I'm not really sure what the point of this unit is? It's kind of a chaplain but it's not a chaplain. It's a beast in combat though and will no doubt carve though most things he meets in combat. 

Another solid unit, with a 2+, 4++ and 4+ FNP, he will be very difficult to remove. Apart from that he's a standard captain.

Basically your regular standard bearer, with the standard rules for when someone dies.

The big thing to note here is the changes to storm shields, going from 3++ to 4++ but adding one to the save characteristic. Apart from this, the units pretty standard.

The new bike units are quick, like very quick. 14 inch move, which can become 20 if you advance. On the new boards, especially the smaller boards, these guys will be zipping all over the place. Apart from that, these are pretty much as you would expect from a marine bike.

Now this is the unit that interests me most. A proper assault squad for primaris Marines. The upgrades to the chainswords is good and as I understand it, will be universal to all Marines, although I've yet to see in to the flesh. I will definitely be getting a squad of these, maybe two depending upon the points values, for my 500 point blood Angels list. I would like to see some extra weapons options, especially for BA units, such as hand flamers and inferno pistols. I'm also still waiting for things like lightning claws to make there way into the primaris arsenal.

With the release of 9th we will no doubt see some more units released but as I'm only looking at building a couple of small 500 point lists for my Marines, there are very few units that I'm waiting for.

With all the new information coming from GW right now, I am really falling behind on posting things up. The information about Combat Patrol has been out a couple of weeks now and I'm only just getting around to writing about it. I think that I am going to have to up my posting schedule a little if I can to get through all that I want to say! Right now though, let's look at Combat Patrol, which along side Incursion, will most likely be the way I will play most.

As you would imagine, Combat Patrol is restricted to a single patrol detachment. This isn't really much of a problem, as at 500 points, there isn't much you can fit in. This keeps the playing field fairly level as well, although for some armies this will be very restrictive, such as Custodies. For me restriction won't hinder me, I will still be able to field pretty much everything I need to. I do wonder if Incursion will have similar restrictions, although we do know that there will be two detachments allowed at that level. 

We were also given one of the missions, which shows the new scoring method. It seems that points scored are going to go up somewhat, as objectives score 5 points, not just 1. Apart from this there is not much change from previously. The biggest changes to mention is that you will hold and objective from when your models first move on to it until an enemy model moves on to it, regardless if you have a model there or not, so no more objective camping required.

After the mission we get a couple of possible forces, from a number of different armies. I've just pulled out two here, mostly as of the 5 given, these are the only 2 I collect.

So, I own just 1 thing on this list, the Skitarii Rangers and with the Vanguard and two tech priest dominus, I can just about scratch together 350 points or there abouts. With the increase in point this should.probably got north of 400 but that still leaves me with a short fall. I would have liked to I coude one of the Armiger's but can't as it falls outside the patrol detachment, I will however be able to put the two of them in to the Incursion format, so that's ok. I might have to look at getting another unit, something heavier, possibly a dunecrawler or maybe some combat, maybe some ruststalkers or electro-priests? I will wait until the new points come out before making any purchases though, just to see how things shape up.

Next up are the space Marines and as you can imagine all these units come from the new boxset. I am still planning on putting together some marine lists, to replace my old school  marines with primaris ones but I will talk more about that in another post. My first new marine army will be the Eagle Knights and will probably be similar to the above list but will remove the bikes, probably to be replaced with Intercessors with stalker bolt rifles or maybe some of the new melta boys for some anti-armour. The bikes would be good for the Dark Guardians and I could play them all together under one detachment for bigger games.

As for all my guard, well so far I've worked up 4 lists that will no doubt change when we get the new points through. As it stands I have.an all infantry list (plus the usual Wyvern), a mechanised infantry list and a armoured list for guard and a airborne drop list for Scions. I could probably put together about another two or three different lists from what remains but I think that four will suffice for now.

So far I am liking combat patrol and it will.give me the option to have all the various armies I want but keep cost, model count and storage down to a minimum, which are all good things. 

So this week we got a few more rules previews, along side the entire rule book! Well, we got the quick start rules anyway, which was nice. there are quite a few rules in there that have changed a little bit and a few new rules as well. I am not going to go over all the rules, mostly as i don't have the time and there are several people who have gone through everything and made some very good videos on YouTube for you to watch.  I will however go through the ones that were released in various post over the last week.

First up is the new Psychic actions. Now while this isn't the actual psychic powers but something done instead, there are a couple of lines that stuck out to me. One was that if a psyker fall out of combat they cannot try to manifest a psychic action and one presumes a psychic power as well. This might have already been a thing and I might have missed it. 

Psychic actions sound like fun as well and might mean that a primaris psyker or two might find a way in to my forces.

The last rules preview of note this week was the supreme command detachment. 

This is a huge change and one that I think will have a massive impact on a number of people, me for one. There are two reason I think that this will impact on people, the main one and the reason I think it's all been chamged, is that you will no longer be able to spam certain hq units, such as smash captains, Eldar psykers, custodies thingies, you get the picture. Now you will have to take what you can in your main detachment. The other way it will impact on people, people like me, is the super heavy element. I used to run this with the cheapest hq HQ units I could, or maybe a psyker as well and then my Hellhammer. This was a cheap way to get a superheavy into an army, now however you'll have to go the auxiliary detachment (I think....) And spend 3cp for the privilege. This mean that my mechanised list will only start with 9 cp at most, which is annoying. Another thing to note is that the only units that you can include now are primarch, daemon primarch or supreme Commander units, which as far I as can tell is 3 units, girlyman and the two daemon primarchs.

While I think that it is a good idea, it is slightly annoying as it means I'm going to have to have a bit of a rethink, not much of one but one none the less. 

I'm not sure we'll get many more previews with the rules out now. Hopefully this will give me a chance to catch up on all the other posts I've got planned! 

So, lost week we got to see how the guard will play in the new edition and the answer is not much different, well, not that I can see anyway.

In the actual article, there was very little substance, the first part being taken up by the standard "Who are they" bit and then we got information on the new morale phase and combat attrition test. Now while this was good information and nice to know, it's got nothing to actually do with guard. We did get a look at the summary execution rule for commissars but it doesn't look like it's change to me or been fixed. Really it should be that the commissar shoots some one and the rest past the test, not having to retake the test but that's for another moan. 

After this we got some stratagems, all of which we already know about and don't seem to have changed as a result of 9th. Two of these stratagems, Deft Manoeuvering and Hail of Fire are from the Psychic Awakening: The Greater Good and seem more to be a plug for the book than anything else. 

The last one, Go! Recon!, Is from the codex and again doesn't seem to change at all.

After this we got the top 3 units for 9th and again, no real news here. First up was the Hellhound and again it was pushing a stratagem, which I believe is from the Greater Good as well. The only thing to mention is that this can offset some of the new terrain rules. Then we had the Bullgryns and again, nothing here to report, as everything that's was said is something we already know. 

Lastly we got the Wyvern and possibly something to actually take note of.

There is one line of text that states that with the new blast rules the mortar can now get 24 shots. Which it could get before being a 4d6 shot weapon. So, this mean that either there stating the obvious or that the new blast rules apply to each individual dice roll, not the overall roll. That means that for units up to 5 it will be random, for 6 to 10 it would be a minimum 12 and over 11 would be 24. This would be a huge boost to the weapon and offset the lack of AP, which I think it should have at least -1ap!

Edit: ok, I've had another look and I think I might have sussed it. The way things are worded it sounds like for a unit up to 5 your just roll the 4d6, for a unit 6 to 10 you would get a min of 3 shots but seeing as your rolling 4d6 and the minimum you can roll is 4, the new rules won't make a difference. The real difference come with a unit of 11+ as you don't roll but get the maximum shots, so 24. Seeing as most units are 10 or under, this rule will have little impact on Wyverns. Unless of course I've got this all wrong still. 

So, all in all, nothing much to say really, which was a bit of a disappointment but not unexpected. I do wonder if the Militarum Tempestus forces will get a faction focus to themselves, as they were not mentioned at all here. Could this be a splitting of the codex again? I do hope not.

On the whole, the test has remained the same with a day rolled and added to the number of models that are killed and a roll of one always passes. The change comes when you fail. In the past you'd loose the number of models equal to how much you failed by, now you loose just one model but must make a Combat Attrition test. So what is a Combat Attrition test?

Well, it's a bit of a mess, that's what it is. So, whole for the morale test, a 1 always passes, now a 1 fails? Anyway, you roll a d6 for each model remaining and then remove models that fail. This whole thing is yet more complication, more dice to roll and more rules to remember. At this rate it'll take hours to play a game, as you'll have to keep referring to the rule book every 5 seconds.

Lastly we have aircraft. There are a few changes here as well, mostly good. 

So, with the release of the contents of the 9th edition box set, we got confirmation on some of the units we already knew about and some additional units as well. Now, I know that this is a week or so old now but with all the information we're getting at the moment, I'm struggling to keep up with it all. It's not so much that there to much information to keep to my regular 2 posts a week but more that I'm just not having the time to write everything. I normally like to keep a post or two ahead but at the moment I'm writing each one right up to the wire. Anyway, moan over, on to the new units.

First up are two  "new" units, the firestrite servo turret and the Invader ATV. 

The new thunder fire cannon, maybe? Or maybe not. It's obviously supposed to fill the heavy support role that the thunder fire cannon does but seems to be a more direct fire model, with (I believe) lascannons or autocannons. As a model, I'm not sure about this one. It sounds like a good idea but I've got a few questions the main one being, can it move? It doesn't look like it can move but then it could be pretty useless in the game if it doesn't. I won't be getting any of these anytime soon, as besides not being to keen on the model itself, it doesn't actually fit any of my army designs.  

This unit, the Eradicators, have featured before but I was hoping that they were the new devastator units. As it turns out, they are melta Gunner but with super meltas (because primaris). I'm guessing that this means assault multimeltas or similar. The extra armour makes sense, if your going to get up close and personal then you need extra protection. These start filling up the special weapons roles, with melta and plasma now sorted. Whether we get normal guys with flamers or if we see any grav armed primaris is a question many of us want answered (maybe, or it could be just me).

 

Lastly we have this bad boy, the captain. This is a glorious model, just look at all the detail! I am really liking the new captain and lieutenant models, they are just full of character and detail. I haven't seen this guy as a dark angel angel yet but I think he'd be perfect! I don't think that I will get this model, purely because I don't plan on getting the box set but I would certainly love to own one if I did. 

So there's the rest of the new models that we know of so far. I suspect that there will be more just after release but for now this will have to do and overall, I'm very impressed with the models, despite some obvious flaws (like bikes that can't go over a speed bump!). I'm still hoping for a guard update soon after 9th drops and if the detail on the marine models is anything to go by, new guard ones should rock!

So we have some new rules this week to look at this week. This week is overwatch and characters.

There have been some big changes to overwatch for 9th edition, some of which I am less than impressed with. For starters overwatch itself has now become a stratagem, rather than an inbuilt ability from the core rules. This means that it will follow all the rules of stratagems, the key one being that it is a one use per phase thing. That means that only one unit can fire overwatch in any given charge phase, reducing the very act down to a bit of a nonsense. Here is the stratagem itself;

However much i dont like this move, it is compounded by the way the stratagem is worded. When a unit is target as part of a charge move, it can fire overwatch before the charge roll is made but what if the charge fails? does that mean if a second unit tries to charge it cant overwatch them? If a unit has this played on them, it could at least last till the end of the phase.

Over all, I'm not impressed with these changes to the game. The is a minor upside to all of this but it come with the usual GW caveats, if ypu go down the Crusade force route, what ever that may entail, you can get overwatch for free and on a 5+. So take the new shiny stuff or suffer. Thanks GW.

Next up was a small bit about the new terrain rules, which grant certain benefits to models in some situations. The example we were given was infantry dug in to a defensive position, which grants the Defensible special rules. No i do like the idea of this but it seems to be adding more things to the terrain rules! by the end of this, were going to need a whole big rule book just for the terrain rules, let alone anything else!

Well that's it for now, we'll see what this week brings! Hopefully the guard preview!

Assault marine, posing to look cool.

Necron, posing to try and not look like an idiot 

Marine, posing in hope no one notices how grey he is.

Last week we got some more previews, both of rules and units. All these previews are great for the new edition but they are giving me a bit of an issue for writing about other things, namely what I hope for the Guard going forward in to 9th. I will get around to writing about what I hope to see and which rules I want to see changed and which I hope are kept the same at some point but for now, let's have a look at the new rules.

There are two rules to look at terrain and Flyers.

First up, terrain. There are new terrain rules that are supposed to simplify and streamline the old rules. At first glance, I can't see how they simplify things but then we don't know the full rules for all the different keywords.

So more details on some of the terrain traits which seem pretty simple and easy to deal with. It is worded in the usual GW manner but basically it's +1 to save (not invulnerable) to either shooting or melee (unless you were charged). Hopefully the rest will be as simple as these are. This mostly seems to be aimed at the tournament crowd again, closing down any avenue of argument or rules exploitation. For most of us there was never any issue with the terrain Rules and I personally never had any issues during games with rules around terrain. 

Hopefully when the full rules come out, it will all be pretty self explanatory and work as smoothly as they suggest it will.

The next talking point last week was aircraft. AIRCRAFT is a new keyword to help differentiate between normal infantry units that can fly and actual aircraft units. I think this is a good move and don't really understand why it was not done in previous editions. 

Lastly, flyers are now no longer stuck on the tabletop. Why they we're we restricted by the rules of 8th I have no idea, it didn't make sense but now they are able to fly around and zip on and off the battle field at will. This is back to the old days of 6th and 7th and how it should be. Having to hold off until turn 2 is no big deal but being able to setup on the battle field anywhere is a great bonus for aircraft and is how it should be. The only issue is, how will it interact with some of the existing rules, such as Grav-chute insertion for they valkyries and vendetta's. 

So far, kinda good. I still think things are heading in the right direction and that this edition will be better than the last. I wonder what this week will hold for 9th previews!