Obligatory Article for 7th Edition and the Hobby Part 2 (WARNING!! CONTAINS COPIOUS CURSING)

WARNING!!!! RANTING AND EXCESSIVE CURSING INCOMING!!!! READ AT YOUR OWN CAUTION!!!

Greetings kind readers. Today's article is a rant/opinion piece. I don't often launch into rants where my beloved hobby is concerned. I like to think that I take most things in stride. There are some aspects to this new rule set for 40K that have gotten me a bit bothered though and I feel the need to exercise my right to take to my blog and complain about them. No I am not jumping ship from 40k or anything, and I have plenty of things that I like about this edition (some of which I will discuss). These are my first impressions after reading through the rules. I will do a more updated post after I get about five or six games in.  So lets begin the fun.

Daemonolgy and Summoning

This about sums up Daemon summoning for me. From Pinterest via Google

As the picture above states, on a scale of 1 to fuck off, I give the ability to summon Deamons a solid "fuck off". Don't get me wrong, certain armies should have this ability in some form (Chaos and Daemons obviously as well as Radical Inquisitors). Yes, the chances of Perils happening are increased for armies not of the Daemonic variety, but come the fuck on. Not only is this a potentially game breaking ability, it makes very little sense lore wise. Before you say "but Bob, psykers run the risk of Daemonic possession just by using the warp, and anyone can fall victim to the lures of Chaos" or any other feeble ass argument as to why your Space Marine Librarian suddenly has thrown all of his training and loyalty to the Emperor out the window, I get what you are trying to say. It is always a possibility that Brother Librarian Schmucky McGee has succumbed to the lure of the Dark Gods and decided that summoning a hoard of the Imperium's greatest enemy is a good idea, or that he somehow screwed up and Daemons have managed to breakthrough. That being said, is it really a probability? I don't think so. The way the psychic powers are described is that each lore is a reflection of the training a psyker has received or is innately talented in. Forgive me for saying so, but I don't think Space Marines or the Guard actively teach their battle psykers how to entreat the creatures of the warp into coming to their aid. Only radical Inquisitors have ever been described as actively harnessing the powers of Chaos in the form of creating a Daemonhost. Even then, it is a Daemon bound to a physical vessel and not something free to run around on its' own. To me the inclusion of Daemonology for everyone is nothing but a shameless way to drum up sales of Daemon kits. If you care to dispute this with me I will happily provide you with primary source references in both Codex and Black Library form as to why this is a nonsensical move lore wise. Part of my day job is academic research so attempt to throw down with me on a lore issue without doing your research at your own peril. Yes, that makes me sound like a bit of an asshole, but when you expect others to, and are expected yourself to provide robust primary and secondary sources of information when you make a claim, well it tends to carry over into your everyday life.

Unbound Armies

 Now when I first read about this on the net as part of the torrent of rumors about 7th, my gut reaction was something like "what the absolute fuck!?". This has since been toned down to indifference at worst and mild interest at best. Taking a Unbound army is something that both players have to agree upon. Thank goodness. In my little corner of the hobby world we have a very "beer and pretzels" mindset when it comes to gaming. That is to say, most of us are more interested in a fun game rather than winning. After I thought about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that the threat of showing up to game night and being blindsided by facing a all Riptide army or armored company was fairly slim. Do I think that Unbound armies represent a massive source of fun ruining exploitation? Absolutely. Do I also think that they provide a source of narrative driven game play that can be fun for everyone? You betcha. Say you want to recreate a Guard armored column trying to make it through a kill zone of enemy air power with minimal anti air support. I think that would be a rather fun scenario for two or more people to iron out and play. It also provides an avenue of new players to get their collections on the table more quickly. As long as all parties agree on what lists are going to be taken and know what they are getting into, I have no problem with Unbound armies. Do I want to go up against one with what I normally take? Hell no. Would I be interested in taking one myself? Possibly.

Psychic Phase

Or the 40k Magic Phase lite as I like to think of it. As readers of this blog may already know, I have some issues with the current Magic system of Fantasy.A lot of those issues stem from the spells themselves, but some of them stem from the mechanics of the system. The mechanics of it are fairly simple. Like I stated above about Unbound armies, I don't see massive exploitation of psykers being a huge issue in my gaming group. Do I see rampant exploitation of psykers being a issue on a wider scale? Absolutely. I think the biggest issues I have with the system come from how Deny the Witch works. If I understood the rules correctly, you have to negate all of the opposing player's successful rolls in order to negate a power. This makes no sense to me. It should only require cancelling out enough successful rolls so that the player fails to generate the necessary warp charges. Negating a shit ton of 4+s with 6s is difficult enough as is. I also think it is ridiculous that you can potentially negate the activation of fore weapons. I think only other psykers should be able to try that. I am also on the fence about the ability to negate abilities that are not targeting your own models (i.e. blessings). It would make sense if you have psykers in your army, but random squad of Guardsmen shouldn't be able to do that. I also see several armies getting screwed by the lack of psykers or good psykers. Tau, Dark Eldar, and Necrons will have a tough time trying to Deny (but fuck the Necrons, they deserve it).

Overall Presentation

Overall I think the presentation of these books is of a pretty high quality. I like the separation of the various sections (pictures, lore, and rules). What I don't like is the massive reuse of artwork as well as the somewhat shitty photo orientations. Now when I complain about the artwork it isn't about the quality of the choices. I love the art that they have in these books. What I am disappointing in is the lack of new work. The orientation of the photos in the "hobby" book is vexing in the extreme to me. I HATE the counterclockwise, large scale photos that they have used. It sucks in Visions and it sucks here. I have to say that I really like the special rules section now being located towards the back of the rule book with the reference section. It should make looking those damn things up a lot easier now.

So What Do I Like?

I do like some of the changes. Honest, I do! The changes to Jink are more of a benefit than a hindrance I think. Being able to get a Jink on turn 1 is a welcome ability. I also like  overflow wounds from a challenge spilling out into the combat. It just makes sense that if your Blood Thirster or whatever just wrecks a fool that it would start laying in to said fool's squad. I like the new rules for all of the terrain pieces as well. The whole deciding what weapons fire first is something I think most people already did. That or roll everything at once and just use separate dice for different weapons. I think the changes to Flying Monstrous Creatures make sense overall. "Hits" shouldn't force a grounding check. My first reaction to the vehicle damage table change is positive. Time will tell on a lot of these things and I am sure there is a lot of stuff that will pop up in game that I have missed here. So let me bottom line this mofo. Rather than taking a step forward, I believe GW took several lurches to the side with this edition. I liked 6th as far as the rules (and most everything else) was concerned and to me this edition is basically 6.5 in all but name. In my little corner of the gaming world I don't see the multitude of broken, bullshit exploits being used. If they are, they will be dealt with rather swiftly I would imagine. Overall I don't think this will be such a broken pile of shit the internet currently seems to think it will be so long as players understand the type of games they will be playing. If you have played in a group for any real length of time you will likely have picked up on who will bring a summoning list to the table and who won't. 

FAQs

Don't look at GW for robust FAQs. From Pinterest via Google

Oh, you were expecting well thought out and comprehensive FAQs that were developed alongside the new rule set? Dumb ass. GW ain't got no candy for you. That is all I am going to say about that.


John's Reactions as a New Player 


Wow, psychic phase broke as hell. This is about to become a bunch of glass cannons throwing dice around. On offense you have a 50% chance of generating a token, on defense you a 17% chance of removing one. Oh and as a defender already behind the dice you have to remove all the generated tokens to stop a power. Never mind that the power needs 4 tokens and you removed 3, it still goes off on the one apparently. Otherwise I see a lot of the powers as being broke, mix and match power selection is broke as hell too. So teleportation or whatever into the heart of a swarm, nova then have another psyker lift you out no problem. Also summoning daemons, dumb dumb dumb. Some of the stuff I saw in here made me go nope, do not want I will stay in fantasy land. Too many ways to exploit and unless you build to stop you are hosed.

Vehicles, last time I played there were no hull points, in which case I would have a similar problem to the stuff i mentioned elsewhere, too easy to exploit. Now you glance a couple times and the problem takes care of itself.

Way too much movement in this game. Movement phase you can move, shooting phase you can move, physic phase you can use powers to move, assault phase you can move. So many fucking rules on moving, all the different types of movements and if you do this you cant do that, except when you have this rule this rule or this rule. This rule half counters this rule but not really, only always bs. Reading all these rules made 40k seem like where hobbyist with ADHD go to play, also seems extremely liberal too, in a way. Well its not your fault you suck, its somebody else's so we are giving you rules so that your army can do whatever you want with it. Is your army too slow, too shooty, taking too much damage, your tanks not strong enough, your inf not beefy enough, your peen not big enough, don't worry there's a rule for that!!!! Seriously look no farther than them throwing the FOC out the window, don't like building a 'balanced' army, you don't have to anymore, its ok do whatever you want. GW needs to stop trying to please everyone with everyone's army being the brokest shit of the month. It seemed like every rule out there I was seeing ways to exploit the *ish* out of. As a long time fantasy player, I had no problem playing random people because you knew what you were going to get; now starting off I have no intention of playing random people in 40k too much opportunity for BS, and it wont even be fudging the rules, it will just be the application of dumber and dumberer rules. There is too much homogeneity in this game. You can build each army to do what another army can do, it loses too much flavor when everyone gets flyers, and big ass walkers, and cheap troops, and good shooting. Want to be good at shooting take any army, want to be good at combat take any army, yes even the Tau aren't bad, want to move around real quick take whatever army you want to build a broke ass army your opponent can't fight take whatever army you want, there is a way to make it broke. Psychic ability seems like the only real definer in this game and then most factions get it and only Necrons and Tau don't. Oh wait don't like that you army doesn't have something, just take an ally. doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense, GW just wants to sell more models so they are going to keep changing the rules to allow you to take whatever you want as long as make more money they don't care about the integrity of the game.

Seriously after reading the rules, I will spend a vast majority of my time and money in fantasy, I will probably dabble a bit in 40k but it now has no draw for me, nothing that makes it stand out from other hobby games. I did like some things, the new smaller books is a much better option. I will say one think that would balance out a lot of my beef would be if it was alternating phases, Player 1 movement, Player 2 movement, Player 1 shooting etc etc. This would balance out all the movement in my opinion. That way when its your turn you aren't four movement phases behind. Just my 2 cents.