10th ed Adepticon Preview

TheBaconPope wrote:

How does everyone feel about each character having a whitelist of the units they're allowed to attach to? It's probably necessary for balance (and maybe to avoid weird rules interactions like mixing toughness values), but I feel it'll have a negative impact on list diversity.

Not a fan. It seems needlessly restrictive and I have a sinking feeling that we'll be among the worst affected.

It seems like it will only serve to highlight the limitations of our codex:

- No mobility options for HQs (so any units that can fly is off the table).

- No lieutenants at all (so no secondary HQs to join units alongside one our other HQs, nor any mini-HQs to act as super-sergeants for units).

- No 'lone-operative' types (so no HQs that can be more independent - they all have to just pick their one unit and stick with it).

I guess the one perk is that the Archon might finally, finally be able to buff Warriors/Trueborn in a transport. Of course, he'll also be stuck picking his nose the entire time because ranged weapons are for proper armies, but I guess that's an issue for another day.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/13/vehicles-are-even-tougher-in-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/

New vehicle rules. Looks like they're still using the same statline as all other units, but GW have finally decided to abandon the soft cap on toughness values.

A Rhino under the new rules is T9 with 10 Wounds and a 3+ save. No news yet on what AT weapons look like, that will be coming tomorrow it seems. Oh, and also explosions are USRs now, good.

Pros:
-Uncapping toughness is a good play I think. It will hopefully get away from the plasmagun equivalents being effective against basically all targets larger than a guardsman.
-Maybe our vehicles will be less vulnerable to small arms fire? Probably not though.

Cons:
-If a Rhino is T9, I expect us to be in the T6/T7 range. That may put is in an awkward defensive band where we get the worst of both worlds from AT and anti infantry.
-If GW keeps the same wounding chart, it doesn't matter how high toughness is if someone can fish for 6's with something like a hotshot las (high RoF, moderate AP, low S)

I agree that we could be open to having the worst of both worlds, however I’d wager we’d get modifiers/tricksto ease our vulnerabilities… I hope at least !

Hold up - reading through the article again I noticed this:

Quote :

At the same time, the Rhino receives two core abilities common across many factions – Deadly Demise and Firing Deck. The first of these dictates how many mortal wounds are suffered by nearby units when a vehicle explodes,** while the second shows how many embarked units can shoot from inside a transport. Both rules have previously existed in many different forms, and are now condensed into core abilities for clarity.

Emphasis mine. It appears that firing points are back. Fair enough, except Rhinos allow two embarked units to fire out of them. Did they mean to write models, or has GW made most transports de facto open topped?

I hope they meant models...but I also think we are going to see a slight boost in the Toughness of our transports, T8 Raiders, and T7 venoms ... T12 ravagers I think

Ideally, I'd like to see a return of the dracon, lesser haemonculus, and drachite (lesser succubus) and have them be put in the 'lieutenant' role. Then have the archon, haemonculus, and succubus be given 'lone operative' when without a squad, with the option to be put into a squad. Of course, I really don't expect GW to put that much thought into our army.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/14/weapons-rules-are-fun-and-flexible-in-the-new-warhammer-40000/

Article on how weapons work in 10th. Overall, I like what's being proposed here.

-Weapon types are gone. Instead, things like Assault and Heavy have been moved to USRs, so a weapon can be both Heavy and Assault for instance.
-Weapon types look to be positive benefits only now. Assault allows the weapon to fire after advancing, Heavy gives +1 to hit when stationary. Not sure how I feel about this...though I'm guessing it will balanced by the weapon's BS (3+BS with a -1 when moving is identical to a 4+BS with +1 when stationary)

-No massive increase in strength for weapons and a general reduction in AP. Melta guns are S9, AP -4, D d6 with +2 in melta range.

-Other USRs exist too - Mortal wounds on 6's, Exploding hits, etc.

-Twin linked is back to its own thing instead of just doubling the fire rate. Specifically it allows rerolling wounds and is no longer exclusive to ranges weapons.

Article tomorrow on transports maybe? Or more specifically Space Marine transports.

TheBaconPope wrote:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/14/weapons-rules-are-fun-and-flexible-in-the-new-warhammer-40000/


-No massive increase in strength for weapons and a general reduction in AP. Melta guns are S9, AP -4, D d6 with +2 in melta range.

Well, no massive str increase on *most* weapons.

Weapons that are supposed to be dedicated anti-tank will get massive increases to match the toughness increases in vehicles. For example, we know that railguns are S20, and the HK missile on the rhino is S14. I expect all other krak missile equivalents to be S14 as well.

It's interesting to me that the melta rifle is clearly not to be considered anti-tank, with S9. I definitely hope that there are much stronger melta weapons elsewhere (for example, I would not expect Fire Dragon fusion guns to be only S9). I hope that dark lances will be appropriately punchier than the standard issue lascannon.

Obviously they will take this opportunity to give us a suitable range of weaponry rather than essentially just poison and darklight. We might even get a weapon with more than 3 shots!

Count Adhemar wrote:

Obviously they will take this opportunity to give us a suitable range of weaponry rather than essentially just poison and darklight. We might even get a weapon with more than 3 shots!

I've always appreciated your sense of humour.

The new morale stuff looks interesting ... I hope we keep all of our leadership shenanigans and can take serious advantage of causing battle-shock more often than other armies

Those morale rules have a lot of potential utility - seems like a decent way to melee lock a unit to finish them off or take a key objective.

As usual though, morale is only effective if GW makes it so everyone suffers somewhat equally. Do we know what the rules for ATSKNF are yet? How powerful that ability is will determine how viable morale is overall imo

We'll know in a couple weeks when 10th is shown off at WarhammerFest ... my guess is Space Marines will have some extra resistance to battle-shock, however in all of the datasheets we've seen for Marines so far it seems that ATSKNF has translated into better LD than most as it hasn't been mentioned at all

Seeing the new psychic preview makes me feel like we are going to be missing out on buffs, unless PfP makes up for it somehow ... and I really hope that changes for this new addition as well

The Psychic rules look like 3rd/4th/5th edition, with some unit buff abilities thrown in. It looks like psychic tests might be gone, with perils replaced by risks built into some of the powers. I wonder if this means that psychic denial is gone as well. It also looks like powers like smite no longer deal mortal wounds.

Transport Rules were previewed today. You can disembark either before or after a vehicle moves, but if you disembark after, you can shoot but not charge. Land Raiders, however, get back their assault ramp ability, which allows units to charge after disembarking after the vehicle has moved. Of course, it would be nice if raiders get the same ability, but I suspect that we won't. Also, vehicles can have a Firing Deck stat, which indicates that number of models that can fire out from it while embarked. So, Rhinos get back their two firing ports, for example.

Hopefully "open-topped" and "assualt-vehicle" translate into "firing deck 6/11" and "units embarked on this transport can charge after disembarking" ... and the most interestingly sideways way of dealing with buffing the unit inside the transport ...

Archon_91 wrote:

and the most interestingly sideways way of dealing with buffing the unit inside the transport ...

Yeah. It's a little odd. However, I'm guessing that they just don't want to have any ambiguity with the 'units in transports don't count as being on the table' concept that they insist on adhering to, so this is the solution. It is made easier by the fact that stats that used to be unit characteristics have been rolled into the weapon stats. Unfortunately, it probably means that squad leaders won't be able to apply buffs to their units while embarked, unless their buffs also apply to vehicles that they are embarked in.

So, as I understand it, a transport can basically tape its occupant's guns to itself and fire them as if they were its own weapons. Which is...certainly a way to handle it. GW hypes this up as the transport occupants benefitting from buffs outside the vehicle since the attacks now come from the vehicle itself.

What it does not mention, is if a character embarked upon a transport gives its buffs to that transport. I suspect no, given that most buffs seem to be written around the new attachment rule, and characters will presumably be unable to attach themselves to transports.

So...I think that an Archon riding in a Raider with some Kabalites or whatever will still be unable to give that unit buffs! We'll see what the full rules entail, but I think our characters are again (again!) going to be reduced to beatsticks either twiddling their thumbs in the passenger seat or footslogging across the board 8" at a time with their elite retinue.

TheBaconPope wrote:

So, as I understand it, a transport can basically tape its occupant's guns to itself and fire them as if they were its own weapons. Which is...certainly a way to handle it. GW hypes this up as the transport occupants benefitting from buffs outside the vehicle since the attacks now come from the vehicle itself.

What it does not mention, is if a character embarked upon a transport gives its buffs to that transport. I suspect no, given that most buffs seem to be written around the new attachment rule, and characters will presumably be unable to attach themselves to transports.

So...I think that an Archon riding in a Raider with some Kabalites or whatever will still be unable to give that unit buffs! We'll see what the full rules entail, but I think our characters are again (again!) going to be reduced to beatsticks either twiddling their thumbs in the passenger seat or footslogging across the board 8" at a time with their elite retinue.

You didn't think GW would miss an opportunity to make our characters absolute arse now, did you?


Incidentally, is everyone looking forward to our characters having no wargear and all of 1 enhancement for customisation?

I guess it depends on what that wargear is and how upgrades on units work ... but I do feel like we are going to have even fewer options on our characters than we already do

Archon_91 wrote:

I guess it depends on what that wargear is and how upgrades on units work ... but I do feel like we are going to have even fewer options on our characters than we already do

Hopefully, our characters will get to keep their blast pistol options.

More hopefully, someone will remind the rules design team that the kits were made *specifically* for easy kitbashing, and you just might sell a lot more kits by allowing swaps between them, so there is a good bottom-line reason for doing so.

krayd wrote:

More hopefully, someone will remind the rules design team that the kits were made *specifically* for easy kitbashing, and you just might sell a lot more kits by allowing swaps between them, so there is a good bottom-line reason for doing so.

It seems they remebered this for other armies with their "how to kitbash so and so" articles ... so they might remember if for us this time

krayd wrote:

Archon_91 wrote:

I guess it depends on what that wargear is and how upgrades on units work ... but I do feel like we are going to have even fewer options on our characters than we already do

Hopefully, our characters will get to keep their blast pistol options.

Meh. A "ranged" weapon with a 6" range might as well be single-attack melee weapon.

The headline of this edition is 'less bloat.' Which is at least partially being translated to 'fewer/condensed options.' Which is definitely overdue for stuff like space marine bolters.

But I fear that GW may look at our emaciated codex that had every scrap of fat trimmed out of it in 2014 and decide that it needs yet more taken away.

We can rest assured, at least, that Space Marines are getting a redundant HQ with a slightly different defensive profile. Vect knows they were starved for choice in that particular category.