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Lasguns can hurt anything, possibly even Land Raiders. Heavy bolters and autocannons will likely be greatly buffed with the new armor save modifier system. Even if they are rend -1 they will mow down marines compared to now.

Sweeping advance is gone and replaced by battle shock. So small squads of dudes is definitely viable without the need for characters such as commisars and are amazing speed bumps and tarpits.

Templates are gone. They only hit D3 or D6 whatever guys. No more entire squads getting destroyed by a flamer. You can march up massed infantry and don't need to space them out. Might even get a decent save against flamers if they don't have much rend.

He who charges first attacks first regardless of initiative. Conscripts with massive numbers of attacks buffed by a priest running over squads of marines or even Daemon Princes without them striking back.

Armor save modifiers are likely to hurt power armor more. MEQ be rolling 4+ and 5+ saves more often. 5+ and 4+ armor more likely to actually get a save even it is only like a 6+ instead the nothing now. For example guardsmen gets a 6+ save against a bolter if it is only rend -1, while they get nothing now. Veterans get 5+ save against bolter, lol. It will be interesting to see how this is implemented, but power armor was not worth it last time in 2nd edition from what I have heard.

Overpowered formation swept away and everyone starting on an equal playing foot. Overcosted units potentially repointed. Hunting lances on rough riders killing terminators. AP3 Basilisks killing terminators and all enemy targets instead of just bouncing off 2+ saves.

Deathstars created by multiple allies gone.

They might only be movement 4" though which could be really bad, but makes run and shoot type orders or whatever much more important.

You could easily apply all of the above to Orks and Nids too.

I would broadly call that a good thing.

Orks, Nids, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar, Sisters and Guard could all use some improvements.

Martel732 wrote:
I mean they die to shrubs right now. At least guardsmen cost points.

Haha, that it true.

But to the grander point, I see save mods being a problem. That will serve to diminish the value of elite units heavily.

Taking away templates - I really don't like that. At all. But, that's just me. There should be a penalty to having 50 guys standing shoulder to shoulder, nuts to butts.

 Marmatag wrote:
But to the grander point, I see save mods being a problem. That will serve to diminish the value of elite units heavily.

More so than the proliferation of AP2 weapons already does?

So long as we aren't going back to 2nd Edition's -1 to -6 scale with a whole lot of -1 options to be found, save mods will actually improve odds of survival for some units where an all-or-nothing system would simply negate their save.

If, for example, plasma gets a -2 ASM, then terminators are saving on 4+. And since we know cover provides positive save mods (Twitter), they could potentially get that back to a 3+.

As of right now, expensive elite troops that rely on not dying to make their value are a losing proposition and have been for nearly 20 years. At the end of the day, the worth of elite troops is going to hinge on implementation. But at the very least, 2W terminators is a sign of hope on that front.

Taking away templates - I really don't like that. At all. But, that's just me. There should be a penalty to having 50 guys standing shoulder to shoulder, nuts to butts.

I take it you never heard of the 2" tool? In general, unless playing against a sloppy opponent using a horde, they were going to be using maximum spacing to mitigate templates. This slows down the movement phase to a crawl with large units and gains us no benefit. Templates as a counter to unit bunching in a game with as many units on the field as 40k is a losing proposition. Hell, I'm sure Ork and Nid players are breathing a sigh of relief, not because they can move everyone elbow to elbow, but because they can now use movement trays without themselves.

In general rolling how many hits a blast weapon or a flamer gets is a much more elegant solution that doesn't work against playability. I mean, I'll miss them as well, but 40k is a mass combat game now and this kind of thing doesn't really have a place in there anymore and causes more problems than it solves. And you certainly aren't getting the community to go back to seeing 40k as a platoon-level skirmish game where you can faff about with a bunch of overly fiddly rules.

Given the AoS scaling down and the annoyance the Guard presents to explaining what you need to start the game to new players ("see, for these guys you need a captain and two five-man squads, for these guys you need a seer and two three-man jetbike squads, for these guys you need a five-man command squad, two more five-man command squads, and four ten-man infantry squads...") I'd honestly expect to see fewer Guardsmen in an army, at least if "lasguns can hurt Land Raiders" isn't a joke. (GW, if you're reading this and you aren't using the LotR-style damage table where really long-shot to-wound rolls have to be made as 6+ and another 4+-6+ after I shall be very disappointed in you.)

(Yes, I know you're allowed to use Veteran squads and only get 25 guys to start a Guard army, I'm exaggerating. I still expect the FOC-within-a-FOC thing to die and fifty-man Conscript blobs to go with it, from what I've heard about 8e so far.)

Well they literally said the words that imperial guard "Won't die to a stiff breeze anymore", so there is always that to hold on to.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
But to the grander point, I see save mods being a problem. That will serve to diminish the value of elite units heavily.

More so than the proliferation of AP2 weapons already does?

So long as we aren't going back to 2nd Edition's -1 to -6 scale with a whole lot of -1 options to be found, save mods will actually improve odds of survival for some units where an all-or-nothing system would simply negate their save.

If, for example, plasma gets a -2 ASM, then terminators are saving on 4+. And since we know cover provides positive save mods (Twitter), they could potentially get that back to a 3+.

As of right now, expensive elite troops that rely on not dying to make their value are a losing proposition and have been for nearly 20 years. At the end of the day, the worth of elite troops is going to hinge on implementation. But at the very least, 2W terminators is a sign of hope on that front.

Addendum: Strikes-first-on-charge could utterly crack the elite-unit paradigm we're sitting on these days (at least in melee), where "can I live long enough to use my powerfist?"/"can I kill something before it one-shots me with a powerfist?" are critical questions.

Taking away templates - I really don't like that. At all. But, that's just me. There should be a penalty to having 50 guys standing shoulder to shoulder, nuts to butts.

I take it you never heard of the 2" tool? In general, unless playing against a sloppy opponent using a horde, they were going to be using maximum spacing to mitigate templates. This slows down the movement phase to a crawl with large units and gains us no benefit. Templates as a counter to unit bunching in a game with as many units on the field as 40k is a losing proposition. Hell, I'm sure Ork and Nid players are breathing a sigh of relief, not because they can move everyone elbow to elbow, but because they can now use movement trays without themselves.

In general rolling how many hits a blast weapon or a flamer gets is a much more elegant solution that doesn't work against playability. I mean, I'll miss them as well, but 40k is a mass combat game now and this kind of thing doesn't really have a place in there anymore and causes more problems than it solves. And you certainly aren't getting the community to go back to seeing 40k as a platoon-level skirmish game where you can faff about with a bunch of overly fiddly rules.

I'm still of two minds on losing templates. Templates and arbitrary-number-of-hits can both be counterintuitive (templates: why can I only ever do one hit to this Wraithknight, who's hundreds of times the size of the grot I can also only do one hit to?, arbitrary-number-of-hits: why am I doing the same amount of damage to one Ranger crouched behind a pillar as to that big line of Mordians in close order?), templates feel like the lesser of two evils on the 'game making sense' front but they're also a much bigger offender on game slowdown. And not having blasts that scatter back and kill your own units is certainly a plus (to date my Skyweavers have killed more of my own Harlequins with haywire cannons than they have of anything else).

Considering how much faster movement is in Bolt Action (or at least in BA1, pre-templates) adding a bit of extra weirdity to 'blast' weapons by making them deal extra hits to larger squads would probably still involve a significant reduction in game slowdown. And to tie this back to the initial post the humble battle cannon might become an anti-tank/MC tool to be feared rather than one to be snorted at derisively.

People are vastily overestimating this "Lasgun" Meme that is going around.

My question is this. What about the Tanks the guard is known for?

What will happen to them? Killing them with lasguns aside, I'm more concerned they will become unable to dish out the volume of firepower they once were (in)famous for.

 Engine of War wrote:
My question is this. What about the Tanks the guard is known for?

What will happen to them? Killing them with lasguns aside, I'm more concerned they will become unable to dish out the volume of firepower they once were (in)famous for.

Well, IG tanks themselves actually haven't typically been all *that* shooty. Raw firepower output from most IG tanks has historically been pretty mediocre between BS3 and restrictions on multiple weapons firing & movement. Tank for tank, many other armies will put out more firepower than the IG tanks will. What worked for IG in the instances where IG tank armies did well was having too many hulls on the field for an opponent to reasonably deal with, which sadly hasn't been terribly functional since 5E.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Engine of War wrote:
My question is this. What about the Tanks the guard is known for?

What will happen to them? Killing them with lasguns aside, I'm more concerned they will become unable to dish out the volume of firepower they once were (in)famous for.

Well, IG tanks themselves actually haven't typically been all *that* shooty. Raw firepower output from most IG tanks has historically been pretty mediocre between BS3 and restrictions on multiple weapons firing & movement. Tank for tank, many other armies will put out more firepower than the IG tanks will. What worked for IG in the instances where IG tank armies did well was having too many hulls on the field for an opponent to reasonably deal with, which sadly hasn't been terribly functional since 5E.

That's a thought. Non-transport/fast vehicles may actually get to MOVE in 8th edition rather than sitting still in order to fire properly

I expect the stock LR to suddenly get better given I expect the ordinance rule to go bye bye, and the battle cannon to not prevent the other guns from shooting.

Aye, we can hope on both counts.

I always preferred the 2nd ed. flavor of Imperial Guard. They had, unquestionably, the best tanks in the game (yep, better than marines). Lots of guns, lots of rifles, the occasional pesky Ogres and Ratskins and dirt cheap walkers. Their main power was artillery. Of all the armies they were very much "the" armour and artillery army. Add in the really cool veteran rules (like shoulder-to-shoulder firing etc.) and they had a very unique flavor and unique place on the tabletop. Now, as with all races...everyone has access to almost everything and I question the purpose of a guard squad even being in the game. I hope 8th changes that a lot.

When you have the community stating that Terminators suck and Space Marine Tactical Squads are kleenex garbage...your core game mechanics need to go.

I'd like to see IG be feared again, that'd be pretty cool.

Interesting, no rend on bolters or flamers.

MEQ durability stays the same pretty much.
GEQ goes up substantially. Full saves against bolters. Was not expecting that.

Even if flamers are D6 that is better than getting hit 5 or more times automatically. Also, get full saves against it too.

IG still have better tanks than marines. It's just that tanks are trash if they aren't free.

Keep seeing 6's auto wound coming up. I thought they said 6's explode and get a chance to wound (s3 vs T10 would need a 6 followed by a 5+, for example). That's how anything can hurt anything.

Sadly that's the penalty of "anything can wound anything" unless they have something tricky up their sleeve.

I hate...HATE...exploding dice. It's a slow, clunky mechanic. On the flip side, anything auto-wounding on 6's is terrible as well and vastly undermines stronger weapons vs. waves of lighter ones. I'm curious what GW is planning, but I imagine it'll suck.

Orthon wrote:
Interesting, no rend on bolters or flamers.

MEQ durability stays the same pretty much.
GEQ goes up substantially. Full saves against bolters. Was not expecting that.

Even if flamers are D6 that is better than getting hit 5 or more times automatically. Also, get full saves against it too.

Yeah, the basic Guardsmen looks like they may gain substantially from some of these changes. ASM's appear, at least from what we have seen thus far, to be more subdued than 2E, no ASM's on bolters or lasguns, Lascannons have a -3 instead of a -6 (allowing SM's to save against Lascannons), itll be interesting to see how it shakes out.

IG has traditionally been a fairly slow shooty army, so we'll probably see artillery gunlines and LRBTs that ponderously roll up the board shooting. What might be problems for that style of army are being outshot (balance issues striking basically), armies that can use cover well, and armies that can get in close really quickly, either with really fast movement or alternate methods like deep strike/GSC ambush. Drop pod marines, deep striking daemons, GSC, some flavor of eldar, and potentially any bike army are my predicted counters. Alternatively we've heard that each flier will work in it's own way, so fliers could be really problematic depending on how that works (if, say, one had immunity to any weapon that dealt random wounds because those are blasts and had a save modified to a 2+ while flying).

That is interesting that a boltgun has no save mods.

They were already worthless. This only compounds it. TAC squads were already worthless, not sure anything has changed here.

This is why the rend/new AP system doesn't work well on a D6. You can't granulate small arms at all. Especially when lascannon is topping out at -3.

Plus, I just heard a million fluff players cry out and be silenced by bolters having no AP at all.

If I'm going to be 100% totally honest, the only things I care about?

Sergeants and officers being able to carry Lasguns again.
Sergeants being able to issue Orders and Vox-Casters not being tin cans on a string.

Martel732 wrote:
This is why the rend/new AP system doesn't work well on a D6. You can't granulate small arms at all. Especially when lascannon is topping out at -3.

Plus, I just heard a million fluff players cry out and be silenced by bolters having no AP at all.

It works fine with a D6, you just need an "armor rating" from 0-12, where you divide your score and subtract from 6 to get your save, best 2+, worst, no save.

For instance, 12/2 = 6, 6-6 = 0 => 2+ (obviously you'd have to round up. so 11/2 = 6)

So a rend of 1 actually is different than a rend of 0, but that depends on the armor of the target you're shooting.

And from a fluff standpoint boltguns are wayyy better than they are on the table lol.

You could go higher than 12 and easily incorporate even the best invuln save.

To me it just doesn't make sense to restrict yourself to 6 values.

You first point is solved by playing the Death Korps

 Marmatag wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
This is why the rend/new AP system doesn't work well on a D6. You can't granulate small arms at all. Especially when lascannon is topping out at -3.

Plus, I just heard a million fluff players cry out and be silenced by bolters having no AP at all.

It works fine with a D6, you just need an "armor rating" from 0-12, where you divide your score and subtract from 6 to get your save, best 2+, worst, no save.

For instance, 12/2 = 6, 6-6 = 0 => 2+

So a rend of 1 actually is different than a rend of 0, but that depends on the armor of the target you're shooting.

And from a fluff standpoint boltguns are wayyy better than they are on the table lol.

I don't think GW is going to use a system like that that requires division. So of the possible systems that GW would ACTUALLY use, the D6 is not going to be able to granulate small arms at all. Because it has to be mind-numbingly simple in their view.

At the end of the day or tournament in this case, the fluff bolters don't really matter.

 Bobthehero wrote:
You first point is solved by playing the Death Korps

Also by running the Armoured Company from FW or D99.

Oh really? Didn't know about the AC one giving out lasguns to its sargeants.

This whole "Lasgun" thing is being blown way out of proportion.