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 Geifer wrote:
Deck building. Not a word I particularly enjoy reading.

Same here, I kind like what I see from a rule
point of view, but a "deck" of cards?!

However, the vortex grenade coming back is a pleasing surprise.

I much prefer having to construct a deck of possible cards to use, rather than trying to remember to use the one out of dozens of possible strategems when the situation comes up. I mean, I guess part of being "good" at Warhammer 40,000 is knowing all the strategems (yours and your opponents), but as someone who doesn't play every day, even the increasing number of strategems in Kill Team just slows the game down.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/06/18/faction-focus-chaos-space-marines-2gw-homepage-post-4/

From Abaddon's special rule we can infer that saves are taken at the end of the round and usually on a D6 vs large blasts and D12 vs small blasts. It remains to be seen how much stuff you remove for each failed save (I would guess 1 tank or 5 mandudes)

Good spot! Managed to miss that last time.

I think each failed save will do a wound for a smol marker - that's because the Primaris unit is listed as 5 dudes, but with two wounds. Large blast may simply make the save that much harder?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Bums.

Reckon I'm going Chaos, lads! Really like the look of the boxed set.

There is more on this in the latest article:

At the end of each turn, in the Damage phase, you then take a saving throw for each blast marker that a unit has but you roll a D12 for each small blast marker and a D6 for each large blast marker! For each failed saving throw the unit gets a damage marker, and when the number of damage markers equals the unit’s Wounds characteristic the unit is destroyed.

Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I much prefer having to construct a deck of possible cards to use, rather than trying to remember to use the one out of dozens of possible strategems when the situation comes up. I mean, I guess part of being "good" at Warhammer 40,000 is knowing all the strategems (yours and your opponents), but as someone who doesn't play every day, even the increasing number of strategems in Kill Team just slows the game down.

True enough, having your abilities neatly sorted in front of you is convenient. But since both approaches are expressions of Combohammer, which as a design paradigm for Warhammer I dislike, having one doesn't do me any more good than having the other.

Very much not a fan of shoving strategems, psyker powers and who knows what else into the deck building meatgrinder.

GW - design a tactically based game and then inject it with Randumb rather than balance things.

Not a fan of the deck approach to “stratagems”.

CSM pack is incredibly underwhelming. They need to either update the bikes or Squat the unit. The Terminator Lord is ok, but frankly, in light of all the new stuff that's been released (pretty great all of it) it's disappointing to see that the bundle is mostly musty old stuff.

-C6

 catharsix wrote:
CSM pack is incredibly underwhelming. They need to either update the bikes or Squat the unit. The Terminator Lord is ok, but frankly, in light of all the new stuff that's been released (pretty great all of it) it's disappointing to see that the bundle is mostly musty old stuff.

-C6

I'm sorry but what?

A boxed set of 37 miniatures has 7 old miniatures and you're saying it's "mostly musty old stuff"?

It's $170USD for 6x of Bikers($40/3; Direct Only), 1x Chaos Terminator Lord($24.75), and 30 Chaos Space Marines($60/10, brand new). Even combining all three of the "musty old stuff" in terms of price, it still isn't the cost of just the Marines themselves.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 catharsix wrote:
CSM pack is incredibly underwhelming. They need to either update the bikes or Squat the unit. The Terminator Lord is ok, but frankly, in light of all the new stuff that's been released (pretty great all of it) it's disappointing to see that the bundle is mostly musty old stuff.

-C6

I'm sorry but what?

A boxed set of 37 miniatures has 7 old miniatures and you're saying it's "mostly musty old stuff"?

It's $170USD for 6x of Bikers($40/3; Direct Only), 1x Chaos Terminator Lord($24.75), and 30 Chaos Space Marines($60/10, brand new). Even combining all three of the "musty old stuff" in terms of price, it still isn't the cost of just the Marines themselves.

heck I wish this came out a month ago, I'd have bought it for my CSMs (Now I have eneugh CSM troops I don't need it)

 zedmeister wrote:
Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

Which is fantastic as Epic Armageddon is fantastic.

 zedmeister wrote:
Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

Except effect is quite different. Before blast markers caused disruption and were caused by casualties. Here no disruption and instead blast markers are the ones that cause casualties.

that skitari tank is the first dual kit in a long long time. Wonder if they'll make a comeback

 streetsamurai wrote:
that skitari tank is the first dual kit in a long long time. Wonder if they'll make a comeback

I would personally be shocked if every single kit in the new SoB line isn't AT LEAST dual kit.

 Geifer wrote:

 Albino Squirrel wrote:
I much prefer having to construct a deck of possible cards to use, rather than trying to remember to use the one out of dozens of possible strategems when the situation comes up. I mean, I guess part of being "good" at Warhammer 40,000 is knowing all the strategems (yours and your opponents), but as someone who doesn't play every day, even the increasing number of strategems in Kill Team just slows the game down.

True enough, having your abilities neatly sorted in front of you is convenient. But since both approaches are expressions of Combohammer, which as a design paradigm for Warhammer I dislike, having one doesn't do me any more good than having the other.

But I think drawing randomly, especially if you draw only a few cards per turn (sounds like one base, plus one for each detachment commander still alive if I'm understanding correctly?) will limit the combos you can pull off. But I imagine they will still have plenty of aura abilities, so the game will end up being about overlaying aura bonuses to make your units invincible or powerful enough to wipe out any other unit. But we'll see.

Any info on the size of the Crusade Case XL that's in the price leaks? I'm curious as to how big this is as im running out of storage for my AdMech and have no room left for my Templars.

 laam999 wrote:
Any info on the size of the Crusade Case XL that's in the price leaks? I'm curious as to how big this is as im running out of storage for my AdMech and have no room left for my Templars.

Haven't seen anything about this. What is it?

Nurglitch wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

Which is fantastic as Epic Armageddon is fantastic.

But..its not being ported? It's just using the same name yet not the rules. Such a disappointment that they need to throw in more random stuff into Apoc instead of actually design rules. Going to see how it works without the Deck Building element as some of us actually enjoy well designed battles that have us make tactical decisions, rather than "I drew the shoot twice strat and you drew the Advance extra D6!"

I like everything we've seen so far. Which is very rare for me and GW rules

I understand the misgivings people have with deckbuilding and random cards, and GW does tend to obfuscate their inability to balance armies behind a wall of randumb, but some very good games use such mechanics, including GW's own Warhammer Underworlds (which I am convinced they secretly outsourced to FFG or something). So it can be done right (let's hope GW secretly outsourced Apocalypse to FFG or something).

 Daedalus81 wrote:


At the end of each turn, in the Damage phase, you then take a saving throw for each blast marker that a unit has but you roll a D12 for each small blast marker and a D6 for each large blast marker! For each failed saving throw the unit gets a damage marker, and when the number of damage markers equals the unit’s Wounds characteristic the unit is destroyed.

So, to my mind, this seems to imply that units retain their full effectiveness until they've been destroyed. The delightful agonies command asset shown in the CSM faction focus also mentions penalties from critical damage, though, which is a form of derading, I suppose.
Still, it seems as though you'll really get some use out of your units. This is what I'm liking most so far.

I agree that the idea of a command asset deck is unlikely to speed up gameplay, though.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 catharsix wrote:
CSM pack is incredibly underwhelming. They need to either update the bikes or Squat the unit. The Terminator Lord is ok, but frankly, in light of all the new stuff that's been released (pretty great all of it) it's disappointing to see that the bundle is mostly musty old stuff.

-C6

I'm sorry but what?

A boxed set of 37 miniatures has 7 old miniatures and you're saying it's "mostly musty old stuff"?

It's $170USD for 6x of Bikers($40/3; Direct Only), 1x Chaos Terminator Lord($24.75), and 30 Chaos Space Marines($60/10, brand new). Even combining all three of the "musty old stuff" in terms of price, it still isn't the cost of just the Marines themselves.

Lots of foot slogging marines and bikers is not what i have in mind when i hear apocalypse. Three lord of skulls attacking a warhound scout titan, thats apocalyptic.

Nurglitch wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

Which is fantastic as Epic Armageddon is fantastic.

Eh...depends on which one you mean. The first "revamp" in the late 90's was pretty gak...

BrianDavion wrote:

heck I wish this came out a month ago, I'd have bought it for my CSMs (Now I have eneugh CSM troops I don't need it)

Seriously! You save $114.75(all my numbers are USD at retail price) buying this box at $170. The Bikers and Terminator Lord are $104.75 by themselves.
They could have put Raptors or Terminators or Havocs in, but those are things that people will see on the shelves. Bikers are Direct Only.

So I get why they put Bikers in.

And again, I priced out everything in case anyone is interested:


We've seen two conflicting price tags on these discount boxes. One at $170 and one at $160.


That would put, assuming $160 is correct and is MSRP rather than a discounted price, the savings at:


For $170:

That would be, I think, Epic 40,000 (the one that came in a box with Orks and Space Marines). Epic Armageddon came out later on, as a book on its own with miniatures available separately.

tneva82 wrote:

 zedmeister wrote:
Blast Markers. Pretty much taken Epic's rules and ported it to 40k

Except effect is quite different. Before blast markers caused disruption and were caused by casualties. Here no disruption and instead blast markers are the ones that cause casualties.

We don't know yet, it is possible that they also cause disruptions in the Morale phase or something. One of the assets shown also referenced a "critically damaged" state, that seems to bring some penalties along with it.

One thing I really like about this preview is that it's not just taking the casualties at the end to let everyone play with their toys, but to force some operational friction into the activation phase through uncertainty of results. Normally in games you can concentrate on your priority targets and switch when they are dead, here you have to constantly ask: "have I poured enough fire there, can I switch?" If you want something dead, better go for overkill. If you want lots of things dead, better be prepared for some survivors trudging through the smoke after the turn.

The idea with having small blasts (saved on D12) coalesce into large blasts (saved on D6) is interesting.

Thought experiment: Double the number of wounds on everything. Eliminate blasts as a concept, just track hits inflicted. Anything that says it causes a large blast instead causes two hits. Take all saves on a D6.

The result is statistically equivalent to the system GW just previewed- on a 3+ save, one D12 and one D6 averages exactly half as many failed saves (0.5) as just three D6s (1). What they've essentially done with this mechanic is halve the expected damage output for each unit, presumably either to reduce bookkeeping (number of wounds per unit), or to interact with some other mechanic they've yet to reveal.

I'm definitely curious to see where this goes.

With Primaris having a 6+ save, seems very likely anyone lighter will be blatted by large markers though.

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:

 laam999 wrote:
Any info on the size of the Crusade Case XL that's in the price leaks? I'm curious as to how big this is as im running out of storage for my AdMech and have no room left for my Templars.

Haven't seen anything about this. What is it?

Its listed in the price list but I've not seen anyone mention it.



I'm very curious as I need more storage.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I like everything we've seen so far. Which is very rare for me and GW rules

I understand the misgivings people have with deckbuilding and random cards, and GW does tend to obfuscate their inability to balance armies behind a wall of randumb, but some very good games use such mechanics, including GW's own Warhammer Underworlds (which I am convinced they secretly outsourced to FFG or something). So it can be done right (let's hope GW secretly outsourced Apocalypse to FFG or something).

Anakin: Can deck-buildings elements be balanced in a tactical game?
Palapatine: Not by GW

I don’t see the card element preventing me from picking this up, but I will have my thumb on the trigger for changing how they’re used the first time it interferes with the base game’s balance.

 Geifer wrote:

 FEARtheMoose wrote:
Not sure im a fan of the randomness of having a card deck in that fashion [draw X amount etc]. I would rather the cards be used the same way as stradgems [can use whichever one whenever] and then maybe limit the amount you can use per turn / phase or similar.

Randomizing is probably the only way to avoid the problem stratagems have. There's a handful of good ones, and they have a strict hierarchy of use. Even if you limit it to one use only, you know exactly which one your opponent will play first, which one second, and so on. It gets dull with time.

Considering stratagems are meant as a way to mitigate randomness/bad luck, I dont agree.