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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So... Combat Patrol.

Why?

I mean you can play 40k at this low level without the need for a special set of rules. The only difference here seems to be 3 rather than 12 CP, and only Patrol.

So why bother?

Well, the requirement of only 1 HQ is a good start, plus only 1 troop. For newer players, this lets you grab a Start Collecting box and be close to a playable force out of the gate. A decent game store should keep some kind of "New player" section up and running, with small missions printed out and maybe some "House armies" that can be rented and tried out.

As for Patrols? Looking past the Dark Eldar, who have their own special rules that make them needed, it's also a good way to slip in allied forces. When your Guard want a small bit of Sisters of Battle stitched on, just grab a patrol instead of a Battallion. When your Blood Axes want a dedicated melee arm, they can take some Goffs along as a patrol for a Warboss and some lads, and so on.

Useful things! Not everyone will use them of course, but, always better to have more tools in the box, you know?

Reece again so make of it what you want, but on the podcast today he said that tri-pointing itself was very different in 9th than it is in 8th - not just the way you get out of it, but the way you tri-point to begin with. He also said again that melee is the biggest change in 9th and that there is other stuff still coming that changes things fundamentally, and Frankie said it's "harder to stay engaged" in melee than before. They both then said that in 9th whatever you charge with pretty much dies the next turn no matter what, so they think people are going to be taking smaller combat units since they'll just die on the next turn, and that this was a deliberate choice by the developers because they didn't like stuff being trapped in combat.

So another clear sign that falling back is even easier than it was in 8th, and that melee units will be shot off the table after charging even more easily in 9th than in 8th.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

BaconCatBug wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
Faction Focus: Drukhari

So, taking 3 Patrols grants you a whopping 0CP bonus.

-6 CP for 3 patrols.
+2 for Warlord Refund
+4 for Raiding Force

yukishiro1 wrote:It's a decent buff, but it does mean you can't take 3 of anything (except troops), so I'm not sure how much play it's really going to get for competitive lists.

Oh ye of little imagination. You're looking this wrong. In an 3 Detachment game, a Drukhari Overlord has the following choices for a 12 CP base army:

Battalion: 2-3 HQ, 3-6 Troops, 0-6 Elites, 0-3 Fast Attack, 0-3 Heavy Support, 0-2 Flyers with one Subfaction trait
Brigade: 3-5 HQ, 6-12 Troops, 3-8 Elites, 3-5 Fast Attack, 3-5 Heavy Support, 0-2 Flyers with one Subfaction trait
Triple Patrol: 3-6 HQ, 3-9 Troops, 0-6 Elites, 0-6 Fast Attack, 0-6 Heavy Support, 0-6 Flyers with 1-3 Subfaction traits (limits on selections made by taking more than 1 Subfaction)

Tell me who isn't signing up for Triple Patrol when it requires 1 more HQ than a Battalion with much more flexibility on list building?

Ok, that's fair. I was going on the assumption people wanted to take one of each type (coven, cult, kabal). If you double up with two patrols from the same division of the army you can then take 3x any choice you want. So this does let you effectively take 2 of the 3 parts of the army and take 3x something from one.

It does, but if you want all 3 units of the same thing opperating under the same rules then that means 2 detachments running with the same benfits. Since you generally get better milage from your Venoms and Kabalites being Flayed Skull and your Archons, flyers and Ravagers as Black Heart it can create a problem. Speaking of flyers, there's only 1 flyer slot per detachment. I know people generally don't like flyers but since they are our only other option for heavy firepower besides Ravagers then we're kind of stuck taking them, and they can't be Coven.

Overall it's funny how the unchanged Raiding Force ability now works as intended when taking 3 patrols when before it was a liability, but the questions over whether you can use it at 1000pts or less and run 6 detachments will be dealt with in the exact same way this rule was dealt with before when battalions got their CP boost 2 weeks after the codex launch "Lol, no, it's for narrative, you're not supposed to use it". It's also never been anything more than a poorly thought out response to the horrible fracturing of our army.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Reece again so make of it what you want, but on the podcast today he said that tri-pointing itself was very different in 9th than it is in 8th - not just the way you get out of it, but the way you tri-point to begin with. He also said again that melee is the biggest change in 9th and that there is other stuff still coming that changes things fundamentally, and Frankie said it's "harder to stay engaged" in melee than before. They both then said that in 9th whatever you charge with pretty much dies the next turn no matter what, so they think people are going to be taking smaller combat units since they'll just die on the next turn, and that this was a deliberate choice by the developers because they didn't like stuff being trapped in combat.

So another clear sign that falling back is even easier than it was in 8th, and that melee units will be shot off the table after charging even more easily in 9th than in 8th.

No We NeEd MoRe InFo

Yeah did anybody not expect this?

It is more realistic if nothing else.

As long as this changes are reflected in the point costs I'm fine with it.

 Tyran wrote:
It is more realistic if nothing else.

As long as this changes are reflected in the point costs I'm fine with it.

How is it more realistic?

Actually, which part are you referring to as more realisitc?

yukishiro1 wrote:
Reece again so make of it what you want, but on the podcast today he said that tri-pointing itself was very different in 9th than it is in 8th - not just the way you get out of it, but the way you tri-point to begin with. He also said again that melee is the biggest change in 9th and that there is other stuff still coming that changes things fundamentally, and Frankie said it's "harder to stay engaged" in melee than before. They both then said that in 9th whatever you charge with pretty much dies the next turn no matter what, so they think people are going to be taking smaller combat units since they'll just die on the next turn, and that this was a deliberate choice by the developers because they didn't like stuff being trapped in combat.

So another clear sign that falling back is even easier than it was in 8th, and that melee units will be shot off the table after charging even more easily in 9th than in 8th.

This really would be a shame if so. It feels like they've gone through a lot of effort to fix many of the biggest issues in 8th. Dropping the ball on melee would be quite unfortunate.

 JNAProductions wrote:


Actually, which part are you referring to as more realisitc?

The gameplay changes to discourage being tied in combat so melee units are more of about damage and disruption.

Because lets be honest a Basilisk refusing to blow up a unit of Genestealers because they were eating a few guardsmen didn't made much sense.

Or viceversa, an Exocrine refusing to vaporize a Death Company squad because they surrounded a termagant.

 Tyran wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:


Actually, which part are you referring to as more realisitc?

The gameplay changes to discourage being tied in combat so melee units are more of about damage and disruption.

Because lets be honest a basilisk refusing to blow up a unit of Genestealers because they were eating a few guardsmen didn't made much sense.

Or viceversa, an Exocrine refusing to vaporize a Death Company squad because they surrounded a termagant.

Except wouldn't it be more realistic to let you fire into combats, rather than making waltzing out of combat a breeze?

 Imateria wrote:

Spoiler:

yukishiro1 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:

BaconCatBug wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:
Faction Focus: Drukhari

So, taking 3 Patrols grants you a whopping 0CP bonus.

-6 CP for 3 patrols.
+2 for Warlord Refund
+4 for Raiding Force

yukishiro1 wrote:It's a decent buff, but it does mean you can't take 3 of anything (except troops), so I'm not sure how much play it's really going to get for competitive lists.

Oh ye of little imagination. You're looking this wrong. In an 3 Detachment game, a Drukhari Overlord has the following choices for a 12 CP base army:

Battalion: 2-3 HQ, 3-6 Troops, 0-6 Elites, 0-3 Fast Attack, 0-3 Heavy Support, 0-2 Flyers with one Subfaction trait
Brigade: 3-5 HQ, 6-12 Troops, 3-8 Elites, 3-5 Fast Attack, 3-5 Heavy Support, 0-2 Flyers with one Subfaction trait
Triple Patrol: 3-6 HQ, 3-9 Troops, 0-6 Elites, 0-6 Fast Attack, 0-6 Heavy Support, 0-6 Flyers with 1-3 Subfaction traits (limits on selections made by taking more than 1 Subfaction)

Tell me who isn't signing up for Triple Patrol when it requires 1 more HQ than a Battalion with much more flexibility on list building?

Ok, that's fair. I was going on the assumption people wanted to take one of each type (coven, cult, kabal). If you double up with two patrols from the same division of the army you can then take 3x any choice you want. So this does let you effectively take 2 of the 3 parts of the army and take 3x something from one.

...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
So... Combat Patrol.

Why?

I mean you can play 40k at this low level without the need for a special set of rules. The only difference here seems to be 3 rather than 12 CP, and only Patrol.

So why bother?

It's just marketing speak for draw people back in who left for smaller, skirmish (3-20 model) games. Nothing really changed.

They've been touting the "Play a game in your lunchbreak/half an hour" thing since forever.

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

Not sure what way you think the points costs are wacky. Someone put the 3 bikes at nearly 160 earlier (53+ points each), and the Bladeguard are likely in the 30-40 point range....so 200 isn't TOO far off.

Still think the primaris bikes should be sub-40 points though.

The bikes will most likely be like 35-40 points each at launch to sell the models, that's just how GW runs. They'll get nerfed to 45-50 points for 2020 if they sell enough models in the meantime.

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

your ancient is too expensive. you must have used the chapter ancient instead of primaris. Who knows what is special rules or war gear is, but if he's basically a normal ancient, then he'll be around 80-85 points.

footfoe wrote:

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

your ancient is too expensive. you must have used the chapter ancient instead of primaris. Who knows what is special rules or war gear is, but if he's basically a normal ancient, then he'll be around 80-85 points.

Did you forget he added 20% price hike as it's assumed/hinted it's average 20% increase? But that's average increase so not all units will be increasing that much. Some might go up 5%, others 30% etc.

Flyers being able to shoot even when moving away from melee, because they never fall back, just move, was a surprise to me. A pleasant one, considering flyers have been hit by the modifier and terrain rules fairly hard.

footfoe wrote:

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

your ancient is too expensive. you must have used the chapter ancient instead of primaris. Who knows what is special rules or war gear is, but if he's basically a normal ancient, then he'll be around 80-85 points.

like i said dont know much about astartes (especially nomenclature )
yes, i used the 'normal' ancient... but still 220 points for 3 guards with PS & SS AND 3 bikes thats way to low isnt it?

assuming the guard has at least the same statline like an intercessor the PS & SS alone would be minimum 15 points... so thats about 35 per guard, which leaves 40 points per primaris biker ((35x3) + (40x3) = 225 with an average increase of 15% for the rest)

RedNoak wrote:

footfoe wrote:

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

your ancient is too expensive. you must have used the chapter ancient instead of primaris. Who knows what is special rules or war gear is, but if he's basically a normal ancient, then he'll be around 80-85 points.

like i said dont know much about astartes (especially nomenclature )
yes, i used the 'normal' ancient... but still 220 points for 3 guards with PS & SS AND 3 bikes thats way to low isnt it?

assuming the guard has at least the same statline like an intercessor the PS & SS alone would be minimum 15 points... so thats about 35 per guard, which leaves 40 points per primaris biker ((35x3) + (40x3) = 225 with an average increase of 15% for the rest)

That sounds about right though. That's paying full price for the sword and shield as well. Some marine units only pay 2 points for a storm shield (vanguard vets). I also assume they will have a better than intercessor stat line, with at least 1 more attack and maybe a third wound.

The bikes should be in the 35-40 point range. An attack bike with heavy bolter is like 37 points, and they aren't any better than that. Even with a points bump of 20%, anymore more than low 40s is going to make them pretty worthless.

 Therion wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

But it is. In three of the deployments you can outrange their entire army, and in the rest you can choose what gets shot, and even that gets shot from movement / mont’ka and not kayuon.

Congrats, you win because the opponent never moves....

I mean, this is a strange take. 36 inches is more than enough to lock down the battlefield.

Well we can still stop Aircrafts from moving can't we ? They can end within 1" but not on top of models. So we can still block an aircraft with models right ?

 Carnage43 wrote:

Spoiler:

RedNoak wrote:

footfoe wrote:

RedNoak wrote:
...but they've removed OVERWATCH combat armies will do GREAT!!!

btw... just going over the pointcost of the primaris... i'm not a astartes player so maybe someone with more experience could help out...

current points with about 10-20% increases:
lieutenant 80
intercessors 100
Ancient 115
thats about 300 points... leaves 200 pts for 3 guard veterans (power sword and stormshield) and 3 bikes? that seems... kinda off???

your ancient is too expensive. you must have used the chapter ancient instead of primaris. Who knows what is special rules or war gear is, but if he's basically a normal ancient, then he'll be around 80-85 points.

like i said dont know much about astartes (especially nomenclature )
yes, i used the 'normal' ancient... but still 220 points for 3 guards with PS & SS AND 3 bikes thats way to low isnt it?

assuming the guard has at least the same statline like an intercessor the PS & SS alone would be minimum 15 points... so thats about 35 per guard, which leaves 40 points per primaris biker ((35x3) + (40x3) = 225 with an average increase of 15% for the rest)

That sounds about right though. That's paying full price for the sword and shield as well. Some marine units only pay 2 points for a storm shield (vanguard vets). I also assume they will have a better than intercessor stat line, with at least 1 more attack and maybe a third wound.

The bikes should be in the 35-40 point range. An attack bike with heavy bolter is like 37 points, and they aren't any better than that. Even with a points bump of 20%, anymore more than low 40s is going to make them pretty worthless.

They are much better than attack bike, especially when it comes to assault.

yukishiro1 wrote:
The bikes will most likely be like 35-40 points each at launch to sell the models, that's just how GW runs. They'll get nerfed to 45-50 points for 2020 if they sell enough models in the meantime.

Enough with this stupid "overpower to sell models" conspiracy.
For every new model that is overpowered, three others are underpowered.

For example...nearly every primaris unit on it's initial release?

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:

stratigo wrote:

 Therion wrote:
Tau are short range. Arguing anything else is insanity. I regularly outranged the entire Tau alpha strike in majors and the ETC tournaments. The 9th edition small board will do wonders in adressing that issue, but I feel their competitiveness will still come down to the points cost lottery like everyone else.

I don't see how an army whose threat range revolves around 36 inches is in any way short.

But it is. In three of the deployments you can outrange their entire army, and in the rest you can choose what gets shot, and even that gets shot from movement / mont’ka and not kayuon.

Congrats, you win because the opponent never moves....

I mean, this is a strange take. 36 inches is more than enough to lock down the battlefield.

Strange take? It’s not a take of any kind. I don’t deal in opinions but facts proven on the table. I played about 400 games with Eldar in 8th, and range was the edge vs Tau. Those games include going 5-0 and 100/100 in BTC 2020 and going 5-1 in ETC 2019 with CW. I lost 5 games with CW all edition, and I don’t think I surrendered a single tournament point vs Tau. It’s also not a take to ask you to pick up a measurement tape. Tau are badly outranged in many deployments for the opening turn, and if they need to deploy on the line and blow mont’ka just so they can shoot at one flyer that didn’t phantasm out of the way, they already lost. They got range problems that are being adressed in 9th by making the table smaller. 36” is becoming nearly the old 48” because deployment zones aren’t so deep that you can just put 11 flyers or 9 grav tanks touching the table edge and being safe.

Range is also how you actually engage the Tau castle when you do get to shoot. You go within 36” of only the units that you will destroy, clearing that area and forcing the Tau to move to fire back, giving them negative modifiers wherever applicable, and denying kayuon forever. Too often bad players, even when doing alpha, just drive into the range of everything, shoot, and wonder what happened when the kayuon return fire wipes their army.

yukishiro1 wrote:
Reece again so make of it what you want, but on the podcast today he said that tri-pointing itself was very different in 9th than it is in 8th - not just the way you get out of it, but the way you tri-point to begin with. He also said again that melee is the biggest change in 9th and that there is other stuff still coming that changes things fundamentally, and Frankie said it's "harder to stay engaged" in melee than before. They both then said that in 9th whatever you charge with pretty much dies the next turn no matter what, so they think people are going to be taking smaller combat units since they'll just die on the next turn, and that this was a deliberate choice by the developers because they didn't like stuff being trapped in combat.

So another clear sign that falling back is even easier than it was in 8th, and that melee units will be shot off the table after charging even more easily in 9th than in 8th.

Reese also said the Stompa was going to be good so I'd take his meta predictions with salt. Especially if he wasn't playing with the new points or the new erratas when doing playtesting.

 Aaranis wrote:
Well we can still stop Aircrafts from moving can't we ? They can end within 1" but not on top of models. So we can still block an aircraft with models right ?

Sort of. You can maximize coherency distance and deny areas of the board where they can end their move- but you can't stop them from moving.

However, there is a practical limit on how much of a table you can deny to a model that can move 45+"
You can definitely set things up so that in the enemy movement phase, they can't move so they're closer to a character than any other model. for example. That's easy, except for really small armies.

But swamping the entire board so that can't end their movement anywhere is fairly impractical.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

No We NeEd MoRe InFo

Yeah did anybody not expect this?

That you'd mine for salt? No. But Reece has a very mixed record on his meta predictions in the past and has been blindsided by combos people have come up with so while I appreciate his insight, I'll take it with some salt.

For the record, the only reason I, and I assume others, said we needed more info was to wait and see before dumping your army on eBay, or otherwise declaring certain parts of the game to be "dead".

Thinking about the claims by Reece a bit more: If locking people in melee was against the designer's intentions highlighting the Wyches' ability to lock units in combat, much less stuff like the Word Bearer's Ashen Axe that came out of Psychic Awakening, seems a bit odd.

I have hope that we'll at least see some kind of change to fall back, but if not, then perhaps large melee units will still be useful as they can wrap and trap multiple targets more easilly to lock at least one unit into combat. Not sure, but if there is a way to move block people into combat it's certain the meta will gladly take it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So I just spotted a rumor that has it the Outriders are 6PL, so about 40-45ppm.

Voss wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Well we can still stop Aircrafts from moving can't we ? They can end within 1" but not on top of models. So we can still block an aircraft with models right ?

Sort of. You can maximize coherency distance and deny areas of the board where they can end their move- but you can't stop them from moving.

However, there is a practical limit on how much of a table you can deny to a model that can move 45+"
You can definitely set things up so that in the enemy movement phase, they can't move so they're closer to a character than any other model. for example. That's easy, except for really small armies.

But swamping the entire board so that can't end their movement anywhere is fairly impractical.

Was mainly concerned about this because of this stratagem for the new AdMech flyer:

There were discussions about this on our thread about the usefulness of it, especially if it's counterable by screening, which looks to be still the case, although a BIT more difficult than in 8th.

Have you seen one of those things in person yet?

You'll be fine.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

Thinking about the claims by Reece a bit more: If locking people in melee was against the designer's intentions highlighting the Wyches' ability to lock units in combat, much less stuff like the Word Bearer's Ashen Axe that came out of Psychic Awakening, seems a bit odd.

I have hope that we'll at least see some kind of change to fall back, but if not, then perhaps large melee units will still be useful as they can wrap and trap multiple targets more easilly to lock at least one unit into combat. Not sure, but if there is a way to move block people into combat it's certain the meta will gladly take it.

Locking people in combat with a skill or strat (the new flamer Pteryxi etc) is very different from tri-pointing. One is an odd game mechanic that comes about from rules interactions and the other is something the unit is supposed to be actively doing.
If tri-pointing was introduced as it's own rule and with an example (or even just a general - can't fall back if the enemy is behind you rule) that'd make sense. But I don't think you can read into anything otherwise.