scout and Reserve special rules.

Lets begin with scout. It is no longer considered a "move" but rather a re-deployment, which means that you no longer will be able to get a turbo boost save of 3+, now will you be able to claim a 5+ jink save if your opponent is playing first or in fact has seized the initiative. I think that players that have played bike lists in 5th will agree with me that where ass bikes are not out of the game, they have taken a serious blow to their utility.

Next up id like to talk about the Reserve changes, and here I' m really surprised! I never thought that coming from reserves via outflanking was overpowered, seeing as very few units could do it...hell the only units that can do it I can count on my own right hand! The change that I' m really surprised to see implemented is that now a unit coming from reserve cannot assault on the turn it does so, this applies to outflanking units as well of course, so Khan and command squad cannot come from outflank and assault something anymore...in fact here is a scenario from a game i had vs a CSM player that was playing with an IG allied detachment.

So i rolled for 3 of my outflanking units since now they come in on 3+, and only 1 of them showed up, so having stayed in 5th edition mindset i had forgotten i couldn't assault. I declared that i was splitting my 9 man unit into 2 different units, and the following happened. Where ass normal I would shoot up the marines guarding the vehicle and hopefully kill them as i had 2 meltas and 1 MM in these 2 squads I went on to fire and miss with every single shot, including the re-rolls...I later got obliterated by ... well obliterators that were sitting atop that building. Jink saves are very unreliable i have to say, and even though you get a jink save regardless how much you move, as long as you move, it's still not enough in my opinion to remove the rule that lets us assault with bikes when we come in onto the table via reserves.

Well then , I think I've been rambling on for way too long, but since were back with my co-writer Antipope, I' d like to show you what he does when hes not too busy playing with toy soldiers! I would also like to congratulate him on an awesome release of his bands (Nordor) cd release "Erga Omnes"! (I hope you' ve kept me one of those CD's I plan on getting 1 from you next time i see you)

 

Antipope rocking his bass as the crowd goes wild!