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Oh my god I'm so pleased about the latest news! The new split fire more than anything. An armoured company is looking more and more likely every day!

Daedalus81 wrote:
The new chart is pretty interesting.

Huh, yeah, it seems there's a lot more variation with the new table.
It never occurred to me how narrow the old version was.

Seems to me I've seen that table concept somewhere before. Like around here on Dakka Dakka.... Pity they didn't steal more.

I feel like unless we some pretty dramatic shifts to the tougher units this is a pretty huge buff to small arms. Suddenly Shoota boyz seem more badass.

Based on the new To Wound system my guess is that, while yes plasma and other mid-strength guns will wound T4 now on 3+, their true lethality will be exposed in their rend and damage characteristic now.

Loving all these changes so far.

Now I hope Heavy Bolters and Missile Launchers get improved! Soo many of them in my bitz box.

Backfire wrote:

xerxeshavelock wrote:
Gosh - does that mean a Pulse Rifle is twice as likely to wound Toughness 8 as a bolter? Or will the gun go down in str to compensate?

Yes, we don't know yet.

Before anyone gets too excited about Boltguns wounding MC's and Vehicles at 5+, remember that in 8th edition MC's have lot more wounds.

Yeah... they said the largest Tyranid critters (I'm assuming excluding FW stuff) has around 18 wounds.

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

I really think they will, I can't see a scenario where they wouldn't.

As you said, it would be far too clumsy a process.

In Age of Sigmar you can split your fire per model. 3 bows here, 2 bows there, 1 axe there, 16 axes there... I've never had it slow down a game of AoS, usually you want to shoot at a maximum of two targets and in close combat you're limited by your weapon range.

 obsidianaura wrote:
It will be my goal to kill a land raider with a las-pistol this edition

Pffrt. NooB :p

20 odd years ago, perhaps more, single stand of Gretchin took out an Imperator Titan in Epic :p

7th codices are just a mess.
"Time to see what my librarian can have."
*Flicks to codex entry.*
"Ok so he can take..."
*Flicks to wargear.*
"A combi weapon. What's his points cost again?"
*Flicks back.*

In the 30k books there's just a list of things the unit can take. It takes more space but less flicking.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

I hope so too. Would be very frustrating to wait for an opponent to roll for each Bolter one by one.

For AoS, it's not by weapon type.

Realistically, you're very rarely going to run into a situation where someone will actually want to split their fire out like the silly example given here.

 En Excelsis wrote:

As an Eldar player I am deeply concerned by the whole shift from Armor Facing. One of the primary reasons that Wraithlords (wraith-anything FTM) are so attractive in the current game is that by not having Armor Facing and instead having a very high toughness and a decent W count makes them vastly superior to other walkers. I'd had my Wraithlords go head-to-head with dreads & venerable dreads more times than I can count and I've never once come out on the losing side of that.

This change makes all other walkers in wraithlords, which hugely devalues the wraithlords themselves. I have my doubts that this shortcoming can be overcome with a special rules but I will reserve judgement until my fears are realized in writing.

If there ever was a reason for removing armor facings, AV and hull points, there it is.

Selective "realism" is great when only one punching bag unit type suffers from all the resulting drawbacks, I guess.
It's particularly amazing when Dreadknights and Riptides are somehow MCs and not vehicles when the Penitent Engine and the Dreadnought are.

 NivlacSupreme wrote:

In the 30k books there's just a list of things the unit can take. It takes more space but less flicking.

Until you have to look up what the more esoteric weapons do, like lightning guns.

 obsidianaura wrote:
It will be my goal to kill a land raider with a las-pistol this edition

If the Cadian relic list remains, that special Laspistol just got a whole hell of a lot scarier.

Interesting but subtle shifts:

Odd toughness is very similar to the even toughness below (so 7 vs 6, 9 vs 8) - the only real difference is weapons of exactly the same strength to toughness. Makes very high powered guns worse, but also makes weaker shooting better. Must be an attempt to give something to hordes - the mass of low powered shooting, which always used to be scary, is now incredibly dangerous. The new dreadnought profile is as easy to "wound" with bolters and heavy bolters as the current one is to autocannons - quite a seismic shift. Likewise, the good old heavy bolter is now slightly weaker against hordes (boohoo) and daft amounts better versus vehicles - that T8 Gorkanaut is now getting wounded on 5+, which was akin to missile launchers before! We are definitely going to see that damage stat come into play if they're aiming to differentiate weapons.

Split fire is another benefit for hordes; now you can equip them with any mismash of stuff and they'll remain effective. In fact, it might be better to mix and match things like devastators now - if you have to declare all targets at the same time for a unit, mixing and matching the guns in each squad will mean you can see the damage done by one group before deciding to repeat that with another group; not mixing might mean wasting shots. Again, that's a huge shift from taking 4x of the current best heavy weapon - though you might still do that anyway if all your squads are equipped the same. It might mean that you don't have to buy random bits off ebay at least, which is nice. Plus, as said, drop podding meltas will potentially melt multiple things now, which is pretty scary.

So, vehicles got a bit weaker, infantry got a bit tougher and special weapons got much better. I like it, definitely seems like they recognise infantry is bad in 40k and has been for a while now (barring the ridiculous fearless guardsman blobs of 6e). The vehicle thing is a little scary, but I'll mathhammer it out when we see more vehicle profiles to see how much weaker they are. More game changing updates like this on the blog please GW!

 Nah Man Pichu wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Not a problem though, because in the new Warhammer 40,000, models in a squad can fire at different targets. So, this means your Tactical Squad can have your boys with bolters deal with that onrushing Hormagaunt horde, while the flamer bathes a nearby Lictor in prometheum fire, and the squad’s krak missile takes an opportunistic pop-shot at that onrushing Carnifex – just as you always imagined they should!

I actually really really like this.

No more sacrificing my tactical's bolter fire because I need the heavy weapons guy shooting at some vehicle.

Just like the article says, gives a lot more utility to your basic infantry, especially tactical squads.

Another effect. You have 2 devastator squad, pldan to have 4 lascannon and 4 heavy bolter. Now odds are good you want to split them

 kronk wrote:

I noticed that, too! I will grant that Unit Specific Rules or similar doesn't sound as fancy, but this (and the previous) thread has increased the world wide use of the word by 735%.

Spoiler:

To be fair, that last spike is probably in no small part due to HBMC's posts in this thread and the subsequent quoting of them.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Backfire wrote:

xerxeshavelock wrote:
Gosh - does that mean a Pulse Rifle is twice as likely to wound Toughness 8 as a bolter? Or will the gun go down in str to compensate?

Yes, we don't know yet.

Before anyone gets too excited about Boltguns wounding MC's and Vehicles at 5+, remember that in 8th edition MC's have lot more wounds.

Also if they stay the same Pulse Rifles only wound Sisters and Guard on a 3+ so that's nice.

Interesting - so making infantry fights closer, but them better against some large targets.
I haven't played regularly since 5th, but this could persuade me to dust the Tau off. And buy all the big gribblies everyone's been spamming...

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 obsidianaura wrote:
It will be my goal to kill a land raider with a las-pistol this edition

Pffrt. NooB :p

20 odd years ago, perhaps more, single stand of Gretchin took out an Imperator Titan in Epic :p

Pfffft, had my Tau Firewarrior knock the last wound off of Kharandras. In melee.

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

Not really as you don't want to cause 1-2 casualties to 3 units but 3 to 6 to 1 unit

Daedalus81 wrote:
The new chart is pretty interesting.

Wouldn't S2 be 2+ vs T1 and S1 be a 6+ vs T2?

tneva82 wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

Not really as you don't want to cause 1-2 casualties to 3 units but 3 to 6 to 1 unit

It's no different to some goon choosing to roll all his to-hit dice or saves one at a time for reasons best known to himself. If someone is determined to slowplay, they'll slowplay.

Sure, there may be times when the game turns on it (two squads reduced to one man each which could do with killing), but I expect that to be very much the exception rather than the rule.

I also suspect you'll have to call your shots before anything is rolled too. Stops plinking.

 En Excelsis wrote:
As an Eldar player I am deeply concerned by the whole shift from Armor Facing. One of the primary reasons that Wraithlords (wraith-anything FTM) are so attractive in the current game is that by not having Armor Facing and instead having a very high toughness and a decent W count makes them vastly superior to other walkers. I'd had my Wraithlords go head-to-head with dreads & venerable dreads more times than I can count and I've never once come out on the losing side of that.

This change makes all other walkers in wraithlords, which hugely devalues the wraithlords themselves. I have my doubts that this shortcoming can be overcome with a special rules but I will reserve judgement until my fears are realized in writing.

It doesn't devalue wraith(lords/knights) but rather puts other things on even keel with them. Put bluntly wraith units been variably broken since 3rd edition especially the wraithlord compared with other monstrous creatures that were usually T6. There is a reason why wraithlord costs went up from the ridiculously cheap 3rd edition codex cost to something still too powerful at t8 in the old rules but at least adequately costed by 7th compared with the rest of similar offerings in other armies (t6 MC's gaining extra wounds and dreads gaining invuls in the same 4 editions since)... just in time for them to return right back where they started with the broken wraithknight that all but replaced the finally somewhat balanced wraithlord in most lists.

 nintura wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 obsidianaura wrote:
It will be my goal to kill a land raider with a las-pistol this edition

Pffrt. NooB :p

20 odd years ago, perhaps more, single stand of Gretchin took out an Imperator Titan in Epic :p

Pfffft, had my Tau Firewarrior knock the last wound off of Kharandras. In melee.

Shield Drone nutted the Emperor's Champion and killed him.

tneva82 wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

Not really as you don't want to cause 1-2 casualties to 3 units but 3 to 6 to 1 unit

It can get annoying in the latter stages of a game when you are facing a number of units that are down to 1-2 models each. Shooting each bolter/lasgun at a time so as to not overkill a target will be a thing. That is annoying, but i guess a rare enough occurrence in a game as to not be completely painful. I'd rather it not be there tho, allocating the unit's shooting before rolling any dice i'd much prefer.

I imagine Wraithlords will see a wounds increase in the new edition.

 nintura wrote:
Pfffft, had my Tau Firewarrior knock the last wound off of Kharandras. In melee.

Something similar here in that I had a firewarrior take out a demon prince (admittedly at 1 wound when he charged the squad) in close combat. I had to promote and convert him to a fireblade in honor of his achievement.


While I support the idea of adding split fire to the rules, I can't help but think that it will slow down the game which seems like it is the exact opposite point that the new rules are trying to make. It's a great rule for mid-model count battles (so roughly 1000-1200pt battles in 3rd-7th ed 40k) but I'm not sure it won't be a step back in turns of play length for typical 8th ed fights.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 nintura wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 obsidianaura wrote:
It will be my goal to kill a land raider with a las-pistol this edition

Pffrt. NooB :p

20 odd years ago, perhaps more, single stand of Gretchin took out an Imperator Titan in Epic :p

Pfffft, had my Tau Firewarrior knock the last wound off of Kharandras. In melee.

Shield Drone nutted the Emperor's Champion and killed him.

Psssssh, he's merely a man. Kharandras is immortal. Sort of.

MaxT wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
I hope the split fire is by weapon type and all shots happen at same time or 40k is about to get a whole lot slower rather than faster.

or It'll be "I'm going to fire this marine at that marine, this guy at that other unit, my 9th guy is going to fire 24" away at a 5th unit.. etc."

Not really as you don't want to cause 1-2 casualties to 3 units but 3 to 6 to 1 unit

It can get annoying in the latter stages of a game when you are facing a number of units that are down to 1-2 models each. Shooting each bolter/lasgun at a time so as to not overkill a target will be a thing. That is annoying, but i guess a rare enough occurrence in a game as to not be completely painful. I'd rather it not be there tho, allocating the unit's shooting before rolling any dice i'd much prefer.

If allocating all shooting at the same time isn't a thing I'd argue it will quickly be pushed to be a thing just to prevent slow play much less oher nonsense.

Split fire gives more credence to the possibility that scrolls aren't going to let you have 4 lascannons in a devastator squad.