40K 10th Ed. Discussion Thread

[Jye Nicolson]

I think Abaddon can hide in a unit of Terminators, so thats a few ablative wounds for him.

Oath of Moment target detected

[Jye Nicolson]

Sisters look promising. Miracle Dice are their faction ability, and the "please use troops" bonus is that Battle Sisters are very good at generating them. Detachment ability is basically Martyred Lady so if you're going for a unit make sure to wipe it out.

Triumph looks good too, buffs are very powerful but you only get two each round.

[Primarch]

Sororitas is the first army previewed that I don't have any models for, but now I'm tempted.
I thought the Triumph looked a bit squishy, but very powerful if you can get it in the right position. The Miracle Dice mechanic should allow Sisters to have some very potent attacks as and when they need them. Exorcists are as crazily grimdark as ever and the detachment ability looks very good. A flat +1 to wound will make a big difference if you still have your heavy/special weapons available. Overall they do look like an army with a lot to keep track of, but very rewarding if you can manage it properly.

More details are up about Crusade as well.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... n-crusade/
I've never played and the article doesn't say, what are RP, they are mentioned in the Nid special ability?

[Jye Nicolson]

RP are Requisition Points, which is the advancement currency for your Crusade as a whole. The effects you can spend them on are called Requisitions, and they do things like make your roster limit 100 points bigger, fix battle scars, let you change a unit's composition etc. Faction rules usually come with their own Requisitions (eg promoting an experienced Marine unit to Chapter Command, like Captain to Chapter Master, or promoting a marine unit who has had bad experiences to Dreadnought).

The Crusade rules look *extremely* similar to 9th. Looks like some balancing of Battle Honours, the Blessings system is more interesting than the current underdog bonus, and the interaction of Battle Honours and Battle Scars is different somehow, with permadeath possible (albeit not for any unit you actually care about, to my eye).

I'm happy with this because I love Crusade but it's not simplified *at all* afaict. It's still a layer of extra rules, and basically the same rules as that. So it will be relying on the underlying 10th rules being more accessible.

I'd still suggest getting stuck in to Crusade because it's great, but it would make sense to play Combat Patrol without Crusade mechanics first.

[Primarch]

The Votann preview seems to have caused a bit of a stir online. Non-votann players seem ecstatic, while those who have a Kin army are despondent. Having never seen their 9th rules, (I certainly heard about their codex controversy though), I couldn't comment on how heavily they were nerfed, but the 10th rules still look pretty solid. They have a gun for every occasion and as the game progresses, they should get better at shooting.
I saw a lot of complaints about the faction rule, Ruthless Efficiency, mainly that it is a one-time bonus unlike other armies. While that is certainly true, I think it offers a few tactical options. Want bonus CP early in the game? Slap RE on the softest and most killable thing in the enemy army. Opponent loaded everything into a Deathstar unit? RE on it gives you a solid bonus against the unit until it is gone. Depending on how valuable CP are, your opponent may well try to hide the RE target, keeping them out of LoS for a turn or two, allowing the Votann player to pull ahead on objectives.
Overall, I think the points per unit will go down to balance the changes and they will settle into some mid-ground area between the Elite and the Horde armies.

[Jye Nicolson]

I'm sure the Votann index will be fine but the selection of things we were shown was not well calibrated to hype existing Votann players

The Sisters preview is a good contrast. Sisters have been a great army ever since their (modern) release but their most competitive builds in 9th revolved around Bloody Rose and Repentia in particular, and it's pretty obvious that is not going to be well supported in the index. But what we were shown makes the Martyred Lady game plan look great - it's solid in 9th already but the synergies in 10th are readily apparent even with just a few key pieces.

Votann mostly shows how their shooting is pound-for-pound weaker than 9th (and to be fair, in 9th it's extremely good) without clearly articulating the alternate game plan. Judgement Tokens in 9th feel extremely powerful and you have a number of ways of handing them out - in 10th combined with army-wide lower ballistic skill they feel like work you need to do to come back up to par (similarly to how Tau players sometimes feel about Markerlights) but it's not clear where they come from now.

Votann players probably are sleeping on how good an army-wide Toughness increase is (I felt it was extremely impactful for Orks in 9th), but it has an amusing bit of anti-synergy in that Votann kind of want you to finish off their units and generate a judgement token, not leave a couple of battleshocked squats sitting around not accomplishing much (the exact opposite of Necrons and Sisters who would just love for you to try chipping down multiple units at once).

The version of Votann in their original book would have been an absolute nightmare, but the one that was legal for play by the time it hit was not so bad. Very good but not dominant, and a very elite feeling army after points increases - the mechanics nerfs mostly just stopped you having your cake and eating it too but your kit still felt wildly good. You just didn't have many dwarves.

It is likely the new plan calls for more dwarves. I could see a plan where you push up Berserkers in Saggitairuses and force the opponent to expose themselves and accumulate tokens to deal with them, at which point your shooting moves forward and cleans up everything with a token on it, with visible units probably attracting more tokens from the Kahl. If your points costs are moderate that sort of thing is highly plausible, it just relies on facts not in evidence in the preview

The strat is amusing because it just looks worse than the Sisters one previewed the day before. It's not - it works for units that didn't suffer casualties, so a Land Fortress can use it where an Exorcist can't - but it's more expensive and requires a token on the enemy unit. For Sisters that strat fits into the Martyred Lady game plan beautifully, for Votann it falls into the uncertainty of where the token comes from other than units dying.

I agree that Relentless Efficiency is Good, Actually. In a vacuum it doesn't look as good as Oaths of Moment but if there's a key strat or two in the Index that really get the Votann's engines going (and I have to assume there's at least one that hands out tokens) those bonus CP will look very sweet.

[Primarch]

T5 and a 4+ save Vs a Bolter is the same as T4 and a 3+ save. Against a gun with S4, Ap -1 it's actually slightly better. Depending on how S Vs. T is calculated, against lasrifles, it might be slightly worse.
That all depends on how many things are auto-wounding on 6s this edition though.

You're right in that the Necrons and Sisters want you to wound units but not wipe them out whereas Votann would rather you outright kill something than chip away at it. I think a savvy player will try to play around those rules, focusing fire on a Cron unit to remove it, but just trying to maul a Votann squad but leaving a couple of survivors to eventually mop up with a chaff unit that can get hit with the Judgement Tokens.

I'd guess that some Strats and HQ's will have extra ways to get JT's on enemy squads.

It's interesting to see that Votann infantry have an Objective Secured ability like the Cadians, but with a totally different name. This and the CSM/Genestealer melee bonuses makes me wonder why they aren't using more USR's. Multiple abilities with the same effect but different names is the ideal opportunity to use a universal rule and simplify things.

[Jye Nicolson]

I'd guess that some Strats and HQ's will have extra ways to get JT's on enemy squads.

Yeah I think showing such a strat and probably the Kahl in the preview would have cut the negative reactions drastically.

It's interesting to see that Votann infantry have an Objective Secured ability like the Cadians, but with a totally different name. This and the CSM/Genestealer melee bonuses makes me wonder why they aren't using more USR's. Multiple abilities with the same effect but different names is the ideal opportunity to use a universal rule and simplify things.

There's a correct amount of USRs somewhere between 8th/9th and 30K. I appreciate the effort to steer the good ship 10th between those two poles but I anticipate a bit of headscratching as to why some rules made the cut but others didn't. I would have thought sticky objectives would be common enough to get an USR but perhaps they're not that widely distributed or GW thinks they're low risk for errata.

[Mattb]

I'm sure the Votann index will be fine but the selection of things we were shown was not well calibrated to hype existing Votann players

That's a good point actually. These previews don't really seem to be for hyping up players of that army with powerful new guns/abilities so much as they're about showing off how much more simple and restrained 10th will be.

The Guard preview was the same: pretty much everything shown was just a flat out worse version of what we already have. I'm really not bothered though since I'm just happy to see things get reigned in. Also, I'm incredibly thankful I only have to remember 6 orders now I stead of 18.

Aside from that I'm really curious to see how they deal with armies like Thousand Sons and Grey Knights with the change to psychic powers.

[Jye Nicolson]

I am deeply amused World Eaters get to play Warcry while they play 40k.

(Their army mechanic involves rolling a bunch of dice and looking for doubles and triples)

They look real nasty.