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Well they might not be GOOD, they are simply better and can be less bogged down by a hordy thing. Still not worth taking over Dakkastelans, but fingers crossed for a change in the protocols to make em run faster or charge further.

Lets hope this is not another dumbing down of admech identity as they did with moving to 8th...

Vehicle rules we've been waiting on. This looks good for us being able to shoot into combat. Little worried how much all our stuff is going to cost now.

Like some others have said now one of our Ad Mech special rules is universal so hopefully we get a new codex sooner rather than later. I'd like it if we got some more interesting rules.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/09/tanks-are-back-on-trackgw-homepage-post-1/

Ive used fisticuff bots a few times just because i felt like it and they tend to stay in combat alot, since they almost always end up in combat with something that just tarpits them. I've never had them actually hit something i wanted them to lol.
Being able to use flamer in melee would massively help with that issue, since their melee may hurt hard but it doesnt hit often due to WS4 and not many attacks. Yeah they can attack twice but the problem is its not literally doubling their attacks so they can be interrupted between attacks and your saves are weakened in the process.

Will it make them usable over dakkabots? I would be shocked if they got good enough to at least be "usable in the right scenario" let alone good enough to compete with dakkabots, considering how much crap dakkabots are able to use in Engine War that melee bots cannot.

I'm expecting some massive change to Melee at this point. Because otherwise, the benefits for taking shooty vehicle/monster units far outstretches that of any melee ones if you were comparing point for point.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
if blast is indeed denied shooting into combat, seriously hope flamers dont end up being considered blast.

They are not--or if they are, it seems they will have a caveat allowing for them to operate in combat. Because the examples constantly used were Burnas and Flamers for 'clearing the chaff'.

But again, it's not that they're "denied shooting" simply by being in engagement(there's been no mention of being able to shoot into a combat you're not involved in that I have come across). It's that you cannot resolve an attack with a Blast weapon if there are enemies within Engagement Range. Nothing stopping you from declaring the shots in the hope you clear the chaff out before resolving the Blast weapons.

im fully expecting the hybrid capable vehicles or monsters to skyrocket in price.
Theres no way any currently priced walkers suddenly given the ability to shoot in melee as well (even ork ones have decent enough shooting) dont go up in price by a large factor. Especially ones that have access to flamers, a Deffdread with 2x klaws 2x skorchas could just slaughter chaff and then chomp something big afterwords, since chaff really isnt hurting it.

Melee itself probably isnt changing, minus the strat we know of and probably another we dont know of.

edit: Yeah im aware you can declare and hope you can still fire after the other guns cleared the enemy out of combat, wasnt worried about that. That rule basically just exists to allow melee to still bog the vehicle down to a degree, shutting off presumably its main gun only but the rest are still free game.

 Vineheart01 wrote:
trying to think of what that mars canticle even affects if vehicles normally ignore heavy penalties.
All i can think of is the pointless HQ guns we generally dont care about or Arquabus, which is denied shooting in general if it moved anyway

All the special weapons on our troops. If any model in the unit moved it affects the special weapon model.

VirtualJiva wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
trying to think of what that mars canticle even affects if vehicles normally ignore heavy penalties.
All i can think of is the pointless HQ guns we generally dont care about or Arquabus, which is denied shooting in general if it moved anyway

All the special weapons on our troops. If any model in the unit moved it affects the special weapon model.

Don't Skitarii not have Heavy Weapons (outside the Arquebus, which CANNOT fire after moving due to its own rule) and Kataphron have a rule to ignore that penalty natively?

 JNAProductions wrote:

VirtualJiva wrote:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
trying to think of what that mars canticle even affects if vehicles normally ignore heavy penalties.
All i can think of is the pointless HQ guns we generally dont care about or Arquabus, which is denied shooting in general if it moved anyway

All the special weapons on our troops. If any model in the unit moved it affects the special weapon model.

Don't Skitarii not have Heavy Weapons (outside the Arquebus, which CANNOT fire after moving due to its own rule) and Kataphron have a rule to ignore that penalty natively?

correct

Yeah, thats what i was getting at with that.
All of our heavy weapons are on our Dominus (and kinda dont care as the weapons suck anyway) or the Arquebus, which CANNOT fire/move anyway.

Everything else either had the rule to ignore it (breacher/destroyers ignore it) or now does because its a vehicle. Most of our infantry use assault or pistol, with a couple rapidfire sprinkled in.

So that half of the Mars canticle is redundant in 9th

Standard Servitors have <Forge World> as a keyword.

There's also the possibility that we'll be able to Advance and fire Heavy Weapons with some of our walkers or that Flyers will natively get a penalty of some kind for firing, associated with their Supersonic Flight.

Ngl, im quite annoyed with the new heavy rule for us.... Whilst it helps the Kastellan and Ironstrider, it literally devalues the Crawler and Hover Platform rules for the Onager and Skorpius. And then the part for the Mars canticle to ignore the heavy penalty.... which now only affects the Dominus and Manipulus.

Your already paying for that ability for the vehicles that ignore the penalty compared to other vehicles, no everyone else gets it and to top it off some vehicles get to fire their turrets weapons twice if they move under half or stand still! Like Leman Russ, Fire Prisms, Repulsor Executioners, Exocrines and Tyrannofex.

I hope Admech get a codex first after Necrons and Space Marines, the age of the dex is really starting to show, Cognis weapons might aswell be just assault weapons at this point, why have the -2 to hit when advancing and Onagers and Skorpius have defunct rules that no every other non infantry unit has.

Whilst the +1 str is nice with Mars, im leaning back to Stygies or even Lucius now unless the datasheets for Onagers and Skorpius change to give them a niche over the other vehicles and monsters in the game.

Im definitely not convinced they did EW in mind with 9th at all at this point

Do remember everything is getting price adjusted.
Things that normally have a rule to ignore heavy may end up being noticably cheap compared to vehicles that didnt before.

Also nothing stops them from releasing a mini-errata saying any existing rule (or cherry pick which ones) that says it ignores heavy penalty instead allows it to adv+shoot heavy weapons at -1 penalty.

And i just noticed something, modifiers are capped at -1 so....cognis -2 doesnt work now lol

I forgot arc rifles and plasma calivers were not considered heavy. It may affect the peltasts if their rules get change for their one heavy shot~~~

 Thairne wrote:
Well they might not be GOOD, they are simply better and can be less bogged down by a hordy thing. Still not worth taking over Dakkastelans, but fingers crossed for a change in the protocols to make em run faster or charge further.

Lets hope this is not another dumbing down of admech identity as they did with moving to 8th...

Tbh as soon as you switch to Conqueror Protocols you wouldnt even be able to fire the Incendine Combustors into melee anymore anyway. So your best staying in Aegis if you want Fistellans to function best, unless you really reaaaaally wanna punch something dead. The Transuranic Arquebus cant move and fire anyway so only the Dominus and Manipulus are affected by the heavy penalty, so the Mars canticle only helps them with ignoring that penalty.

Fistellans are probably best as Lucius or Ryza with a Prime Hermeticon and Learning of the Genetor for Biochemical Aggression if you really wanna fish for that -4 AP on 6s.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vineheart01 wrote:
Do remember everything is getting price adjusted.
Things that normally have a rule to ignore heavy may end up being noticably cheap compared to vehicles that didnt before.

Also nothing stops them from releasing a mini-errata saying any existing rule (or cherry pick which ones) that says it ignores heavy penalty instead allows it to adv+shoot heavy weapons at -1 penalty.

And i just noticed something, modifiers are capped at -1 so....cognis -2 doesnt work now lol

If we can trust GW to actually get the points right for once.....

I wouldnt count on a errata for existing rules that say they ignore heavy penalties to instead advance and shoot heavy weapons at -1 penalty as that puts Cognis weapons in a even more weirder spot now.

Cognis can still take the -2 into account, they said on stream you take modifiers into account step by step, but the end result cant be higher or lower than a 1.

So say you get a +1 to hit, then a -2, your at a -1 to hit, or a -1 to hit then +2 you have + 1 to hit. But ive never needed the reason to advance something with a Cognis weapon before, maybe for the Fusilave and Ironstriders.... but they already move quick so

you need more detail they have also sed modifiers are capped at -1 to hit

U02dah4 wrote:
you need more detail they have also sed modifiers are capped at -1 to hit

Having watching the streams like 3 times over for each, Stu explained how modifiers work now in 9th. He could very well be wrong or misremembering but I dont think so, he even went over how Alaitoc fliers are still ok vs some armies with +1 to hits. Your overall modifier is limited to a -/+ of 1, but the process it takes to get there still takes into account the modifiers in a whole. You could have a -3 to hit and then a +5 but it will still only be a +1 to hit like my example in the above message.

Just like how he said Blast type weapons cant be fired into combat today on stream, its not on the Warcom preview but it is most likely in the rules weve yet to see. So I dont need more detail, its what the rules designer has said. If hes wrong hes wrong, but that would be unlikely.

Classic Cawlbawl with dakkabots looks really strong in 9th. Unless they can wipe out most of the dakkabot unit in a single turn of combat, you're going to blow anything engaged with them right off the table in your own turn no problem, and you can even put a lot of the shots into a different target if you're confident you can wipe out the thing tagging you with less than the full complement.

The big problem with dakkabots in the past was getting tagged, and now it basically barely matters any more.

Cawl + bot unit + 3 disintegrators with indirect sitting in the middle of the board is going to cause massive problems for a lot of lists. Can't come into LOS of the bots or you get blown off the table, can't stay out of LOS or you get worn down by the disintegrators.

To continue on the use of Fistelans (with flamers), the way I've used them was in Lucius in a Cohort Cybernetica. I paid 2 CP for the Robots and the Datasmith to DS, dropped them 9" from my target, used the +3" charge distance stratagem from Cohort and assured a charge really easily. The Datasmith had it a bit harder though but he didn't need to succeed, just to catch them later for repairs. The trick is not to switch them into double fight mode until you're certain you want to kill whatever you're engaged with. By keeping them in Aegis you keep the flamers for shooting at screens, overwatch if needed, and most importantly the 4++ against shooting.

I used them in a single unit of 4 and they didn't die as fast as you'd think. They had a great disruptive role because not everyone can ignore 4 robots punching their way through. Meanwhile I had an Agripinaa Servitor Maniple of 6 Destroyers with plasma shooting alongside 2 Dakkastelans, and the rest of the list. Really fun list. Also I used the reroll 1s to Hit in CC canticle on the turn I wanted them to smash.

Fight twice just got a lot worse, since you can now flamer into combat and Lucius bots now can get a 2+ ignoring AP-1/3++ in aegis.

Of course, the basic problem with them is still that they don't kill stuff very well, whether fighting twice or not. You need re-roll hits or they're just miserably bad; even fighting twice, 400 points of robots does only 12 hits without rerolls, which is pretty terrible. They're only good against the sort of targets no competent player is going to let you get them into.

Oh yes they don't destroy stuff, but they're disruptive and cumbersome, and that helps a lot relieving my gunline of some pressure in the meantime. It's clear that for anti-tank I'd use Neutronagers or Lascannon Ballistarii as it's cheaper and easier.

I never claimed they were competitive, just a lot of fun. I'm eager to see if 9th will help them pass the threshold though, with Engine War there's already some juicy stuff. I wonder if I did well holding off to my purchase of 2x10 Hoplites in Duneriders, as I have no idea of their future for 8th.

Yeah, that's why I think that if you are going to take them, it's probably worth doubling down on what they are good at - sticking around - by taking them lucius, keeping them in aegis, and maybe even considering not bothering with spending 40 points + 2CP for a datasmith to activate the +3 to charge roll. Maybe don't even bother deepstriking them, honestly - you pretty much *want* your opponent shooting at them because good luck shooting a bunch of T7 2+ ignoring AP-1/3++, so why make that difficult?

Of course, for only 10 more points a model, it still just makes more sense to take them as dakka instead, because they don't kill anything in melee anyhow, and that way you can blast stuff off the table with the guns too while being just as good at soaking fire.

 Aaranis wrote:
Oh yes they don't destroy stuff, but they're disruptive and cumbersome, and that helps a lot relieving my gunline of some pressure in the meantime. It's clear that for anti-tank I'd use Neutronagers or Lascannon Ballistarii as it's cheaper and easier.

Use Autocannon Ballistarii; Lascannons are overkill now. I made a post a few pages back underscoring how ridiculous they now are with the Mars Canticle and their new Pattern stratagem combined with things like Wrath of Mars (procs on 5+ with the aforementioned stratagem). They seriously just shred things.

 Suzuteo wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Oh yes they don't destroy stuff, but they're disruptive and cumbersome, and that helps a lot relieving my gunline of some pressure in the meantime. It's clear that for anti-tank I'd use Neutronagers or Lascannon Ballistarii as it's cheaper and easier.

Use Autocannon Ballistarii; Lascannons are overkill now. I made a post a few pages back underscoring how ridiculous they now are with the Mars Canticle and their new Pattern stratagem combined with things like Wrath of Mars (procs on 5+ with the aforementioned stratagem). They seriously just shred things.

Pattern stratagem?

You mean the combination of doctrina and the new gem for +1 to wound?

Well back when I played Lascannons were good, haven't played in a while so I'll wait to see what 9th does to them before switching weapons on my Ballistarii. But yes, the bonuses are awesome with PA.

 Hesselhof wrote:
Pattern stratagem?

You mean the combination of doctrina and the new gem for +1 to wound?

Yes. 6x for 360 points.

24x S8 AP-1 D2, +1 to wound; explodes on 6+ to hit with Magos, AP-1 on 6+ to hit with Logos, mortal on 5+ to wound with Wrath. You can also Dunestrider to drastically increase threat radius, and Cognis Overwatch to screen your gunline.

 Suzuteo wrote:

 Hesselhof wrote:
Pattern stratagem?

You mean the combination of doctrina and the new gem for +1 to wound?

Yes. 6x for 360 points.

24x S8 AP-1 D2, +1 to wound; explodes on 6+ to hit with Magos, AP-1 on 6+ to hit with Logos, mortal on 5+ to wound with Wrath. You can also Dunestrider to drastically increase threat radius, and Cognis Overwatch to screen your gunline.

They also benefit hugely from the Servo-focused Auguries custom dogma. That gives them Cawl's re-rolls at half range with the added benefit for it working in Overwatch as well. BS 3+ re-rolling in overwatch? Also with the ap -1 benefit on a 6? Charging them is worse than charging stuff with flamers.

 Suzuteo wrote:

 Hesselhof wrote:
Pattern stratagem?

You mean the combination of doctrina and the new gem for +1 to wound?

Yes. 6x for 360 points.

24x S8 AP-1 D2, +1 to wound; explodes on 6+ to hit with Magos, AP-1 on 6+ to hit with Logos, mortal on 5+ to wound with Wrath. You can also Dunestrider to drastically increase threat radius, and Cognis Overwatch to screen your gunline.

I feel like if I was going to do that I would go with Divinations of the Magos combined with fabrication of the artisan instead. Artisan would give you an additional AP on all shots within half range. Doesn't trigger all the time but when it does that a huge boost in damage. In addition, artisan let's your vehicles fall back and shoot with no penalties. May not be as necessary in 9th but that ability will still be very useful in certain situations. That said the additional AP on a 6 to hit works at all ranges, so I can understand why people would pick it, it just feels like it's not going to trigger very often. You're getting what, 24 autocannon shots max, so you're getting roughly four AP 2 wounds out of it, since it only triggers on a natural 6. Also, the other two abilities in it's table are trash, a 4+ MW save from pyskers and an OW boost for infantry. There's just no flexibility there.

I know for my Metallica army Divinations/Fabrication is the combo I plan on running. Makes my sprinting Kastelans far more effective and can really boost any models I tend to run (vanguard, kataphrons, skorpius, ballistarii) Granted I run a very mobile gunline abomination army so being within half range is very easy for me to do. Honestly the only real issue I tend to have is keeping characters in range of the guys they're buffing from time to time, but the ability to roll 2d6 advance pick the highest on my Manipulus aura now should help alleviate that. My sprinting Kastelans now get to move very reliably at a high rate of speed, hit with Ap3 ignores cover a lot of the time, can fall back and shoot, and if I need to root them I can still tack on extra shots on 6's to hit.

These new Warlord traits are probably going to be very key to how our armies are built for the foreseeable future. They have major effects for very low CP expenditure. With the drop most armies have in available CP, we will need to find ways to save on CP wherever possible, and this is a big one. I wouldn't be surprised to see two of these plus a special detachment warlord or two with relics being the main core to army abilities soon, since these abilities are essentially strategems you buy once that work all game, as long as they live and can keep up with their units of course. I understand a lot of people meta armies are not gonna be very good with 9th most likely, but if you have a decent collection of models you should be fine. With model count going down maybe spam won't be as critical to win, a man can hope

I like the new vehicle rules too. They fix every gripe I can think of at first glance, and explains why they didn't bother to give the plane an ignore heavy rule. If blast weapons can't be used that kind of sucks but that's going to depend on if flamers count as blast. I know for guard it's incredible how much these simple changes fixed vehicles in the army that sucked. Vehicles are definitely going to go up in cost now, and I would expect at a higher rate than infantry do. Which I'm all for, the amount of models needed in a 2k game these days is insane. I didn't want more models on the table, I wanted the models I had to matter. These changes seem to go a long way towards that. It also hints admech will probably get a big rework soon because so many of our rules are completely busted by this new edition. But in the meantime at least our stuff won't be useless the moment something touches it in combat.

Anyone tried the skystalkers in a game yet? They seem like a handy Swiss army knife unit and I really want to give them a try. You have movement shenanigans, ability to pin down units for debuffs, MW's on any target you want with little the enemy can do (all that matters is the unit moves over the target, even if only one model actually crossed the target the whole unit can grenade it) and good antihorde shooting. Even their melee isn't completely terrible. I know the sterilizers are more attractive for the flamers and ability to prevent people falling back, but I don't like that their big selling point of melee is just some s5 ap1 1D attacks. Skystalkers on the other hand seem like any game you take them in they will have a use. Fighting hordes? They can fly around clearing screens, maybe sniping characters by hopping over them for MW's and shooting them from behind. Fighting vehicles? They'll pop their MW on a 3+ and can focus on grabbing objectives all around the table while pinning down a key firepower unit. Maybe I'm a little too optimistic but I'm having a hard time thinking of a matchup where they have no use. For just 79pts for 5 if my math is right, even just ability to guaranteed snag linebreaker on the last turn is nifty, and that's ignoring everything else they can do. I really like them.

Cross posting from Reddit. Thank you to user FirstRankFire for posting these details. A lot to like here for us Ad Mech players.
I can see this helping out the Neutron Onagers a bit.
40k Daily Stream 10th June: Blast Weapons & Creations of Bile

More information revealed on what "Blast" weapons will be; a new weapon "type" joining pistol, assault, heavy etc.

* There are over 170 weapons currently in the game that will become Blast weapons, battle cannons, volcano cannons and vortex weapons all cited.
* Blast weapons on vehicles can never fire into melee (see vehicle/monster firing in combat rules [revealed yesterday](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/06/09/tanks-are-back-on-trackgw-homepage-post-1/)).
* When firing a Blast weapon at a unit with 6 or more models, each D3 or D6 roll cannot score less than three, i.e. a D6 rolling a 2 = 3, and a D3 is automatically a 3.
* When firing a Blast weapon at a unit with 11 or more models, each random shot weapon automatically score the maximum number of shots. I.e. a D6 is always a 6.
* This would appear to effect 4D6 weapons as well, so a Wyvern will always have 24 shots against a unit of 20 Ork Boyz.
* Confirmed that certain grenade types also become Blast weapons, such as the humble frag grenade, and it is confirmed that stratagems allowing a whole squad to throw them remain effective - so a Guard squad will get 60 attacks against a unit of 11 or more models.
* Also confirmed that armies that thrive on horde units, i.e. Orks and Tyranids, will still get a lot of love in the new edition - more rules to be revealed soon - this is just one part of 9e.
* The new abilities, pros and cons, will be reflected in the new points changes.

The bit about D3 always scoring a 3 on 6+ model units is interesting due to multiple D3 rolling attacks, such as the Skorpius' Belleros cannon.
If it targets a squad of 6, it fires 9 shots per those words. Thats unusually good. Unless by "each roll" they meant the entire roll and not specifically the die (which would fall back on 4DX actually not benefiting at all against 6-10model units for...some reason)