Adventures in sixth edition.

So I've gotten in several games now, experimented with altering lists for this edition, and messed around enough to get what I feel is a general grasp of the game. Here's what sticks out to me so far:

Way too many random effects to keep track of.
Wait, now I gotta roll for Warlord Traits, Mysterious Objectives, Psychic Power generation, PLUS existing randoms like Combat Drugs, etc? I don't think I've ever played a tabletop game with this many randoms, it's becoming a peculiarity of Warhammer 40K. Naturally, most of these randoms aren't even that significant, with the exception of Psychic Powers. (Wee, I get a re-roll on shooting but only when the enemy is trying to steal from the hotdog stand at the other end of the table) IMO, Warlord traits is just an annoyance for the most part, with the average roll contributing nothing while every once in a while you get something dramatic like Move Through Cover for the entire army. Not a fan of this new aspect...

Haywire Grenades/Meltabombs HURT!
Should you make the mistake of parking your Landraider next to a nearby Wych convention, except to see it wrecked faster than you can say "ZOMG FORGOT VEHICLES ARE WS3 NAO!". The new Weapon Skill stat on vehicles makes them incredibly vulnerable to getting satchel charged into oblivion by grenade wielding models of all types. Even the mightiest tank will fall apart to a mere handful of successful grenade hits. Suffice it to say that grenading vehicles into wreckage might just be the most cost effective way of dealing with them. Wyches and Assault Squads with meltabombs are looking seriously scary since their high mobility lets them pounce on any expensive, shiny piece of military hardware. I think vehicles in general have a new weakness here, since they can't simply pull the ol' "I moved real fast and now you can't hit me!" trick.

Get a bigger hammer.
Back in fifth edition, my Templars sported a lot of Lascannons. Now I'm glad for it, because the rules of sixth edition seem to favor high quality firepower over spam. Lascannons, Melta weapons, anything with high strength or strength bonuses starts looking really appealing when you consider glancing hits no longer get you a free roll on the damage table. While the addition of hit points does reduce overall vehicle longevity, the ability to break clean through the armor and get some bonuses added to a damage roll is invaluable. Things like back shots with Heat Lances, Lascannons against low AV, etc all get you a chance to bypass the slow death by attrition which comes from glancing a target to death. This is doubly true of infantry transports, whose passengers don't appreciate their tank turning into a glowing fireball. (Which doesn't happen when you wreck it through glances)

Assaults are a risky mess with vague wound allocation rules.
Even Thunderhammer/Stormshield Terminators now take the occasional casualty when charging from Snap Fire. Generally speaking, heavily armored specialists like Assault Marines, Terminators, and Incubi aren't going to be too phased by incoming fire before an assault, but lesser armored units like Wyches do take significant losses from time to time. This is slightly balanced by the ability to hurl a grenade into a squad before charging it, but taken in addition to previous edition changes scaling back the strength of assaults, and what I think you may be left with is the pendulum swinging away from assaulting as a viable general strategy at the moment. HOWEVER, I predict that the assault units THEMSELVES may become significantly more powerful, since the new Rage rules and Hammer of Wrath allow some specific units to make truly overwhleming numbers of attacks against their targets. Watch for developments in new codex releases, as of now Death Company are making SIX attacks on the charge with jump packs and HOW, image what the new Khorne Berzerkers will be like Also, while the new wound allocation system works pretty good for shooting, it gets confusing in close combat with multiple types of weapons, chaotic battle lines, and tricky "next closest model" distances after the front line gets removed.

Fliers are tricky business.
Obviously, you ideally want to move your flier on the board obliquely and make a three turn strafing run over the entire table. Unfortunately, the moving chaos of battle/terrain/enemy models/friendly models/carelessly placed beer mugs pretty much make it impossible to get more than 2 consecutive turns of shooting, and possibly only one. Matter of fact, against aggressive armies, you may in fact get only ONE turn of shooting before their army is scooting into your deployment zone, leaving you to fly off the table and vainly try to draw a bead on them next turn. Also, enemy forces usually deploy in heavy cover on their back line, leaving you with less than choice targets as you zoom across foreign territory. This isn't to discount the effectiveness of fliers, since only being hit on 6s means most players will completely ignore them and their altitude allows you excellent LOS to potential targets. (Don't count on flanking enemy tanks for back shots though, not unless you've got Hover Mode.) I think there is some potential here, particularly for the Dark Eldar Voidraven, since fliers do have one major thing going for them: Durability. The enemy either won't shoot them or misses them entirely.

The new wound allocation system for shooting is brutal but balanced.
This new mechanic gives and takes away equally: On one hand, careful placement of big bullet shields at the front of your units can make them insanely more durable. On the other hand, getting flanked or losing that perfect squad arrangement through a tank shock or other shenanigans will leave you with the agony of watching all those special weapons troops get picked off by concentrated enemy fire. It also means big holes get chewed into your lines, preventing bubble wrap from working like it used to. Obviously, this is another impediment to assaulting, since shooting a charge target and then taking snap fire will only ever make a charge less likely to be successful. There's tricks here involving intentionally limiting your own line of sight, but generally, pretty simple movements will let you get better angles on incoming enemy squads. You definitely think about the game differently, particularly as squads get into enemy lines and you have to figure out how to keep a formation that won't let the enemy pick off your Lightning Claw Terminators while your Storm Shield models watch helplessly. Invariably, things get a lot messier as the game wears on and new firing angles develop. (Way better than the old retarded system)

Sensible Shooting.
Remember, you can choose the firing order of your weapon types to work to your advantage. Is there a lone Storm Shield Terminator in front of two Terminators with Lightning Claws? Have your Kabablite Warriors shoot them FIRST with splinter weapons, then zap the less well protected Termies with Blasters and Dark Lances once their lead warrior falls. Shooting in general has really collected some impressive benefits, with Snap Fire allowing you to make the best of any bad situation (Shooting while moving, shooting enemies before they charge), but the ability to open fire with specific weapons first is quite possibly the most significant. Now you can fire more efficiently than ever before, with you, not your opponent deciding the order in which saves will be rolled. Combine this with flanking your opponent, and there's a lot to be said for mobile, high firepower armies. (Cough*DarkEldar*cough)

Objectives, objectives everywhere.
FIVE OUT OF SIX MISSIONS ARE OBJECTIVE BASED! If you don't at least consider the possibility that you might want to hold/capture an objective, don't expect many wins. Especially with concept of random objective point values, you really need to be able to challenge the enemy for an objective and push them off of it. (It's certainly possible for your enemy to end up camping on all the good objectives, as I found out) While static gunlines might also look appealing again, camping on low value objectives, or holding less than your opponent isn't ideal. Particularly with secondary objectives rewarding aggressive play, it begins to look like strong offenses are key here. Dark Eldar players may find that bogging down enemies on their home plate with Wyches while Kabalites hold the home turf is viable, since just like the old days, contesting an objective will keep the enemy from the prize.

Blasts and explosions needed more work.
Uh, I'm supposed to randomize casualties from those? Seems like someone didn't think this one through, I'd prefer one player or the other chose allocation (even with the imbalance that would result) since randomizing is so time consuming. I do like the fact that EXPLODING BARRELS OF SLUDGE have come to life in my Warhammer 40K. *plays Doom theme*

Arrex wrote:

Way too many random effects to keep track of.
Wait, now I gotta roll for Warlord Traits, Mysterious Objectives, Psychic Power generation, PLUS existing randoms like Combat Drugs, etc? I don't think I've ever played a tabletop game with this many randoms, it's becoming a peculiarity of Warhammer 40K. Naturally, most of these randoms aren't even that significant, with the exception of Psychic Powers. (Wee, I get a re-roll on shooting but only when the enemy is trying to steal from the hotdog stand at the other end of the table) IMO, Warlord traits is just an annoyance for the most part, with the average roll contributing nothing while every once in a while you get something dramatic like Move Through Cover for the entire army. Not a fan of this new aspect...

Well, I like the Warlord Traits and the Psychic thing is very familiar to me as a result of my experiences with WFB. Mysterious Objectives though is something I will have to get used to, but it is easier to keep up with once you played a few games in.

For the Warlord Traits I only ever choose my traits from the Strategic Trait which helps in memorizing my traits. The other traits are cool to an extent, but they are not army-wide as those of the Strategic trait and the allure of the Night Attacker trait is more than enough reason for me to take the trait in the first place.

Arrex wrote:

Haywire Grenades/Meltabombs HURT!
Should you make the mistake of parking your Landraider next to a nearby Wych convention, except to see it wrecked faster than you can say "ZOMG FORGOT VEHICLES ARE WS3 NAO!". The new Weapon Skill stat on vehicles makes them incredibly vulnerable to getting satchel charged into oblivion by grenade wielding models of all types. Even the mightiest tank will fall apart to a mere handful of successful grenade hits. Suffice it to say that grenading vehicles into wreckage might just be the most cost effective way of dealing with them. Wyches and Assault Squads with meltabombs are looking seriously scary since their high mobility lets them pounce on any expensive, shiny piece of military hardware. I think vehicles in general have a new weakness here, since they can't simply pull the ol' "I moved real fast and now you can't hit me!" trick.

Get a bigger hammer.
Back in fifth edition, my Templars sported a lot of Lascannons. Now I'm glad for it, because the rules of sixth edition seem to favor high quality firepower over spam. Lascannons, Melta weapons, anything with high strength or strength bonuses starts looking really appealing when you consider glancing hits no longer get you a free roll on the damage table. While the addition of hit points does reduce overall vehicle longevity, the ability to break clean through the armor and get some bonuses added to a damage roll is invaluable. Things like back shots with Heat Lances, Lascannons against low AV, etc all get you a chance to bypass the slow death by attrition which comes from glancing a target to death. This is doubly true of infantry transports, whose passengers don't appreciate their tank turning into a glowing fireball. (Which doesn't happen when you wreck it through glances)

Agreed. But at the same time, this gives a Dark Eldar player many avenues of killing a vehicle. You can either kill vehicles by glancing it to death or by blowing it up. This is perhaps why Dark Eldar Lances kicks a lot of ass these days for their inherent nature of glancing stuff (not pun intended) is now a great strength in 6th edition and their Ap value only makes this aspect so much more rewarding when one of the shots penetrate.

Arrex wrote:

Assaults are a risky mess with vague wound allocation rules.
Even Thunderhammer/Stormshield Terminators now take the occasional casualty when charging from Snap Fire. Generally speaking, heavily armored specialists like Assault Marines, Terminators, and Incubi aren't going to be too phased by incoming fire before an assault, but lesser armored units like Wyches do take significant losses from time to time. This is slightly balanced by the ability to hurl a grenade into a squad before charging it, but taken in addition to previous edition changes scaling back the strength of assaults, and what I think you may be left with is the pendulum swinging away from assaulting as a viable general strategy at the moment. HOWEVER, I predict that the assault units THEMSELVES may become significantly more powerful, since the new Rage rules and Hammer of Wrath allow some specific units to make truly overwhleming numbers of attacks against their targets. Watch for developments in new codex releases, as of now Death Company are making SIX attacks on the charge with jump packs and HOW, image what the new Khorne Berzerkers will be like Also, while the new wound allocation system works pretty good for shooting, it gets confusing in close combat with multiple types of weapons, chaotic battle lines, and tricky "next closest model" distances after the front line gets removed.

Assault is a high-risk, high reward situation in my opinion as reaching there is a challenge it itself due to the random charge length and also overwatch. But once you are able to slam into the unit, that unit is bound to suffer a lot of pain (and not the good kind either).These days any assaulting unit will have to be durable enough and also be escorted by a tanker or two in order to jump in and do their job. That and having different weapons for different phases of combat is also just as important as you can kill your opponent in waves.

Arrex wrote:

Fliers are tricky business.
Obviously, you ideally want to move your flier on the board obliquely and make a three turn strafing run over the entire table. Unfortunately, the moving chaos of battle/terrain/enemy models/friendly models/carelessly placed beer mugs pretty much make it impossible to get more than 2 consecutive turns of shooting, and possibly only one. Matter of fact, against aggressive armies, you may in fact get only ONE turn of shooting before their army is scooting into your deployment zone, leaving you to fly off the table and vainly try to draw a bead on them next turn. Also, enemy forces usually deploy in heavy cover on their back line, leaving you with less than choice targets as you zoom across foreign territory. This isn't to discount the effectiveness of fliers, since only being hit on 6s means most players will completely ignore them and their altitude allows you excellent LOS to potential targets. (Don't count on flanking enemy tanks for back shots though, not unless you've got Hover Mode.) I think there is some potential here, particularly for the Dark Eldar Voidraven, since fliers do have one major thing going for them: Durability. The enemy either won't shoot them or misses them entirely.

Flyers are good in breaking the backs of armies and should be considered as such. They are there as a big hammer and thus their first appearance of the table is the most important aspect of flyers. Of course things will change with armies having some anti-air ability as the new codices and updates come into being.

So far, I am finding that Razorwings are doing an admirable job of just coming in and scare the crap of everyone. For some reason no one actually thinks that the aircraft is capable of 4 large blast templates whenever it fires those missiles and even when I told my opponent that they are one-shot weapons, they will try to shoot it down with prejudice.

Arrex wrote:

The new wound allocation system for shooting is brutal but balanced.
This new mechanic gives and takes away equally: On one hand, careful placement of big bullet shields at the front of your units can make them insanely more durable. On the other hand, getting flanked or losing that perfect squad arrangement through a tank shock or other shenanigans will leave you with the agony of watching all those special weapons troops get picked off by concentrated enemy fire. It also means big holes get chewed into your lines, preventing bubble wrap from working like it used to. Obviously, this is another impediment to assaulting, since shooting a charge target and then taking snap fire will only ever make a charge less likely to be successful. There's tricks here involving intentionally limiting your own line of sight, but generally, pretty simple movements will let you get better angles on incoming enemy squads. You definitely think about the game differently, particularly as squads get into enemy lines and you have to figure out how to keep a formation that won't let the enemy pick off your Lightning Claw Terminators while your Storm Shield models watch helplessly. Invariably, things get a lot messier as the game wears on and new firing angles develop. (Way better than the old retarded system)

Sensible Shooting.
Remember, you can choose the firing order of your weapon types to work to your advantage. Is there a lone Storm Shield Terminator in front of two Terminators with Lightning Claws? Have your Kabablite Warriors shoot them FIRST with splinter weapons, then zap the less well protected Termies with Blasters and Dark Lances once their lead warrior falls. Shooting in general has really collected some impressive benefits, with Snap Fire allowing you to make the best of any bad situation (Shooting while moving, shooting enemies before they charge), but the ability to open fire with specific weapons first is quite possibly the most significant. Now you can fire more efficiently than ever before, with you, not your opponent deciding the order in which saves will be rolled. Combine this with flanking your opponent, and there's a lot to be said for mobile, high firepower armies. (Cough*DarkEldar*cough)

Agreed in so many ways. Not to mention that flanking shots and focus firing can change things around rather quickly. I personally love the positional importance of the game and the layered activation of the order of things. Even assault is also done in a unit by unit base and thus requires one to think of bait and switch tactics at times.

I personally love that some of the shoting elements of 4th edition is back in the game, and it helped me transitioned into 6th much more seamlessly as it felt more natural for me to try to get the best angles for a painful killing shot (that and my Tau training says that positioning and shooting is king).

Arrex wrote:

Objectives, objectives everywhere.
FIVE OUT OF SIX MISSIONS ARE OBJECTIVE BASED! If you don't at least consider the possibility that you might want to hold/capture an objective, don't expect many wins. Especially with concept of random objective point values, you really need to be able to challenge the enemy for an objective and push them off of it. (It's certainly possible for your enemy to end up camping on all the good objectives, as I found out) While static gunlines might also look appealing again, camping on low value objectives, or holding less than your opponent isn't ideal. Particularly with secondary objectives rewarding aggressive play, it begins to look like strong offenses are key here. Dark Eldar players may find that bogging down enemies on their home plate with Wyches while Kabalites hold the home turf is viable, since just like the old days, contesting an objective will keep the enemy from the prize.

I personally aim to wipe them off objectives with arrogance and firepower. Nonetheless I do understand the need for some footslogging elements to become linebreakers or objective contesters such as Beastmaster units.

As for Random objectives, I prefer the idea that I let my opponents trigger those objectives first before me as any bad objectives that are triggered can be ignored for better ones. I found that out in many hilarious ways as my opponents are struck with exploding objectives.