First game of 6th

[Mike the Pike]

@TOD: Did you just reference 'Fiddler on the Roof' in the 21st century?

@MiJ: Huh? What was that?

[Colonel Voss]

@TOD: Did you just reference 'Fiddler on the Roof' in the 21st century?

@MiJ: Huh? What was that?

Dunno, must be the wind

[The Underdweller]

Well, it's still not total luck regarding the charge; you have to work out the odds of making it successfully based on how far you are and whether it might be better to run away instead (if you have a jet pack anyway!)

[pdfitzg]

Played my first game of 6th ed tonight. 1000 points each. I am a hardcore 40K collector, but casual gamer. My buddy, and opponent, is a fanatical collector and power player but I was keeping my fingers crossed that his Grey Knights had the evening off. Yeah, I'm just not that lucky. Since I had only read the basic rules, we didn't use flyers, allies, or fortifications.

Anyhow we did all the setup and ended up deploying on the short edges, which made me happy about bringing a Leman Russ. Four objectives on the board. I do like the new missions as they seem to have more replay potential and I think they encourage players to have balanced armies. There is a lot more randomness to the game which my turn off some of the competitive players. I enjoyed it, but admit the current ruleset is about as random as I'd be comfortable with.

As for the game itself.... Deep striking (which he did with some termis) seems to be much safer. Less chance of losing you squad on a mishap and you can save if you land in difficult terrain. Also love snapshot, overwatch, and the fact that only the individualy moved models, well, count as moving. Assault makes sense for the most part, but seems a bit slow with the intiative pile in and allocation methods. But, with the new rules, I'm guessing assaults will take less turns so probably balances the time out.

Assuming we played this part correctly, seems you can roll for the random psychic powers and then pick the codex powers if you don't like the results which is a cool way to keep people from always using the most powerful powers, but give those of us that the dice hate, a safe fallback plan.

My favorite round was when I finally knocked his termis down to just his HQ Librarian, and he only had one wound left. Buddy had no choice but to charge my veteran squad with my Lord Commisar, which still had me sweating. First he tried some sort of pyro psychic attack that had slammed one of my squads earlier. I got to role a die for countering the power and I got the six I needed. So now the Librarian was charging into a fully manned, fully kitted out squad that got to shoot at him first. All BS 1, but two plasma guns, a flamer, bolter, plasma pistol, krak launcher, and a bunch lasguns had to do something. Yeah, I only pulled off one six and it was from a lasgun, but he failed his save! It was an awesomely rare event that had us both jumping around (me happy, him, not so much).

While it was a close game in some aspects, I ended up winning something like 8 to 3VP. I havn't read the full VP rules yet but seems I got points for both the objectives and for getting first blood and killing his HQ. This is my first victory ever against Grey Knights (I did tie them once), so I was very pleased.

So far, I think it's an improvement over 5th, and a lot of the changes are subtle so I don't think it will take long to learn. I had a lot of fun, but I'm not going to disclose how long it took because most of that was my fault since I hadn't read the majority of the rules yet. Now I'm eagerly awaiting my son's arrival so we can get in a bunch of games during his visit.

Thanks,

[Admiral-Badruck]

Jus and I had a couple games last night in my gaming apartment (from now until forever referred to as Mektown.) we miss played a few things I am sure but we had a great time. Most of the new rules are fun however look out sir and mixed armour saves are a time sink. I reckon the next time I play I will be a bit better. Tau are great. But I found that I need more marker lights. They really help in the new night fighting rules. As do dark sunfilters. I am keen to keep playing Orks as well the war boss in mega armour is wonderful. Flash Gitz ignore cove saves now so they are death on a stick. Blood angel heroic intervention is crazy good. And power axes suck... Love the new rules. Can't wait to play again.

[pdfitzg]

@Admiral-Badruck, Yeah, I forgot to say something about look out sir. Agree it is a time sink. It made us chuckle a couple of times but I think the novelty will wear off quickly. Should have been some limitations on it. Maybe only once per character each time a new unit shoots at you. Guess we are stuck with that until the end of the decade...

Didn't have any mixed armor to deal with. We forgot a few things like frag grenades as an offensive weapon, although it wasn't like my IG were going to use them anyway. Even a Lord Commisar is going to have a hard time motivating IG to assault GK terminators. Be really careful about you squad formations. Keep your heavy weapons and special characters back a bit. Couple of time I forgot and that hurt me. The Leman Russ Lumbering rule no longer does squat for you either and tanks seem to be a little more difficult to give cover to. If I remember correctly (it was getting late and I'm getting old), you can only disembark if the transport moved less than 6 inches, but your squad can move their full distance. That does seem to be a potential game changer. Still no assaulting except open top or when vehicle rules specify that you can.

Oh yeah, the little servo skull dice stands were cool for objective markers and such. The new templates look nice but you don't use the frame of it, so they are larger than the other templates and have some bits that might grab. Thinking the regular templates are better if you playing something like city fight.

Rule book was half the weight of my Army Transport bag, even when you take into account the army, codex, dice, markers, and my ultrabook. It also doesn't really fit in any of the pockets so looking forward to a mini version. Had the normal flipping back and forth in the book to verify rules, but the index is much improved and I don't think we did a "coin toss" ruling the entire evening which was surprising.

Very eager to play again.

[pdfitzg]

Sorry for all of the typos. I was being lazy and didn't proof my posts.

[me_in_japan]

no worries - compared to some posts we've had here, that was dang near Shakespeare

[Primarch]

I played 2 more games of 40k today. 2000 points of Necrons against a CSM army and then an Eldar force.

Some points that came up:
Whilst I knew vehicles could no longer score, it appears that they can no longer contest either, even if troops are inside them. This actually cost me the first game as despite having whittled Pikey's army down to seven marines and a disabled Rhino, I couldn't contest either of the objectives he was holding as I had foolishly left my infantry on board their transport. D'oh, I wont be making that mistake again.
Jink saves for skimmers are great. If a skimmer moves it has a 5+ cover save, better if it goes flat out. In my first turn of shooting (literally every gun in my army), I did nothing at all to the three wave serpents that flew up in my face.
Fast moving vehicles are no longer difficult to assault. Moving vehicles are just WS1 now, which means you generally hit them if you assault them. Despite my aforementioned lousy shooting, my Scarabs did me proud by eating two of the three wave serpents in turn 1.
Fearless is great for tarpit units now. No more 'No Retreat' wounds means some units will just bog down in combat for a large part of the game.

So, 2 games, 1 win, 1 loss, both were good fun (though probably not so much for Pikey as both of them involved him getting the worst of the dice rolls). Despite playing at 2000 points, both games went fairly quickly. We managed 2 games in about 6 hours along with a break for lunch.

[pdfitzg]

@Primarch Thanks for the battle reports. Interesting about the objective contesting changes. I really need to read the vehicle rules so I don't make similar mistakes.

@MIJ LOL, thanks!