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Oh boy! Another Faction Focus article. We're bound to get tons of generalised and otherwise banal information about things we already know insight into Chaos in 9th!

Here we go!!!

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:Psychic Awakening: Faith and Fury brought us plenty of amazing new Stratagems, but we’ve still found ourselves feeling obligated to bring along an endless sea of Chaos Cultists (a Tide of Traitors, you could say) to pay for them.

Well thank Khorne that the brains trust at GW saw fit to increase the price of cultists by 50%, thereby discouraging their use. Of course, the actual problem was the lack of incentive (outside of Red Corsair armies) to take actual Chaos Space Marines in your Chaos Space Marines army. The good news here is that CSMs have also gone up in cost... wait... that's bass ackwards.

Anyway, moving on...

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:You’ll now find yourself with plenty of points to spend on all those powerful Stratagems and will, in fact, be rewarded for not choosing to spread out into additional Detachments – more Daemonforge for everyone!

So, in other words, "Everyone gets more CP than before. That includes Chaos Space Marines! WOW!", which we of course already knew. Oh, and a reprint of a stratagem from the Chaos Codex. Such insight!!!!

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:The updated Blast weapons rules will breathe new life into many of their weapon options by making them far more reliable when targeting larger units. We won’t even have to wait for a new codex as the rules kick in from Day 1!

So, in other words, "The Blast rules that everyone gets also includes Chaos Space Marines armies! WOW!" The amount of new information in this article is simply incredible.

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:The newest edition will give your Vehicles a chance to keep firing away even while smashing Imperials to bits with their metallic hands and/or teeth – this will make the shooting/assault versatility of most Daemon Engines feel like an asset rather than a missed opportunity.

So, in other words, "The new vehicle rules that affect everyone also affect Chaos Space Marines armies! WOW!" I am utterly floored by the sheer injection of knowledge this article is providing.

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:It will be much, much harder for an enemy player to hide from your wrath in the new edition. No longer can your opponent’s units cower behind walls they think you can’t clamber over, or try to fill the floor of a ruined building so you can’t climb up. The new terrain rules are much friendlier to aggressive assaults – which, in turn, allows us to be very unfriendly to our opponents’ armies!

You know what? I'm going to give him this one. This is an example of actually explaining how a new set of rules might impact an army. Finally.

And then we're onto reprinting existing rules for units we already know about. But, to be fair, the guy is at least explaining options for units (Heavy Flamer + Combi-Flamer combo on a Defiler to take advantage of the new vehicle rules, for example) rather than just meaningless waffle.

So if the other articles were solid 0/5 efforts, we'll give this one a 2/5 for at least containing a paragraph and a half of actual useful information.

Voss wrote:

RedNoak wrote:

Voss wrote:

Eh. Its situational to the point of 'if I'm not rolling tons of dice or have 5+ flamers' I'm never going to use it, it turns no brainer again, and that is bad.

aha. this is literally what SITUATIONAL means....

No it isn't.
[...]
That isn't situational. You've either included a unit in your list that's worth firing in overwatch AND your enemy is foolish enough to charge it, or you don't spend the CP. It is just that simple.

situational
/sɪtjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n(ə)l,sɪtʃʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n(ə)l/
Learn to pronounce
adjective
1.
relating to or dependent on a set of circumstances or state of affairs.

If you have something worthwihle than you'll gonna use the overwatch strat... if not, you'll not use it. Maybe you get charged by a vehicle/character with only a couple of wounds left... maybe you'll hope to cut down enough chaff to survive the combat... maybe you'll use it as a deterrant (your example^^)... those are all situations in which the strat may or may not be used... hence its situational....

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'm assuming the popping into melee is to prevent weird edge cases like that Kroot Conga Line from happening again:

Spoiler:

God I love that picture. The look on the Kroot player's face.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's funny how GW went from a terrible fallback mechanic in 7th to an equally terrible, but polar opposite fallback mechanic in 8th.

I keep saying they make changes by swinging a pendulum rather than looking for a middle ground. Look no further than the changes to falling back between editions.

A Playtester Who Should Know Better wrote:It will be much, much harder for an enemy player to hide from your wrath in the new edition. No longer can your opponent’s units cower behind walls they think you can’t clamber over, or try to fill the floor of a ruined building so you can’t climb up. The new terrain rules are much friendlier to aggressive assaults – which, in turn, allows us to be very unfriendly to our opponents’ armies!

(previous post; You know what? I'm going to give him this one. This is an example of actually explaining how a new set of rules might impact an army. Finally.)

Yea I noticed this in the (rather dull) article as well. Based on what some play testers said on Youtube, GW is trying to get rid of a lot of the "gamey" type stuff, and one of the worst was the 5 guys on a ruins ledge are unassailable because you psychically can't fit your models on that same ledge. Also my giant magnus model can't attack models that are on a second floor even though they come to his chest. Based on the above statement it shows that GW is trying to fix the worst abuses, (if they do or not is another issue) which is good.

 insaniak wrote:
And if you don't want to pay for books before reading them, support your local library.

Point was i won't pay for books before not reading them, but yes, library seems a good solution, thanks. Mod note acknowledged.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's funny how GW went from a terrible fallback mechanic in 7th to an equally terrible, but polar opposite fallback mechanic in 8th.

It shows the enduring optimism of players that after two editions that were both terrible in totally different ways, people are hopeful that this time, they'll get it right.

Completely disagree. Fall Back itself is not a bad mechanic, it's just lacking any kind of deterrent or cost to it which is more of a caveat. If your models got to make even a single attack against a unit falling back then that would at least be something.

Fallback as a concept is fine, its just that there is no real downside to do it.

The only time its a downside is if you have literally nothing else to shoot with in your army, which is only really possible at like 100 points or something.

Which means that GW must have play tested with unit vs unit instead of army vs army.

 Imateria wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's funny how GW went from a terrible fallback mechanic in 7th to an equally terrible, but polar opposite fallback mechanic in 8th.

It shows the enduring optimism of players that after two editions that were both terrible in totally different ways, people are hopeful that this time, they'll get it right.

Completely disagree. Fall Back itself is not a bad mechanic, it's just lacking any kind of deterrent or cost to it which is more of a caveat. If your models got to make even a single attack against a unit falling back then that would at least be something.

I thought the cost was that the unit falling back couldn't do anything else.

The issue isn't its cost, it's that it is automatic and easy as its counters are kinda rare (surrounding) or gamey (tripointing) and is something that you're more or less always willing to do (as it puts the assaulting units in a weak spot).
Even being able to chop off a model or two when they fall back isn't a solution. And to be honest, I don't have a clue how you solve this problem outside of moving fall back to the end of the close combat phase and allowing assaulting units to make some move if their opponents falls back. Which isn't great either imho.

Slowing down the movement of the fastest melee outliers and most reliable deep strike melee threats.

Improve terrain rules and how units interact with it. (It appears they've done this)

Move falling back to the end of the shooting phase. You want to avoid getting hacked apart? Fine, run but you're not getting rewarded with a full shooting phase. Requiring some counter assault elements makes the game more dynamic and reduces the no brainer shooting skew currently without downsides.

* Expand Tau by finally putting the "Empire" into it by adding melee centric auxiliaries. A one phase army is a balancing nightmare.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Oh boy! Another Faction Focus article...

So if you know you're going to be disappointed by these Faction Focus articles, why even click on them and give GW the traffic?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I'm assuming the popping into melee is to prevent weird edge cases like that Kroot Conga Line from happening again:

Spoiler:

God I love that picture. The look on the Kroot player's face.

yukishiro1 wrote:
It's funny how GW went from a terrible fallback mechanic in 7th to an equally terrible, but polar opposite fallback mechanic in 8th.

I keep saying they make changes by swinging a pendulum rather than looking for a middle ground. Look no further than the changes to falling back between editions.

There definitrly is the pendulum issue in general, but I'd argue they seem to be swinging it a bit more gently these days, and with better intent rather than trying to huck it into the next county.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So if you know you're going to be disappointed by these Faction Focus articles, why even click on them and give GW the traffic?

Can't you tell how much fun I'm having ragging on these things?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
... but I'd argue they seem to be swinging it a bit more gently these days...

There is absolutely zero evidence of this.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So if you know you're going to be disappointed by these Faction Focus articles, why even click on them and give GW the traffic?

Can't you tell how much fun I'm having ragging on these things?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
... but I'd argue they seem to be swinging it a bit more gently these days...

There is absolutely zero evidence of this.

If you're having fun, that's fair.

And I feel the changes to terrain and flyers are good examples of giving the pendulum a push instead of yeeting it.

Intent doesn't always reflect end result though, so who knows how much it'll mess with the meta.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just had a thought: would the Overwatch change count as a Iron Hands nerf since they have a buffed Overwatch?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Just had a thought: would the Overwatch change count as a Iron Hands nerf since they have a buffed Overwatch?

Depends on whether or not one of the "other ways" to get overwatch is having atsknf on your datasheet.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
And I feel the changes to terrain and flyers are good examples of giving the pendulum a push instead of yeeting it.

The fact that everyone seems to be saying that this edition will be vehicle heavy and infantry will be going back in the box suggests otherwise, though.

 insaniak wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
And I feel the changes to terrain and flyers are good examples of giving the pendulum a push instead of yeeting it.

The fact that everyone seems to be saying that this edition will be vehicle heavy and infantry will be going back in the box suggests otherwise, though.

All claims made based on hyperbole and incomplete data.

I get there is a lot of apprehension right now but most of this threads has been people making rather big claims off of small bits of information.

I mean people were saying that melee was still dead before today's reveal. Who knows what people will claim tomorrow?

 Eldarain wrote:


Move falling back to the end of the shooting phase. You want to avoid getting hacked apart? Fine, run but you're not getting rewarded with a full shooting phase. Requiring some counter assault elements makes the game more dynamic and reduces the no brainer shooting skew currently without downsides.

This is a really interesting suggestion.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:


Move falling back to the end of the shooting phase. You want to avoid getting hacked apart? Fine, run but you're not getting rewarded with a full shooting phase. Requiring some counter assault elements makes the game more dynamic and reduces the no brainer shooting skew currently without downsides.

This is a really interesting suggestion.

Yeah... I can't see a fault with that. I mean, sure, it negates certain rules for units but those can always be changed. Otherwise as an overall general rule that looks like it'd just work and solve all problems immediately.

There's potentially some funky interactions because it means some units in your army get to move after others shoot. In really weird circumstances this could, for example, allow you to "fall back" forward into a place you couldn't have moved into during your movement phase, because you cleared our the enemy screens with shooting from other units. But that doesn't seem like a big issue to me. And it already exists with stuff like fire and fade and doesn't seem to create any massive issues.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
So if you know you're going to be disappointed by these Faction Focus articles, why even click on them and give GW the traffic?

Can't you tell how much fun I'm having ragging on these things?

 ClockworkZion wrote:
... but I'd argue they seem to be swinging it a bit more gently these days...

There is absolutely zero evidence of this.

If you're having fun, that's fair.

I'm actually having a laugh with him as it sounds exactly like what I'm reading too. It's so sad that it becomes comical.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:


Move falling back to the end of the shooting phase. You want to avoid getting hacked apart? Fine, run but you're not getting rewarded with a full shooting phase. Requiring some counter assault elements makes the game more dynamic and reduces the no brainer shooting skew currently without downsides.

This is a really interesting suggestion.

It doesn't make sense because the opponent would just keep the unit there for road blocking purposes. If the unit doesn't die on their turn, the melee unit will be less useful.

But that's what makes it interesting. It's a trade-off where each side gets something. The melee unit gets protected from a phase of shooting, while the player falling back gets to save their unit for a turn. It makes falling back into what it actually should be: a way for your unit to save its skin, not a way to expose the opponent's melee unit to your gunline.


The main problem with falling back right now is nobody does it to save the unit, they just do it so they can shoot the hell out of you. 90% of the time a gunline would happily remove the whole unit as casualties in the morale phase if it could, just to expose the melee unit to fire during their own turn.

I am actually all for falling back being a required strategem. I mean, think of the battlefield. A bunch of guardsmen are firing from cover and then they get charged by a bunch of orcs. Once that happens and melee combat occurs, its just this pitched melee battle and everyone is hacking away.

How common is it that the entire guardsmen squad suddenly ignores all the melee going on and falls back... That to me sounds like they literally ran away from combat already. And if they broke and ran like that, usually there is nothing left of such a squad after that. It has lost all coherency and organisation and will only get re-organised after the whole battle is over.

It would have to take a special command given to the whole squad for them to stop fighting for their lives and "fall back". And the question is if they will even be allowed to do so. Just because you want to fall back doesn't mean the enemy will let that happen. Yet, in 8th ed, it happened with a 100% success rate.

Imagine a pitched chaotic melee fight with people fighting for their lives with each other. How easy is it to "fall back". I mean, imagine if you are squaring off against another guy with a sword who is hell bent on killing you. How do you go from swinging at each other to putting some distance between you and that guy... He is not going to stand there frozen like an idiot while you "fall back..." What is this? gentlemen's agreement? lol

"My word, Private! Those Genestealers sure gave us a good licking, didn't they?"
"Absolutely Sergeant. I never much liked Corporal Jenkins, but to see him in so many pieces."
"Disgusting."
"Most disagreeable!"
"Well, now we can just wander away from these vicious aliens and let the rest of the lads give 'em what for from afar."
"Capital! We shall follow your lead Sergeant."
"Tally ho men! Let the big guns deal with these suddenly frozen and likely very confused xenos."

And then the 4 Guardsmen left from Jim's squad walked out of combat with essentially no penalty and the far more expensive Genestealer unit was completely torn apart by incoming fire.

Honestly, I'd be fine with Overwatch staying 100% as it is now if Fall Back was fixed.

It will be a big part of how 9th will play out I think. Therion's rumors point to tri pointing no longer locking up units.

His rumor correctly predicted Overwatch being relegated to a Strat and not just free bullets so I'm more inclined to believe them now (having doubted that change)

 Eldarain wrote:
Therion's rumors point to tri pointing no longer locking up units.

That's actually worse. I've never done tri-pointing myself, but it was one of the few (gamey) ways of stopping fallback from decimating assault units. If that's just gone, and anyone can fallback from anyone regardless of positioning, then things just got harder for assault armies, even with Overwatch being a strat.

On the flipside tripointing might be gone because we'll ve seeing a change to falling back that makes it less automatic.

This is one of those things I'm eagerly waiting to know more on.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
On the flipside tripointing might be gone because we'll ve seeing a change to falling back that makes it less automatic.

This is one of those things I'm eagerly waiting to know more on.

One of the bigger dominos for sure.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
On the flipside tripointing might be gone because we'll ve seeing a change to falling back that makes it less automatic.

This is one of those things I'm eagerly waiting to know more on.

It's kind of make or break for me on this thing.

They've fixed one of the biggest problems with vehicles, they're adding an expandable and adaptable system to terrain (even if their verbiage is a bit confusing at times). The table sizes thing is slowed, but then again they're just doing that to sell the mats they make so it's really not that big a deal (please folks - stop pretending its for any other reason!). Neither is the "move one guy now HW is at -1" thing. That's annoying, and reeks of their inability to be consistent with rules design, but again, not a huge deal. The new missions concept sounds interesting, and like the terrain stuff, is easily adaptable. Army structure changes sound good, and I like any idea that divorces CP generation from army construction. Flyers? Whatever. I've never used one. If I ever do then great. The changes to reserves sound positive (I'd love to be able to walk my Genestealers on from the table edge of my swarm markers get removed on the (now smaller) table).

So it really it comes down to Falling Back, if they've made any changes to how shooting works (ie. S5 vs T8/9 should = NO! & 'see the tip of a spike = everything can fire at you' bull gak) and what, if anything, they've done with morale. They're the main 4 to me.

Those are the things I want to know about the most as well, especially fallback and morale.

And I want to see those new fw books. If they don't fix what they did to my super heavys and R&H I will be .

 puma713 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
If you're hunkering on your own table edge you've already lost the game the way the new missions work.

Leafblower IG would probably disagree with you. But we'll see. I think I misunderstood how it works. I assumed that the deploying would work like outflanking used to work and you'd "move on" to the board. Now that I re-read it, it sounds like if the enemy is 1" from your board edge, which will happen quite rarely.

Based on flier article non-flyers deploy 6" from table edge with outflank. And if you are coming within 6" of your own edge you don't care about proximity. So you can do that to units within 7" of your table edge. Or be very close to fire melta/flamer/rapid fire/easy charge. Getting within 10" of ork player can be risky if there's bunch of goff meganobz in outflank. Virtually automatic charge...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RedNoak wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

RedNoak wrote:

Voss wrote:

Eh. Its situational to the point of 'if I'm not rolling tons of dice or have 5+ flamers' I'm never going to use it, it turns no brainer again, and that is bad.

aha. this is literally what SITUATIONAL means....


not so thrilled about the 'cool headed' rule, though... we all know what 'far in between' generally means for GW...

really hoping to see fall back as a strategem, that would make me wanna field my orks close combat centric again

Cool headed is only for narrative (crusade) play anyway.

thanks for clarifiying bacon! did miss the crusader part
i dont think crusader will have any impact in matched play, outside of friendly games

Wouldn't be surprised to see some units get that in day1 errata anyway. Overwatch ability is coming anyway for some units


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Latro_ wrote:
That set to defend is interesting because it's not replacing overwatch its instead of.

That says to me you charge anyone and they'll get a plus one to hit you for all charges if they are in cover. In a lot of cases I'd prob take that instead of overwatch! Hmmm maybe a nerf in disguise for assault units charging

It also gives a tangible bonus to hold objectives with HTH troops.

I mean, 10 Ork Boyz with Slugga and Choppa, Set To Defend (or is it the other one?) would be what, 30 Attacks hitting on a 2+ against charging units?

Well 10 survivors maybe. 10 boyz would die before getting to strike


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
And I feel the changes to terrain and flyers are good examples of giving the pendulum a push instead of yeeting it.

The fact that everyone seems to be saying that this edition will be vehicle heavy and infantry will be going back in the box suggests otherwise, though.

All claims made based on hyperbole and incomplete data.

I get there is a lot of apprehension right now but most of this threads has been people making rather big claims off of small bits of information.

I mean people were saying that melee was still dead before today's reveal. Who knows what people will claim tomorrow?

Ah yes playtesters who have played the game are just hyperboling and incomplete data

Says a lot about playtesting quality(or lack of it) if they do it on incompete data!

Or the "wait for full rules" crowd is again, like 100th time out of 100 cases in past 2 decades, AGAIN. As usual. That crowd never uses logical thinking and just are "it is fine it is fine it is fine" mantra sticking head into sand.

So they are wrong 100 time out of100