6th and you...

wrote this a couple of days ago but sill forum wouldn't let me post for some reason....

So now we've all played a fair amount of 6th edition I though tit would be interesting to see how people feel their armies have changed or got better/worse under 6th.

Nids - all in all, I think nids have got a lot, lot, lot better in 6th. In 5th the main problems we had were - Missile launchers were the best weapon money could buy and our cryptonite. With all the vehicles plodding about missile launchers (or the amry variant thereof) were the best most cost efficient choice out there and they ID'd our multiwound T4 with no save and wounded our big guys on a 2 with no save. To top that off, we couldn't break open vehicles without throwing units into assault with them and getting ourface blow off by the contents :-\ - Throw in the Grey Knight force weapon instant death fiesta and it felt like Matt Ward was specifically writing codex's to kill us...

All that has changed now - Missile launchers aren't what they once were and vehicles are being used as paperweights instead of transports! - although even if a vehicle popped up it wouldn't be nearly as hard to kill for us nids now, throw in the new psychic powers and it's hard to impressed by nids these days. I've even brokwn out my much maligned warriors, although there's still enough S8 that they will probably go back into the box once again, and them coming out if probably my overexcitement!

Blood Angels I haven't played with as much but I gotta think they're stock has gone down a tad (considering where they were in 5th I mean). The razorback isn't what it was, feel no pain took a hit, and so did assault. I think they're stil good, don't get me wrong - but they lost out a bit, which is probably a good thing from where they were to be fair!

So how do you think your army changed?

I think my marines, or at least the way I played marines, are still pretty much the same on average. Soem units got much better - terminators for example are not quite a plauable choice with the nerf to power weapons. Our vehicles are a little bit worse but do have enough armour to avoid being galnced by the majority of small weapons fire. Combat is about the same as we do get rapid fire overwatch. And we do have flyers, which is pretty cool!

Eldar on the other hand got better and worse but probably didn't even out. The psychic powers themselves are much of a muchness, but having them be random does not help us. That said, each random one is a slight upgrade, but you can't plan an army on chance. Unless you Orks. Countering that the "no saves against the warp" is really beneficial to Eldar as we do get one, combined with rolling on three dice and making the opponent do the same adds certain fun to it! That said it's hard to tell when playing the standard gaming group as there is quite a lot of list tailoring, so it would be fun to see vs a genuine all comers list.

Some units got hit badly - Banshees for example are not what they were - the amendment to fleet and the power weapon being changed hurt them badly.

But I think it's the vehicle rules which effected Eldar the most. Unlike marines many of the eldar vehicles are made of paper. That didn't used to matter so much as you would simply take upgrades to give saves, ignore certain results etc... This obviously hurt every army but the standard upgrades are all redundant. The other thing was assualting. Not being able to assault out of a stationary vehicle has made Banshees and other CC units even more fragile. Toughness 3? 5 up save? there going to last a long time....

Nothing really seems to have largely improved though, odds and sods yes - hammer of wrath for jet bikes, improved jet bike toughness, throwing of grenades - but nothing major.

On the whole then,

Marines (and the way I play them) - much of a muchness.
Eldar - showing their age more and more!

T

it does feel like, i've got the two most effected armies whn i hear other people talk about 6th. My nids, whilst they lost a few pieces (pieces which i loooved) got so much better, and blood angels lost one of the biggest strengths of their dex with razorbacks (they get a 35 point discount when you pop assault marines in one).

Didn't really think there was a great deal of list tailoring going on in this campaign tbh, the last one sure but the rules were funky. I've altered mine but that's more a meta shift - there's a lot a squidgy armies and less power armour so i'm giving heavy torrent flamers and warriors a crack! I think i'm going to regret the warriors. I've seen no real list shifts so far though, not in a specific counter type of a way anyway.

id agree there doesnt seem to be too much list tailoring - i definitely havent tailored any lists and have gone more for experimenting with the units i havent used before

ive learnt one thing - even a unit of nob bikers with a painboy AND a warboss cant do anything to mephiston!

overall i think orks are pretty good and standing up to the other lists. Tey are somewhat unsubtle though (duh!) and its hard to get any other tactic on the board than overwhelming force or overwhelming firepower. but thats pretty effective for them!

if anything, 6th ha simply narrowed what is an effective ork list - there used to be loads - trukk lists, kan walls, green tide, battlewagon lists mech list etc. now all of these are slightly less effective and a new hybrid/dakkajet list seems the most effective

i still think orks just need an evolution rather than a revolution, and a few tweaks here and there will do it.
more options would be nice - anyone who is familar with the codex knows that pretty much everything is taken as its written in the codex - only nobs have any variety, and even then you can only really give them one loadout (bikes excluded as tbh they should be a seperate entry in the codex.

Thinking about my previous comment I probably have to retract the list tailoring part of it.

i think Eldar are in the same boat as the Orks. They need tweaks rather than wholesale changes.

I think the major one is to bring the points in line with where they should be. another would be to create a viable CC unit. An example would be to amen the Banshees to stick with the T3 and 5+ armour and give them AP2 weapons, or to increase their save to 4+ and leave them as they are for the rest, or to give them a 5+ dodge save in CC like some of the DE have. these are not major things but would make them viable again.

I try very hard not to listen to rumours, that's what Stryph is for , but the Eldar do seem to be having some unit changes. Additonal CC troops, another skimmer type more like the viper and possibly an Open Topped transport. Not sure they are needed but an open topped vehicle would be quite pleasant.

Assuming chaos is a template codex, we will all get better warlord traits with each new release. I do think they should have been added as an FAQ though. One document with all traits in one place couldn't have been that hard to produce.

As always though, by the time these all come out, 7th edition will be here!

I'm afraid I really haven't been keeping up with the rumour mill that much recently - heard some ork rumblings but they almost sounded too accurate to be true...

Open-topped transport would be a quick solve for the Eldar assault issues you mention, seems we all feel a little stiffled in our unit selections under 6th until there's a fix. Although I'd be a lot more willing to throw more of my T4 multiwounders into lists if that poxy defiler wasn't floating around out there - takes me 2 turns to get close enough to do anything about it.

That said the more I play tervigons this edition, the more broken they feel (until I play Space Wolves and they fall down a hole again no doubt), and I'd like to get away from them at least a little bit, unfortunately I'm still not sure how atm.

Personally I'm all in favour of an all out tyranid revolution - nerf the tervigon into the ground (lets face it that's inevitable now they've milked that cash cow) and open up some of the other options - I wanna run fexes and not feel like I wasted all my points! While we're at it I wanna be immune to all challenges and unable to make them (maybe the swarmlord should be the exception...)

Gonna have to break out the proxycrons soon as well, see how my fluff based list stacks up! I should probably at least look at the guns that list has before deciding on it as it's completely based on what the models look like

i dont think tervigons are broken, i think its the fact that if you field them as HQs and troops you can field so many! perhaps just a 0-1 cap, regardless of which foc they come under will redress it.

but then is 0-1 going too far?!

or perhaps make spawn a psychic power instead of ability so its a choice to make and spawning limits its potential

i also think that lictors and stealth should be a far more viable option. i think we've said this before, but lictors clearly should be able to assault from the turn they appear!

i think an open topped vehicle with decent armour (12 lets say) would be awesome for eldar, primarily because unloading your cc troops at full strength is easy, and when you then assault you invariably strike first and can really form a mobile assassin unit. you might die afterwards to shooting, but its better than dying before!

an open topped explosion is also less harsh on the frail elven bodies!

great for fire warriors too to shoot out of from safety.