Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 nintura wrote:

 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.

The Emperor's Champion is more than a man, he's an ideal manifest through the Emperor's Will. You can kill the man, but you can't kill what made him who he is.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik 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'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.

Umm it is different. By splitting fire like hell you weaken yourself. How many handicap themselves just to shoot every model at different target for fun of it? You want to concentrate casualties to one target

Splitfire is great IMO and also a really, REALLY good change for two reasons IMO:
1) You no longer suffer for not overspecializing a squad, but giving them a more balanced loadout. Now you can put 1-2 Heavy Bolters in a Devastator,Havok, Heavy Weapons or Long Fang squad and it will still be a good choice because you won't have to waste shots but it also promotes all-comers diversity in weapon loadouts. The same for heavy weapons: Now mixing a plasma gun and a melta, or a grenade launcher and a flamer is actually a good choice rather than turning the squad in question into an unoptimized mess.

2) This is BIG for people that can't afford to or don't have the time to go bits hunting for rarer special weapons. You all know the pain of having e.g. one Plasma gun, one melta, one flamer and one grenade launcher in a IG command squad? Or having a grenade launcher and a flamer? Or even worse having a resin/metal/finecost squad where you can't change the special weapons without heavy remodelling (that also massively drops the re-sell value) and the box comes with two special weapons with entirely different roles? Now you can just use those units out of the box and they will actually work rather decent than you wasting half their special weapons slots in almost every situation.

I remember playing lots of Long Fangs back in 5th edition and thinking that Splitfire is an ability that all those expensive, vulnerable and immobile infantry heavy weapons squads and teams should have, from a promoting varied loadouts perspective alone (both for versatility as well as increasing the survivability per points by mixing in cheaper weapons).

Also means that lone heavy bolter Space Wolf I have somewhere and who had been gathering dust on a shelf even back when I was still active 5 years ago, will finally see some use, especially if he turns out to have AP -1 and possibly even deal more than 1 damage per wound. Same for all those flamer equipped guardsmen.

If the same also applies for vehicles... means that heavy bolter sponsons or stormbolters on AT vehicles finally serve a purpose. Also massive buff for vehicle squadrons for obvious reasons (always disliked how they all had to target the same unit).

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

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.

Well it wasn't really that narrow. It looks narrow because all combinations seem equally common, but they are not. its a much smaller sub-box around S3-S6 and T3-T5 where most of the action happens. If you narrow the view down to that area the difference is much less striking.

I was agreeing with you?

Daedalus81 wrote:
Split fire gives more credence to the possibility that scrolls aren't going to let you have 4 lascannons in a devastator squad.

GW saying that no wargear or unit options would change means that four lascannons shouldn't be going away.

Difference is now you don't HAVE to have 4 lascannons since the unit can split its focus making it ltimately cheaper to run.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:

 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.

Yeah, this is the best argument I've seen yet for removing facings.

Sorry folks, I didn't mean to light a fire there.

My intention was not to gripe about how awesome my Wraithlords were and how much it sucks to be me now they the playing field is level.

The fact of the matter is that the playing field was never level. Wraithlords (WL) and Dreadnaughts have never made for a solid apples-to-apples comparison since they are totally different. For starters, they have extremely different point values to reflect their disparate performance, and the fill different roles on the table. My WLs have always been great at grabbing enemy attention. They are big and scary-looking and can take some punishment, but they don't lay down the hurt like some of the other choices. What makes them unique IMO is that unlike traditional tarpit units that can lock up enemy squads (any dreadnaught, most MCs, and a handful of ICs) WLs can tarpit larger, more dangerous enemies. I am not limited to keeping one of my enemies squads occupied - instead I could keep his HQ busy for a few turns, or his larger, heavier MCs. This role just isn't filled by other models. With the new changes it is filled by almost all walkers.

Dreadnaughts are, by comparison, more specialized. They can be dedicated for melee with various close combat weapons, or they can be kitted for dakka and sport autocannons, plasma cannons, missile launchers, and so on. The WLs are less performant in either area but are competent at both. Sort of 'jack of all trades but master of none'.

Now, don't get me wrong. I still think this is a loss more than a victory for a few reasons. The most selfish reason is that I am an Eldar player of many years and as any Eldar player knows, there is already a huge problem with the FOC. Specifically the Heavy Support section and how saturated it is for my faction. Heavy support is already contentious and any time you chose to field a WL you're doing so knowing that you gave up a squad of War Walkers, a Fire Prism, or something else that would be super valuable - this is good, it means that each unit has a value. By removing the value of one unit you are giving it de-facto to another. If WLs become undesirable as I fear they will, all Eldar players will ultimately field less diverse forces. It hurts the game as a whole when fewer models are played. Perhaps a better way to say it - when more battlefield roles are performed by dedicated units.

It may be an extreme example, but think about what SM forces would play like if they just removed Dreadnaughts from the army list. How would you compensate for such a thing.

This all causes me to worry that GW may actually be telling the truth - they may actually be reducing the entire game to quick, more homogeneous matches. If 'everything can hurt everything' than the difference in value for any given part of that 'everything' is markedly reduced. the games will be shorter not because the rules were simplified, but because so much less of what you can do as a player matters. I am honestly worried that all units are just being reduced to 'versions' of their Space Marine counterparts. If Dire Avengers just become elfy-themed version of Space Marines, and WLs are just colorful iterations of dreadnaughts, what's to stop the same from happening to Chaos units, the Tau, or the Tyranids? What's the value in playing those forces?

Sorry - it's all pretty meta at this point since nothing is official until the rules are printed a published, but I think my worries are at the very least well founded.

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.

I'm assuming you'll have to allocate the whole unit beforehand like in AoS.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 nintura wrote:

 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.

The Emperor's Champion is more than a man, he's an ideal manifest through the Emperor's Will. You can kill the man, but you can't kill what made him who he is.

But you can by action make The Emperor look like a sizeable lady's chemise!

 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.

Single Grot killed Jainzar in meelee.

 Ragnar Blackmane wrote:
Splitfire is great IMO and also a really, REALLY good change for two reasons IMO:
1) You no longer suffer for not overspecializing a squad, but giving them a more balanced loadout. Now you can put 1-2 Heavy Bolters in a Devastator,Havok, Heavy Weapons or Long Fang squad and it will still be a good choice because you won't have to waste shots but also promote all-comers diversity in weapon loadouts. The same for heavy weapons: Now mixing a plasma gun and a melta, or a grenade launcher and a flamer is actually a good choice rather than turning the squad in question into an unoptimized mess.
.

With caveat you likely still want ranges to rougly match. Especially with heavy weapons that want to stay still when possible.

Daedalus81 wrote:
Split fire gives more credence to the possibility that scrolls aren't going to let you have 4 lascannons in a devastator squad.

Not so fast...

Grundstok Thunderers Warscroll wrote:DESCRIPTION
A unit of Grundstok Thunderers has 5 or more
models. Each Grundstok Thunderer is armed with
an aethermatic weapon, whether the signature
Aethershot Rifle, an Aetheric Fumigator, a
Decksweeper, an Aethercannon or a Grundstok
Mortar.

There's only one of each special(Aetheric Fumigator, Decksweeper, Aethercannon, Grundstok Mortar) but enough Aethershot Rifles to outfit the whole squad.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 nintura wrote:

 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.

The weakness of the man is not the same as the weakness of his idea. ;P

Back on topic, since someone mentioned AoS has you allocate all shooting at the same time, I feel that the shooting phase won't get much longer, just more tactical since you'll have to judge if splitting versus focusing gives you the result you want before shooting, ect.

Plus easier TAC armies since you could run a mix of weapons in a squad without fear of not being optimized enough.
Psssssh, he's merely a man. Kharandras is immortal. Sort of.

The Emperor's Champion is more than a man, he's an ideal manifest through the Emperor's Will. You can kill the man, but you can't kill what made him who he is.

But you can by action make The Emperor look like a sizeable lady's chemise!

Somehow it lost my part of this. basically the weakness of a man isn't the weakness of an idea.

And on topic: if you have to allocae shooting all at once like AoS then it makes people judge if focusing or splitting their shots will matter more ahead of time. Another change I'd say is more tactical.

 judgedoug wrote:

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

Whoops - fixed - thanks!

Daedalus81 wrote:
Split fire gives more credence to the possibility that scrolls aren't going to let you have 4 lascannons in a devastator squad.

If the Kharadron Overlords Thunderers is any indication, I'm pretty sure that the heavy weapon squads like Devastators are gonna be totally free to have all the same special weapon.

Just to clarify, from those who play/know AoS, the universal Split Fire requires allocating attacks before rolls start, correct?

If so, that'll remove a vast majority of the potential for slowed-down games... something that seems reasonable to presume, given that one of the main goals of the 8th edition redesign was to reduce game time, and something like "firing every bolter, one at a time, picking and choosing targets every time" seems like it would immediately violate the above.

 En Excelsis wrote:
Sorry folks, I didn't mean to light a fire there.

Spoiler:

My intention was not to gripe about how awesome my Wraithlords were and how much it sucks to be me now they the playing field is level.

The fact of the matter is that the playing field was never level. Wraithlords (WL) and Dreadnaughts have never made for a solid apples-to-apples comparison since they are totally different. For starters, they have extremely different point values to reflect their disparate performance, and the fill different roles on the table. My WLs have always been great at grabbing enemy attention. They are big and scary-looking and can take some punishment, and they don't lay down the hurt like some of the other choices. What makes them unique IMO is that unlike tradition tarpit units that can lock up enemy squads (any dreadnaught, most MCs, and a handful of ICs) WLs can tarpit larger, more dangerous enemies. I am not limited to keeping one of my enemies squads occupied - instead I could keep his HQ busy for a few turns, or his larger, heavier MCs. This role just isn't filled by other models. With the new changes it is filled by almost all walkers.

Dreadnaughts are, by comparison, more specialized. They can be dedicate for melee with various close combat weapons, or they can be kitted for dakka and sport autocannons, plasma cannons, missile launchers, and so on. The WLs are sort less performant in either area but are competent at both. Sort of 'jack of all trades but master of none'.

Now, don't get me wrong. I still think this is a loss more than a victory for a few reasons. The most selfish reason is that I am an Eldar player of many years and as any Eldar player knows, there is already a huge problem with the FOC. Specifically the Heavy Support section and how saturated it is for my faction. Heavy support is already contentious and any time you chose to field a WL you're doing so knowing that you gave up a squad of War Walkers, a Fire Prism, or something else that would be super valuable - this is good, it means that each unit has a value. By removing the value of one unit you are giving it de-facto to another. If WLs become undesirable as I fear they will, all Eldar players will ultimately field less diverse forces. It hurts the game as a whole when fewer models are played. Perhaps a better way to say it - when more battlefield roles are performed by dedicated units.

It may be an extreme example, but think about what SM forces would play like if they just removed Dreadnaughts from the army list. How would you compensate for such a thing.

This all causes me to worry that GW may actually be telling the truth - they may actually be reducing the entire game to quick, more homogeneous matches. If 'everything can hurt everything' than the difference in value for any given part of that 'everything' is markedly reduced. the games will be shorter not because the rules were simplified, but because so much less of what you can do as a player matters. I am honestly worried that all units are just being reduced to 'versions' of their Space Marine counterparts. If Dire Avengers just become elfy-themed version of Space Marines, and WLs are just colorful iterations of dreadnaughts, what's to stop the same from happening to Chaos units, the Tau, or the Tyranids? What's the value in playing those forces?

Sorry - it's all pretty meta at this point since nothing is official until the rules are printed a published, but I think my worries are at the very least well founded.

Ahh but that's not what you said - at all. You most recently said:

Dreadnaughts are, by comparison, more specialized. They can be dedicate for melee with various close combat weapons, or they can be kitted for dakka and sport autocannons, plasma cannons, missile launchers, and so on. The WLs are sort less performant in either area but are competent at both. Sort of 'jack of all trades but master of none'

So then previously you said:

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.

See the problem there?

Apparently the jack of all trades unit always wins against the specialist. So that can't be right?

makes them vastly superior to other walkers

Again - your words and one of the problems with 7th ed and 7.5 edition power dexes like Eldar


On the other concern - AOS units are all pretty different.....I am not that worried about that aspect

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
Just to clarify, from those who play/know AoS, the universal Split Fire requires allocating attacks before rolls start, correct?

If so, that'll remove a vast majority of the potential for slowed-down games... something that seems reasonable to presume, given that one of the main goals of the 8th edition redesign was to reduce game time, and something like "firing every bolter, one at a time, picking and choosing targets every time" seems like it would immediately violate the above.

I think that's given for 40k too. No bloody way even gw can be stupid enough to make game with goal of quickening it and then make virtually mandatory to shoot model at a time

So previously to kill that dreadnought it was 4.96 lascannon shots. Now it is 6.2.... 25% stronger!

Wonder what Necrons will get to compensate for gauss now being everywhere. Shred would be nice, Tank Hunter perhaps more fluffy (ie reroll to wounds against vehicles, if there is such a distinction)

I'd have liked to see a 7+ at 3x strength, but that'll be rare enough I don't miss it.

tneva82 wrote:

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
Just to clarify, from those who play/know AoS, the universal Split Fire requires allocating attacks before rolls start, correct?

If so, that'll remove a vast majority of the potential for slowed-down games... something that seems reasonable to presume, given that one of the main goals of the 8th edition redesign was to reduce game time, and something like "firing every bolter, one at a time, picking and choosing targets every time" seems like it would immediately violate the above.

I think that's given for 40k too. No bloody way even gw can be stupid enough to make game with goal of quickening it and then make virtually mandatory to shoot model at a time

Yep. All it will be is "lascannon at that tank; 10 bolter shots at unit A and 5 bolter shots at unit B". Done.

torblind wrote:
Wonder what Necrons will get to compensate for gauss now being everywhere. Shred would be nice, Tank Hunter perhaps more fluffy (ie reroll to wounds against vehicles, if there is such a distinction)

I'd guess +1 Dam on rolls to wound of 6.

I am hoping you have to declare all your firing before you actually fire anything. It would be silly to allow a devastator squad to pick targets individually one weapon at a time unitl they kill things. Otherwise this seriously slows up a units firing.

Example:
Player 1: My first lascannon devastator will target that vehicle. Rolls dice, hits does 4 of the 6 wounds.
Player 1: My second lascannon devastator will target that vehicle again. Rolls dice misses.
Player 1: My third lascannon devastator will target that vehicle again. Rolls dice, Hits does 2 wounds, kills vehicle.
Player 1: My fourth lascannon devastator will target that character over there. Rolls to hit....
Player 1: The bolter sergeant will target that squad over there....


Yeah, that would be annoying.

When I messaged GW about wargear in units:

Build without fear, [REDACTED]! Any models that are legal now will be legal in the new edition.

so until oriven otherwise, I wouldn't lament the supposed loss of the 4 of the same heavy Devastator squad.

Youn wrote:
I am hoping you have to declare all your firing before you actually fire anything. It would be silly to allow a devastator squad to pick targets individually one weapon at a time unitl they kill things. Otherwise this seriously slows up a units firing.

Example:
Player 1: My first lascannon devastator will target that vehicle. Rolls dice, hits does 4 of the 6 wounds.
Player 1: My second lascannon devastator will target that vehicle again. Rolls dice misses.
Player 1: My third lascannon devastator will target that vehicle again. Rolls dice, Hits does 2 wounds, kills vehicle.
Player 1: My fourth lascannon devastator will target that character over there. Rolls to hit....
Player 1: The bolter sergeant will target that squad over there....


Yeah, that would be annoying.

Can't do that in the AoS rules. You pick targets, resolve against one target unit fully, and then move to the next.

now THIS is an article

new wound "table" is nice and easy to remember - personally I would have liked a "7+/2+ with a reroll" band for things that absolutely should/shouldn't wound but in the interests of keeping things simple I see why they did it

Split Fire is going to be amazing - I imagine it'll be one target per weapon profile from the description, to stop units splitting fire too much, but it will make ML/Flamer squads viable again and give a reason to mix weapons in a unit

Guard blobs just got a lot more dangerous.

50 guard in a blob with the following configuration
- 10 flamers
- 4 lascannons
- 4 MLs
- 2 HBs
- 30 lasguns

That squad is extremely terrifying. Up close it throws out 60 STR 3 shots and 10d6 STR 4 flamer hits.
It has a variety of heavy weapons it can use to target different targets.

At first I was thinking about how much better Chimera's got due to the AV10 side armor no longer being a huge issue, but now I'm looking at blob squads as downright scary.

And you thought Tau shooting phases were long now...