Hey everyone! Now that I have a few more games of the new edition of 40k under my belt, I figure its time for me to go over some of the changes and how I feel about them. This will be an opinion piece, so if you disagree about something, make sure to comment and tell me what you think.
First off, why don't we talk about the elephant in the room. The psychic phase. This is the main thing about the game that has been radically altered, and because of it, the way we build lists and play needs to change a bit as well. Now, I'm sure most of you already know how the psychic phase works, and how psychic tests have changed, but what does it mean for our psykers? Well, frankly, it's going to mean that you no longer will be casting all of your psychic powers very reliably, especially if you roll low on the "winds of magic" roll. If you're wanting to cast a power with a warp charge cost of 1, you're only getting a 50% chance of success with a single dice, and if you want to cast a power with a cost of 2 or more, you're going to be using a lot of your dice. Denying the witch has also gotten a lot more interesting. No longer do you have to sit idly by while your opponent casts his blessings, and even with no psykers in your army, you have a pretty good chance of denying at least one power a turn, and if you have a lot of psykers, you can basically stop them from casting any powers at all.
Because of all these things, I think we'll start to see a shift in the meta towards taking lots of psykers to control the psychic phase. Armies without access to psykers could also have a very hard time, especially against armies that are summoning tons of Daemons.
This brings me neatly to my next point. Daemonology, specifically Mealific, is crazy! I attended a small local tournament on the weekend, which I brought a Thousand Sons army to, and I decided to spend the day trying to summon as many Daemons as possible. The first game, all but one of my psykers blew themselves up with Perils trying to summon, and not a single Daemon made the field, but in my second game I managed to summon a Lord of Change, 2 units of Horrors with icons, iridescent horrors and instruments, a unit of Bloodcrushers and a Herald of Slaanesh. For those of you counting at home, that's a total of 665 points of Daemons! The last game I got 2 units of Horrors again, the Herald, the Bloodcrushers, and a unit of Plaguebearers out. This is with an army that is suffering Perils of the Warp on ANY doubles, and I was still able to summon lots of units and minimize losses of my psykers as well. This army was not at all optimized for summoning, and yet managed to do ok at it anyways.
So what did I learn from this army? Well first off, If you can summon even a single Daemon unit with a mastery level, i.e a unit of Horrors, a Greater Daemon, or a Herald with a mastery level, you now have a unit that is likely to be able to summon a unit of two a turn, if you have lots of psykers elsewhere. If you were to really optimize your summoning, you could be easily getting 300-400 points worth of Daemons a turn.
I also noticed that while Chaos Daemons have the monopoly on the amount of dice you can get, thanks to cheap heralds coming in sets of 4 and troops that can have mastery levels, the most reliable unit for summoning is a Daemon Prince from the Chaos Space Marines codex with a spell familiar, as you can summon without getting a perils on any double, and you can do it with fewer dice, thanks to the re-rolls a spell familiar grants. The next best after Daemons themselves, is oddly enough, Eldar. These guys can generate a huge amount of dice, and Farseers are practically immune to Perils, thanks to their ghosthelms. To me, this makes absolutely no sense, as the Eldar are largely about keeping down the influence of Chaos, particularly Iyanden and Ulthwe, but oh well, I guess.
So, moving on from the Psychic phase we have some other important changes. The Vehicle Damage Table has changed and has made vehicles far more survivable, which is great news to pretty much all my armies, as I like to use tanks and daemon engines. It'll be nice to be able to field Defilers and Forge/Maulerfiends without having them immediately blow up every game anymore, and it'll maybe help out my poor Orks in their crappy Trukks and Battlewagons that used to blow up when you looked at them, but now will need at least a stiff breeze to do the job.
Jink is another thing that was changed, and there are pros and cons for my Eldar. The main benefit will be when facing lists with Drop Pods, or playing on tables without too much cover, as I'll always be able to get at least a 4+ cover save. The downside is that now you must declare a jink before any rolls are made, and if you do, you snap fire in your next turn. Honestly, with the mobility of the Eldar, and the fact that we prefer tables lush with terrain of all sorts, I don't see myself using Jink all that much, as I'll be likely to be getting cover anyways.
Another big change was to how Flying Monstrous Creatures work. Gone are the days of swooping up the table, before switching to gliding mode turn 2 to get an assault off. Now, you have to wait a turn before assaulting if you've come from swooping mode. Lame. On the plus side, you are much harder to ground now, as you now only test for grounding once at the end of each phase, and then only if you suffered an unsaved wound. This means that you're Creatures are more likely to get to the enemy in one piece, but have to hang out and have a smoke or something before they're allowed to do anything. Kind of weird, but ok. I should also mention that Smash is now a single attack, as is Vector Strike, aside from if you're attacking flyers or Flying Monstrous Creatures. I would also be remiss to not talk about the humongous nerf that Heldrakes took. Their Baleflamer is now Hull Mounted, and with Vector Strike losing potency, they really are barely worth the points, if they are at all.
Last, but certainly not least is the change to how armies are built. You can now take as many detachments as your heart desires (meaning as many force orgs as you want, so long as you keep taking an HQ and 2 Troops per detachment) while still being "Battle Forged", or you can take an Unbound army in which the Game Designers have apparently just thrown their hands up and stormed off shouting that they quit and you can just do what you want. Super Heavies, Titans, and Gargantuan Creatures are all part of the main rule book and so undeniably part of the game as well. Honestly, I think we'll still mostly be seeing Battle Forged armies that follow the regular force org chart, with only the occasional gimmicky unbound army, or super heavy, at least in my local meta.
So where do my armies stand after these changes? Well, I think Daemons are going to be super powerful now, even though Monstrous Creatures are going to have a bit harder time, as you'll be able to potentially get them back through Daemology, as well as get tons of troops very quickly, and lots of other shenanigans with things like Cursed Earth and the Grimoire and stuff like that.
Eldar I think will remain largely the same, though the change to psychic powers may slow them down a bit as you will be far less likely to get all of your buffs off. That being said, we still have a truly ridiculous amount of firepower, and some great rules to see us through with what I think will be hardly a bump.
Chaos Space Marines are going to have an even harder time now, unless they're summoning Daemons. The only really powerful unit we had access to is now but a shadow of its former glory, and though vehicles got better, Daemon Engines are still pretty expensive for what you get. The problems of over-costed units and tons of trap options and stupid, useless units still exists, and likely will for some time.
Lastly, with Orks, its impossible to say for sure. With a new codex on the horizon and some very interesting rules rumored to come, it could be a new dawn for our green-skinned friends. Most of the changes didn't really affect the buggers, but they got a minor buff in their vehicles getting marginally harder to blow up, so we'll see when the new Codex drops.
Overall, I think that 7th edition offers a lot of interesting things, and its been quite fun so far. I definitely look forward to playing some more games and hopefully I can get a battle report up fairly soon for you guys. Thanks for reading!
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