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The new Termagants possess an ability to allow them a free move as a reaction to a trigger.

This rule alone opens up a world of opportunity to interesting interactions within the game.

What are abilities that you would like to see on your own units? What triggers could you think of that would be fun and flavorful?

Copy/paste the reactions from Horus Heresy.

Move in op movement phase
Shoot them when they shoot you
Go to ground/evade
Overwatch in charge phase
Improve combat ratings in OP charge phase

Tittliewinks22 wrote:
Copy/paste the reactions from Horus Heresy.

Move in op movement phase
Shoot them when they shoot you
Go to ground/evade
Overwatch in charge phase
Improve combat ratings in OP charge phase

Do the WAAAGH! rule like that

Charge in op movement phase
Charge when they shoot you
Charge when they go to ground

The thing I don't like about the Heresy reaction system is how it's limited to a certain number of units per phase, and then the count resets for each phase. So a unit might stand motionless while you shoot and then assault it because the reactions are better spent elsewhere, or it might shoot you three times in your own turn. It encourages loading up on death stars and feels unintuitive.

Giving units their own reaction abilities is a pretty straightforward way to do it, and I could see it adding a lot of flavor to appropriate units. Maybe anti-air guns get to reaction-fire when they see aircraft, Berzerkers get to assault if an enemy comes near them, Lictors can disappear when fired upon, stuff like that.

Definitely interested to see what they do with this. My one concern is that a whole bunch of bespoke reaction abilities might just reintroduce the 'hold on I think I have a thing for this' paralysis that stratagems currently create. The smart thing to do would be to color-code abilities that you use in your opponent's turn, so they're easy to spot on the datasheets, so naturally GW has not done so.

I wasn't trying to imply they copy the reaction system from HH, I was saying that all the reactions in HH are a good example of possible datasheet reactions we could see in 10th ed.

A thought occurred. Is the termagant rule something that MUST trigger the first time the conditions are met and so can't be 'held back'?

It wouldn't be bad if it did, but it does change who the tactical decision maker would be in some respects. Like if Orks could charge while under WAAAGH. Do you try and bait the reaction or do you need multiple elements to get a favorable outcome from the inevitable reaction?

 catbarf wrote:
The thing I don't like about the Heresy reaction system is how it's limited to a certain number of units per phase, and then the count resets for each phase. So a unit might stand motionless while you shoot and then assault it because the reactions are better spent elsewhere, or it might shoot you three times in your own turn. It encourages loading up on death stars and feels unintuitive.

Giving units their own reaction abilities is a pretty straightforward way to do it, and I could see it adding a lot of flavor to appropriate units. Maybe anti-air guns get to reaction-fire when they see aircraft, Berzerkers get to assault if an enemy comes near them, Lictors can disappear when fired upon, stuff like that.

Definitely interested to see what they do with this. My one concern is that a whole bunch of bespoke reaction abilities might just reintroduce the 'hold on I think I have a thing for this' paralysis that stratagems currently create. The smart thing to do would be to color-code abilities that you use in your opponent's turn, so they're easy to spot on the datasheets, so naturally GW has not done so.

Agreed. We use a reaction system in our rules and any unit can react if fired upon or an enemy with LOS comes within 12". I don't see why this should be a limited resource.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
A thought occurred. Is the termagant rule something that MUST trigger the first time the conditions are met and so can't be 'held back'?

It wouldn't be bad if it did, but it does change who the tactical decision maker would be in some respects. Like if Orks could charge while under WAAAGH. Do you try and bait the reaction or do you need multiple elements to get a favorable outcome from the inevitable reaction?

It's worded as 'Once per turn, when [condition], this unit can...' so i read it as 'may', not as 'must'. In my opinion this means that it can be held back, as otherwise the wording would be something like 'The first time [condition], this unit can...' or something like that. So the action can't really be triggered if the Tyranid player does not want to, and foregoing it once still allows them to use it later in the same turn. The only limiting factor is that it can only be used once per turn.

Thanks for that. That was my initial gut reaction as well. I think I prefer the ability to play mental games with them.

I think it’s good, because be said before that I’d rather replace stratagems with unit specific abilities that’s make choosing your units more tactical, but also give the units more personality. So something for Khorne demons could be if another friendly unit does x amount of damage to a unit in X range then they go into a blood lust and charges that unit.

Or if if a unit of Khorne demons engages an enemy unit in melee but fails to inflict any wounds then then the Khorne demon unit turns in on itself and takes x mortal wounds because the blood god cares not from where the blood flows.

I’m being silly but this could bring back lots of fun crazy rules for orks

Been saying there should be rules for this kind of thing since 9th launched.

Can someone explain the intended application of that reaction move? The name makes me think that you're supposed to use it to scurry away from potential chargers, but d6"seems too unreliable to get much use out of that. I feel like it's more likely to get used to move your gaunts *towards* the enemy to block charges to more valuably targets?

But I'm aware that I'm being irrationally negative about the new datasheet already, so maybe I'm just being a grouch.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Can someone explain the intended application of that reaction move? The name makes me think that you're supposed to use it to scurry away from potential chargers, but d6"seems too unreliable to get much use out of that. I feel like it's more likely to get used to move your gaunts *towards* the enemy to block charges to more valuably targets?

But I'm aware that I'm being irrationally negative about the new datasheet already, so maybe I'm just being a grouch.

repositioning has a ton of possible applications

closing the gap, screening other stuff, making a charge worse.

it HAS to be D6 (IMO) because doing a normal move instead would be way too strong. That way, there is still a chance the gaunts won't move too far, limiting their options

Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

I doubt it will be universal.

Thousand Sons units may have Smite and another spell instead of some reaction.

Basically instead of having boring 'reroll 1s to wound with 20+ models' we get stuff life this.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

highly doubt its gonna be on every unit.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

I'm slightly worried about this too. I really like the termagant rule thematically*. Termagants aren't exactly an elite/special unit, so that suggests abilities like these won't be rare.


* I have some doubts about how fun it'll be in practice:
player 1: "I'm moving my unit 6" forward."
Player 2: "hold on, let me just move my 30 individually based gaunts *rolls* 2" first. Oh and my other unit is in range too, hold on..."]

Go to ground for guardsmen would be pretty neat. They like to hide in trenches and foxholes I would suppose

Sacrificing their shooting or melee ability fpr survival would suit their objective holding role

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

I doubt it will be universal.

Thousand Sons units may have Smite and another spell instead of some reaction.

Basically instead of having boring 'reroll 1s to wound with 20+ models' we get stuff life this.

High concept, I'm absolutely onboard for that. Repositioning on gaunts was a bit surprising to me though as I don't really think of them as an especially mobile/agile unit. In the past, we've seen rules like this one on eldar corsairs. I'm not against more positioning/mobility rules and fewer rerolls, but it makes me wonder what kind of abilities we'll see on units that I do think of as being fast and agile. Would be a bit weird for gaunts to have this and something like wyches or dire avengers not to.

Proper overwatch moves come to mind.
Instead of shooting at a charging target you designate an area and if an enemy moves through it they get shot add. However, a unit that does this cannot shoot in its turn.

Should encourage more flanking moves. Maybe introduce more equipment types designed to counter them. Like flash bangs or something.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
A thought occurred. Is the termagant rule something that MUST trigger the first time the conditions are met and so can't be 'held back'?

It wouldn't be bad if it did, but it does change who the tactical decision maker would be in some respects. Like if Orks could charge while under WAAAGH. Do you try and bait the reaction or do you need multiple elements to get a favorable outcome from the inevitable reaction?

It's worded as 'Once per turn, when [condition], this unit can...' so i read it as 'may', not as 'must'. In my opinion this means that it can be held back, as otherwise the wording would be something like 'The first time [condition], this unit can...' or something like that. So the action can't really be triggered if the Tyranid player does not want to, and foregoing it once still allows them to use it later in the same turn. The only limiting factor is that it can only be used once per turn.

Yea moving same unit many times would be silly.

But big difference to hh reactions. Hh you have x reactions per phase. Here it's every unit with this rule

Reactions……

If the rules get them right, and keep them relatively straight forward? Can add some decent dodges when it’s not your turn. Once per phase, you get the chance to pull your [unmentionable] from the [thing which our ancestors mastered many years ago].

Done like that, it gives an out against lazy attacks, without being able to entirely dodge poor positioning against a canny foe.

The trouble here is the if. It’s such a big if, were that particular if were a but, I fear Sir Mixalot would be driven to such a fit of sheer fondness and ardor nobody would come out of it looking particularly good.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


High concept, I'm absolutely onboard for that. Repositioning on gaunts was a bit surprising to me though as I don't really think of them as an especially mobile/agile unit. In the past, we've seen rules like this one on eldar corsairs. I'm not against more positioning/mobility rules and fewer rerolls, but it makes me wonder what kind of abilities we'll see on units that I do think of as being fast and agile. Would be a bit weird for gaunts to have this and something like wyches or dire avengers not to.

It is rare that a biped can outrun a quadruped.

It happens when the biped is significantly larger than the quadruped (bigger stride)- but even then, the quadruped can change direction faster, so they may lose the straight-away race, but they're still harder to catch.

The other time it might happen is when the quadruped is particularly heavy.

I generally hate “I interrupt your turn to do extra things with my models” in a game with such a heavy mental load as 40K. They’ll have to really streamline to make them work.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I generally hate “I interrupt your turn to do extra things with my models” in a game with such a heavy mental load as 40K. They’ll have to really streamline to make them work.

theyre dropping strats to ~6 per subfaction, i'd say the mental load just got almost completely destroyed

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I generally hate “I interrupt your turn to do extra things with my models” in a game with such a heavy mental load as 40K. They’ll have to really streamline to make them work.

theyre dropping strats to ~6 per subfaction, i'd say the mental load just got almost completely destroyed

I for one totally believe GW's claims.

Totally.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Now imagine that every-other unit in the entire game has a unique reaction (or a reaction which is very nearly but not quite the same as another, but with a different name).
Because that's where this is heading.

I doubt it will be universal.

Thousand Sons units may have Smite and another spell instead of some reaction.

Basically instead of having boring 'reroll 1s to wound with 20+ models' we get stuff life this.

High concept, I'm absolutely onboard for that. Repositioning on gaunts was a bit surprising to me though as I don't really think of them as an especially mobile/agile unit. In the past, we've seen rules like this one on eldar corsairs. I'm not against more positioning/mobility rules and fewer rerolls, but it makes me wonder what kind of abilities we'll see on units that I do think of as being fast and agile. Would be a bit weird for gaunts to have this and something like wyches or dire avengers not to.

The naming suggests that this tries to represent stuff like the 3rd edition 'instinctual behaviour', which for gaunts meant that they scuttled to the next cover and took potshots at enemies when they were outside of synapse range, and was different for other creatures.

Also, it's only on one of the datasheets, and has other differences to the other Termagant sheet, so who knows, it might be a thing only for some sort of special unit, or alternatively only in the 'Combat Patrol' mode where there are -presumably- less models and units in total, and with less heavy or special stuff, so 'common' units can have some more tricks that would be slow to do in full-on battles.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

I for one totally believe GW's claims.

Totally.

be as pessimistic as you want, for now i'll believe that 10th indexhammer will have only a few strats, just like AoS...

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I generally hate “I interrupt your turn to do extra things with my models” in a game with such a heavy mental load as 40K. They’ll have to really streamline to make them work.

theyre dropping strats to ~6 per subfaction, i'd say the mental load just got almost completely destroyed

Any reaction play is still mental load, whether it’s called an Ability or Stratagem. At least they’ll all be on unit cards, but it just feels like shuffling the deck not changing anything.

 JohnnyHell wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
I generally hate “I interrupt your turn to do extra things with my models” in a game with such a heavy mental load as 40K. They’ll have to really streamline to make them work.

theyre dropping strats to ~6 per subfaction, i'd say the mental load just got almost completely destroyed

Any reaction play is still mental load, whether it’s called an Ability or Stratagem. At least they’ll all be on unit cards, but it just feels like shuffling the deck not changing anything.

I'm sorry you think Gaunts having a special rule is super taxing on you. Best not play anything.