10th ed faction focuses

With the faction focuses starting to come out I figured I would see what my fellow archon think of them, Space Marines are still spehssss mehreeeening (though it looks like they won't be immune to *gasp* leadership stuff), tyranids now have our Agents of Vect stratagem as a one time use ability on their swarmlord (makes me wonder if we will keep it as a stratagem or if it will move to an ability on the archon), and chaos are looking proper chaosy with their ability to choose a boon with the chance to lose a few models for doin so

I like the looks of it.

Changing Combat Doctrines to three one-use abilities is a good move I think, and works quite well. I would hazard it may be an indication of what PfP will become too. I could imagine PfP becoming a set of one-use abilities in the same way.

So far, I've not seen anything in the focuses I really thought is broken or off-character, though Shadow of the Warp alarms me when it comes to traditionally low leadership units.

Welp ... the necron faction focus ... is actually good, reanimation protocols actually feel like they mean something now and their focus on having multiple characters leading swarms of mindless troops feels pretty on brand ... I am tentatively hopeful ... I shall remain so until our faction focus where kabalites, archon and raider, The darklance and liquifier gun, a cult focused stratagem, plus GWs philosophy on our army will be revealed

Archon_91 wrote:

Welp ... the necron faction focus ... is actually good, reanimation protocols actually feel like they mean something now and their focus on having multiple characters leading swarms of mindless troops feels pretty on brand ... I am tentatively hopeful ... I shall remain so until our faction focus where kabalites, archon and raider, The darklance and liquifier gun, a cult focused stratagem, plus GWs philosophy on our army will be revealed

I have to disagree.

It's sad to see Warriors being degraded even further, so that one of the only two core abilities Necrons get is "If you attach an overpriced character to the squad, your Warriors get to have the same BS they had in all prior editions".

Similarly, RPs seem entirely pointless. The whole issue in 8th was that you didn't get to make any rolls until your turn, so your opponent could just focus down a squad and the rule might as well not have even existed (I'm sure it's entirely coincidental that SMs have a core rule that lets them do exactly that). What's more, even when it does work, 1d3 wounds is nothing.

But I guess every non-SM army is just an NPC faction that exists to die and show how awesome SMs are.

To be fair, Warriors have a rule that increases RP to 1d6 wounds.

Count Adhemar wrote:

To be fair, Warriors have a rule that increases RP to 1d6 wounds.

But why would your opponent allow you to make that roll?

If you think automatically reanimating d6 models (d3+3 if on an objective) at the start of every turn unless the unit has been wiped out completely is bad I think we possibly have different definitions of what is good.

Count Adhemar wrote:

If you think automatically reanimating d6 models (d3+3 if on an objective) at the start of every turn unless the unit has been wiped out completely is bad I think we possibly have different definitions of what is good.

You still haven't answered how this is an improvement on the RP system in 8th, which received a tremendous amount of well-deserved flakk because 90% of the time it might as well not have existed.

The entire problem was that opponents would simply commit to wiping out units, so that you never got to make RP rolls at all.

Could you explain how you think this is fixed by rolling a single d6 rather than rolling per model killed?

I do think that a blob of 20 warriors sitting on an objective is going to be difficult to get rid of. Sure, you can focus down the unit, but that it's not like it's the only unit in the army; you're going to have to ignore other (possibly deadlier) elements of the army in order to do that.

We also don't know what the character leadership abilities are and we don't know what the necron stratagems are. There could be a lot of ways to buff RP even further.


At this point, I'm mostly just concerned that vehicles will be *too* tough. I suspect that dark lances are just going to be S12, AP-4, Dmg 1d6+1. So far, the anti-tank options that I've seen that aren't giant guns mounted on a tank seem a little lackluster. (for example, melta weapons are only going to wound rhinos 50% of the time)

We might be relying on our Scourge and talos with Haywire blasters to do a bunch of our heavy anti vehicle stuff (I suspect anything Haywire is going to be *anti vehicle x*) and darklances shift to being anti heavy monster or elite sniping weapons

krayd wrote:

I do think that a blob of 20 warriors sitting on an objective is going to be difficult to get rid of. Sure, you can focus down the unit, but that it's not like it's the only unit in the army; you're going to have to ignore other (possibly deadlier) elements of the army in order to do that.

I hope you're right. Regaining d6 models per turn is certainly a nice ability in theory.

Like I said, my main concern is whether they've learned the lessons of 8th, when Necrons rarely ever got to roll for RPs because opponents simply focused down units and (unlike in past editions) there were no mechanics for restoring units that had been completely wiped out.

What's more, we already know that Marines will be able to wipe out Warrior squads with ease thanks to Oath of Moment. I doubt they'll be the only ones.

krayd wrote:

We also don't know what the character leadership abilities are and we don't know what the necron stratagems are. There could be a lot of ways to buff RP even further.

That's the thing, though, buffing d6 to d6+d3 or to 6 or whatever doesn't matter if the squad is dead and you never get to make the roll.

(Or if the units that provide the buff are hilariously overpriced, relative to the buff they provide - as is the case currently.)

krayd wrote:

At this point, I'm mostly just concerned that vehicles will be *too* tough. I suspect that dark lances are just going to be S12, AP-4, Dmg 1d6+1. So far, the anti-tank options that I've seen that aren't giant guns mounted on a tank seem a little lackluster.  (for example, melta weapons are only going to wound rhinos 50% of the time)

I absolutely agree with you here. Honestly, the boost to vehicle toughness seems excessive (Rhinos at T9 just feels wrong). It seems like they could just have gone back to the old wounding chart and it would have had basically the same effect.

Leaving Meltas at S8 and not even giving them a boost to wound when within Melta range seems absurd.



Also, Chaos Daemons preview is up:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/05/09/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-chaos-daemons-2/

Shadow of Chaos looks interesting.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

krayd wrote:

At this point, I'm mostly just concerned that vehicles will be *too* tough. I suspect that dark lances are just going to be S12, AP-4, Dmg 1d6+1. So far, the anti-tank options that I've seen that aren't giant guns mounted on a tank seem a little lackluster.  (for example, melta weapons are only going to wound rhinos 50% of the time)

I absolutely agree with you here. Honestly, the boost to vehicle toughness seems excessive (Rhinos at T9 just feels wrong). It seems like they could just have gone back to the old wounding chart and it would have had basically the same effect.

Leaving Meltas at S8 and not even giving them a boost to wound when within Melta range seems absurd.

With the anti-vehicle (x) keyword I think the way it works is within range the meltas mortal wound any and all vehicles on a x+ and any additional damage if they also happen to roll a true wound ... I think they mentioned it briefly in the weapon profile article a little while ago but I could be interpreting/remembering that wrong

Archon_91 wrote:

With the (anti-vehicle

Yeah. But I'm pretty certain that the only weapon that we have that will have anti-vehicle is going to be the haywire blaster.

Dark lances are just going to be lascannons with better AP.
heat lances are just going to be 18' range meltaguns.
I'm guessing that the void lance might get bumped to S14.

It's just really weird to me that meltas are being moved from their traditional anti-tank role to basically anti-heavy infantry/anti-light vehicle. It seems to me that Sisters of Battle might be getting screwed on the anti-tank front more than anyone else because of this.[/quote]

Archon_91 wrote:

With the anti-vehicle (x) keyword I think the way it works is within range the meltas mortal wound any and all vehicles on a x+ and any additional damage if they also happen to roll a true wound ... I think they mentioned it briefly in the weapon profile article a little while ago but I could be interpreting/remembering that wrong

They already explained how Meltas work:



So Meltas do d6+2 damage at half range . . . which obviously doesn't help if they can't wound their target.


Regardless, I'm not too optimistic about our weapons getting Anti-Vehicle. Especially since, if they do, it will probably be Anti-Vehicle 4+, which is terrible.

Put simply, you do not want to be wounding your optimal target on a 4+. That was one of the reasons Dark Lances were horrible for 6th and 7th - because it took (on average) 3 Ravagers' worth of Dark Lances to kill a single Chimera.

As a controversial option, I could see an argument for Lance being a weapon type.
Back in the good old days, Bright and Dark Lances treated any armour value over 12 as 12. Perhaps a similar idea could exist in 10th, with Lance type treating any toughness over a limit as that limit. It would take us back to what Lances once were.
Granted, wishful thinking, but you never know until we see it.

Soulless Samurai wrote:

Archon_91 wrote:

With the anti-vehicle (x) keyword I think the way it works is within range the meltas mortal wound any and all vehicles on a x+ and any additional damage if they also happen to roll a true wound ... I think they mentioned it briefly in the weapon profile article a little while ago but I could be interpreting/remembering that wrong

They already explained how Meltas work:



So Meltas do d6+2 damage at half range . . . which obviously doesn't help if they can't wound their target.


Regardless, I'm not too optimistic about our weapons getting Anti-Vehicle. Especially since, if they do, it will probably be Anti-Vehicle 4+, which is terrible.

Put simply, you do not want to be wounding your optimal target on a 4+. That was one of the reasons Dark Lances were horrible for 6th and 7th - because it took (on average) 3 Ravagers' worth of Dark Lances to kill a single Chimera.

Yep that was my bad, I combined anti-vehicle with melta in my head

Leagues of Votann are up and GW added options from their gallowdark kill team so we might actually see the new Soulshackle kabalite kill team unit in our index, finally something being added and not everything being stripped away

Archon_91 wrote:

Leagues of Votann are up and GW added options from their gallowdark kill team so we might actually see the new Soulshackle kabalite kill team unit in our index, finally something being added and not everything being stripped away

It might be neat to have those options added, but the term 'arch-sybarite' is stupid. It's a *Dracon*!

krayd wrote:

Archon_91 wrote:

Leagues of Votann are up and GW added options from their gallowdark kill team so we might actually see the new Soulshackle kabalite kill team unit in our index, finally something being added and not everything being stripped away

It might be neat to have those options added, but the term 'arch-sybarite' is stupid. It's a *Dracon*!

We might, and I hope that we will get an actual Dracon when the time comes for our new Codex. Could certainly use a few more datasheets in our army.

I'm hoping that not showing up in the first year or so means they have a larger "Aeldari vs Slaanesh" release that sees updated plastic for our cousins aspect shrines and new stuff for us, but knowing GW it'll be "Emperors Children vs. Flavor of the week Space Marines" (an excuse to release two new primarchs)

Squidmaster wrote:

As a controversial option, I could see an argument for Lance being a weapon type.
Back in the good old days, Bright and Dark Lances treated any armour value over 12 as 12. Perhaps a similar idea could exist in 10th, with Lance type treating any toughness over a limit as that limit. It would take us back to what Lances once were.
Granted, wishful thinking, but you never know until we see it.

Isn't this just identical to giving the weapon Anti-Vehicle 4+ though? With Lance capping enemy armor at 12 and S8, you would always pierce a vehicle on at least a 4+, which is mechanically identical to what we know about the Anti-[whatever] rule.

Single shot weapons wounding on 4+ is just not going to be viable unless you can pack a crap ton of them into your list...and I'm not super eager to go back to the 8th edition days of tailoring your entire list around packing as much darklight as possible into your army.

---

Looks like Mechanicus is up, as an aside. They get either a defensive or offensive buff they can switch between and some mortal wound radiation bombardment thing for their detachment rule. A lot of it is restricted to either you or your opponent being in their respective deployment zones so I'm not sure how impactful it will turn out to be outside the first turn.

Eldar are up next, that will be our first look into how elves work this edition.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Isn't this just identical to giving the weapon Anti-Vehicle 4+ though? With Lance capping enemy armor at 12 and S8, you would always pierce a vehicle on at least a 4+, which is mechanically identical to what we know about the Anti-[whatever] rule.

No, because monsters (and anything else that happens to have T12+) are also a thing.
Again, I'll be surprised if it's not the same stats as a lascannon, but with better AP, just like 8th and 9th edition.

I noticed that they dropped the average AdMech BS from 3+ to 4+. However, they seem do be more potent in terms of damage output. Also, it is mitigated somewhat by the doctrina imperative which will give everyone +1 to hit if they don't move. The rad bombardment actually does look pretty nasty as an alpha-strike inhibitor. Basically, you have to choose between taking mortal wounds or not being able to use stratagems on your units on round 1. Also, choosing the latter could screw with getting any secondary points on round 1 that require taking objectives (if there are any).

krayd wrote:

TheBaconPope wrote:

Isn't this just identical to giving the weapon Anti-Vehicle 4+ though? With Lance capping enemy armor at 12 and S8, you would always pierce a vehicle on at least a 4+, which is mechanically identical to what we know about the Anti-[whatever] rule.

No, because monsters (and anything else that happens to have T12+) are also a thing.
Again, I'll be surprised if it's not the same stats as a lascannon, but with better AP, just like 8th and 9th edition.

I noticed that they dropped the average AdMech BS from 3+ to 4+. However, they seem do be more potent in terms of damage output. Also, it is mitigated somewhat by the doctrina imperative which will give everyone +1 to hit if they don't move. The rad bombardment actually does look pretty nasty as an alpha-strike inhibitor. Basically, you have to choose between taking mortal wounds or not being able to use stratagems on your units on round 1. Also, choosing the latter could screw with getting any secondary points on round 1 that require taking objectives (if there are any).

Ah good point. In that case, yeah, I suspect we'll be spending the edition using our "advanced beyond human understanding" dark matter weapons to scratch the paint off of enemy tanks. I suppose we'll see, I'd be surprised if they didn't choose to show off the Dark Lance in our faction focus...or at the very least something AT we can extrapolate off of.

The move to BS 4+ for the Mechanicus isn't surprising, that seems to be a common adjustment across armies (except for Space Marines, naturally). I'm not against it, it helps reduce lethality, opens up a smidgen of design space, and reduces the statistical impact of +1/-1 modifiers.

I've noticed a pattern with the army rules, a lot of them so far seem to be "if your army is [faction] then choose y or z at the start of your command phase and this will effect all [faction] units for the round ... and I think this is what PfP is going to be for us, either giving us advance/charge for the round or some form of "moves a lot -add a whole 1"- faster for move / advance for the round, and the other option will be a shooting or defensive buff ... I think combat drugs will be a datasheet ability for wyches and succubi, the detachment rule will probably be some for of webway assault deployment *can deepstrike at least 6 inches away instead of 9"* ... but I get a hint of what we will get tomorrow when they show off our kin

Aeldari are up and it is safe to say our Darklances are S12 Ap -3 Damage D6+2 kabalites will most likely have some "if this unit is on an objective" effect ... I do feel a bit bad foe the Aeldari, the gutting of the psychic phase really hurt them, but at least the Farseer kept Fortune ... and another interesting little aside in the article is that they don't take damage from failed psychic like "the other lesser races" ... so failing to hit with a psychic attack might cause damage?

Eldar losing Battle Focus to instead keep Miracle Dice +1 doesn't seem quite right.

Now +1M over a guardsman is their only claim to having heightened mobility and reflexes.