Well, to say something nice, Allies might be nicer under the new FOC

A single HQ will unlock a detachment of choice plus (burning the HQ's Prime slot power on Logistical Benefit) any 1 unit of any type. So that could be a White Scars bike boss and 3 Fast Attack units, for example, with no Troop tax.

The funny thing is it seems possible to just spam this endlessly without putting any units at all in your allegedly primary faction (as long as you're fine living with no Praetor or Primarch) and this will give you more non-HQ slots than a primary detachment would.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The last reply from the /tg/ thread with the leaks hits home

Hey I think this ruleset was generated by an AI. It's convoluted and complex for the sake of complexity. All the jargon trips over itself in a completely unintuitive way. The book-keeping needed to track all the detachments and bonuses also seem impractical to the point of being AI suggestions. Just look at the wording on the special rules - I don't think it's just me becoming spontaneously slowed, they're straight up hard to read

They’re not hard to read though?

The wording isn’t short, but that doesn’t mean it’s not clear or succinct, nor any longer than the wording absolutely needs to be to convey the rule and how it works.

EDIT. - Here's an Imgur folder with some of the leaks.

https://imgur.com/a/5U2Wkq8

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They’re not hard to read though?

The wording isn’t short, but that doesn’t mean it’s not clear or succinct, nor any longer than the wording absolutely needs to be to convey the rule and how it works.

"There are no limits on which units can be in your army. Now here's a list of limits on the units on your army..."

And what’s the wider context?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I’ve read the images in the link Snrub provided, and I’m not seeing that wording.

You wouldn’t be cherry picking and deliberately paraphrasing into a misleading quote, would you?

Here's a direct quote

It may also include any number of Auxiliary Detachments or Apex Detachments - the number of Auxiliary Detachments or Apex Detachments available to a given Army is determined by...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, I’ve read the images in the link Snrub provided, and I’m not seeing that wording.

That's not the full set of leaks, by the way. It hasn't been updated with some of the newer stuff yet.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/itpl4ywx/rules-in-the-age-of-darkness-how-to-build-an-army-in-the-new-edition/

And what is in that wording that’s unclear or misleading?

Your Army dictates the number of Aux/Apex detachments it can include. But there’s no minimum.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/itpl4ywx/rules-in-the-age-of-darkness-how-to-build-an-army-in-the-new-edition/

This is gak. They've just made the FOC more convoluted for... no reason at all? Was there anything actually wrong with the way it was?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And what is in that wording that’s unclear or misleading?

Your Army dictates the number of Aux/Apex detachments it can include. But there’s no minimum.

So it is any number or a number dictated by other factors?

Hahahaha no more Dreadnought Talons. Its literally 1 Dreadnought per HQ taken, and they can be one-shotted by a regular meltagun. I hope nobody bought a lot of Dreadnoughts last edition for some reason.

Not a fan of this new force org. It doesn't actually add anything of value and those "Prime" unit benefits are just needless rules bloat.

It's also not great that this is all being referred to under Legion terms which makes me suspicious that everything is going to be different for the likes of Mechanicum or Auxilia.
"Add more detachments by taking Consuls". Awesome, great, one small problem, no other faction has as many HQ options as the Legions.

Oh yea F in the chat for factions that will have to take massed do-nothing T3 officers to unlock anything worth having.

I hate the HQ tax but at least the Consuls are cool af.

Dudeface wrote:

Go look at the pictures, since you're subjectively skewed to think it's great in order to pointlessly argue as you note, you'll love it.

Again, just trouble-making. What you’re saying now is (1) incoherent, (2) not what you started out saying, and (3) demonstrably untrue if you look at what I’ve actually said previously about this new edition. But don’t let that stop you jumping on anyone who’s not immediately prejudging everything.

Leaker is back, same /tg/ thread, btw. Posting psychics now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Das_Ubermike wrote:
Then that seems even worse. It's an edge case, I know, but I can envision a world where you'd rather get a glancing hit to stun the vehicle until you can finish it off next turn in CC, rather than penning it and allowing it freedom of action with full firepower in the next turn. I get that they probably didn't want to make pens too strong, but yeesh.

This you?

>be a tank driver in 30k
>a burst of lascannon fire rips through the tank, killing the gunner and rips half the armor off.
>Blood rain patters off my helmet from newly exposed sky
Thats ok I'll drive with my foot and load myself.
>An autocannon richochets harmlessly off the angled armor
BROS??? WTF WAS THAT???? IM CLOSING MY EYES!!1
>Another autocannon shot bounces harmlessly off, not even scratching the paint
>I panic, draw my side arm and fire a few rounds into the engine block to calm my nerves

Like others have said, and where we've seen in other parts of the rules, the force org seems really complex, but only to add complexity. I don't see how it benefits anything to lock detachments behind low-tier HQ units. If you make a detachment type but only have 1 type of unit behind it, that's just a unit selection. I realize I'm viewing it through the Marine lens, but this is the Marine vs. Marine game.

And jeez, did they add a (X) to everything? But the number in the parenthesis isn't always formatted the same way. Again, complexity for complexity's sake.

 Snord wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Go look at the pictures, since you're subjectively skewed to think it's great in order to pointlessly argue as you note, you'll love it.

Again, just trouble-making. What you’re saying now is (1) incoherent, (2) not what you started out saying, and (3) demonstrably untrue if you look at what I’ve actually said previously about this new edition. But don’t let that stop you jumping on anyone who’s not immediately prejudging everything.

Go argue with everyone else saying the same things we did then. I'm not special, stop treating me like I am.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Leaker is back, same /tg/ thread, btw. Posting psychics now.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Das_Ubermike wrote:
Then that seems even worse. It's an edge case, I know, but I can envision a world where you'd rather get a glancing hit to stun the vehicle until you can finish it off next turn in CC, rather than penning it and allowing it freedom of action with full firepower in the next turn. I get that they probably didn't want to make pens too strong, but yeesh.

This you?

>be a tank driver in 30k
>a burst of lascannon fire rips through the tank, killing the gunner and rips half the armor off.
>Blood rain patters off my helmet from newly exposed sky
Thats ok I'll drive with my foot and load myself.
>An autocannon richochets harmlessly off the angled armor
BROS??? WTF WAS THAT???? IM CLOSING MY EYES!!1
>Another autocannon shot bounces harmlessly off, not even scratching the paint
>I panic, draw my side arm and fire a few rounds into the engine block to calm my nerves

Nar boss. Though I did see that post and laugh. If it's bad enough that me and an anon arrived at the same conclusion, I really wonder how that rule change wasn't smothered in the crib.

It is a bit funny that a lascannon will pray for a glance and the 1/3 chance to halve firepower probably for the rest of the game, rather than taking off 1 or 2 hp with zero consequence.

Realistically, tho... Deep Strike is 1" from enemy, no scatter. Melta one-shots Predators at 6"... 3.0 is not going to be fun for tank companies.

Reddit is a no-go at work.

Can someone tell me when they post reliable intelligence on the status of Knights in 30k, so I can join the fun and be depressed too?

No info on Knights yet or any other units. The leakeranon only has the rulebook.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Oh yea F in the chat for factions that will have to take massed do-nothing T3 officers to unlock anything worth having.

I hate the HQ tax but at least the Consuls are cool af.

Atleast my enforcers now come in handy since i can just uplift them to HQ..... in order to allow my list to still be fething legal.....

It takes real skill to make the FOC more handicapped than 8th edition onwards, and yet GW managed it to do so, but he , we can now facilitate duels in 4 diffrent ways.,,,

Challenge rules are 6 pages of glorified rock paper scissors lizard spock where one player has to declare first and the other one probably wins. And the last page deals entirely with how to redeploy the winner back into his unit... clear and concise system indeed.

Again, concise doesn’t mean short. It just means in the clearest way using the fewest words.

Work wise, I can break down sometimes complex rules and considerations into a clear conclusion. But that can still take a page or two of a letter, depending on complexity and importance of given information, and how many things I need to cover, or say aren’t in fact relevant, especially when one party thinks such a thing is a slam dunk.

People really need to be realistic when it comes to such things. If you get bored and wander off after the first three lines? Perhaps wargaming isn’t for you.

That FOC is just the return of 7th ed Decurion type detachments.

It was not the visions of future that drove Konrad mad, it was reading too much doomposting here.


Well anyway, Auxilia and Mech have their own FoC to use and rules regarding that so leaks and article only cover the marine specific one as an example. And Legions are getting their own things regarding force building.

 Snrub wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/itpl4ywx/rules-in-the-age-of-darkness-how-to-build-an-army-in-the-new-edition/

This is gak. They've just made the FOC more convoluted for... no reason at all? Was there anything actually wrong with the way it was?

You already owned the rules for how it already was.

BUY IT AGAIN!

Charges are now a 3 page process

There's a step up move which is optional of move + initiative, then optional firing assault weapons at each other, then charge 2d6 pick highest.

It simply doesn't require 3 pages of pure text.

Oh there's also an end of the phases phase.

There's definitely some things in the new rules I like, but that force org doesn't work at all and I don't really know what they were thinking.

 Tyran wrote:
That FOC is just the return of 7th ed Decurion type detachments.

I had the same PTSD flashback, especially with the thing at the bottom of the page that states that every Detachment has its own Special Rules for that Detachment.

 Sotahullu wrote:
It was not the visions of future that drove Konrad mad, it was reading too much doomposting here.

When can we expect an Imperial Assassin to show up and finish us off?

...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Sotahullu wrote:
It was not the visions of future that drove Konrad mad, it was reading too much doomposting here.

When can we expect an Imperial Assassin to show up and finish us off?

...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

I think most of us were expecting a tweak here, a number change there, and maybe a new fluffy addition for a more narrative feel.

Definitely not a rework for the sake of a rework. I enjoy FOCs, but this seems overdone.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

This is a significant amount of change for the game, a change that many (including myself) believe is completely unnecessary and adds nothing of value or substance.

The significant difference between the changes from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd is the relatively small amount of time between them. For context, I went through 6 years of high school and 5 years of higher education (give or take a few months) before HH1 swapped to HH2. By this point, all the Legions had rules, the Primarchs had models, a mid-edition rules cleanup had occurred, and we even had the first plastic HH models. I had gone from Emperor's Children, to Iron Warriors, to Cults & Militia, to Ruinstorm Daemons, back to Iron Warriors, and had just started a Shattered Legions project when the news of HH2 rolled out.
Ultimately, the game was old, and a refresh at that point IMO was welcome.
There were still weird choices with HH2, but that is par for the course with any edition change; nobody likes everything.

This is different. HH2 isn't old; there have been numerous model updates, but not nearly enough new units for the various factions to warrant a redo of the army books. An FAQ or a rules cleanup was all that was needed to fix some of the more prevalent issues with the system and to give a balance tweak.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Sotahullu wrote:
It was not the visions of future that drove Konrad mad, it was reading too much doomposting here.

When can we expect an Imperial Assassin to show up and finish us off?

...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

I was all in on a new edition a month ago, I wasn't super bothered but my friends were and I liked the older 40k rules well enough.

The saturnine box looked amazing, so far so good. Then we get the preview and the already heavy rules set that's been forcibly adapted to handle swarms of marines, gets bogged down with more bolt on stats for arbitrary faff imo.

Whole sections of the game continue this trend of complexity for the sakes of it to appeal to "crunch" lovers. The best bits are the tactical status that clearly dont need 4 stats the vehicle damage changes. The rest is just word salad changes for the sakes of adding more stuff to me.

As a result I cancelled my register of interest, I have no want to play a game that's like joining a book club at this stage.

Welcome to modern GW.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

well, it is a new game and in that way at best a sidegrade instead of an upgrade
because if you change to much any past experience in balancing and design is meaningless and you start again from scratch but also for the players
so it will take the next 6-12 months to figure the game out so we can tell what is good or bad and what need to be changed so a balance update in 12-18 months will make it a game but by that time we are already thru half of its lifetime and of 4th isn't an update but again a new instead we are starting from scratch again

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Sotahullu wrote:
It was not the visions of future that drove Konrad mad, it was reading too much doomposting here.

When can we expect an Imperial Assassin to show up and finish us off?

...Honestly, are the new rules bad, or just different than what was expected/wanted?

Well, apparently it takes 6 pages to tell you how to do a Challenge.... That's not good. And that's just one bit of the game.

 Snord wrote:
As with WH40k, the move away from a 'restrictive' FOC might satisfy the players who just want their favourite toys on the table, but it leads to s**t looking armies.

What leads to gak looking armies are WAAAC spammers. If you want a good looking army, you need an army following logical, realistic composition, which FOC was utterly gak in delivering. Really, all it did (along with its cousin, Rule of 3, which for some reason is still bashed by HOC simps despite being utterly identical in practice, go figure) was to try and limit spam a little (in which it mostly failed, thanks to talons/squadrons/etc) but producing anything like viable army, it did not.

Picture, if you will, Iwo Jima movie, in which US marines army consists of 3 guns, 3 sherman tanks, 3 trucks, and 3 Texas class battleships. Oh, and 20 compulsory dudes. And 4 star general commanding the above, because he can punch 4 japanese soldiers in a minute instead of just 3 (but no staff, he just stands alone in the middle and shouts). Which part of it, pray tell, sounds realistic in any way?

 lord_blackfang wrote:
no more Dreadnought Talons. Its literally 1 Dreadnought per HQ taken, and they can be one-shotted by a regular meltagun. I hope nobody bought a lot of Dreadnoughts last edition for some reason.

I like how doomposters act like a meltagun could never oneshot a dread (or, for that matter, stuff like Land Raiders or Spartans, etc) for literal decades. Inconceivable, eh?

Also, thanks for QED how utterly garbage HOC was at doing one job it had.

And who pray tell were these people mass spamming the things (besides WAAAC thatguys, that is) because most HH groups I am aware of and see had very strict limits and taking more than 1-2 was seen as asking for it? Or was the legendary etiquette and self restraint (something something narrative) of HH players just a myth?

after having time to think about the new FOC, my conclusion is that i'll need to see it in practice and how they handle it in the rules (ie. legion/faction specific ones) before i can really judge it, but i don't dislike it. reminds me a bit of what AOS did for 4th edition

 Irbis wrote:

I like how doomposters act like a meltagun could never oneshot a dread (or, for that matter, stuff like Land Raiders or Spartans, etc) for literal decades. Inconceivable, eh?

There was a damage roll involved, as I'm sure you're aware.

Now a meltagun pen will kill a Dreadnought or a Predator 100% of the time... and an intact Land Raider 0% of the time (it won't even be Shaken).

I also don't think there was any time in all of history that you could deep strike with absolute precision and safety inside Melta range.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

People really need to be realistic when it comes to such things. If you get bored and wander off after the first three lines? Perhaps wargaming isn’t for you.

Please remind the class when the last time you actually played a wargame was.

2024. Thanks for playing.

But seriously, none of these rules are truly verbose. The information is there. The information is clear.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2024. Thanks for playing.

But seriously, none of these rules are truly verbose. The information is there. The information is clear.

Almost universally you could say all of them with fewer words.

Why does it need 9 lines for FNP?

Dudeface wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
2024. Thanks for playing.

But seriously, none of these rules are truly verbose. The information is there. The information is clear.

Almost universally you could say all of them with fewer words.

In your own time then….


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:
Why does it need 9 lines for FNP?

Because it clearly explains the mechanic, and when that mechanic might crop up.

In short?

What it does.

When it does.

How it does.

Is there any part of that rule that you find confusing or contradictory?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oooh, Fear is back. That’s nice!

Fear never went away mate.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In your own time then….

"Feel No Pain (X) - When a model with this rule takes damage from an unsaved wound, it may make a Feel No Pain damage mitigation roll.
This roll is taken with the value of (X).
Feel No Pain rolls may not be taken against an attack of double or greater Strength than the receiving units Toughness."

I had the pleasure of flipping through the 4th edition rulebook earlier this week. It had 22 USRs in total, and they fit on 2 and a half pages.

We must assume Doc didn't know how they worked since they weren't a quarter of a page each and it is not possible to explain them in less.

That’s nice.

But the question remains.

Which of these rules do you find ambiguous, unclear, or contradictory?

Because that’s the only real question here surely? Do you, or do you not, understand the What, How, and When of a given rule in these image, once you’ve read them?

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
That FOC is just the return of 7th ed Decurion type detachments.

I had the same PTSD flashback, especially with the thing at the bottom of the page that states that every Detachment has its own Special Rules for that Detachment.

Yeah, these are a little...odd. I read the article a few times and am still a little confused. Hopefully the rules a more clear in the rulebook.

"You may have noticed in the charts above that some slots have a special border around them, marking them as Prime Slots. For each one of these filled by a unit, you may select one of several Prime Advantages, which do all sorts of things from enhancing the fighting prowess of the squad’s Sergeant to bolstering the unit’s Advanced Characteristics."

I wonder if the Prime Advantages will cost points or will they be free buffs.

Free buff. It’s in the leaked pages. Theres a link a page back if you wish to have a read.

I'll play, but only this once.

A model with this special rule uses up X points of Transport Capacity rather than 1 when it embarks on a model with the Transport sub-type.

I also took The Liberty of cleaning up some of the random Capitalization.

What is even going on in that gakshow, why does it keep referring to itself.

And that's with conforming to current terminology. We can shave it down further using commonly understood wargaming syntax

This model uses up X points of Transport Capacity rather than 1 when it embarks on a Transport.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That’s nice.

But the question remains.

Which of these rules do you find ambiguous, unclear, or contradictory?

Because that’s the only real question here surely? Do you, or do you not, understand the What, How, and When of a given rule in these image, once you’ve read them?

Perfect example, first of all, why the feth do we need "strike groups", it's a weird concept.

Step 4 & 5:
Models declared engaged make attacks for all melee weapons in order of initiate step.

Starting with the active player, group the attacks based on attacking profile in that initiative step, further splitting the group based on target unit and different pools for the bearers weapon skill. Models joining the units are considered separate units for these rules.

To make these attacks, roll the individual groups to complete a hit roll as explained on page 195 (this is really lazy imo) and keep the results separate. Discard unsuccessful rolls.

Note when attacking a unit with mixed weapon skill, use the majority based on number of physical models ignoring special rules such as bulky.

All hit rolls for a combat at that initiative step must be completed for both players before moving to Step 5: Making a wound test.

Giving 'group of dudes with same weapons' the game term of Strike Group allows future rules to reference such things clearly.

 Shakalooloo wrote:
Giving 'group of dudes with same weapons' the game term of Strike Group allows future rules to reference such things clearly.

It's simply telling you to make attacks in initiative order, it doesnt need to be a full a4 page and not include the actual rules for the fething hit roll.

Nothing is gained by that level of sheer character padding.

I suppose if you can propose a hypothetical use that's better than "when the attack model/when this model is attacked" i could be swayed.

I think a "Strike Group" drinking game is in order....

Sheesh.

Written by AI theory looking better by the minute

I agree with MDG about a lot of things, but this isnt one of those times. These are some of the most verbose and inconcise rules Ive seen, and im certain that the AI hypothesis is correct.

Yeesh, that is some dense and unfriendly text.


How many tournaments are going to keep running 2nd ed?

Feels like a programmer writing, not an AI to me.Maybe a bit of Mojo Jojo sure.

Strike Groups? Just a proper noun for what was called dice pools before.

Wordy, but trying to eliminate any ambiguity that some people use to try to break the game.

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Feels like a programmer writing, not an AI to me.Maybe a bit of Mojo Jojo sure.

Strike Groups? Just a proper noun for what was called dice pools before.

Wordy, but trying to eliminate any ambiguity that some people use to try to break the game.

I agree. This doesn't feel like ChatGPT (or one of the Omnissiah's pals).

It reads like they bounced the wording off a bunch of obnoxious rules lawyers and D&D min-maxers with the sole instruction, "phrase it so they can't break it."

The value on the dice you roll after you rolled it is the result of your roll, in case you didn't know.

Having now slept on the issue, I've realised what's been irking me about these rules, and Blackfang your post above post about the Charge Move's nicely illustrates this.

It's like rather then having rules writers do their thing, and then having an editor look over the final product, they've instead had a lawyer who writes EULA's come in and reword everything in the most inane way possible. It's all superduper carefully worded that there's no room for misunderstanding and wrongful interpretation (which lets be honest, is a good thing), but it's been done in the worst most convoluted way possible.
When I look at these leaked rules and at the rules articles WarCom have posted, my eyes start to gloss over and I stop actually paying attention to what I read. Which is exactly what happens when I have to read privacy polices, EULA's, and other such works of legalese.

Could GW have taken the concept of a "Rules Lawyer" too literally?

Genuinely, yes!

Look at that blurb about making charge moves. It's eye wateringly asinine in the way it's written.

It's not like this is exactly a new phenomenon in their rules writing either, It's been going this way for a while now. Just some of these rules are particularly egregious though.

See in one way its a good thing; but the issue is unlike say Magic the Gathering, where the Rules are broadly the same all the time and just tweaked; because GW reboots everything chances are these rules will never get to a point where the concept is both tight and simple to write at the same time.

Cause they'll change something somewhere somehow



But yeah its a VERY convoluted and wordy way to describe something.
It's like how they've been simplifying warscrolls/dataslates by moving data off them and into other spots - it creates a system that's actually harder to learn and play because the info is difficult to egnage with

 Overread wrote:
Could GW have taken the concept of a "Rules Lawyer" too literally?

Well, we know GW loves lawyers!

 BorderCountess wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Could GW have taken the concept of a "Rules Lawyer" too literally?

Well, we know GW loves lawyers!

 Snrub wrote:
It's like rather then having rules writers do their thing, and then having an editor look over the final product, they've instead had a lawyer who writes EULA's come in and reword everything in the most inane way possible. It's all superduper carefully worded that there's no room for misunderstanding and wrongful interpretation (which lets be honest, is a good thing), but it's been done in the worst most convoluted way possible.

When I saw all the capitalised words the first thing that struck me was that it looked like a legal document where someone had gotten a bit carried away with the defined terms. It does all seem rather heavy-handed.

As for whether the rules are excessively worded, the way GW have done it might be intended to make it clearer what the intent behind the rules is.

Having seen Warcom's article on the new force organisation rules, and had a look at how my own army lists would be affected, I am more positive about how they will work. The starting point seems to be that we will need more HQ models in order to field the variety units that we will want. I am fine with having more independent characters - in fact, I like having individual models as they add a lot of flavour to the army. The question for me will be whether the points will be adjusted so these additional HQs don't knock out too many other units. We may still end up with horrendous lists; that will depend a lot on things like how Line works, points values, and army-specific special rules.

 lord_blackfang wrote:


The value on the dice you roll after you rolled it is the result of your roll, in case you didn't know.

"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice, with the highest single Dice result being the Charge Distance. Move the Charging Models the Charge Distance"

I could make it:
"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice. Move the Charging Models the highest single Dice Result rolled."


Mod edit - removed.

 Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice, with the highest single Dice result being the Charge Distance. Move the Charging Models the Charge Distance"

I could make it:
"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice. Move the Charging Models the highest single Dice Result

"You can't modify your charge distance since the rules say you move equal to the Dice result, nothing else!!!!"

Than any modifier would apply to the dice result
And the original text misses the information that the result of the charge roll is the value you are moving your models during the charge move (while explaining the single terms in detail it doesn't make the connection that the charge roll gives you the distance for the charge move)

And hands up who now doesn’t know how to determine your charge roll?


Becuase I get whinging into the void is apparently the in-thing right now. But sounding like a broken record?

If you understand the rule, the wording is fine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And hands up who now doesn’t know how to determine your charge roll?


Becuase I get whinging into the void is apparently the in-thing right now. But sounding like a broken record?

If you understand the rule, the wording is fine.

If it takes 500 words to say "roll 2 dice and pick the highest" then the writing is awful even if the rule is perfectly legible.

Don't get me wrong, im not saying 40k is well written, but it's a lot more to the point and digestible.

But they hear HH players love complexity and crunch, so word count must go up!

If the intent and mechanics of the rule is understood, the writing of said rule cannot be bad.

People want clear rules. They get clear rules.

People get clear rules “why so many words”.

It really does feel like folk are just desperate for something, anything, to whine about.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If the intent and mechanics of the rule is understood, the writing of said rule cannot be bad.

People want clear rules. They get clear rules.

People get clear rules “why so many words”.

It really does feel like folk are just desperate for something, anything, to whine about.

Because clarity does not necessitate verbosity in every circumstance. Do you consider the fact they used 5 full pages of A4 without using any diagrams for "how to make a melee attack" reasonable? Bear in mind those pages actually refer you off to another section on the how to hit roll, the wound roll, i had to reread strike groups about 6 times to work out what the point was.

The "make an armour save or damage mitigation roll" is half a full side of A4 and an extra paragraph and designers note on the following page. Oddly it doesnt actually tell you how to make an armour save, it simply tells you to do it and discard the dice.

How is this not excessive?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If the intent and mechanics of the rule is understood, the writing of said rule cannot be bad.

People want clear rules. They get clear rules.

People get clear rules “why so many words”.

It really does feel like folk are just desperate for something, anything, to whine about.

It's simple to create something complicated. And it's complicated to create something simple.

I think that's from Mikhail Kalashnikov.

GW is taking the lazy route of writing a lot of lines for something that's not that hard. There are whole games out there that have fewer pages than just the shooting section of GW rules.

 Waaagh_Gonads wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:


The value on the dice you roll after you rolled it is the result of your roll, in case you didn't know.

"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice, with the highest single Dice result being the Charge Distance. Move the Charging Models the Charge Distance"

I could make it:
"After all Volley Attacks and Overwatch Reactions have been resolved, the Charging Player rolls 2 Dice. Move the Charging Models the highest single Dice Result rolled."


Mod edit - removed.

All you've done is remove where they have defined and then used" Charge Distance", presumably this is so they can use Charge Distance elsewhere in the rules.

You've saved 7 words and your version isn't really any clearer.

Strike Groups?

It’s like for like batch rolling.

All my models with I4 and CCW form one strike group.

All my models with I4 and Power Weapons form one strike group.

As per the rules, those should be rolled for separately, no doubt to clearly delineate which batch of dice might benefit from say, Shred, or other traits/abilties.

Of course, if you’ve sets of differently coloured dice, one could roll more than one strike group at the same time by assigning a colour to each.

But the rules writers can’t assume you’ll have that facility, and so they went with Strike Groups.

As mentioned above, it’s entirely possible there’ll be other groups which impact Strike Groups. Off the top of my head and purely for example? Perhaps a defensive nerf which allows me to force a given Strike Group to fight last, or halve its overall attack dice or reduce its strength, without affecting other Strike Groups.

It could be a paragraph. It could be five pages. It could be 27 volumes and an index plus 4 supplements.

Do you, or do you not, understand what the rule does, when it does, and how it does, having read the whole of the thing?

Yes or No.

Because to revisit Shred (the one I’ve memorised) does exactly that, whilst also explaining why it doesn’t apply - that is, simply rolling the Shred target number won’t necessarily cause a wound,

Always keep in mind that any rulebook will be someone’s first rulebook. People coming to the game with no existing experience. We might look at Shred or Strike Groups and perhaps wonder “why so many words”. But to someone with no pre-conceived or pre-acquired experience should come to the same understanding of that specific rule as we do.

Because, regardless of the length of text, the rules are clearly written.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If the intent and mechanics of the rule is understood, the writing of said rule cannot be bad.
People want clear rules. They get clear rules.
People get clear rules “why so many words”.

It really does feel like folk are just desperate for something, anything, to whine about.

I know how to do a charge roll and when to do it
But I am not sure what to use it for. What to I do with the number from the Charge Roll?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Strike Groups?

It’s like for like batch rolling.

All my models with I4 and CCW form one strike group.

All my models with I4 and Power Weapons form one strike group.

As per the rules, those should be rolled for separately, no doubt to clearly delineate which batch of dice might benefit from say, Shred, or other traits/abilties.

Of course, if you’ve sets of differently coloured dice, one could roll more than one strike group at the same time by assigning a colour to each.

But the rules writers can’t assume you’ll have that facility, and so they went with Strike Groups.

As mentioned above, it’s entirely possible there’ll be other groups which impact Strike Groups. Off the top of my head and purely for example? Perhaps a defensive nerf which allows me to force a given Strike Group to fight last, or halve its overall attack dice or reduce its strength, without affecting other Strike Groups.

It could be a paragraph. It could be five pages. It could be 27 volumes and an index plus 4 supplements.

Do you, or do you not, understand what the rule does, when it does, and how it does, having read the whole of the thing?

Yes or No.

Because to revisit Shred (the one I’ve memorised) does exactly that, whilst also explaining why it doesn’t apply - that is, simply rolling the Shred target number won’t necessarily cause a wound,

Always keep in mind that any rulebook will be someone’s first rulebook. People coming to the game with no existing experience. We might look at Shred or Strike Groups and perhaps wonder “why so many words”. But to someone with no pre-conceived or pre-acquired experience should come to the same understanding of that specific rule as we do.

Because, regardless of the length of text, the rules are clearly written.

No it isn't clearly written, I had to read it 6 times as I noted to understand why it was there. It doesnt tell me how to complete a hit roll even as it simply palms that off onto another page.

A rule that impacts expressly only 1 strike group and not the model owning it would be weird and convoluted would it not? Why would 2 attacks with a consuls power weapon drop 2 strength against 1 target, but not all the other incoming attacks, why would that not impact the consul themselves, why would you not just apply a -2 strength to incoming melee attacks for that mini and avoid strike groups and the weirdness altogether?

So now you’re complaining an extract, which is clearly an extract, doesn’t go beyond being an extract?

It’s step 5 among other steps. I’d imagine the answer you’re looking for might be in step 6.

And this is exactly what I mean when I say it feels like folk are just desperate to find something, anything, to complain about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Dudeface.

If it took you reading it six times to comprehend it? It only took me the one read.

So I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you there. And I’m not saying this to be rude or cheeky. Certainly there’s many times I’ve read things in the past and it’s just not gone in. I might be tired, stressed, something else on my mind etc.

On your final paragraph there? Maybe wait until we’ve seen such examples. Because again, it sounds like you’re just priming yourself to dislike whatever the answer is in advance.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So now you’re complaining an extract, which is clearly an extract, doesn’t go beyond being an extract?

It’s step 5 among other steps. I’d imagine the answer you’re looking for might be in step 6.

And this is exactly what I mean when I say it feels like folk are just desperate to find something, anything, to complain about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Dudeface.

If it took you reading it six times to comprehend it? It only took me the one read.

So I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you there. And I’m not saying this to be rude or cheeky. Certainly there’s many times I’ve read things in the past and it’s just not gone in. I might be tired, stressed, something else on my mind etc.

On your final paragraph there? Maybe wait until we’ve seen such examples. Because again, it sounds like you’re just priming yourself to dislike whatever the answer is in advance.

I'll open by saying thank you for some concern, I am maybe a little rougher round the edges than usual atm due to external factors, so you might be right in that regards. Its always good to remember we're human at the end of the day.

That said, I am happy to be wrong if a sensible application of a modifiers to a strike group is shown. I just feel that its not a concept that thad been needed before, it isn't needed now and its explained in an overly verbose way.

It might be that I wasn't looking for it to exist so the sudden addition caused additional confusion, it might be that admittedly I set out looking for rolling to hit and got sideswiped with all this extra stuff that never existed.

It just feels like long winded scribing of common sense into a rigid text construct.

It maybe fires me up more because I see this daily in the real world. Software brainboxes creating lovely verbose documentation full of technical terms, they make sense if you've prior knowledge and context, but the sheer volume of words and info switch off the delivery guys who consume it.

The two main requests I always have to facilitate from the delivery guys "ok, so that's hard to read, what does it actually do" and "just include the relevant tables where you're talking about them, I don't want to have to keep referring back and forth."

I feel the rules as written are guilty of the same faults, the delivery guys consuming it will find it too heavy and not to the point.

I mean there's lots of people agreeing in here, I'm not in isolation, I'm just likely irrationally agitated by it.

Good to see that legitimate criticism of long winded rules writing is written off as "you must be unwell".

Which isn’t what I said, or its intent. Indeed, the intent of that bit was “so people don’t think I’m subtlety calling him thick”.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Which isn’t what I said, or its intent. Indeed, the intent of that bit was “so people don’t think I’m subtlety calling him thick”.

Even if that was the case, you might simply the brightest in the room, look at it that way.

I am happy that you like these rules and their prose, I do not and will not, think its as simple as that and there's no personal insults intended by anyone Gert.

Not everyone has to conform with everyone's world view, so we'll all have to agree to disagree I think and carry on.

But how do I know what the little pips on the dice mean? The rule should tell you explicitly to count the number of pips on the dice to work out the result. It's somebody's first rulebook after all.


There's only one reason to write rules like this - dickheads who like to say things like "does placing a die count as rolling it".


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess what I'm saying is there's a spirit to wargaming, and needing to write rules so longwinded that they eliminate all ambiguity while also being difficult to parse is catering to the kind of person who does not embody that spirit and who I'd like to feth off to some other hobby please and stop ruining mine.

Not that we’ve seen from the incomplete images so far, no.

And honestly? That last point is valid. These rules do seem to close up any obvious loopholes, hopefully frustrating those who try to rules lawyer their way to victory.

On a lighter note though I find myself really liking elements of the army building rules, in that taking characters unlocks slots for other things - it's evocative of the source material, the horus heresy novels love throwing a cast of hundreds of minor junior officer characters in to the plot (which is then exciting when one of them transcends either nobly or ignobly) so encouraging lots of rando junior officers on the tabletop is v. cool in my book

Can we all just chill out already please?

I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

 Hellebore wrote:
Yeesh, that is some dense and unfriendly text.


How many tournaments are going to keep running 2nd ed?

Not to get pedantic, but I mostly play in events, not tournaments for HH. While I'm hopeful that AdeptiCon HH will stick with 2nd, I'm not holding my breath.

New editions bring in new players, after all.

Have we considered the possibility that the British government is using GW rulebooks to scout for a new Turing-level intellect and Doc passed?

Just fluff today unless they decide to do some leak damage control.

 Rolsheen wrote:
I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

Don’t be put off by this thread - this is a fairly typical Dakka reaction to a new rules set. It’s perhaps more intense because (1) HH players tend to be a fairly conservative lot, and (2) there is a lot of unhappiness about a new rules set being released so soon; people are therefore even less receptive than usual. No one here actually knows how these rules will work, no matter how authoritative they may seem. There are other sites offering a more nuanced take - look around some more before you walk away from HH.

The HH: Age of Darkness discord certainly has a more nuanced take, the best copium so far has been "WarCom is posting the wrong rules".

But do stick to actual communities (Reddit, Discord, Forums, Facebook). Friendly reminder that youtubers are not credible sources apart from reading books verbatim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Perils of the Warp is a good spot to explain to first time gamers that the result of the dice roll is the number on the uppermost face of the dice, in case you were still confused on how dice work by the time you got to your first psychic check.

My dice don't have numbers on them, they have pips. I assume my psykers will therefore be immune to perils.

I'm not sure that I'll get the "3d Edition", but the models are really impressive. I like the look of these older armor sets, and the ease in which to put them together.

Whoever designed these sprues, can you go over to 40k, and put some work in on those sprues, as well?
I shouldn't have to have a PHD in Engineering, just to put models together.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Perils of the Warp is a good spot to explain to first time gamers that the result of the dice roll is the number on the uppermost face of the dice, in case you were still confused on how dice work by the time you got to your first psychic check.

How To Roll Citadel Dice wasn't an April Fools joke. It was a test.

 Snord wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

Don’t be put off by this thread - this is a fairly typical Dakka reaction to a new rules set. It’s perhaps more intense because (1) HH players tend to be a fairly conservative lot, and (2) there is a lot of unhappiness about a new rules set being released so soon; people are therefore even less receptive than usual. No one here actually knows how these rules will work, no matter how authoritative they may seem. There are other sites offering a more nuanced take - look around some more before you walk away from HH.

I'll second this sentiment. Don't let all the curmudgeons put you off. The rules so far have me excited, as they seem to be really leaning into thematic and narrative elements to make the game play like the action in the novels. I am going to fully reserve final judgement until we have all the books in hand and can play a few games to see.

The problem is I'm not gonna invest $€£¥ into books for a game that is not going to get FAQ/ERRATA and then just shuffled off into another edition in 3yrs.

So based on their previous behaviour its nuts to then magically expect them to change said behaviour this time...but trust them at your own peril.

Elegant



(this the first move you make during a charge, before firing pistols)

I am a bit confused tho, they don't explain which row in the left column corresponds with which row in the right column.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Have we considered the possibility that the British government is using GW rulebooks to scout for a new Turing-level intellect and Doc passed?

Just fluff today unless they decide to do some leak damage control.

Mate, if they are? The test is wrong.

I’m pretty damned competent at what I do, but far from the smartest person in many rooms.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:

 Snord wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

Don’t be put off by this thread - this is a fairly typical Dakka reaction to a new rules set. It’s perhaps more intense because (1) HH players tend to be a fairly conservative lot, and (2) there is a lot of unhappiness about a new rules set being released so soon; people are therefore even less receptive than usual. No one here actually knows how these rules will work, no matter how authoritative they may seem. There are other sites offering a more nuanced take - look around some more before you walk away from HH.

I'll second this sentiment. Don't let all the curmudgeons put you off. The rules so far have me excited, as they seem to be really leaning into thematic and narrative elements to make the game play like the action in the novels. I am going to fully reserve final judgement until we have all the books in hand and can play a few games to see.

I would say the opposite, if you one doesn't see the need to spend lot of money on books that will be replaced in 3 years, just don't do it.
No need to buy into something just because people on the internet tell you it must be done for the sake of whatever

those people who have everything from the current version and like the game, no need to buy everything again and start from scratch, it won't be better just different

 kodos wrote:

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:

 Snord wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

Don’t be put off by this thread - this is a fairly typical Dakka reaction to a new rules set. It’s perhaps more intense because (1) HH players tend to be a fairly conservative lot, and (2) there is a lot of unhappiness about a new rules set being released so soon; people are therefore even less receptive than usual. No one here actually knows how these rules will work, no matter how authoritative they may seem. There are other sites offering a more nuanced take - look around some more before you walk away from HH.

I'll second this sentiment. Don't let all the curmudgeons put you off. The rules so far have me excited, as they seem to be really leaning into thematic and narrative elements to make the game play like the action in the novels. I am going to fully reserve final judgement until we have all the books in hand and can play a few games to see.

I would say the opposite, if you one doesn't see the need to spend lot of money on books that will be replaced in 3 years, just don't do it.
No need to buy into something just because people on the internet tell you it must be done for the sake of whatever

those people who have everything from the current version and like the game, no need to buy everything again and start from scratch, it won't be better just different

This never works really. Most places will keep up with the current rules and move on. I heard this line after every edition change since I started and no one plays those older editions of 40k or HH, etc. I'd even argue supporting the stores you play at by buying products, books included, from them helps us have a place to play. Also, go in on books as a group and make copies. Sharing is caring.

so because it doesn't work for you, your advice to any other player group is to just buy the latest edition no matter if they like it or not because everyone at home must follow

on the other side, I know people who still play 40k 5th Edition because they never moved on from it and are still happy doing so

if you don't play in stores or go to events, no need to follow the churn and burn

 kodos wrote:
so because it doesn't work for you, your advice to any other player group is to just buy the latest edition no matter if they like it or not because everyone at home must follow

on the other side, I know people who still play 40k 5th Edition because they never moved on from it and are still happy doing so

if you don't play in stores or go to events, no need to follow the churn and burn

It isn't that it "doesn't work for me". It is that a vast majority won't do this and never have.

No offense, but I highly doubt you know people playing 5th Edition. And yeah, sure, if you don't play in stores, events or clubs that keep current, do whatever you want. That is always an option. Not even sure why someone would care about "churn and burn" if they aren't playing in any environment in which staying current matters. Feels like complaining just to complain.

"You only get an opinion if you play in a store" is a wild take.

Just because we don't play in a store doesn't mean we aren't interesting in new editions and it is entirely fair to be disappointed when a new edition is not what we perceive to be good.

I'd wager it's even more important to people who don't have a central place to play with a wide pool of other players.

Which isn’t what he said?

If you play in store, particularly pick up games? It’s almost certainly going to be the current edition.

If a given store won’t let you and a friend play an earlier edition? That’s a problem with that store.

Personally, I play in stores and I haven't seen a pick up game in 10 years. It's all pre-scheduled games then we leave.

 Platuan4th wrote:
Personally, I play in stores and I haven't seen a pick up game in 10 years. It's all pre-scheduled games then we leave.

thats kinda how it is across all games, PUG are gone, mostly scheduled through discords now.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Personally, I play in stores and I haven't seen a pick up game in 10 years. It's all pre-scheduled games then we leave.

thats kinda how it is across all games, PUG are gone, mostly scheduled through discords now.

Same here

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Personally, I play in stores and I haven't seen a pick up game in 10 years. It's all pre-scheduled games then we leave.

thats kinda how it is across all games, PUG are gone, mostly scheduled through discords now.

Yup, and that's my point. The excuse of "well, you have to play the new edition because that's what the store plays" is both true and false, because you have to schedule a game anyway and if you put in the work, you can most likely find someone to play whatever game or edition you want. My store is generally tournament try hards that refuse to play anything but the most current 40K mission pack, but there's still enough that are willing to play a retro edition day on the 21st because my friend and I put in the work to ask around on our Discord and Messenger group for the store. Those same people are even interested in doing a 5th Edition Badab War Campaign. If you don't ask and just assume, of course you'll only see current edition X.

Yeah you can find people for a day, thats easy, but sticking with an edition is near impossible in the long run.

 Gert wrote:
"You only get an opinion if you play in a store" is a wild take.

Just because we don't play in a store doesn't mean we aren't interesting in new editions and it is entirely fair to be disappointed when a new edition is not what we perceive to be good.

I'd wager it's even more important to people who don't have a central place to play with a wide pool of other players.

Not what I said. You don't seem to want to engage in discussion in a civil way and just want to complain about an edition that isn't even out yet.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:
Personally, I play in stores and I haven't seen a pick up game in 10 years. It's all pre-scheduled games then we leave.

thats kinda how it is across all games, PUG are gone, mostly scheduled through discords now.

Yup, and that's my point. The excuse of "well, you have to play the new edition because that's what the store plays" is both true and false, because you have to schedule a game anyway and if you put in the work, you can most likely find someone to play whatever game or edition you want. My store is generally tournament try hards that refuse to play anything but the most current 40K mission pack, but there's still enough that are willing to play a retro edition day on the 21st because my friend and I put in the work to ask around on our Discord and Messenger group for the store. Those same people are even interested in doing a 5th Edition Badab War Campaign. If you don't ask and just assume, of course you'll only see current edition X.

It isn't the store, it is the groups. In all my many decades of gaming, I have never seen a group stick to old rules unless the game its dead (like Mordheim). Of course you can try to do a retro one-off game, but that is tough when maybe a few players don't even have rules to use in 5th Edition (Votann, for example). Plus, that is looking back with rose-colored glasses. 5th had so many problems, as did every edition. So will this new one, probably. But complaining endlessly about it and making wild accusations of AI use and whatnot. Just too much. I've been here at Dakka for a long ass time and it is wild how far down the doom and gloom path it has taken.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:
I've been here at Dakka for a long ass time and it is wild how far down the doom and gloom path it has taken.

I've been here since Russ owned the site and had the store, there's always been doom and gloom.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:


No offense, but I highly doubt you know people playing 5th Edition.

Put me down for Rogue Trader, 3rd edition and Kill Team 2018.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:

 Snord wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I want to thank you all, you've saved me and my friends thousands of dollars by killing any interest in starting Horus Heresy by showing how the rules are so open to misunderstanding, bickering and hostility.

Don’t be put off by this thread - this is a fairly typical Dakka reaction to a new rules set. It’s perhaps more intense because (1) HH players tend to be a fairly conservative lot, and (2) there is a lot of unhappiness about a new rules set being released so soon; people are therefore even less receptive than usual. No one here actually knows how these rules will work, no matter how authoritative they may seem. There are other sites offering a more nuanced take - look around some more before you walk away from HH.

I'll second this sentiment. Don't let all the curmudgeons put you off. The rules so far have me excited, as they seem to be really leaning into thematic and narrative elements to make the game play like the action in the novels. I am going to fully reserve final judgement until we have all the books in hand and can play a few games to see.

I had assumed that person was making a joke. Even if they're weren't deliberately doing that, the post works as a clever joke, and I chuckled when I read it.

The punchline being that giving up and writing the rules in complete legalese has still lead to misunderstanding and bickering. Only instead of it being bickering about the intent or function of the rules, it's about the aesthetic quality of them and the unpleasantness of reading them.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:


Perils of the Warp is a good spot to explain to first time gamers that the result of the dice roll is the number on the uppermost face of the dice, in case you were still confused on how dice work by the time you got to your first psychic check.

Forget that, this is an incomprehensible word salad even without the dice roll explanation.

 kronk wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Yeesh, that is some dense and unfriendly text.


How many tournaments are going to keep running 2nd ed?

Not to get pedantic, but I mostly play in events, not tournaments for HH. While I'm hopeful that AdeptiCon HH will stick with 2nd, I'm not holding my breath.

New editions bring in new players, after all.

Noted. I'm not sure this edition is going to encourage new players though. The continual reveals of how dense, overly wordy and unnecessarily long the text is is about as ANTI new players as a game can get.

This is clearly not Horus Heresy: Accessibility Edition...

chaos0xomega wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:


Perils of the Warp is a good spot to explain to first time gamers that the result of the dice roll is the number on the uppermost face of the dice, in case you were still confused on how dice work by the time you got to your first psychic check.

Forget that, this is an incomprehensible word salad even without the dice roll explanation.

Oh, dear Changer... they actually did hire lawyers to write these rules, didn't they?

"This book reads like stereo instructions." -Adam Maitland, Beetlejuice

 BorderCountess wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:


Perils of the Warp is a good spot to explain to first time gamers that the result of the dice roll is the number on the uppermost face of the dice, in case you were still confused on how dice work by the time you got to your first psychic check.

Forget that, this is an incomprehensible word salad even without the dice roll explanation.

Oh, dear Changer... they actually did hire lawyers to write these rules, didn't they?

"This book reads like stereo instructions." -Adam Maitland, Beetlejuice

I never thought that Paralegal Degree would pay off! Now I can use my skills to play a game.

As much as I like some of the introduced features, someone needed to tell the writer to go back and write it again with half the word count.

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:


No offense, but I highly doubt you know people playing 5th Edition.

"Guys, guys, we've got to discuss this in a CIVIL manner!"
"No offense but you're a liar."

 Da Boss wrote:

 em_en_oh_pee wrote:


No offense, but I highly doubt you know people playing 5th Edition.

"Guys, guys, we've got to discuss this in a CIVIL manner!"
"No offense but you're a liar."

What an interesting way to not convey the scenario correctly. That was two different people I was talking to. And on top of that, you added your own little spin. Calling into question an exaggeration isn't the same as saying someone is a liar. Come on, bud, do better than this sort of post.

How exactly is it different? Perhaps you should be doing better yourself.

Guys, beers at the bar and on the house. Lets all move on...

I'm interested to see what they have for Liber Questoris, and I hope its a reasonable price considering the split from Liber Mechanicum. Ideally I like the 2-to-1 ratio for Armigers and Knights, but I can understand those who are interested in larger games that would prefer the game without them. I have 4 Armigers and whether they grow to 6 and a Knight, it depends on whether they offer the Dominus in 30K. I'm confident that will happen in 3rd edition as 2nd was rearranging the kits so that 30K has it's own packaged alternative, and they probably couldn't quite stretch that to the Dominus. It would also be a low effort to make it appear they've introduced a new Knight to purchase alongside the Liber Questoris book.

If not I might consider a box of 20 marines and the melee weapons kit, and host games of KT:AOD. I don't have much interest in marines these days but in skirmish they can be a welcome diversion. I have a Tome Keeper's Kill Team which was an enjoyable project and it's appealing to move on to different things. With such a box there's two team's worth for Legion-vs-Legion action.

Mechanicum book has my interest. In 2nd Ed, they’re a wee bit wonky.

Thallaxi are incredible, point for point probably the most efficient Troops unit. But the Ursarax, their CC variant, less so.

Aye, time to chill out, remember to be polite when discussing our little toys.

Vehicle rules

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/bz3yebcn/rules-in-the-age-of-darkness-how-vehicles-work/

So, Dreads aren’t vehicles, just Really big Infantry.

Melta is gonna be nasty now, as it’s a reliable way to pop tanks in a single shot. Whereas even Lascannons (based on stationary infantry) are only doing D2 per penetrating hit.

Heck, I expect Combi-meltas to be a common weapon for unit leaders where available.

May have read it wrong, but it seems a bit disjointed that penetrating hits don't also cause a status effect at the same time. I'd be guessing here, but getting autocannoned to death seems to cause a more realistic (!) degredation of performance instead of just being lascannoned to pieces

Unlike in previous editions however, Glancing Hits don’t automatically strike off a Hull Point.

If a Model that already has a specific Status would have that Status applied to them again by a result from the Vehicle Damage Table, then they instead lose a singles Hull Point

Penetrating Hits simply deal the weapon’s Damage value straight to the Hull Points, and a vehicle is destroyed when this total reaches zero.

So, while they can get random status effects, it's not quite as easy getting your rhino glanced to death. It might get pinned or whatever, but 3 glances from a heavy weapon squad is no longer going to kill it. I also didn't see Weapon Destroyed on that glancing hit list. So you'll have a temporary status effect when you get glanced, but won't permanently lose a weapon.

And penetrating hits just strip hull points, but no longer stun or immobilize the target.

Titans, on the other hand, operate very differently, and there is an entire chapter of the Liber Questoris book dedicated to them.

Titans look resilient as hell. Hull points per area and apparently not auto-dead when that area hits zero. Need to see the rules on them, but an entire chapter? Space Jesus help us...

Oh, man. I can't wait to bring multiple vehicles, characters and titan in a single game.
Tracking each individual mini combat, having like 15 spare tokens for status effects and then a separate spreadsheet for titan limb hps
What's better than spending 6-8 hours on a single 3k game anyway.

 zedmeister wrote:
May have read it wrong, but it seems a bit disjointed that penetrating hits don't also cause a status effect at the same time. I'd be guessing here, but getting autocannoned to death seems to cause a more realistic (!) degredation of performance instead of just being lascannoned to pieces

Glancing is a bit dicey now. Sure, if I get oddly lucky, glance a Predator six times, and all the chart rolls are 1’s and 2’s? It’s glanced to death.

But, if even one of the chart rolls is 3-6? It survives. Barely, and in poor shape, but still there.

I…kinda like that. Means Glancing is an option, but you still ideally want Penetration.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Warhammer Community wrote:We’ll leave you here for now, but there’s still a lot more to see – including a new system for Flyer Combat Assignments that makes Aircraft more engaging and interactive. There’s actually a whole system for infantry assaults against Titans, in which valiant troops climb all over the enormous war machines and desperately probe for weaknesses while the crew fight them off! You can even dispatch jump-pack equipped Space Marines to attack the head in close combat…

OK, that sounds kind of fun!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
May have read it wrong, but it seems a bit disjointed that penetrating hits don't also cause a status effect at the same time. I'd be guessing here, but getting autocannoned to death seems to cause a more realistic (!) degredation of performance instead of just being lascannoned to pieces

Glancing is a bit dicey now. Sure, if I get oddly lucky, glance a Predator six times, and all the chart rolls are 1’s and 2’s? It’s glanced to death.

But, if even one of the chart rolls is 3-6? It survives. Barely, and in poor shape, but still there.

I…kinda like that. Means Glancing is an option, but you still ideally want Penetration.

Yeah, I get that. For me, I'd like it so that penetrating also causes a status effect in addition to the hull point loss. Gives a more realistic feeling of a vehicle being shot to pieces. It's taking a lot of fire, it's surpressed, weapons are sparking, etc. Whereas, just loosing hull points purely through penetrating hits means it can perform top notch till it explodes.

 CragHack wrote:

What's better than spending 6-8 hours on a single 3k game anyway.

Some of us take that long already...

I only ever saw titans in Titan v Titan games. Most of the events I play in don't allow them, so I'm not too worried. However, I already didn't enjoy playing Titan v Titan. I don't think whatever these new rules are will change that.

True. Wonder how that might inform vehicle selection.

Certainly, as I’m not terribly fond my tanks degrading, I think I’d be much more careful about facing. 10 Bolt Pistols up the rear armour is now super unlikely to kill me. But it might just prevent my tank being Killy enough to do its job.

That vehicle damage table is crap, the old one actually says what the result means, but now you roll for a "Tactical Status" which corresponds to a "Status Effect" (a different thing), the rules for which are somewhere else. It's such a clear retrograde step.


When we were talking about it being somebody's first rulebook i didn't realise we were talking about the author.

Sooooo. Let me get this straight. Lascannons now permanently bad unless i mass them out the wazoo, any tank running lascannons to hunt other tanks is now esentially worthless.
Melta just one shots or halfs a pred now reliably otoh and afaik is easier too mass, has more than enough delivery systems and all the pred got as an exchange was... let me check, 2 hull points.

This is..... dumb.....

If anyone's wondering, experts say the Sicaran Arcus in the banner is still the resin model

Vehicle rules are the best bit we've seen so far, the Glancing chart is slick and efficiently co-opts the existing status effects into representing permanent physical damage. I would be proud to have this in my homebrew.

Pens not getting a roll on the chart does cause a bit of immersion break and, combined with the changes to weapon profiles, will lead to some strange outcomes. We've learned, for example, that Armourbane turns glances into pens. This means a lascannon will never glance, so a single lsacannon can only ever plink 1-2 HP off a vehicle (that start at 5 HP for a Rhino) with no hope of suppressing it in the slightest, which is very different to what we're used to, when you could reasonably expect the vehicle to at least not shoot for a turn.

Titan rules, vaguely described as they are, sound sensible for a centrepiece model you will only ever have 1 of and close to what I'd do if I were making Titan rules (the stats on that Reaver look frighteningly generous tho)

Also, from the email.

Plastic missile Sicarius confirmed? Apparently not.

My 6-man meltagun squad in a Dreadclaw is making a comeback. They didn't do squat in 2nd edition. They'll be nuking Spartans in 3rd edition.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Pens not getting a roll on the chart does cause a bit of immersion break and,

I think that's my biggest issue with it. Penitrating hits should do...something.

This means a lascannon will never glance, so a single lsacannon can only ever plink 1-2 HP off a vehicle (that start at 5 HP for a Rhino) with no hope of suppressing it in the slightest

My lascannons usually come in 5 or 10-man squads, so they'll getter done.

Ignore this one

We're getting close to the much sought after vehicle-monster parity from the wrong side now, with vehicles likely to reach their last hull point without having ever suffered any degree of suppression!

Kinda. Ish.

Autocannon and their ilk now occupy an interesting new niche of being suppressors of vehicles, with a fairly reasonable chance of plinking something to death.

So far as we know right now, we’re also no longer looking to AP2 or AP1 for efficient tank blatting, which I’m not against.

Melta may also not be quite as filthy as first thought, as sure it can kick out a lot of damage, and all glances penetrate within a certain range. But, they get no help in first getting past armour, as there’s no Bonus D6 to Armour Pen.

So, that squad of 5 in a Dreadclaw are taking their chances against AV14, and possibly pushing their luck some against AV13.

And having such a short range where they’re truly effective means if they don’t squish it? Maybe it’s them that’ll get the squishing instead.

Of course, Multi-meltas likely get a pretty big natural buff now there’s a bonus for staying still, rather than a penalty for being on the move. So swings and roundabouts.

A lot will also depend on where certain squads fall in the FoC.

But…I might just be swinging by Chaos Cards on my meander to the pub tonight to get another 20 MkVI for the Heavy Weapons I have on sprue.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


I never thought that Paralegal Degree would pay off! Now I can use my skills to play a game.

One of my lawyer friends is an ITC event rules guy and is our store's go to for rules questions, so it has its uses in our spheres.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Also, from the email.

Plastic missile Sicarius confirmed? Apparently not.

For some reason I can't imagine them using a FW resin model in these pictures anymore...but yah...never say never!

 kronk wrote:

 CragHack wrote:

What's better than spending 6-8 hours on a single 3k game anyway.

Some of us take that long already...

I only ever saw titans in Titan v Titan games. Most of the events I play in don't allow them, so I'm not too worried. However, I already didn't enjoy playing Titan v Titan. I don't think whatever these new rules are will change that.

I've used my Warhound in both our big end of campaign games as well as a few normal 3K games and honestly? It never does enough outside of those big games where there's other big stuff to justify not bringing just 750 points of more normal stuff.

Vehicle rules are definitely the better of everything previewed so far. Don't think meltas are going to be quite as problematic as suggested, given they seem to be losing the bonus to armour penetration - lone combi-meltas probably less useful than a squad full of them for example and haven't done the maths, but don't the changes mean that a lascannon dev squads are actually probably more reliably going to nuke a tank a turn (you only need to get 3 from a squad to hit and minimum glance to take out a pred for example)?

The effort on titan rules is interesting given how few people actually have them... I know it's as illusive and unlikely as a plastic thunderhawk, but it would make sense to put that much into titan rules if a plastic warhound was coming, wouldn't it...?

A full 10 man lascannon squad just barely ekes out 3 pens (4+, due to armourbane), doing 6 damage.

A 5 man melta squad gets 1 pen on average, doing 6 damage.

Assuming the delivery method/meltas themselves don't make the 5 man squad more expensive than the 10 man squad, the meltas are more efficient (but vulnerable to invulnerable saves messing up the one damaging hit)

Piousservant wrote:
Don't think meltas are going to be quite as problematic as suggested, given they seem to be losing the bonus to armour penetration

The weapons article says they still get Armourbane in addition to the doubled damage at Melta range.

Seems Armourbane means any Glances become Penetrating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rihgu wrote:
A full 10 man lascannon squad just barely ekes out 3 pens (4+, due to armourbane), doing 6 damage.

A 5 man melta squad gets 1 pen on average, doing 6 damage.

Assuming the delivery method/meltas themselves don't make the 5 man squad more expensive than the 10 man squad, the meltas are more efficient (but vulnerable to invulnerable saves messing up the one damaging hit)

You’ve not factored in that the Lascannons have significantly greater range, and so stand to average more shots during a battle. If they target something and don’t kill it? They may well be outside of immediate reprisal range. And even if they only shoot say, three times in a battle? Every volley has a fair chance of deleting something the enemy would rather wasn’t deleted. And a 10 man squad can do vile things to other Marines. 5 Meltas, less so.

Meltaguns however need to get within 6” to be really deadly. Now, getting in that range entirely aside? If they whiff it, they’re worryingly close to something quite possibly a bit miffed with them. Even if they do the job, at such short ranges that thing might well have mates ready to duff up the Meltaguns.

The range on Lascannons (48”) also means they can threaten more of the board, turn to turn. If I can get them up high somewhere, with a solid LoS? Their sheer presence can strongly discourage certain lines of approach for my opponent until they’ve been taken out. Meltaguns typically need to go ambush hunting, either tearing around in a transport, or dropping in via Pod exactly where your opponent didn’t want them. And on the latter, are prone to be taken out in the opponent’s next turn - a turnabout sacrifice that only really makes sense if my opponent has a valuable enough target for them to knack in the first place.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, Dreads aren’t vehicles, just Really big Infantry.

Melta is gonna be nasty now, as it’s a reliable way to pop tanks in a single shot. Whereas even Lascannons (based on stationary infantry) are only doing D2 per penetrating hit.

Heck, I expect Combi-meltas to be a common weapon for unit leaders where available.

The lascannon is armourbane though, so it will do 4 Damage against a vehicle.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, Dreads aren’t vehicles, just Really big Infantry.

Melta is gonna be nasty now, as it’s a reliable way to pop tanks in a single shot. Whereas even Lascannons (based on stationary infantry) are only doing D2 per penetrating hit.

Heck, I expect Combi-meltas to be a common weapon for unit leaders where available.

The lascannon is armourbane though, so it will do 4 Damage against a vehicle.

Armourbane doesn't deal double damage.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Piousservant wrote:
Don't think meltas are going to be quite as problematic as suggested, given they seem to be losing the bonus to armour penetration

The weapons article says they still get Armourbane in addition to the doubled damage at Melta range.

I read it that the melta range means you get armourbane in that range, and armourbane doubles damage.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Piousservant wrote:
Don't think meltas are going to be quite as problematic as suggested, given they seem to be losing the bonus to armour penetration

The weapons article says they still get Armourbane in addition to the doubled damage at Melta range.

I read it that the melta range means you get armourbane in that range, and armourbane doubles damage.

Nah the armour bane rule is specifically glances become pens in the rulebook leaks.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Piousservant wrote:
Don't think meltas are going to be quite as problematic as suggested, given they seem to be losing the bonus to armour penetration

The weapons article says they still get Armourbane in addition to the doubled damage at Melta range.

I read it that the melta range means you get armourbane in that range, and armourbane doubles damage.

You read it wrong. Melta gives you Armourbane(Glances become Pens) and double damage.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, Dreads aren’t vehicles, just Really big Infantry.

Melta is gonna be nasty now, as it’s a reliable way to pop tanks in a single shot. Whereas even Lascannons (based on stationary infantry) are only doing D2 per penetrating hit.

Heck, I expect Combi-meltas to be a common weapon for unit leaders where available.

The lascannon is armourbane though, so it will do 4 Damage against a vehicle.

Armourbane doesn't deal double damage.

Warcom says: melta grants armourbane within 6 and doubles damage.

I guess you could read the "and" in different ways but I read it as armourbane giving you the double damage. Could be wrong of course.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So, Dreads aren’t vehicles, just Really big Infantry.

Melta is gonna be nasty now, as it’s a reliable way to pop tanks in a single shot. Whereas even Lascannons (based on stationary infantry) are only doing D2 per penetrating hit.

Heck, I expect Combi-meltas to be a common weapon for unit leaders where available.

The lascannon is armourbane though, so it will do 4 Damage against a vehicle.

Armourbane doesn't deal double damage.

Warcom says: melta grants armourbane within 6 and doubles damage.

I guess you could read the "and" in different ways but I read it as armourbane giving you the double damage. Could be wrong of course.

Again, you are. We know for sure because the leaks show us what Armourbane does(Glance becomes Pen).

I see where you’re coming from. But the “and”…

Armourbane within 6” and doubles damage to a mighty six

So it’s delineating two, separate benefits.

Didn't look at the leaks and relied on warcom namedropping special rules without explaining them, so, sorry I guess

I’m very interested to see the spread of Hull Points going forward.

We can make some extrapolation.

A Predator is a light-medium tank, and of course has 5. Whereas a Standard Knight, definitely a Super Heavy, has 10.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Landraiders have 7 you know, being noticeably tougher and bigger than a Predator.

Ooooh. Am I going daft, or has this boosted Speeders some? I don’t expect them to be terribly tough, but with glancing them to death being somewhat trickier maybe it’s the boost they need?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Seems Armourbane means any Glances become Penetrating.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rihgu wrote:
A full 10 man lascannon squad just barely ekes out 3 pens (4+, due to armourbane), doing 6 damage.

A 5 man melta squad gets 1 pen on average, doing 6 damage.

Assuming the delivery method/meltas themselves don't make the 5 man squad more expensive than the 10 man squad, the meltas are more efficient (but vulnerable to invulnerable saves messing up the one damaging hit)

...Snip...

No, all that stuff I "didn't factor in" was rolled up into the comment about the delivery method.

Warcom says: melta grants armourbane within 6 and doubles damage.

I guess you could read the "and" in different ways but I read it as armourbane giving you the double damage. Could be wrong of course.

I have seen so many people say something to this tune but never in my life as a primary English speaking person have I heard the term "and" to mean "which", which this reading requires it to be. Is this a UK vs US English thing? I am a US English speaker. (this is not specifically directed at SgtCortez as I see the German flag on the profile. I've noticed in among a wide variety of people, including my own play group, anyways)

As a US English speaker, I have seen "and" mean "which", but always with a qualifier that turns it into that meaning.

 Rihgu wrote:

I have seen so many people say something to this tune but never in my life as a primary English speaking person have I heard the term "and" to mean "which", which this reading requires it to be. Is this a UK vs US English thing? I am a US English speaker. (this is not specifically directed at SgtCortez as I see the German flag on the profile. I've noticed in among a wide variety of people, including my own play group, anyways)

I'm certain I've seen it phrased that way in literature and before the leaks I wondered which reading was correct myself. I believe it can be used to denote direct consequence:

He shot and killed her.

It has Armourbane and (because of that) doubles its Damage.

Since the leaks obviously we know it's just a regular and that is listing multiple effects.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Rihgu wrote:

I have seen so many people say something to this tune but never in my life as a primary English speaking person have I heard the term "and" to mean "which", which this reading requires it to be. Is this a UK vs US English thing? I am a US English speaker. (this is not specifically directed at SgtCortez as I see the German flag on the profile. I've noticed in among a wide variety of people, including my own play group, anyways)

I'm certain I've seen it phrased that way in literature and before the leaks I wondered which reading was correct myself. I believe it can be used to denote direct consequence:

He shot and killed her.

It has Armourbane and (because of that) doubles its Damage.

Since the leaks obviously we know it's just a regular and that is listing multiple effects.

Armourbane and because of melta doubles its damage as a minor correction.

 Rihgu wrote:

I have seen so many people say something to this tune but never in my life as a primary English speaking person have I heard the term "and" to mean "which", which this reading requires it to be. Is this a UK vs US English thing? I am a US English speaker. (this is not specifically directed at SgtCortez as I see the German flag on the profile. I've noticed in among a wide variety of people, including my own play group, anyways)

"You can open the door and let everyone in."

Both the "shot and killed" and "open the door and let everyone in" examples are still a list of separate things. "And" still means "and" and not "which" or "because of" or "so" or any of the connectors that describe cause/effect.

Dudeface wrote:


Armourbane and because of melta doubles its damage as a minor correction.

Nope. Look at the Weapon Listing, then read the wording again. The weapon only has Melta listed as a rule/ability, while Lascannons have Armourbane listed. It's clear that the Special Rule Melta confers both the Armourbane and the Double Damage while within 6".

 Rihgu wrote:
Both the "shot and killed" and "open the door and let everyone in" examples are still a list of separate things. "And" still means "and" and not "which" or "because of" or "so" or any of the connectors that describe cause/effect.

Cambridge

Well it’s settled now anyways.

Now I want to see the Dreadnought stats. I’ve a load of the existing types, and intend a brace of Saturnine (not because I’m a beardy git*, but because I love me Dreads, especially the Contemptor chassis).

With tanks being tougher, I’m hoping they’ve tweaked Dreads down just enough - though ranged weapons doing multiple damage may have done that in itself.


*well. I do have a beard. And some of my consumers would consider me a git.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Now I want to see the Dreadnought stats.

We know two things

- they are 1 model per slot (no Talons) and 1 slot per detachment; so essentially 1 per HQ or 2 per vanilla Centurion. It will be so funny if they forget to give extra slots to Mortificators.

- Dorito can be one-shotted with a 6 Damage gun

 Platuan4th wrote:

Dudeface wrote:


Armourbane and because of melta doubles its damage as a minor correction.

Nope. Look at the Weapon Listing, then read the wording again. The weapon only has Melta listed as a rule/ability, while Lascannons have Armourbane listed. It's clear that the Special Rule Melta confers both the Armourbane and the Double Damage while within 6".

Yes but the comment I was replying to implies it doubles damage because of armourbane, which is incorrect. It doubles damage because of melta which also grants armourbane.

Well, the Crusade FoC can have one by using that Logistical Benefit. But there’s an Auxiliary Detachment of up to 2 Dreadnoughts. And if memory serves, we can have one of those per Command Unit in the main Crusade FoC Detachment.

So, assuming that’s the 3 non-Big HQ only? I can have 7 Dreads. If I read it right, and am remember it right. 9, if Big HQ also allows me an Aux.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, the Crusade FoC can have one by using that Logistical Benefit. But there’s an Auxiliary Detachment of up to 2 Dreadnoughts. And if memory serves, we can have one of those per Command Unit in the main Crusade FoC Detachment.

So, assuming that’s the 3 non-Big HQ only? I can have 7 Dreads. If I read it right, and am remember it right. 9, if Big HQ also allows me an Aux.

I'm afraid Dreads are the only unit type that come in Auxiliary Detachments of one.

Which sounds like the classic GW pendulum - something is OP, so we limit its number, and nerf it, and raise points (personal conjecture)

You’re quite right. Skipped back and checked the imgur link.

High Command also allows an Aux pick. So maximum of 5 Dreadnoughts per Crusade Force Detachment.

Do we know for certain right now if the Crusade Force is the only main detachment for now?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
5 is still plenty for my itch, Spesh as it could be 5 Deredeo, 5 Leviathan, 5 Saturnine etc.

Did I miss something in the article, or did they not mention anything about what happens if you engage that example Predator in melee?

 Dysartes wrote:
Did I miss something in the article, or did they not mention anything about what happens if you engage that example Predator in melee?

Hit rolls in strike group turd layering against rear armour, then penetration test.

Edit: no you didnt miss it, they chose not to mention it for some reason.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You’re quite right. Skipped back and checked the imgur link.

High Command also allows an Aux pick. So maximum of 5 Dreadnoughts per Crusade Force Detachment.

Do we know for certain right now if the Crusade Force is the only main detachment for now?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
5 is still plenty for my itch, Spesh as it could be 5 Deredeo, 5 Leviathan, 5 Saturnine etc.

But remember that in that case you've got no other slots but the base 4 troops and 4 rhinos, you're probably not getting to 3000 pts.
High Command can pick the Officer Cadre for 2 more Command and another Logistical Benefit


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The most deranged build I've seen so far is something like 6 Centurions and 30 empty Rhinos with multi meltas.

Depends what constitutes troops.

Unless there’s one I’ve not seen, the leaked image doesn’t have anything which screams Heavy Weapons and Special Weapons squads are excluded from Troops.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wait. Other than Support.

It’s my turn with reading fails today it seems. In my defence, end of the week and a very trying last day.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Wait. Other than Support.

Yea both support squads are in there... and now that they share a slot it's going to be even more crucial to have them be balanced against each other, which failed slightly in 2.0

So we know KT: Typhon and the weapons platforms are tomorrow; do we know if Saturnine is up for order next week? They seem to be pushing hard with the rules previews.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
So we know KT: Typhon and the weapons platforms are tomorrow; do we know if Saturnine is up for order next week? They seem to be pushing hard with the rules previews.

We still got plenty of rules and then factions to go through. Word on the street is mid July.

I wouldn't expect it any earlier than mid-July. They'll probably do an article for each and every legion like they did back in 2022, which was basically the launch set painted in a different colour.

SamusDrake wrote:
I wouldn't expect it any earlier than mid-July. They'll probably do an article for each and every legion like they did back in 2022, which was basically the launch set painted in a different colour.

Except the Salamanders, because the influencer they recruited to paint them put his youtube channel logo on every model

Did titans lost a couple points of BS? Reaver says 3 for arms and carapace, while Knights are BS4

 Mr_Rose wrote:
So we know KT: Typhon and the weapons platforms are tomorrow; do we know if Saturnine is up for order next week? They seem to be pushing hard with the rules previews.

Doubt it. It'll probably be something fantasy-related.

Time for a bit of fun.

Go go gadget predict-o-matic, Marine Heavy Weapons.

We know Heavy (X) will bring benefits when the unit is stationary to a stat depending on what is X. Heavy Bolters are Heavy (FP), Lascannon Heavy (D).

I kind of expect…..

Autocannon Heavy (FP)
Multimelta Heavy (AP), in addition to Melta
Plasma Cannon I honestly don’t know. FP, AP and D just don’t feel right. Possibly Heavy (BS)?
Heavy Flamers - again I’m really not sure.
Missile Launchers may have multiple, depending on the Missile type? Krak Heavy (AP), Frag Heavy (S) perhaps?
Volkite - probably Heavy (FP), as they’re high rate of fire weapons.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Multimelta Heavy (AP), in addition to Melta

Remember, AP1 does nothing, so not (AP) unless they start at AP3. (FP) makes the most sense, it's double barreled. Probably loses twin-linked base.

That’s true,

Also, now I think about it the Heavy Flamer isn’t a Heavy Weapon. Perhaps a higher Rout test modifier?

I really wish they had left more flexibility for Heavy instead of a flat +1 to a stat. Maybe they didn't know how to phrase anything more flexible in their uber-legalise.

Heavy(Panic+1) would be nice for Heavy Flamer, yea, but the syntax doesn't allow it. It also doesn't allow the most obvious stationary boost, which has precedent in other editions, Range.

I suspect it may have a higher Panic number as base.

So, for example

R Template, FP1, S5, AP4*, D1, Panic (2)

If I’m right there, they stand to be excellent objective clearers. Do a decent amount of damage, send the enemy packing.

*Pretty sure they’re AP4 right now and have been since 3rd Ed 40K?

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
You’re quite right. Skipped back and checked the imgur link.

High Command also allows an Aux pick. So maximum of 5 Dreadnoughts per Crusade Force Detachment.

Do we know for certain right now if the Crusade Force is the only main detachment for now?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
5 is still plenty for my itch, Spesh as it could be 5 Deredeo, 5 Leviathan, 5 Saturnine etc.

But remember that in that case you've got no other slots but the base 4 troops and 4 rhinos, you're probably not getting to 3000 pts.
High Command can pick the Officer Cadre for 2 more Command and another Logistical Benefit


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The most deranged build I've seen so far is something like 6 Centurions and 30 empty Rhinos with multi meltas.

I think this is incorrect?

Crusade gives you:

1 High Command
3 Command

Per the article, each command slot gives you +1 aux detachment (true of both command and high command). Right off the bat thats +4 aux detachments.

A non-consul centurion gives you an additional +1 aux, and those are command slot options. 3 of them brings you to +7 aux detachments.

One of those command slots is prime, taking logistical benefit on it allows you to take any battlefield role of your choice, which can be an 8th dread.

You also have one prime troops slot, filling it and using logistical benefit gives you +7 aux and 2 slot choices (ie dreads).

So in theory a max of 9 dreads, 8 if you are unwilling to field a troop and are limiting yourself only to command and dread choices.

Also i dont think the "no other slots" concern applies. I see nothing that says youre limited to just one crusade detachment?

Oh nice!

*pats his lovely Dreadnought paddock*

chaos0xomega wrote:
I see nothing that says youre limited to just one crusade detachment?

Nothing that says you aren't, either. But it says you get "a" Primary Detachment and any number of x and y. If Primaries are unlimited you can just spam Logistical Benefit and make the whole system pointless.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
An interesting note about what GW thinks are the relative power levels of units:

A Consul can unlock:

1 dreadnought

or

2 bike squads

or

4 Sicarans

or

4 Land Raiders

"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

The Tarantula does nothing for me, but I can see myself getting at least 2 Rapier kits. They look especially good in Dark Angels colours. I spent ages converting 2 of them for my SoH, but sadly my attempts don’t really compare to the kit version

chaos0xomega wrote:
One of those command slots is prime, taking logistical benefit on it allows you to take any battlefield role of your choice, which can be an 8th dread.

You also have one prime troops slot, filling it and using logistical benefit gives you +7 aux and 2 slot choices (ie dreads).

Bad news, logistical benefit is limited to once per detachment.

Womp womp, so you get 8 dreads instead of 9

Pre orders up. No sprue pics unfortunately. Would love to know if magnetising them is possible

The Heresy sculpting team generally is pretty good about “sneaking in” magnet spots or ways to make push-fit subassemblies viable. Not guaranteed of course but generally it’s better than 40k-proper.

Ordered three boxes of the Quad/Laser Rapiers.

Still tempted to use the crew, with appropriate weapons of course, as a Recon Squad. The armour just looks suited to that role to my eyes.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ordered three boxes of the Quad/Laser Rapiers.

Still tempted to use the crew, with appropriate weapons of course, as a Recon Squad. The armour just looks suited to that role to my eyes.

We know they're intended to be used as an Augur Command & Control Squad, so there is precedent for them running around without Rapiers

 zedmeister wrote:
Pre orders up. No sprue pics unfortunately. Would love to know if magnetising them is possible

I think one of the advance reviewers has a video on YouTube of them magnetizing them fairly easily

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Multimelta Heavy (AP), in addition to Melta

Remember, AP1 does nothing, so not (AP) unless they start at AP3. (FP) makes the most sense, it's double barreled. Probably loses twin-linked base.

Considering all the rest of the nostalgia driven rules present, perhaps a way to give it a small blast template?

Only video I can find is on Sprues & Brews

Tarantulas are trivially modular and can just friction fit guns.

Rapiers are very difficult to magnetize, with the system where the gun mount is clamped between the left and right track, which must be glued together.

Also, seems they were so pressed for sprue space that the Rapier's guns, uncharacteristically for modern HH, don't come with the barrels halved. They're all solid single piece barrels with no muzzle hole.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Time for a bit of fun.

Go go gadget predict-o-matic, Marine Heavy Weapons.

We know Heavy (X) will bring benefits when the unit is stationary to a stat depending on what is X. Heavy Bolters are Heavy (FP), Lascannon Heavy (D).

I kind of expect…..

Autocannon Heavy (FP)
Multimelta Heavy (AP), in addition to Melta
Plasma Cannon I honestly don’t know. FP, AP and D just don’t feel right. Possibly Heavy (BS)?
Heavy Flamers - again I’m really not sure.
Missile Launchers may have multiple, depending on the Missile type? Krak Heavy (AP), Frag Heavy (S) perhaps?
Volkite - probably Heavy (FP), as they’re high rate of fire weapons.

I'd guess
Autocannon (AP)
Multimedia (S)
Plasma Cannon (Dam)
Missile Launcher (BS)
Volkite (FP)

Well the entire USR and scenario sections were leaked on 4chan (second to last HH thread)

Most notably the USR Officer of the Line(x): unlocks x auxiliary detachments instead of 1.

Ordnance(x) is like Heavy(x) but that stat is doubled when stationary rather than increased by 1,

I think the word salad finally misfired for real and Poison basically says "if you would have wounded anyway without needing the poison rule, then the hit can't do more than 1 wound" when they meant to say that rolling high enough to wound both with and without poison doesn't stack into two wounding hits.

Shock(x) rolls on the glancing table on x+ to hit even if it doesn't glance, but doubles can't strip HP

Explaining flamer templates is an entire page

All in all not a lot of USRs, either they really cut down or there's a lot more faction specific ones.

Surely not on the bit about the flamer template?

On magnetizing rapiers (doable but not trivial)

https://www.goonhammer.com/goonhammer-reviews-horus-heresy-rapier-battery/

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ordered three boxes of the Quad/Laser Rapiers.

Still tempted to use the crew, with appropriate weapons of course, as a Recon Squad. The armour just looks suited to that role to my eyes.

We know they're intended to be used as an Augur Command & Control Squad, so there is precedent for them running around without Rapiers

Which is something thats been bugging me - you need 2 crew per rapier, when will you ever have spare crew for an augur squad? Or is the idea that you can only field them when youre not fielding rapiers?

Pretty sure the idea is that if you're not bringing Rapiers in a list, you can still bring the models as this squad.

I think the idea is the same as the proxy/conversion guides in Arcane Journals.

"we don't make a model for this but this is how you can represent it using Citadel miniatures"

chaos0xomega wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ordered three boxes of the Quad/Laser Rapiers.

Still tempted to use the crew, with appropriate weapons of course, as a Recon Squad. The armour just looks suited to that role to my eyes.

We know they're intended to be used as an Augur Command & Control Squad, so there is precedent for them running around without Rapiers

Which is something thats been bugging me - you need 2 crew per rapier, when will you ever have spare crew for an augur squad? Or is the idea that you can only field them when youre not fielding rapiers?

The crew are also on a separate sprue from the Rapiers.

My hope (not based on anything other than copium) is that GW might sell the crew sprue separately for a limited time while the book is new. But that's probably overly optimistic...

Or the crew may get reused if they come out with say a Legion Basilisk kit

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I think the idea is the same as the proxy/conversion guides in Arcane Journals.

"we don't make a model for this but this is how you can represent it using Citadel miniatures"

Yes, but in many cases you are using most/all of the kit for those, or youre using the spare parts of the kit (like the white lions).

This is basically asking you to buy a kjt and not use most of it.

No really, it's more telling you that you have an option of how to use the models in the kit in different ways.

Slightly off topic, but I need to rant about Rapiers. Why in the world can't GW rules guys get on the same page when it comes to Rapier rules? I get the want 30k and 40k to be different, but the unit organization is totally scattershot. In HH it's the carriage and two guys. It used to be the same in 40k, but for some reason I 9th they decided it needed to just be a single model with one crew member. And don't get me started on if the crew are armed with bolters or bolt pistols, as that's seemed to go back and forth too.

 Gert wrote:
Surely not on the bit about the flamer template?

Without looking at the leak, I'd guess they're trying to nail things down to prevent any arguments about whether a model is affected or not - and that this might include at least one diagram.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Surely not on the bit about the flamer template?

Without looking at the leak, I'd guess they're trying to nail things down to prevent any arguments about whether a model is affected or not - and that this might include at least one diagram.

I checked, no diagrams.

https://i.4cdn.org/tg/1749857324452909m.jpg

Can't get the damn image to display

In what universe were diagrams a problem?

It's like they've gone into a meeting and asked, "How do we make this the least accessible ruleset we've ever made?"

 Gert wrote:
In what universe were diagrams a problem?

The AI can't parse them!

chaos0xomega wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I think the idea is the same as the proxy/conversion guides in Arcane Journals.

"we don't make a model for this but this is how you can represent it using Citadel miniatures"

Yes, but in many cases you are using most/all of the kit for those, or youre using the spare parts of the kit (like the white lions).

This is basically asking you to buy a kjt and not use most of it.

Or, given the crew models for the Rapier need only be present and not necessarily visually distinct? Swap them out for Random Marine 1 and 2.

Saturnine Kit Focus for both the unit and Praetor. Spure pics abound!

Squad



Praetor

Looks ball jointed on the Praetor, meaning we can actually adjust the posing

I’m liking that the kit comes with a full suite of weapon options.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m liking that the kit comes with a full suite of weapon options.

Yeah but it kind of doesn't though. It's only got half of what you need to equipped them in full. As it is, if you by the Saturnine box and want 6 double plasma Sats, you can't make them that way. Same goes for if you want 6 double desintegrator load outs. You can have 3 and 3, but not a full 6 of any either.

And we don't know at the moment if this is the full potential loadout for the Sats. They could be doing the same thing as they did with the contemptor for the AoD box and only supplying one sprue of weapons, with another set coming for individual release.

They say these are all the options in the Libres.

Which means you'll have to wait for the next DLC for melee Saturnine rules.

Oh ok, I missed that.

 Snrub wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m liking that the kit comes with a full suite of weapon options.

Yeah but it kind of doesn't though. It's only got half of what you need to equipped them in full. As it is, if you by the Saturnine box and want 6 double plasma Sats, you can't make them that way. Same goes for if you want 6 double desintegrator load outs. You can have 3 and 3, but not a full 6 of any either.

And we don't know at the moment if this is the full potential loadout for the Sats. They could be doing the same thing as they did with the contemptor for the AoD box and only supplying one sprue of weapons, with another set coming for individual release.

Fair point, I misread that bit of the article, confusing the 6 of everything as 6 of everything per 3.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Fair point, I misread that bit of the article, confusing the 6 of everything as 6 of everything per 3.

Oh it's easy done. And if one were to gloss over the writing and jump straight to look at the sprue pics (as I initially did) you could easy mistake them for having included more then there is given that the weapons are split in two halves.

 Tamereth wrote:
"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

You're not wrong!

There look to be more than a few major changes, and that's just in what we've seen previewed so far.

And there also looks to be a lot of "make it more complicated for some reason" action going on...

 Alpharius wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

You're not wrong!

There look to be more than a few major changes, and that's just in what we've seen previewed so far.

And there also looks to be a lot of "make it more complicated for some reason" action going on...

More complicated is why people supposedly like it over 40k historically. People claim to love the extra 'crunch'.

Dudeface wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

You're not wrong!

There look to be more than a few major changes, and that's just in what we've seen previewed so far.

And there also looks to be a lot of "make it more complicated for some reason" action going on...

More complicated is why people supposedly like it over 40k historically. People claim to love the extra 'crunch'.

Historically 30k and 40k were the same game. When 40K got dumbed down people were glad 30k stayed the same as it was. I've never heard anybody call for what is a mass battle game to get extra 'crunch'. Cleaner more balanced rules for some units were the only thing people were calling for.

 Tamereth wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

You're not wrong!

There look to be more than a few major changes, and that's just in what we've seen previewed so far.

And there also looks to be a lot of "make it more complicated for some reason" action going on...

More complicated is why people supposedly like it over 40k historically. People claim to love the extra 'crunch'.

Historically 30k and 40k were the same game. When 40K got dumbed down people were glad 30k stayed the same as it was. I've never heard anybody call for what is a mass battle game to get extra 'crunch'. Cleaner more balanced rules for some units were the only thing people were calling for.

I am aware of the games history, but thank you, however you dont have to look hard or far for crunch requests.

I think most people just wanted a Warhammer that still plays like a wargame, not a mobile phone RTS.

Of course some people legitimately want more actual crunch, but for the most part they just want it to not be... streamlined... the way 40k was.

Personally I thought 2.0 could use a bit of shaving down in the USR and weapon profiles department, but gameplay was nice. No way can 3.0 flow as well when a single charge move involves moving, two rounds of snap fire, then more moving, then pile in, before any attacks are rolled.

 Snrub wrote:
Saturnine Kit Focus for both the unit and Praetor. Spure pics abound!

Squad

Spoiler:

Praetor

Spoiler:

I'm baffled that they refer to the Praetor's cape as 'optional'. Sorry, Edna, but are awesome.

So how do we think they are supposed to wear the suits, given how big they are to a normal marine?

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/26-saturninetermlore-scale-t3tacej7ks.jpg

Maybe they wear stilts, or they use a robot head on top of their head? Or they have their pelvises artificially widened to help them spread into the legs...

GW loves making armour that doesn't make sense, in order for bigger=better.

Space marine armour has pretty much never made anatomical sense, to be fair.

It makes as much anatomical sense as their tanks do.

In fairness we do have stories of nobles in Necromunda getting their bodies modified so that they can fit into their power-armour suits. So the setting does at least have the concept that power-armour isn't made for a "standard human body" and instead you have to get tweaked a bit to fit.

Any word if the questoris book will be released with the initial release, or if it will come at a later date?

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Any word if the questoris book will be released with the initial release, or if it will come at a later date?

Initial release, alongside books for loyalist & traitor legions, Mechanicum, and the Solar Auxilia.

 Hellebore wrote:
So how do we think they are supposed to wear the suits, given how big they are to a normal marine?

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/26-saturninetermlore-scale-t3tacej7ks.jpg

Maybe they wear stilts, or they use a robot head on top of their head? Or they have their pelvises artificially widened to help them spread into the legs...

GW loves making armour that doesn't make sense, in order for bigger=better.

They're basically centurion suits, aren't they?

I’m reckoning they’re mini dreadnoughts. Either the marine is mutilated to fit or they’re in the foetal position

 Albertorius wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
So how do we think they are supposed to wear the suits, given how big they are to a normal marine?

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/26-saturninetermlore-scale-t3tacej7ks.jpg

Maybe they wear stilts, or they use a robot head on top of their head? Or they have their pelvises artificially widened to help them spread into the legs...

GW loves making armour that doesn't make sense, in order for bigger=better.

They're basically centurion suits, aren't they?

Centurion suits are probably an attempt to recreate Saturnine armor, without the knowhow lost in the Heresy

Well, we’ve precedent for physically altering the body to fit from the Spyrer suits.

That’s not to say Saturnine and Spyrer share a lineage, just to show it is a thing.

They put the Dreadnought in Tactical Dreadnought Armour

Jokes on all of us. It's actually half a dozen midgets all crammed in there all controlling different parts.

 Snrub wrote:
Jokes on all of us. It's actually half a dozen midgets all crammed in there all controlling different parts.

So, just a bunch of snotlings shokk attacked into terminator suits

"No, I don't know how we got here either, just follow the other green guys and shoot what they shoot!"

 Snrub wrote:
Jokes on all of us. It's actually half a dozen midgets all crammed in there all controlling different parts.

They go well with the 700 indians posing as the AI that GW hired to write the book

Dudeface wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:
"The Warhammer Design Studio have been pretty happy with where the game has been for the last few years, and they’ve seen this new edition as the opportunity to reinvestigate the core systems and make improvements – rather than making wholesale changes."

With each new article we see this was more and more of an outright lie.

You're not wrong!

There look to be more than a few major changes, and that's just in what we've seen previewed so far.

And there also looks to be a lot of "make it more complicated for some reason" action going on...

More complicated is why people supposedly like it over 40k historically. People claim to love the extra 'crunch'.

Crunch is fine, as long it's clearly worded. Right now it's reading like the Silmarillion, or a credit card TOS.

Currently wondering if different variants of certain weapons might gain additional traits.

For instance, the Quad Heavy Bolter Rapier. That’s a lot of raw firepower going down a pretty narrow corridor. So perhaps it’ll have Pinning (X), to represent that.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Currently wondering if different variants of certain weapons might gain additional traits.

For instance, the Quad Heavy Bolter Rapier. That’s a lot of raw firepower going down a pretty narrow corridor. So perhaps it’ll have Pinning (X), to represent that.

That was already a concept, for example the biggest Volkites have Pinning and bigger lascannon and autocannon get Exo-shock

True. Wouldn’t say no to some of that here.

And now we have the profiles for both squad and preator.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/7h1lqo8p/rules-in-the-age-of-darkness-saturnine-terminators-take-the-field/

Base Initiative 3 on Saturnine Terminators.

Yeah that sounds good for them. Look at 'em, big ponderous buggers. They ain't fast.

So, things we learned today

Plasma is getting even worse than in 2.0 to make room for Disintegrators as the premiere anti-MEQ special weapon

Special rules are still scattered all over the place (Occulix is under the unit entry but the Thermal diffraction field is not)

The most common cause of death for a Saturnine is their Disintegrator getting hot

The AI writing these rules is freely mixing two layout types for upgrades, the modern one with points right-justified after a line of dots and the old style with points just being stated in flowing text.

Oh I completely glossed over the weapon profiles and missed that plasma is worse now. And what kind of a range is 24" for a barrage weapon? That's fething stupid.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The AI writing these rules is freely mixing two layout types for upgrades, the modern one with points right-justified after a line of dots and the old style with points just being stated in flowing text.

Oh and a thousand year curse on you, sir. Now that you've pointed out the inconsistent upgrade layout, I'm forever doomed to be irritated by it.

It's a change from 2.0 that now a model may have its weapon exchanged for a weapon, where in the past a model may exchange its weapon for a weapon.

Does that matter? Not really. Does it annoy me that the wording (and, as above, the layout) has changed? Yes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also of (extremely minimal) note is that you are able to take both hammer and axe on the praetor, which I have to assume is why they have two separate poses rather than swapping the head. I guess also you could potentially build a fists-only praetor from the kit by the same token for a blunter angrier look.

I wasn't expecting the full range of ranged options, but Saturnine praetors all having only one optional gun is an odd choice given the rest of the unit's otherwise ranged bent. If that doesn't hint at a melee option in future... then knowing GW I won't be overly surprised but still.