Tag Archives: tactics

40k 6e Space Marines: Core Dudes

Posted on by tjkopena

Games Workshop put out a new Space Marines codex last week.  Recently I started creating army lists and am posting thoughts as I go.  Previous thoughts were on Vulkan and Librarians.  Up now are the core dudes of any Kingbreakers force: Sternguard, Tacticals, and Transports.

Sternguard

Sternguard got kind of a funny set of changes.  The first five went down a point each, but any additional veterans went down three points each.  Unfortunately Combi-Weapons went up five.  That’s a little problematic for me as I’ve previously relied on a good number of Combi-Meltas.  So my 5-man Combat Squad with 3 Combi-Meltas went up 10 points while a 10-man full squad with 6 stayed the same.

Tacticals

Tacticals have a similar story going on.  Dudes got cheaper but a bunch of their stuff got more expensive.  In general it works out to be kind of a wash.  I guess the motivation was to drop equipment price lists from individual units and allow many of them to use the same armoury listings without really changing the overall unit prices from 5e, but that seems kind of a silly, unnecessary reworking.

You also need to pay to upgrade Tactical Sergeants to Veterans and get a second Attack and boosted Leadership.  Personally I think the Veteran upgrades are probably worth paying for unless the squad is really not going to wind up in combat at all.  Two base attacks plus a bonus third for wielding dual close combat weapons can be pretty decisive against a variety of opponents.  In general I’m all for a la carte upgrades—if I don’t want it, why should I implicitly pay for it?—but these might be pushing it a bit.  In particular, I think they create an opportunity for minor mistakes and abuses.  E.g., I usually upgrade my dudes but one game I don’t to shave points, and I totally forget I didn’t and roll the extra Attack and +1 Leadership all game.  Similarly, a large game could easily have ~4–8 Power Armour squads with the option.  If I only upgrade my front line, I could easily “forget” and roll on the upgrades when my Devastators wind up getting assaulted, and many opponents aren’t going to catch that in the heat of battle.

Transports

One big difference for some lists is that Razorbacks went up 15 points, to 55.  Rhinos and Drop Pods stayed at 35.  I’m not sure how reasonable this is.  Razorbacks seem to have a pretty solid built in tradeoff versus a Rhino: Carry half as many dudes, but be able to shoot stuff.  Paying 5 points for the privilege seemed reasonable, but a 38% premium seems overkill.  This seems to be aimed directly at neutering the Razorspam lists floating around in 5e, but I didn’t think they were that prevalent or overpowered, and mostly seemed to be a Blood Angels thing anyway.

Another significant difference is that Drop Pods were reduced back down to a transport capacity of ten, having been able.to carry twelve in 5e.

Kingbreakers

One of the things I had to learn in the previous edition was that cheap Special and Heavy Weapons are a strength of the Marines.  Plasmacannons for 5 points were a bargain that had to be taken advantage of; ditto free Missile Launchers.  The points changes make it feel like the weapons aren’t a good bargain anymore, at least for Sternguard and Tacticals, but the lesson probably still applies.  Similar goes for the Sternguard Combi-Meltas.  At first I thought my loadout was going to be too costly, but when you do the math a 10 man squad actually comes up 10 points cheaper.

I do usually bring a Razorback or two, but not enough of them to make that increase super punitive.

The Drop Pod transport capacity decrease is a huge deal for the Kingbreakers though.  I can’t get super worked up about it because it just brings them back in line with the other codexes.  But 10 Sternguard + Vulkan or a Terminator Librarian coming down in a Drop Pod was a keystone of my battle tactics.  The Sternguard have fairly flexible armoury options so it wouldn’t be a huge deal in terms of equipment to cut them down to a squad of 8, whereas Tacticals would miss out on a fancy weapon.  The real loss is not being able to Combat Squad that unit anymore.  I thought it useful to be able to split up coming out of a Drop Pod, either dividing up existing targets or trying to pop a transport with one and frag the occupants with the other.  Not being able to do this with one of my heroes along for the ride isn’t the end of the world, but it’s unfortunate.

40k 6th Edition Space Marines: Vulkan

Posted on by tjkopena

Games Workshop put out a new Space Marines codex last week.  Today I started putting together some army lists and will be posting thoughts as I go.  First up: Everyone’s favorite flaming hero, Vulkan He’stan.

Vulkan

Like nearly everyone, last edition I eventually caved and started running Vulkan.  He was just too good to resist—army wide Flamer and Melta buffs, with a standard Captain stat line but a 2+/3++ save, Digital Weapons, a Relic Blade, and a Heavy Flamer and Bolt Pistol to boot.  His points in the new book remain the same, a large but not crazy 190, and all of his stats and gear are also identical.  So he’s of slightly less value given that a Salamanders army gets the Flamer buff for free, and neither buffs Thunderhammers anymore.  However, I think he still stacks up pretty solidly.  I’ve generally found Vulkan to be fairly survivable and able to go toe-to-toe with tough units, so 190 points is not unreasonable for this HQ.  The one negative I’ll say about him is that his Warlord Trait (Iron Resolve: +1 to combat resolution w/ Vulkan in the fight) is terribly underwhelming.  The whole Space Marine trait list is weak across the board, and that is not one of the stronger ones.

In any event, by way of comparison, a very similar generic captain would run like so:

  • Captain: 90 points
  • Artificier Armour: 20
  • Storm Shield: 15
  • Power Weapon: 15
  • Relic Blade: 25
  • Digital Weapons: 10

There’s no option to pick up a heavy flamer on the Captain, unfortunately.  That totals 175 points, so for 15 more Vulkan’s picking up a Heavy Flamer and buffs all Melta weapons to Master-Crafted.  So, Vulkan is probably worth it if you want to run this basic setup.  I’ve found the Heavy Flamer actually fairly useful, and the Melta buff alone could easily be worth 15 points in many armies.

My other response is that’s pretty awesome and a huge improvement in the Space Marine codex.  Generic HQs in the previous book were just slightly boring in their options, and very inefficient compared to the named heroes.  They just cost too many points for how (un-)survivable a Space Marine leader is and to miss out on the army wide buffs, previously only granted by the named HQs.  So, that’s super awesome that you can now pretty much construct the named guys out of the generic options and get the bulk of the buffs from the Chapter Tactics.  That gives a ton of options.  In this case, you could basically run Vulkan but shaving a couple points with a generic guy if you don’t need the Melta buff, or you could upgrade to the Burning Blade and/or some other Chapter Relics if you wanted to beef him out to a heavier close combat fighter.  I’m super stoked about that.

Kingbreakers

So, for now at least, I’m probably going to run Vulkan and then see how I want to tailor things tighter to my playing style.  Next up: Librarians!

Dark Eldar Quick First Review

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This week I’ve been reading over the new Dark Eldar codex. These are some of my first impressions. As a side note, I was not super familiar with previous editions of the codex, so much of it was new to me.

Cover

GW definitely goes up and down on the quality of its codex covers. Marines have generally been ok, if a little staid. Blood Angels were terrible—boring scene, poor technical execution (proportions, body angles, etc.). Skaven were solid, as is the Dark Eldar cover. It well conveys the feeling of a horde of killers oozing out of a sudden, inky darkness exploding over their target.

Models

mandrakeBy and large the new model range is excellent, and a vast improvement over the previous models. The Mandrakes in particular stand out. Previously a pretty stupid looking collection of generic Dark Eldar looking figures in gratuitous gimp suits, now they’re exciting and original. The models fit in really well with the fluff of shadow beings able to appear at will out of the darkness, and I really like them a lot. I’m also a big fan of the new Reavers, which have a much more exciting style, rider pose, and dynamism than previous jetbikes and bikes.

Other new models for the army are all also pretty good. They look much more serious and original than the previous line. Of note, they have a lot of edges, like the plating on their armor, and other details that I think many people will be able to paint up very nicely without much difficulty. The artwork for the units without models also looks good, so I’m looking forward to those being released. Artwork for Scourges, Wracks, and Grotesques in particular all look great, so I’m excited to see how those models come out.

I got a chance to check some models out in person at Redcap’s the other day, and a couple more things stood out that you can’t tell from the book or website. One is their scale; the models are small, very thin and lithe. The height still doesn’t match up correct for Space Marines to actually be eight foot tall warriors, but the body proportions look a lot more in scale. The Dark Eldar are notably thinner than Imperial Guardsmen. When you look at these guys it definitely makes sense that they’re all Toughness 3.

The other thing the GW pictures don’t convey is the number of options available. There are a good number of leg stances and enough poseability that even the large units have enough variety. Most notably though, the boxes seem to have a ton of heads in them. From the website it looks like all the Wyches have long hair, all the Kabalites the tall helmets, and so on. I haven’t seen sprues, but from the assembled models Adam at Redcap’s had, it looks like you actually have a bunch of options in each box. Enough to make most of a unit with hair or the blank face masks—which I love—or the revised, much improved helmets in the Kabalite case. Pretty cool, and a potential way to help differentiate units.kabalite

Fluff & Book

The codex book is well done. There’s a good amount of fluff. Coming at it unfamiliar to the faction, I was happy with the quality and quantity of background material. It’s slightly difficult to imagine how such a race continues to function, but that’s true of most of the 40k factions and well within tolerable bounds for suspension of disbelief. Small touches along those lines though were well appreciated, e.g., discussion about there being small amounts of Dark Eldar procreation but most being bioengineered. There are also some good incidents highlighted, e.g., a crazy Salamanders assault into the heart of Commorragh itself to retrieve a captured ship. Although it’s somewhat sad that this is worth noting, the editing in the book seems to be on par with the recent books and much better than the previous editions. I only caught a couple cases of extraneous or missing words in the fluff. Similar to the Blood Angels book, a lot of of the black and white artwork is dark and lacking in contrast, but it’s workable. I guess that fits the mood, but a lot of the detail and quality would carry through better if it was lightened a touch & the contrast raised.

Rules

reaversObviously I’ll have to see the new units at work to really get a feel for them. However, my purely text-based take on them is definitely favorable. In particular, they have a lot of special rules and powers that bring a different feel and style to the army, without any of the angry and confused “WTF?!?!” that the Blood Angels book engenders. For example, Pain Tokens and the ability of many units to gain buffs such as Feel No Pain as they kill units is a new, interesting mechanic, fits in well with the fluff, and brings something novel to the faction without seeming terribly over the top. Nearly every unit has a special rule or ability, so it could be a confusing army to play against the first couple times, but for now I’m excited to see how they work out.

It’s not obvious from the text that there are any particularly terrible units in the book. Almost all seem to present interesting options. Reading through at first it’s almost discouraging because many units have a ton of close combat attacks and many others have a bunch of great shooting attacks. But, it’s not clear how to interpret that given the low Strength and Toughness of the units.

lelithConsider Lelith Hesperax, a stone cold killer. Every model against her loses one attack, to a minimum of one, because of her blades and barbed hair. She also has a 4+ Invulnerable, buffed to 3+ in close combat and her attacks ignore Armor Saves. On top of that she’sWS 9, BS 9, Initiative 9 (!) with 4 base attacks, plus a bonus for two close combat weapons, plus she gets an extra attack for each point by which her weapon skill beats the highest weapon skill in base-to-base with her. So, against a typical Tactical Squad she’s going to drop 11 attacks on the charge. But she’s strength 3. So, on average against MEQs 7.33 of those attacks will hit (11 attacks times 3+ to hit), and 2.44 of those will wound (7.33 hits times 5+ to wound), so she’s basically looking at 2 or 3 dead Marines. That’s pretty good, but it’s not over the top either. For 175 points she seems… probably reasonable? Maybe even fairly touchy to use, given that she doesn’t have shooting abilities and only a typical Invulnerable against shooting for an HQ, though she’s also likely to have Feel No Pain from a Pain Token. So, Lelith’s the fastest and the best, even more than the most powerful demons, but she’s ultimately a small humanoid. A lot of units are like that, though even less clear. A ton of attacks, powerful abilities, but all seemingly likely to be balanced out by relative weakness and fragility.

I gather there are probably better HQ choices in the book because of their other abilities, e.g., Vect’s 50% odds to Seize the Initiative, but Lelith highlights how I felt reading many of the writeups. At first I thought “Wow, that’s a ridiculous number of attacks and high stats!” Then I remembered she’s only S3 T3. I assume and hope the other crazy abilities balance out similarly. For example, it’s harder to evaluate, but the Dark Eldar definitely have some extreme mobility. Reavers can move 36 inches and get a 3+ Turboboost save! But they’re only Toughness 4 with the buff from their bike. It definitely comes across as a glass jaw army, with some serious aggressive capabilities but not much capacity to stand and take damage. Again though, things like Pain Tokens granting Feel No Pain change that, so it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out. Certainly at the moment I’m optimistic that the book is well balanced and look forward to some matches.dark-eldar

All pictures above are from Games Workshop, used without permission.