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Hey guys, our gaming group has been very excited about the leaked 5th edition changes. We had spent our time in the theory armchair discussing how this is going to affect the game and how that is going to affect the game. But we felt it was time to get a more detailed analysis of some of the changes. So we decided to play a 1500 point game under the 5th ed. rules.

disclaimer: Yes they are not official changes. Yes, these rules are subject to multiple revisions prior to release. Yes, this could even be a complete hoax. We understand all of these facts. We were just interested in seeing what these particular leaked rules did to a standard 40k game, so that we could enter in to new discussions.

Ok, we spent a good 30 minutes before they game working out all of the terrain. For the most part, my set of 4th edition terrain was acceptable. My 3 hills will absolutely need to be raised higher. To avoid the partial obscuring of models. 5th ed. hills will need to be a minimum of 3" tall. If they aren't that tall you aren't going to gain any additional advantages, outside of maybe seeing over swarms. The difficult section of the rules was in regards to vehicles their cover saves and area terrain as it pertains to vehicles. We didn't really come to a consensus. But it ended up not really coming up.

Ok, we made 5th edition army lists. With all of the new rules in mind.

Nids

HQ broodlord with 5 genestealers with scything talons

HQ 4 close combat warriors

ELITE 2x carnifex with barbed strangler and scything talons

TROOPS 3X20 spinegaunts with without number

TROOPS 2x6 genestealers with scything talons

HEAVY 3x zoanthropes with warp blast

IG

HQ JO mortar
2x lascannon sentinel

ELITE 10x ratlings

TROOP JO mortar
2x las/plas infantry squad

TROOP JO mortar
2x las/plas infantry squad

FAST 2x hellhound
lascannon sentinel

HEAVY 3x leman russes


I'm gonna swiftly go through the batrep but I will stop to give a more in depth description on some of the more 5th edition-esque events.

The mission type was recon (which oddly enough is loot counter recovery) and the level was the one where you deploy on the long board edges. We placed 4 loot counters, 2 per side close to the deployment zones, and one smack dab in the center.

DEPLOYMENT: Oh my god... This was amazingly good. So we roll the dice. Nids win roll to choose table edge, deploy their entire army and then go first. Without any foreknowledge of where I was going to be. (you can make educated guesses based on terrain) The nid player was forced to deploy in a wide spread. IG then got to deploy knowing that they will not get the first turn. But also getting to see exactly what the nid player was planning. Facing a numerically superior foe, the IG deployed on a short frontage. All of the infantry in a corner, with all of the armor in the center of the table. The whole thing was backed up against the table edge. I want to talk more about this new way to deploy later. It was so cool.

Top of 1. Gaunts fleet, stealers fleet, broodlords unit runs, the zoanthropes and warriors run, and the carnifexes shoot at my hellhounds, shaking one.

Bottom of 1. IG shoots a lot. I haven't seen shooting output like that from IG in 4th ed. For the most part the line of sight adjustments were beautiful. Initially I only had line of sight to gaunts and carnifexes. Even on my moderate hills, every genestealer, zoanthrope and warrior was at least partially obscured by a unit that I could wound or damage, making it an illegal target. The tanks weren't tall enough to see completely over gaunts, so screening any sized model is totally viable work for a gaunt. Only city ruins would have given me the height I needed to ignore the gaunts. I killed 18 gaunts and 4 genestealers and wounded a carnifex on turn 1.

Top of 2. Gaunts fleet, stealers fleet, broodlord runs, zoanthropes and warriors run and the carnifex shoots at my hellhounds, weapon destroying one.

Bottom of 2. IG shoots. Now that a gaunt screen had been removed I was able to wipe out the last 2 genestealers in the first unit, and kill 4 of the broodlords genstealers. Here is the first time the wound allocation changes came in to play. Using cover saves and the high toughness of the broodlord, the nid player was able to allocate shrewdly, saving a genestealer. He was able to maximize his 3+ armor saves on the broodlord, and absorb a death with his additional wounds, all without any rules argument or discussion. With the area in front of my infantry temporarily clear, I shot battle cannons at the screening gaunt unit in the center of the table. I killed about 6 of them and was able to kill a warrior by placing my templates shrewdly. The ratlings annihilated a carnifex (they are good). Taking him down with the help of a lascannon.

Top of 3. gaunts fleet and charge, stealers fleet and charge a hellhound, broodlord runs, zoanthropes warp blast my leman russes, shaking one, a carnifex shoots at the hellhound and scatters on to a command squad, another carnifex charges a leman russ. The warriors leap on to a leman russ. The gaunts die to the guardsmen, the stealers through sheer bad luck, fail to glance the hellhound, the charging fex needed 6s to hit the leman russ that had moved 12" and missed, the warriors shred a leman russ with a penetrating hit from the front armor. (any concerns about nids having any trouble at all against vehicles in assault is completely unfounded. Land raiders and monoliths will be the only thing they should have a concern with, thanks to the rear armor rule.)

bottom of 3. IG shoots the broodlords unit dead, kills 5 of 6 genestealers, and 2 of the remaining 3 warriors in shooting. A sentinel ties up a full strength gaunt unit, but they were already scoring when they got locked. I made a very 4th edition move with my infantry, and lost the game on it. I moved about 15 of my infantry up to finish of the final genestealer and warrior with shooting. And close the distance on the far objective. In doing so, I blocked the LOS of my ratlings and a plasma weilding infantry squad. Only able to shoot with the now 4 strong command squad, I failed to kill either, and placed both of my far right coring units within charge range of the warrior and the genestealer.

Top of 4. Two fresh units of gaunts arrive and move towards the two objectives, an unwounded zoanthrope floats back to synapse them and get out of LOS. The warrior leaps onto a 10 man infantry unit and fails to break them, the genestealer charges the command squad and dies after taking them below scoring.

Bottom of 4. Ratlings wipe out the last carnifex, sentinels try in vain to snipe the remaining zoanthrope.

Top 5. nids get on their 3 objectives, with their army only consisting of 2 zoanthropes 1 warrior and 59 gaunts.

bottom 5. I can't get over to contest the third objective. Due to the late game pressure by the wall of close combat nids, If I could have forced the tie, I would have easily won on VPs, but the nids performed beautifully as a 5th edition objective taking army.

Win for the Nids...


Here are some points that i want to stress that we learned in our game. Some of these you could have predicted by just looking at the leaked rules, some you just have to set up models to see.

-screening. Without being 6+ inches off of the table, there was just no way I could see any of hit units without their model being "partially obscured by an enemy or friendly model". This includes zoanthropes modeled on their little spire that they stand on. And it includes my infantry squads being on a 2" high hill. Warriors and genestealers did not die to anything that wasn't a template until the gaunt screens had been swept clean away.

-deployment. Possibly the coolest thing about 5th edition so far. It really gave you that attacker/defender feel. I feel that If I had won the roll in hindsight I would have wanted to go second anyway. As a defensive army, the IG greatly benefitted from seeing the enemy deployment, lining up accordingly and having the bottom of the turn to make any suicidal objective grabs. Although with every mission having a modified version of random game length. You cannot reliably know when the real last turn is going to be. I think aggressive assault armies will want to pick their path of advance and get that extra turn of movement every time. And I think reactive or defensive armies will very often want to see what their opponent is planning to do. When similar armies play against each other, the first turn will probably be slightly more favored. But I think the advantages and disadvantages are comparable.

-leman russ. Killed more than it has ever killed before. Not a scoring unit though. And very vulnerable to being assaulted. With my opponent having both strength 8 and strength 10, they still felt a bit more survivable, and were never in cover the whole game.

-cover and LOS. Ok 5th edition seems to have much more clear LOS, but also more and better cover saves. As my area terrain was a forest, we were able to shoot at each other through the woods. Making a lot of my old LOS blocking terrain clear, but every shot traced through the woods would give infantry and monstrous creatures cover saves. Which severely negated the effect of all that shooting. Also, LOS does get blocked at least as much as before, but selectively. I was able to see and shoot at something with everyone every turn. But in many cases, that something I got to shoot at was chosen by my opponent. Much more tactical in my opinion.

-flanks? I had annihilated the nids in in my left flank, and my center, but the right flank nids were fast enough to get to my lines, and box me in. I couldn't effectively shoot them, due to the sharp angle. When I stepped up to get more guns on them, I blocked LOS for other units trying to do the same thing. Armies seem to truly have flanks now. A fast assault army can be deployed out of position, still get where they need to be, and have the return fire cut down severely by the steepness of the shooting angle. All this with a simple screening rule. Very cool.

-troops scoring. Without number on at least 2 units of gaunts is a new requirement. You won't be asking your genestealers to grab objectives. they'll be dead, or locked in bloody cc, far away from objectives. With good sturdy synapse (screened zoanthropes, screened warriors) without number gaunts can be used to screen genestealers, absorb bullets, lock shooters in CC, then come in and be a scoring unit on the back half of your table. Brilliant and necessary. With screening, you can reliably count on your gaunts dying, and with the single ravener not being able to grab the game winning objective, its a new no-brainer, and very "niddy" to boot. With guard it felt like the troops scoring was a real balancing factor. The ratlings were just dominant, and the tanks worked really well en masse. but at the end of the game I needed to move my infantry that I had walled in to grab me some objectives. I would revise my list to include at least another infantry unit, possibly an armored fist unit. Which would thin my scary level of shooting a bit.


I feel like there are more exciting things to talk about that we learned from the game. maybe after some replies i will be able to talk a little bit more about what was different.

Other than clearer rules for area terrain and LOS there was nothing that I missed from 4th ed. A step in the right direction to be sure. The game played out so much more cinematically than the many IG versus nids games in the past. The guy who didn't focus on troops shot the other guy to piss, won the VP game by a huge margin, but was soundly beaten by objectives. The true winner of the game was the player who focused on troops and claiming. That sounds about right yes?

Very cool to see how some of the stuff played out. I am curious how long the game took? Did it feel longer than a 4th edition game (of course, barring issues with learning the new rules).

edit - oh yeah, do you think, based on your game, that we will see a big return of the lowcrawling wraithlord?

Thanks for the battle report, very interesting read. I didn't think about the advantages of without number before, amazing that this choice actually becomes viable in 5th edition!

neofright wrote:Very cool to see how some of the stuff played out. I am curious how long the game took? Did it feel longer than a 4th edition game (of course, barring issues with learning the new rules).

edit - oh yeah, do you think, based on your game, that we will see a big return of the lowcrawling wraithlord?

It was only a 1500 point game, which is a bit smaller than I usually play, but it didn't take any longer than normal. The wound allocation rules did not play a large part in our game because he never shot at my infantry and all of his units apart from the broodlord were ver large and very similar.

To answer your second question, probably not, but maybe. For the wraithlord in particular, no need to make him crawl. the rules (this version) put him in the large target catagory. meaning he can only be screened by other monstrous creatures or vehicles. Also, the LOS rules state that in addition to needing LOS to the model "the model cannot be partially obscured by a friendly or enemy model" meaning, if you can see a wraithlord, but his shins are obscured by an avatar, and you can potentially wound that avatar, you cannot legally target the wraithlord.

However I know what you are asking. And in particular, things like necron destroyers being on a large clear flying stem can potentially screw over necron players from screening that they may be entitled to. Under these new rules a warrior or immortal could easily claim to be screened by a scarab swarm base. at least from an unelevated attacker, but a destroyer with a long flying stem would not be "partially obscured" by the scarabs, unless you counted his flying base stem as a part of the model. I could very easily see destoyers mounted on shaved down stems to at least try to get a turn of screening from scarabs and warriors.

Another instance is the caveat that you may ignore an intervening model if none of your weapons can damage the intervening model. Wave serpents on flying stems will intervene with, but not block LOS. This means that units with no weapons of strength 6 or higher could ignore a wave serpent to shoot the shins of a unit hidden behind it. This may lead to "flying stems" being shortened or forgone, more eldar players and jetbike owners will be inclined to glue their model directly to the base, or attempt to not include the base at all.

It's not as bad as it might be. Anything that has its feet firmly attached to the ground is unaffected, simply because if their ankles were partially obscured from the eye of the firer, they are screened. It's just for the flying stem people that this may be a problem.

Nice batrep, and it's interesting to start seeing some of the rumored changes in action. As a nid player, I'm obviously pretty interested in seeing how screening turns out.

One point, though, FYI: the copy of the purported rules that I have doesn't include anything about assaults always hitting rear armor. I remember that featuring in some of the rumors, but, as far as the infamous PDF goes, assaults are still worked out against the relevant armor facings. That could hurt for units planning on assaulting tanks.

Good read! With only four infantry squads, I assume you really didn't have too much trouble with LOS, but would a larger infantry army (say 10-12 squads) been really difficult to set up fire lanes with? Or would you have just packed everybody in nice and tight and said screw the templates?

Dire Wombat wrote:One point, though, FYI: the copy of the purported rules that I have doesn't include anything about assaults always hitting rear armor. I remember that featuring in some of the rumors, but, as far as the infamous PDF goes, assaults are still worked out against the relevant armor facings. That could hurt for units planning on assaulting tanks.

Well butter my buns and call me a biscuit! Wow, you are correct. That would have changed the game a bit. Hmm. Strength 5 warriors can get to armor 14 in close combat, but that'd just be a glance, like the much nerfed venom cannon. Hmm, zoanthropes still seemed to do fairly well against the high armor. Just need to screen them till they are in range, and make those shots count.

spmusubi

you could do something like this to fold up mass infantry.. I dont like it, because in my mass guard armies my lasguns did a lot of the work, but...

L=lascannon, P=plasma gun, G=guardsman

__GGGGGGGGPL
LPGGGGGGGG

This gets your heavy and special weapons LOS, and now that you can't range or LOS snipe specific models, its a safe way to deploy.

Guard are going to need to make early moves to get to objectives, and then hunker down and hold them. They won't be able to do last turn grabs, thanks to the new random game length. Seeing as how I just assembled a 160 model army, I was hoping it would be viable, but, for take and hold, you'll need a substantial firebase PLUS a hard hitting fast moving "assault force" mine is going to be 3 leman russes with an armored fist squad LOSed behind them. You'll need this assault force to at least make a play for their objective. If you don't get it, at least you drew some pressure away from your own firebase, and now you can take your win on VPs.

For recon (the one I played) against an assault army, you are pretty boned without transports. As you saw, I couldn't move closer to the genesteaers, so I got boxed in pretty hard. I cleared enough space to get to 2 objectives by running. But there will always be that odd objective that you'll need to reach out for. Unfortunately, for standard missions, I think guard horde is out.

Guard do very well with a mix of horde, vehicles, and either DS troops or vehicle mounted ones that drive up/spin/disembark immediately. Just remember to 'run' and don't let anyone see any part of you or you'll get shot. However Chimeras have a use now, turn them towards marines and you can leave yourself where they can see you but are obscured...and they get to blow the chimera up. lol gonna see alot of transports running backwards at marines.

Shep: I was actually thinking a little more like



_________Enemy

GGG_______________GGG
GGG_______________GGG
____GGG_______GGG
____GGG_______GGG
__________GGG
__________GGG

to maximize lasgun coverage since obviously the old deploy mulitiple squads in ranks isn't going to work very well with blocked LOS. The downside is that everybody's pretty much in Close Order Drill which should lead to some pretty brutal casualties w/ the new blast rules. There'd be a lot of movement by the top two squads adjusting to enemy movement, but it should allow loads of Guardsmen to fire w/ LOS. Maybe.