6th Ed - I'm in a happy place. |
After a weekend at Tim’s Summer Skirmish, a 500pt 6th Ed. Tournament involving 10 singles games and 3 doubles games, I feel ready to give a first impression of the new 40K.
Firstly what does 6th mean to my army?
The
majority of my experience has been with Codex: Space Marines (13/14
games) and I think I’m going to stick with them for the short – medium
term. I don’t think much has changed in terms of how best to employ them
strategically, they are still a durable, gun-line style army with the
ability to withstand assault from all but the most dedicated of combat
troops. As before they do not fare well in protracted assaults though,
unless you’re talking about Assault Terminators! The change to Rapid Fire and the introduction of Snap Fire
are both massive benefits to Vanilla Marines considering the nerf that
vehicles took; now you are as effective while mobile on foot as you are
standing still, Heavy Weapons excepting – but that’s a small price to
pay for not being totally reliant on vehicles to re-deploy. Mobility is
king at the moment and while Marines are not particularly fast, they can
move and still be very effective which is all you need to be as a
gun-line army.
Space
Marines trade off all-out shooting power for the durability of T4 and a
3+ save so they’re never going to be as good at shooting as armies like
Imperial Guard. In the past I’ve used this fact as an excuse to try to
build my Marine lists to be able to assault armies which they “cannot”
out-shoot. However I will now be building my Marine lists to be as
shooty as possible while also playing to their strength in durability.
Lastly,
assault. With the way wounds are now allocated, the reduction in the
general quality of cover saves and the introduction of Overwatch I
feel weight of numbers king for assaulting units but needs to be used
in conjunction with speed and positioning. Marines cannot do weight of
numbers in the traditional sense but their increased durability over
typical, assault-centric units acts as something of a trade-off.
Unfortunately, as I stated above, they are not fast and if you’re trying
to assault a shooty army (which is probably the only time you would
consider an assault to be tactically viable) chances are that they are
going to be able to put out enough shooting to ensure you never make it
into contact – if you are foot-slogging it from your deployment zone. So
unless you want to include assault vehicles or jump troops I would
forget assault as a strategy in all but the most desperate
circumstances.
In
terms of specifics I like the Thunderfire Cannon even more than I used
to, though it’s cover denial round is a little less useful because cover
is less reliable. Tactical Terminators are great, lots of durable
shooting, don’t leave home without a Cyclone. Attack Bikes are nice, not
sure it I’m going to lean towards Melta or Heavy Bolters but initially
I’ll be trying out Melta. After seeing flyers in action, I want a
Stormtalon Gunship in my list. I think sniper scouts will be making a
come-back into my list, just as a deck-chair unit though, cheep and
cheerful, hoping for the occasional contribution. Lastly at the moment
I’m very sold on combat tactics so I won’t be running any special
characters as HQ unless it’s Calgar. Combat Tactics is surely going to
be golden against very combat focussed armies and I want to try this out
as much as possible in the early stages of 6th.
Secondly what do I think about the rule-set?
So far, so good to be honest. Assault is frustrating but I’m playing Marines and this is not their forte, perhaps the frustration will be lessened with more specialist scrappers! I think all the comments about the rules being clunky and slow in places have been greatly exaggerated, the game is pretty smooth and I found assault to flow quite well. The emphasis put on movement due to the way wounds are now allocated makes the game feel more tactical and the changes to rapid fire, and the ability to snap fire Heavy Weapons makes the movement phase more involved (for my Marines at least) – this is a great thing.
Shooting is very powerful, even more so than in 5th,
because it’s the closest models that go down first you can keep a
charging enemy at bay with concentrated firepower and a couple of lucky overwatch kills, if he is not positioned well. Also the reduction in the average cover save, combined with the ability to focus-fire means shooting will be more effective in general.
Changes
to terrain are a mixed bag, I love the random tables for woods, ruins
etc but some people won’t. The reduction of the standard cover save is a
big deal for some armies and less so for others, I found myself
avoiding terrain trying to get to the IG lines as quickly as possible on
a few occasions because I felt the 5+ save wasn’t worth it, where in
the past I would have hugged terrain very carefully. As it turns out
charging down-field is not something Marines do well (or have ever done
well if I’m honest)
Vehicles
are suffering at the moment because of peoples’ general perception that
they won’t last 5 seconds looking down the barrel of a gauss-gun. Fair
comment but I think Necrons (whilst powerful) will be less prevalent
than Grey Knights were at the end of 5th and unless you are
facing down a ton of rapid firing gauss, Vehicles are not dead in the
water and do have an important part to play in 6th.
I’ll
finish off with Flyers, I love them. I saw a lot of Vendettas this
weekend and they were extremely effective. This will be tempered by the
introduction of units with skyfire and related rules, but at the
moment they are pretty amazing. If you have access to them in your
codex, you need to seriously consider making room for them in in your
next 6th Ed tournament list.
I finished the tournament with 6 wins and 3 losses in the singles games, placing second in the 2nd
bracket (for the second year running!) and 0-3 in my doubles games,
frankly we were out-classed and out-gunned, and I had a great time. In
summary I think 6th is a great breath of fresh air for a
system that had become somewhat stale, however for competitive
tournament play it may ruffle a few feathers and how tournaments adapt
to the changes remains to be seen. I am optimistic that 6th
will remain an enjoyable game for the foreseeable future though and I
plan to get a fair few games in between now and Christmas to get my
Space Marine army down-pat.
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