FAQ 2: INFLATION IS A BITCH

Well it's here, the BIG FAQ 2 has released and we can all just calm our tits and stop getting all worked up.  Or can we?  I've had a chance to take a look at the changes made, so lets take a good look and I'll give you some of my thoughts on upcoming changes.

First up, the Battle Brothers beta rule has become official.  We've been playing with it for the last half a year so there's not much to unpack here.

Tactical Reserves has changed and they kept it a Beta rule as the change is quite large.  I guess they decided that they had it right in previous editions, because they have completely removed the ability to arrive via reinforcements on turn 1.  They have also switched the requirement of having half of your power level on the table to half your points as well as half your number of units.

This happened on Turn 2 or 3

This has some pretty big implications as quite a few armies tend to have some sort of reserve units coming via "deep strike".  Imperial armies with their "Slam-Captains", Eldar with their webway Shining Spears, and this now affects Genestealer Cult armies.  Even with the restrictions to arriving in your deployment zone (which GSC used to be exempt from) you could keep a shooting unit safe, or bring in assaulters if your opponent got a little aggressive and moved up.  I have witnessed a player bringing in a Bloodletter bomb in his own deployment zone and charging a unit 11" away.  Now, it's straight up "They can't come in till turn 2".  They didn't change that reinforcements have to come in by turn 3 though, so you basically have 2 turns to bring in your units.  Now this has been specified in that this only applies to unit that are deployed off the table during deployment, which means that Daemons can be summoned turn 1.  This is going to be a sleeper trick here, just wait and you will see it popping up in a couple lists.  This change also answers the questions of "Can ability X move units on the table to a location outside my deployment zone?"  I don't know why people still had those questions, but they were still being asked right up to when this FAQ came out.

Along side this, the stratagems that allow you to set up a unit before the first turn starts, the Alpha Legion "Forward Operatives" and others like it, have taken a huge hit.  They have now been changed to be a 9" move that happens before the first turn starts.  No more 120 cultists right in your face turn 1, which is probably a good thing.  Undoubtedly the community is going to cry foul that their Chaos Space Marine armies are totally useless now and maybe they are right, but they are going to have to put on their big boy pants and figure out something else.  Same as those guys who bought more than 3 Flying Hive Tyrants or Plague Burst Crawlers.
KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ALSO A BETA RULE, SO IT IS POSSIBLE THAT IT WILL NOT REMAIN EXACTLY AS IT IS.

Continuing on with the trend of changing up the first battle round, the player that has the second turn now has access to a stratagem that gives all of their units (except TITANIC ones) the benefits of cover, even if they are not in cover, for 2CP.  Think of that for a minute, Rhinos, Dreadnoughts, Carnifexes, all these things now get a 2+ save for 2CP if you get the second turn.  This is going to bring back a ton of units that are always threatened on getting nuked turn 1, and they all get a pretty solid boost for 2CP.  This is going to spark a bit of life for Marine based armies, and you will start to see them make a bit of a comeback and people start feeling out the new meta.

Another hard segue and we have slid right into the Command Point issue.  Only one ability can be successfully used per battle round to gain or have Command Points refunded.  This is really big as there were times where guys would spend nearly 50% more command points that what they started with.  I actually really like this solution as opposed to some of the other ideas that were being tossed around on the internets.  It covers every ability, and it still keeps them a viable choice as getting a command point back every battle round will still be a big thing.  However players will now be able to branch out and take a couple different relics or warlord traits as they won't have to double up on these abilities.  You will also likely see more abilities that just give you an extra CP.  Knights have one, AdMech have one, and this change has made them a little more important.

Lets continue to segue and talk about the increase in the cost of living...or the cost of stratagems.  Several of the prominent and powerful stratagems have increased in cost.  Upon Wings of Fire from the Blood Angels book, Oathbreaker Guidance System, Order of Companions, and Our Darkest Hour all increased by 1CP, and Agents of Vect increased to a whopping 4CP.  Vect took another hit in that there has to be a unit from the Kabal of the Black Heart on the table to use it and can't be used on stratagems that are used before the game or during deployment.

So, the big FAQ 2 was not the only changes to be made as many of the codexes and the main rulebook got some updates as well.  The first of which, and possibly the biggest is the changes made to unit with FLY.  Now, unit with FLY can move across models and terrain as if they were not there IN THE MOVEMENT PHASE.  This changes charging on and off of terrain, as you will now have to measure the vertical distance like some scrub without wings.  You can no longer charge over top of screening units.  This...is...big.  For myself, nearly every game I have played I have made a charge move over top of units for better positioning with Daemon Princes, Bloat Drones, and Mortarion.  Now you will have to charge into the front of the target unit making it much harder to pin it in place.

There was some speculation that Daemon Princes would get "The Bat" as well, making them the same data sheet when taking into account the "Rule of 3", but they remain independent from one another.  As well as squadrons which still allow you to take 9 Carnifexes, Leman Russ Tanks, or Armigers.  This was not that much of a surprise, but some people were thinking it would get hit.

The last FAQ bomb that I am going to drop off here is that Renegade Knights can now summon Daemons...

I think one is gonna be pretty big.  I've done a Tactics Talk on Summoning Daemons and to imagine that you can now swap any of those characters in that article with a Renegade Knight gives me tingles.  I already stated I think summoning is going to come back in a pretty serious way, this is going to enforce that as Knights are awesome no matter what allegiance.

So how is this going to affect the game as a whole?  Well that is a tricky thing to figure out.  We can see what gets hit by these changes but it doesn't really give a clear feel of how well balanced these changes made everything yet.  You can expect to see a drop in the 120 cultists in your face Chaos list, the BA/AM/Knights have also taken a hit but you will likely see a similar list just with some changes.  Perhaps Wolf Priests instead of Slam Captains, and possibly a little more AM in the list instead of the minimum 200 points of CP battery.  Eldar will climb in popularity again as many of these changes didn't single them out other than Agents of Vect, even with the change to FLY hurting Shining Spears.  Daemons took a little bit of a hit in that their bombs can't come in turn 1, as I mentioned I have seen guys "deep strike" big units into their deployment zone, putting them in reserve simply to keep them safe from shooting.  Once again I must mention summoning, which gets around that.  I mentioned that Marines are going to make a surge as Rhinos with a 2+ save become more durable, bring back Rhino rush and Marine combat armies.  That one round of increased save is a pretty big deal.  Assault based units that FLY took a pretty good hit to the junk losing a great deal of mobility, but most of the ones being used a lot will still be used as they are still really powerful.  Of all the changes, this one probably hurts the Slam Captains the most.

I hope you learn something from my ramblings.  Let me know what you think, maybe I missed something, maybe you think I'm wrong.  I look forward to reading your comments.

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.

MID YEAR META CHECK

So it's been a couple months since the shake up that was brought to us by the BIG FAQ and I'm going to be looking at a couple of the biggest events that have happened since to see what the top lists look like and what kind of themes they have.  I'll be looking at events like the London GT, the BAO, and the ETC.  Now, I fully understand that some of the ETC lists will be a little skewed from a take all comers meta, but they will give us a more focused view of the theme their list is based on.

Now, there is a pretty clear turning point when looking at some of these lists, and that turning point is when Imperial Knights was released in June.  Since then, many of the top lists have at least one Knight in them and why not?  They are tough, put out some major damage, and are pretty quick for something so large.  It ticks off all the boxes a unit needs to be effective.  The Knight is not the only model that follows this trend, Mortarion and Magnus fit this bill, but so do a lot of Death Star style units like a big unit of Custodes Vertus Jetbikes.  There is a main theme behind these units which is durability.  This can be accomplished is many ways, and while a Knight is durable in the obvious way, 200+ models are durable in a different way.  To-hit modifiers, high toughness, good saves, multiple saves, all these things come into play when talking about durability, and every list has something extra to make it more durable.

Those Knights, as with many other armies, are very CP intensive, so many players are finding a way to increase the number of CPs they start with and some way to regain them as the game progresses.  The most popular method among the Imperium is the cheap Astra Militarrm CP battery.  This is a battalion detachment that consists of a Company Commander and 3 infantry squads with mortars.  The Commander is made the Warlord and given Kurov's Aquilla and the Grand Strategist warlord trait and the detachment only costs 200 points.  3 Blood Angel scouts squad are another battery, joining the Slam-Captains to make a battalion for 5 more CP.

Anvils and batteries are all fine and dandy, but sometimes you need a dagger.  A precision strike right to the heart of the enemy and there are few units that do it better than the Blood Angles Captain lovingly nicknamed SLAMguinius.  Armed with a jump pack, thunder hammer, and storm shield, this guy can drop in to a tiny opening in the midst of the enemy and employ a stratagem that grants him very favourable odds of a successful charge and once he makes that charge it's night night to what ever he touches.  He is easy to hide, quick and easy to manoeuvre with FLY, and because he is a character your opponent will have issues targeting him all of the time.  There are not too many other armies in the game that can employ something on a similar scale as SLAMguinius but a Dawn Eagle riding Shield Captain is close, and an Eversor Assassin can fit the bill in a pinch.  Even a Harlequin transport full of dudes with fusion pistols could fill that role due to the transports small size and being open topped.

This brings me to manoeuvrability, which is something that the Aeldari (Craftworld, Drukhari, and Harlequin) do so well it's the main reason why they are as good as they are.  This high mobility allows them to get LOS on targets that were previously hidden, get in close to pick off characters, avoid or engage in combat as they wish, and hide when they need to.  This theme is also probably the most difficult to master as timing, placement, and predicting your opponent's actions are paramount to being successful, usually due to the army not being durable.

So, being fast and durable and all that is nice, but you aren't going to win games if you can't kill your opponent.  Dealing damage is key in this game and the number of ways you can deal damage equals the ways you can be durable, and you will need to be able to accomplish all of them.  For big, tough things with lots of wounds (like Knights) you need weapons with high strength, AP, and damage, like lascannons, melta weapons, or thunder hammers.  Another great way at dealing damage to very tough units is mortal wounds.  Psychic powers are particularly effective as these completely ignore the models toughness factor.  They often don't require hit or wound rolls and ignore all saves except for the "Feel No Pain" type rolls.   For those armies with 200+ models you need QUANTITY shooting like hurricane bolters, auto bolt storm gauntlets, punisher cannons, or 200 of your own scrubs you can throw into the meat grinder.  There is another type of damage I'm not sure what to call, reliable perhaps?  It typically ignores one of the main rules for shooting such as mortars ignoring LOS and flamers automatically hitting.  There has also been a decrease in "throw away" units, and a focus on getting those units used for bubble wrap or speed bumps to actually be able to do something.  The AM infantry squads in the battalion battery detachment are given mortars so they can be hidden, hold objectives, and still participate in the offencive tactics of the overall army.  Cultists are being infiltrated and given the mark of Slaanesh so they can fire 160 shots per shooting phase, a weird kind of alpha bitch-slap.

As you look at the above themes then look over the lists that win tournaments, you will notice something, many of the units fit into multiple categories.  Take a look at the Custodes Shield Captain on a Dawn Eagle jet bike.  Being T6 with a 2+/4++ save and 7 wounds, 14"M, 5 attacks at S6 -3AP d3D hitting on 2+ and 12 bolter shots hitting on 2+ and re-rolling all 1's to hit.  He is Durable, mobile, deadly, and can be that dagger, which checks off 4 of the above 5 themes I have outlined.  Plague Burst Crawlers are T8 with a 3+/5++ save and a 5+ FNP.  They have 2 guns that auto hit and one that ignores LOS, plus they move 10", while they don't have FLY it can be pretty damn surprising when an artillery type tank comes charging at you with 2D6 auto hits at S7 AP-1.
Now, for every theme that a unit does not have, it is often that much better in one of the other themes.  For example, and lets stay with Custodes for ease of comparison, a unit of 3 Vertus Jetbikes loses out on being as nimble and durable as the Shield Captain due to their larger foot print and not being a character (even with their increased number of overall wounds).  However their damage output is more than double that of the Shield Captain for less than double the points.



"I see you have the machine that goes PING!"

Lets compare notes from my end of year review from December.  The summary of that post is Celestine, re-rolls, alpha strike, bubble wrap, and smite.  Compare those themes to the ones laid out here, durability, command points, assassin like characters, manoeuvrability and a focus on damage output.

Now, there are some big changes to the lists in general, but when you look at the themes, they are not that different.  Celestine has been replaced with multiple generic characters, typically the BA SLMAcaptain or Custodes Shield Captain on Dawneagle.  Re-rolls are not nearly as focused on as they were before, Guilliman didn't show up in any of the top lists I looked at, but the captains that replaced Celestine still hand out re-rolls.  Guide and Doom are pretty popular as are Nurgle Daemon Princes and plague weapons.  The lack of re-rolls has been replaced with simple quantity of shots, favouring more bullets over of re-rolls but both tie into damage output.  The alpha strike still exists, but players have begun to compensate for this as the durability of units has skyrocketed and because units can't deep strike turn 1 the style of alpha strike is firepower based opposed to assault based.  Bubble wrap still exsists, but with the loss of drop alpha strike allowing armies to move out   Finally smite, which used to be so prevalent, is now only a token ability that is gently sprinkled around, although it can still be used to great effect by certain armies.

If you are really going to boil it down to the bare bones, you want to kill your opponent, stay alive, get objectives.  Easy...

Until next time, keep them dice rollin.