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Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





I have a wild hair to talk about army-wide rules for various factions and to hear how you like yours or what you'd do differently. To clarify, this is meant to be a discussion of your Oath of Moments, your Shadows in the Warp, etc; not a discussion of all the rules related to your faction as a whole.

So to start things off:

Marines - Oath of Moment:
I have kind of mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, an abstraction of the commander telling the army to coordinate and focus on killing a specific target sort of fits marines, and I get what they're going for in the abstract. But on the other hand, it feels a little bit weird for marines to just... suddenly be more effective against a thing because the boss told them to. It's kind of like the lieutenant thing where they suddenly shoot better when there's a character standing nearby to remind them to shoot well. Like, the implication is almost that marines are prone to getting lazy and not shooting well if they don't have someone standing over their shoulder. Mechanically, Oath does some kind of weird things to game math and unit performance. Suddenly being able to fish for Sustained/Lethal hits can really change up how a unit performs, and +1 to-wound (if you're running vanilla marines) creates strange interactions where basic bolters are suddenly surprisingly effective into imperial knights and enemy land raiders.

On the whole, I think it's *fine*, but it definitely contributes to the feeling that my marines are playing on "easy mode." Where I'm just that much less likely to miss my shots and have to think that much less carefully about which weapons should go after which target so long as I successfully identify which target I most want dead this turn. I don't really have any suggestions for something I'd do instead of Oath, and I think it works okay as a newbie-friendly rule.

Thousand Sons - Rituals AKA "The Psychic Phase"
I'll gripe forever about psychic tests as a failure point for cool powers being an annoying mechanic, and the recent nerfs to make it impossible to re-try a ritual once you fail it felt unfluffy and unnecessary to me. That said, I think this is one of the better army rules. It makes any given psyker in your army feel like they have a few different magical abilities they can call upon in a given turn in addition to the one or two abilities on their datasheet, and the specific rituals are all pretty useful and pretty good at helping to make up for the faction's relatively lack of ranged anti-tank. I don't feel compelled to spam predators because rituals make it possible to chew through an enemy tank with bolter fire and a little help from a doom bolt.

If I were to tweak this, I'd revise psychic tests to not be a failure point (randomly not getting the benefit of your army rule is lame), and maybe have the list of available rituals vary from detachment to detachment so that we can get a little more of the flavor of various 'Sons Cults, etc.

Tyranids - Synapse and Shadow in the Warp
Synapse works fairly well for me. Rolling 3d6 for battleshock tests makes the faction feel fairly different and gives you a way to give the bugs relatively bad Ld stats without massively punishing them for it. The +1 Strength while within synapse feels a little weird on the face of it (why am I punching harder just because the hive mind is controlling me directly?), but it's basically a more sensical of the marine oath of moment/lieutenant thing. Where it's weird for marines to get lazy when the teacher isn't watching, tyranid bioforms are animals who reasonably could stand to benefit from a more direct bit of control causing them to suddenly attack in intelligent patterns or priotize more meaningful targets rather than just shredding away at the enemy on base instincts.

Shadow in the Warp, on the other hand, is a bit meh. Mainly because it's just so unreliable. Being able to force a battleshock test on the whole enemy army once per game is dependent on enemy units that you *care* about battleshocking failing their test at random. So you usually end up waiting until a critical turn where there are multiple enemies contesting multiple objectives, and then you hope that at least one of them fails their test so that you can deny your opponent some points for a turn. But it's just too unreliable and random, even when you lean into it with something like the vanguard detachment. It kind of makes me wonder if there was some confusion about how battleshock works when the designers were putting it together.

Maybe if it was usable every turn and you just chose X units to attempt to battleshock based on game size? Or if you could use it X times per turn to attempt to protect friendly units from psychic attacks or abilities? Or even just making it an every turn battleshock that the enemy takes if they begin the turn within X" of a synapse creature.

Sisters - Miracle Dice
I like them. Getting dice as your units die feels fluffy and is also a good way to take the sting out of losing units during the game. Essentially being luck manipulation is a good way of representing the type of "miracles" that might just be luck/magical thinking rather than an actual supernatural power. The faction as a whole does a pretty good job of giving me ways to use/recycle low-value miracle dice so I don't end up getting cranky when most of my rolls are 1s and 2s.

Dark Eldar - Power From Pain
Pretty good! Probably my second favorite incarnation of their army rule behind the original 5th edition version, and admittedly the current version has some advantages over that version as well. I was surprised that GW went to the trouble of adding a second "pain" special ability to each datasheet, but I'm glad they did. It gives them an opportunity to provide more units with the ability to do fluffy things. I'd be okay seeing a similar approach to army rules being taken with other units in the future. Tying pain tokens to slain enemies gives you some of that visceral reward the 5th edition version had, and granting pain tokens when enemies fail battle shock makes battleshock feel less useless. It also kind of gives you some motivation to consider leaving a few enemy units alive-but-injured for a chance at more tokens in the following command phase, which is pretty on-brand. You could probably make the argument that some pain abilities should just be basic special abilities instead or that a few of the pain abilites could just be recycled instead of needing them all to be bespoke, but I'm pretty happy with this mechanic on the whole.

Eldar - Battle Focus
It's technically a very powerful rule, but I have gripes. Mainly that, like stratagems, it locks the flavorful abilities behind a once-per-turn rule. So only one unit per turn can avoid being overwatched. Only one unit per turn can dive for cover after being shot at, etc. It ends up feeling a little gamey and a little less fluffy in the same way that stratagems do compared to rules that are always available/can be used by multiple units a turn. Several of the agile maneuvers also feel very situational/specific. Ex: consolidating after the enemy falls back from you is great, but only when there's a wall nearby, and only when you roll well enough on the d6+1" roll to actually get your unit behind that wall.

I know it's kind of complaining about my bed being too soft and my dinner being too delicious, but I think I would have preferred to just get the 7th/9th edition version of battle focus back. Let us move d6 (or better yet, a flat 3) inches after we shoot. Maybe give us the option to instead be un-overwatchable on turns that we advance (to help units that don't really benefit from the move-shoot-move. That way, the entire army can feel like it's using its speed to its advantage each turn instead of just a handful of units, and you get some of that sneaky elf guerilla warfare feeling back as your squads are jumping behind walls to hide from retaliation.

Tau - Basically Spotter Units
I kind of like where this one is at. It lets you give tau relatively unimpressive base BS while functionally making most of the army +1 BS most of the time. Some of the other army mechanics (seeker missiles) play off of the army mechanic well. That said, I do have a few gripes:
* I'm mainly trying to play aux cadre, so half my units (kroot, vespid) don't get to utilize it. I'm not sure it would break the game to let them in on the fun somehow, even if it's just as an aux-cadre specific stratagem or something. (The enhancement to let one kroot unit benefit from the rule doesn't really do much.)
* While fine on its own, combining the ignores cover part of the rule with many tau units abilities to ignore modifiers can kind of make it feel like tau as a whole don't allow you to engage in counterplay with their shooting. If you try to pop smoke, for instance, a guided riptide will still hit you on its full/improved BS and ignore the benefit of cover.
* Some of the mechanics that tie into being guided just feel a little abstract/generic. Things like gaining SH from Kauyon or rerolling wounds when guided by stealth suits sorta abstractly make sense, but it feels less grounded in the universe than something like a seeker missile using markerlight info to hit their target. I'd maybe prefer fewer kill-more-betterer rules and morethings that manipulate range or debuff a pinned target, etc. Rules that are less abstract and more clearly connected to the idea of your shooters benefitting from targeting data.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/12/22 01:05:43



ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka




NE Ohio, USA

How do I like my army wide rules?

Stable.

I do not like rules constantly fluctuating.

   
Made in bd
Regular Dakkanaut






Sydney

Chaos Space Marines - Dark Pacts:
I like the rule itself. Needing criticals to pay it off introduces a bit of randomness, so sometimes you do your little prayer to your dark god and then go screaming into combat and nothing really happens anyway, which is very fitting for chaos - without a doubt it works enough of the time to be totally worth it, and alongside the expected buffs to your units, every now and then you'll pull off a real doozy of a result that seems like your god took a particular liking to you (my cultists have a weird tendency to be effective anti-Inceptor troops, just thanks to weight of dice and Lethal Hits). And conversely, failing your Leadership test and having somebody keel over dead is fun (if frustrating at times) - like the positive effect, sometimes you dodge it, sometimes you lose a Legionary but the others just keep chugging along, and sometimes your Chaos Lord implodes right as she's about to tear a dreadnought a new one. Chaos is capricious, I like it.

What I'd like to see revised is the use of Chaos Icons, allowing the Ld test to be rerolled - not the reroll itself, but who gets Chaos Icons, because so far as I can see it's based wholly on whether the sprue contains a Chaos Icon bit, which was a decision made back before the rule existed. So you get situations where common Legionaries can ask their god for a do-over if they fail their Dark Pact roll, but Terminators and Havocs can't, despite their having elite equipment presumably representing higher status in the warband and therefore being more deserving of their god's favour. The Terminators not having an icon reroll seems more questionable fluff-wise, since if the icon represents a higher chance your god likes you you'd think Terminators would have whole Pandora bracelets full of the things already, although on the table I find it's the Havocs who make it most awkward: not only is a Havoc Aspiring Champion already underpowered compared to their underlings, since the squad's likely to be at the back blazing away long-range and the best you can hope for is to kit the champ with a plasma rifle and hope it helps (especially in the context of a chaos warband, since they're all about ego and a champion letting somebody else have the biggest toys seems unlikely), they're now reduced to literal cannon fodder so you can 'safely' make dark pacts until at least one fails and the champ drops dead, after which you have to be more judicious with the pacts since now a failure might kill a heavy weapon you actually care about.

I don't have a great solution - basing Chaos Icon availability on who logically 'should' have one just means everyone besides the cultists and other non-marines hangers on should, in which case you may as well just bake it into the Dark Pact rule that everyone except Damned units gets a reroll rather than basing it on squad wargear. Maybe allow a reroll unless a squad is Below Half-Strength, since if the squad's being mauled you could imagine their god deciding if they're not 'paying' for the power boost with glorious deeds they can do it with their own blood instead - that'd favour CSM armies making wild early-game assaults when everyone's at or close to full strength, which doesn't seem out of character for chaos warlords. Alternatively some kind of token system where a squad 'earns' a reroll by pleasing their god, say you get a reroll by killing an enemy model (not one reroll per model, the squad only ever has one reroll), easy enough to do so rerolls would be pretty common as they are now, but if you have to use it you lose it until you've kill another model to earn it back - in which case the bloodier things get the more Dark Pacts will go flying around since the risk to yourself is lower (although since we're not back in 2nd edition, needing heaps of little card markers to keep track of which squad's got what at any given moment isn't really in keeping with the game's operation these days). Or just give Terminators, Havocs, Raptors and so on chaos icons like other squad types, with a small adjustment to points cost (if they even considered that to begin with) - doesn't have to extend to characters, I'm okay with leaders not having access to the icon reroll if they're not in a squad, it feels like being surrounded by a retinue would make you look good to your god.

Bottom line I think the rule's fine, just tidy it up at the edges.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2025/12/22 03:33:05


   
Made in ru
Dipping With Wood Stain






Astra Militarum:
Orders. I think most fluffy army rule ever. Just make your lads do something better but focusing their attention.
Tyranids: 3d6 fits army well, since it's a Hive mind take a test.
As for +1 strength it's more like under Hive mind control they the doesn't limited buy own brain preventing self harm.

My Plog feel free to post your criticism here 
   
Made in dk
Loyal Necron Lychguard






Necron Reanimation Protocols is great, simple that it works for everything, the rules are fair and don't lead to a huge amount of movement creep. The D3 roll is impactful enough to be worth doing.

I do miss command protocols a little.
   
Made in ca
Winged Kroot Vulture





So, I'm not sure this technically applies, because it follows the spirit of your post, though not the letter.

Kroot:

Ostensibly under the umbrella of "Tau" Kroot's two detachment rules in place of the Tau army rule functionally gives them their own army rule when using that detachment, so if you don't mind that little technicality, I do have an answer.

I freaking love it. Specifically Hunter's Instincts, which feels much more like a proper army rules that ties in with the Kroot's overall theme. (Skirmish Fighters, while good, feels more like a swappable detachment rule.)

Gaining buffs the more damaged your target is steers Kroot into both the thematic and tactical playstyle of using several smaller units to take down larger ones. It pairs well with other rules the Kroot units and stratagems give that applies additional benefits to all your units attacking a single target to turn even the most basic attack into something deadly.

The rule is also for the most part, self regulating. Because the buffs don't carry over onto other targets, it prevents things from getting too snowbally too quickly and still gives your opponent a chance to fight back while your squishy units duck for cover after taking out a key target.

Mechanically, I think the only thing that I would change is to have the second buff trigger when a unit is AT half, rather than below. It wouldn't have been that big a deal in the era of 10/5 man squads, but with 6/3 becoming far more common, it turns into more of a vehicle/monster killer buff than a general one and it should be equally useful everywhere.

Additionally, it would be nice to have the Kroot have a dedicated setup unit, something that gained a buff for attacking a full strength target as an enabling unit to support the army. (Currently the only thing kind of like this is the Rampagers chance to deal mortals on the charge.)

Otherwise, no notes really, 10/10 Army rule. I've been playing Kroot for the majority of my games since they got their codex, and I'm still having so much fun with them.

Armies:  
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut






Southern New Hampshire

Harbingers of Dread, on paper, is kinda fluffy. In practice, having my faction ability key off of battleshock leaves me feeling incredibly disappointed.

She/Her

"There are no problems that cannot be solved with cannons." - Chief Engineer Boris Krauss of Nuln

LatheBiosas wrote:I have such a difficult time hitting my opponents... setting them on fire seems so much simpler.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:"Don't be a dick" and "This is a family wargame" are good rules of thumb.


DR:80S++G++M--B+IPwhfb01#+D+++A+++/fWD258R++T(D)DM+++
 
   
Made in pl
Fixture of Dakka




GK rule are hard to use, stopd working if opponent can push you out of half the table and most crucial has NOTHING to do with the faction fantasy. The paladin/priest/mage demon hunter can fit many things, but being the uppy downy faction. On top of that the unit rules were writen with the "we have to write it fast" and "old marines stuff has to be nerfed in to th ground" mind set, making an army with an already small unit count got really limited in its options.

What I would like to see for GK is for the "magic" marines of the imperium to have magic. GK psychic powers got turned in to rules with "psychic" added to it. Which is actualy a nerf, as GW forgot to create any synergy that buffs/helps GK use that trait, but they did not forget to sprinkle anti psyker stuff here and there. Also psychic powers as unit rules, would have been okeyish, if every factions other units didn't get rules on every unit they have too.

I would remove the uppy downy stuff. Let GK have "psychic" rules on units/weapons/gear, but also give them a set of rules that let them do their lore stuff. Channel power through the unit leader. Let big characters buff or improve their unit in ways other then "re-roll", maybe put the uppy downy as an ability on brother captins.
Ah as GK share weapons with marines, and non primaris weapons are getting the shaft all the time. Maybe give GK an army wide option to buff their weapons. str 6 melee and str4-AP attacks do not work in w40k anymore. And I have my doubts that GW is going to decide to give GK extra attacks to make them work.

If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain. 
   
 
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