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Based on everything previewed so far, how do you feel about Phoenix Rising? [Poll]  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






 Elbows wrote:
I just didn't see any Craftworld traits which blow my skirt up - or are as solid and useful across all of the units. I appreciate they're good for adjusting if you're building a certain type of list, but almost none of them match the general quality of a 6+ FNP roll, etc. I prefer simple army traits which are useful on 95% of the units in the codex. The Craftworld ones in this book let you specialize, and I can see that being a boon for tournament play, but for a general build-a-Craftworld I found them underwhelming.

Regarding the Exarch traits...you kind of made my point there. Why have a list of 6 traits when only one or two are worthwhile? I would have preferred a simpler, more focused 3-trait list. It's a bit of false advertising if half of your "options" are objectively garbage and will never be taken. As far as I'm concerned that's wasted paper you're printing at a certain point.

On a lighter note, I think "Avenging Strikes" could actually be the sleeper here. Lose a model, and you hit on 2's and damage almost anything on a 5? There could be a sneaky Asurmen/Dire Avenger combo thing here...run up the board with 4+ invulnerables and hope you lose a model or two per unit. Sadly once your opponent figures it out they'll treat them like Necrons, ensuring they destroy the unit entirely.


There are several good traits that affect everything (or most things) 6+ invuln+Salamander Reroll is the first example that comes to mind, and I think that's solidly better than ulthwe. Certainly less fiddly.

I don't think there are any that fully supplant ulthwe or alaitoc, but honestly...is that the point? I thought the point was to have options, and have those options stand up against the standards. And barring a few clear stinkers (+1" to range wtf?? +1 to hit if half your unit is dead?) I can come up with an army build that works for almost every trait and several traits that work with any army build.

Generic Traits:

-Reroll morale
-Extra AP on shurikens
-6++ invuln
-1s are 2s for Psy powers (This is a lot better than you'd think)
-Master of Concealment
-Salamanders Reroll

Strike and Fade is ridiculously good with a heavy Shining Spears build. like RIDICULOUSLY good. Remember, units that didn't charge don't even get to activate if you don't have enemies within 1" - all your spears get to charge, fight first because they charged, and consolidate 3" backwards.....no fighting in the fight phase for your enemy, lol. Students of Vaul+Expert Crafters is IMO better than Alaitoc on flyer builds, since so often to play the objective game you need to deny movement and that means you're within 12" of enemies.

A more focused 3-trait version of the aspect warrior traits would just be...the 2-3 good ones per aspect warrior type we have now, and none of the silly ones. so what difference does it make?

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Screaming Shining Spear





I think there are some good combos but it helps to do it on a detachment by detachment basis which I'm not a big fan of since my stuff is painted in a single style.

 
   
Made in us
Powerful Phoenix Lord





After going through the proper PDF last night...I'll have to stick with a big bunch of "meh".

Story
Awful. Just lazy and poorly written. Hamfisted at parts and just rushing to get to a point to justify stuff. Very akin to the Vigilus books, where I feel like they just tried too hard to be clever...and ended up with a mediocre pile. Nothing to get excited about here.

Exarch Powers
Mixed bag. Mostly good. In general the lists have one or two options that are suitably good and actually elevate the Aspect Warrior squads to be worthwhile. This is something that was really needed. Scorpions are big winners here. 5+ mandiblasters are absolutely worthwhile. I had excellent results in a few games this past weekend with them. Are they a world-beating tournament option? No, but they're no longer insulting when you run them. Dire Avengers scored big with avenging strikes. Running 10-man units, if you lose one or two guys suddenly you're shooting on 2's and wounding marines on 3's, etc. I had excellent use out of this one as well (running several Dire Avenger squads it added up). Again, do Dire Avengers become meta-breaking? Not even close, but once again they no longer feel insulting, considering their cost. Shining Spears have a couple options, but the best is the simple +1 to charge roll. Reliable, simple, and good. Warp Spiders have a gimmick. Dark Reapers benefit from the tempest launcher option, and Swooping Hawks have a couple of interesting options. Fire Dragons have a more reliable advance but are still wildly expensive/pointless. Who loses big time? Banshees. The poster-girls of the release. The boost to Scorpions make the Banshees even worse...and that's massively disappointing. The basic Exarch power is still likely the best choice. Really disappointing actually...

Runes of Fortune
These range from "eh, okay" to "that's insulting...". Almost none of them are better than Smite, but it does give Warlocks an option to replace their garbage Destructor instead....so that's where these will find service. Definitely some room for these to work if you keep a Warlock embedded with a unit and you're dedicating your power to that unit. Some are laughably bad ...such as the witch strike one. No one will ever take that as long as witch weapons inexplicably have no AP. Absolute trash. One noticeable change is that, similar to the marine books, casting costs are down. All six powers are 4 or 6 to cast. They're little boosts and can help the Warlocks (which are horribly over-costed as-is). Will you replace proper Smite on a Spiritseer or Farseer? Unlikely. Could you be sneaky and slot one in on a Bonesinger? Sure. If the Bonesinger is hanging out to repair vehicles, he could make use of Fateful Divergence to help a Fire Prism or something? Overall, pretty uninspiring, but better than a one-damage Smite for Warlocks.

Craftworld Traits
I'll take back a bit of what I said earlier. I maintain there's very little to interest me here, but I concur that there are strong options. However, the strong options here are lazy re-prints of various other army traits. There is room here for a tournament player to get tricksy, and that's fine. However there seem to be very few interesting middle-of-the-road options. It's either comically useless narrative stuff (and not even cool narrative stuff), or rather strong tournament stuff. The list could be half as long as no one would have noticed the 50% of these traits that will never be taken by any player in the world....even in a narrative setting. A lot of missed opportunities here.

Bonus of the book is actually the name generator. That's cool and handy, and a nice little addition.

Overall Highlight: A handful of the Exarch powers absolutely transform Aspect Warrior squads...and this was needed, and it helps. That's probably the most worthwhile thing you'll get out of the book. The custom Craftworld traits will offer something for the tournament folks (being able to build specifically around unique options), but will be relatively disappointing to the narrative folks.
   
Made in us
Shadowy Grot Kommittee Memba






As a narrative player myself, I greatly appreciate being able to bring an army trait that benefits the following focuses:

-Wraith Units (Iyanden is a joke compared to wrath of the dead+regeneration fir an actual wraith focused army)

-melee units (Saim-hamn forces you into specific builds way more than headstrong+Savage blades)

-Guardian units (biel tan is an option as is ulthwe but I love master artisans and 6++ Inv to make your guardians special weapons feel better)

The DE traits fell so flat for me because the stupid triple division in the deldar range makes building a themed army basically impossible within the three options.

Like, you cannot build a melee Kabal list. There are no melee Kabal units. You cannot build a tanky or shooty cults list. When both the troops and hq slot are totally fixed no variation is possible. So every custom trait that doesn't boost the one thing the subfaction does is just pointless.

Add in the fact that gw purposefully made the already trisected range even more threadbare by classifying a huge number of the units "mercenaries" that can never get any trait, and it's just kind of impossible.

For reference, that's a full 1/3 of the unit entries in the book. If I could take incubi, drazar, mandrakes, etc in my custom Kabal maybe some of these melee traits wouldn't be useless....but I can't.

"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
   
Made in us
Ollanius Pius - Savior of the Emperor






Gathering the Informations.

I have no horse in this race and I've said it elsewhere, but from what I've seen it really really really makes me think that we're going to see updated codices for these factions within the next year--and I would expect a decent sized release alongside of the book.

I wouldn't be shocked if things like your Wraith comparison there, Scotsman, are what the Iyanden trait will actually end up being. I also wouldn't be shocked if Drazhar+Incubi and Jain Zar and Howling Banshees are just a teaser of what might be in the pipe.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/22 21:55:40


 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




Box is junk, book seems a surcharge to fill out a couple pages of eldar codexes that aren't standing up well.

If this is the release model for the next year+, its going to be an ignorable string of pointless releases.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/22 22:00:08


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
 
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