Phoenix wrote:The other thing that I’ve been noticing with the new rules is that they favor hard, mobile, short ranged / hand to hand troops over soft, static, long ranged ones. Troops are almost a non-factor in kill point games since they give up so few kill points. So as long as you are not losing squads in droves, you’re fine. However, in objective missions, you have to get your troops to the objectives and keep them alive there. This is going to shift not only the purpose of troops, but which ones are taken. I’ll use eldar as an example since they have a wide variety of troop choices. Guardians are not going to be very useful. This is due to the fact that while they may be able to get to an objective in a reasonable amount of time, they are way too frail to hold it. Rangers / pathfinders are also not going to be very useful. While they have some decent shooting power, they lose it if they start moving. And while they are tough as nails at range (assuming they are in cover), they drop like flys if they get assaulted, so they can't really move up too close to the enemy. The only purpose I can see for them is to hold your own objective in missions where one objective starts in your deployment zone. Jet bikes and dire avengers will both see an increase in use since both are fast (assuming the avengers are in a serpent), both are fairly hard (3+ saves for the bikes and shimmer shield for the avengers), and both are short ranged units. I think this sort of change in the role of troops is going to seriously cut down on the diversity of troops you see on the field since the role of troops is going to be capturing objectives. Marine scout sniper squads will be a thing of the past. So will las plas squads (at least the 6 man versions). There will be even less reasons to take guardians (if that’s possible) and fire warriors without a devil fish will be completely unheard of.
Hey Phoenix, I'm gonna wade back into this thread, which has turned epic...
I've been busy testing 5th, and i've been looking mostly at tyranids and onwards. All of the black codecies are too far gone to really be worthy of discussion. Witchhunters, space wolves and dark eldar will be on life-support until they get re-issued, but
IG and demonhunters are just broken.
So from tyranids on to orks. Things have been looking good in testing for making adaptations. I agree with some of the generalities you are throwing around, but I also feel the need to temper them with a less 'reactionary' voice.
My testing group has been slowly changing the structure of all the different armies and proxy armies to spend well over 50% on troops. Popular support units are no longer being fielded in duplicate and triplicate. It seems to seamlessly grow that way. In the objective grab missions, troops take such an increase of attention from your opponent that lone hammerheads, single loota squads, 2man obliterator units, striking scorpions, etc. are more survivable through their lack of scoring status. the new difficult decision in our games has become, take the shots at the warwalker unit? Or start working on removing scoring units immediately.
With a new emphasis on 4-6 large effective troop units, a lot of different unforseen meta-game shifts have popped up. i just flatly disagree with your assessment of guardians. in both of the objective games, at least one objective will be either in your deployment zone or placed just a fraction of an inch outside of the zone. That means that every army can field a static firebase with no fear of it being a non-factor. With eldar's new enforced focus on troops, firebases become more important. Avatar-guardian combos seem to be doing pretty well in testing. you can't really look under the hood for the effect these rules are going to have on the game. You have to climb in and go for a spin to see what these changes bring. I know you are one of the ones out there testing so, I'm not accusing you of pure theory-hammering. When you are playing take and hold, and you've got X troop type pushing towards your objective, dire avengers are great sometimes, but sometimes its 2 or 3 rhinos you need to pop. And thats when the eldar missile launcher comes up. With less harlies, less fire dragons, less warlock spears, less falcons etc. As an eldar player, a troop with access to a 'heavy' weapon becomes vitally important. Playing 4th edition eldar lists under 5th rules was working at first. But now that opponents have slipped into 1k+ points of troops and just playing to objectives, you need to play the troop game. And eldar need tank killing in their troop game.
As to firewarriors in a devilfish. Sure, but was there a reason to take them in preference to kroot now? unless that reason was a devilfish. That maybe a true statement, but not really a new 5th edition thing. As far as i've seen, i'd go as far as to say is there any reason to not take a space marine or chaos space marine unit and not buy them a rhino in 5th?
Nids are "taking" with gaunts and genstealers and "holding" with 'without number' gaunts. they seem to be more focused on assault in the few games that we've run with them. With less tanks to bust, and less reasons to bust tanks, it doesn't seem as grim for them as the internet seems to think.
Templars are taking and holding with their only troop choice just fine. land raiders, drop pods and slogging seems to work well for these guys. in ascending order of effectiveness.
Tau, haven't played many with tau, kroot infiltrating up flanks really puts pressure on the shooty armies. mobility armies that empty their backfield to redeploy also have to come back around to get the kroot. Firewarriors in devilfish finally have the targets that they've been waiting 2 years to shoot at. No one is playing warskimmer
40k anymore, so everyone has troops on the table or lightly armored transports/bikes, that means double tapping str5 finally has something to go after. Jetpack markerlights firing on the move has made firewarriors (and really everything with BS3) more deadly. Tau leadership may be an issue, it hasn't come up yet. but the sample set is way too low to speak with any confidence about it.
Eldar, talked about them a little, avatar guardian pathfinder bases with dire avenger "takers" seem to be working, pick your favorite units that aren't troops, spend 800 points on them, and realize that until "total devastation" that they probably aren't going to be taking nearly the same amount of fire as they did in 4th.
Dark Angels. haven't got to them yet, But with tons of troop options and being marines, i would assume that no one who plays dark angles would be unhappy with rumored 5th ed rules. 'Combat squad' seems on paper to be the premier 5th ed rule. Playing Kill Points? 10 man units... Playing objectives? Ok lets double my scoring units.
Chaos.. Well, plague marines are the new falcons... that is all
orks... playing a ton of speed freaks with orks.. A nasty good 5th edition army. Their troops rule. Been planning to do some more focused testing with eldar versus orks in the coming weeks. The eldar list will really need to get re-imagined. Broken down and built from the ground up. Popping trukks as early as possible, using cover to go first in assault, fearlessness and good counter charge will all be required. falcon spam, heavy jetbike usage, lots of aspect warriors all seem like terrible ideas when thinking about answering orks and taking objectives under 5th ed random game length and troop scoring rules. I imagine a popped trukk from a wave serpent or guardian fired missile/lance followed by a bladestorm will be a very simple one-two punch that won't be hard to affect. A combo from 2 troop units. Slogging orks will probably be eating guardian fired eldar missile mini-pies. I can't IMAGINE a blast marker not killing some orks in a 30 man mob under the new blast marker rules. Save those missile blasts for last. Might even get some pinned ork mobs especially after a bladestorm. Should give the avengers time to reload or re-embark. shimmershield/bladestorm to stuff the survivors of the turn 1 and 2 shooting, followed by any half decent counter-assault. Now I'm going off to theory-land, I'll just play a couple games this weekend with these matchups and come back and report. You just gotta keep in mind that 40-60% of objectives in all games are going to be right on your doorstep if you want them to be.
