Chapter Approved / Vigilus Chat

[The Other Dave]

I recently picked up Chapter Approved 2018 and the Vigilus Defiant campaign book, and as there's a lot of Good Stuff in both of 'em, I thought I'd start a thread to see if anybody else has and wants to talk about ramifications and such.

Chapter Approved

It seems like there's more there there in CA2018 as opposed to CA2017, but that may just be me being used to the contents of last year's book.

The Open Play stuff (looted wagons for Orks and custom characters for everybody) is pretty cool, and as it's not like the looted wagons are (on the face of it) overpowered, I wouldn't mind people thumbnailing points values for them and trying them out in regular play. The conversion guide is also pretty well-done, for that matter. Custom characters, though, do little for me.

Lots more in the Narrative Play section, although (our group playing as it does) the battle honors campaign stuff is neat in theory but unlikely to see much use, unless in the next four or five months I get a bee in my bonnet and decide to make NagoyaHammer a full-on campaign day. Unlikely, but one never knows. The Cities of Death stuff, though, looks pretty sweet, and brings back lovely memories of the cityfight supplement in, what was it, 3rd edition? It adds the potential for some more granularity with cover, with obscurement, soft and hard cover, height advantage and the like, along with some special missions. Could be fun to try out, for sure.

Matched play codifies the FAQ and CA2017 rules with things like Battle Brothers, Boots on the Ground and so on, nothing too new, and has some nice-looking new missions. In particular, all of them ignore the rule where tabling your opponent gets you an automatic win, a good thing in my book, as I like encouraging objective-based play where possible. There's also a section summarizing and codifying some of the terrain rules that've come out, so it's nice to have that all in one place.

The star of the show is the Sisters of Battle beta codex, which looks to these eyes like it's pretty close to a release codex (aside from the new units they'll doubtless get). I never looked at the index army list too closely, so I don't know exactly what's changed, but at the very least the addition of Chapter Tactics-analogs is very nice - and, notably, they're not just reskinned tactics other people have (well, aside from the obligatory ignore wounds on a 6+ one), and most of them interact with the Acts of Faith rules, which is nice and fluffy. Some nice stratagems, including a couple that make Arco-Flagellants and Sisters Repentia into suicide murderfiends, which again, fluffy. The one that makes storm bolters AP-2 and damage 2 is particularly juicy, and I wish I had it for my marines.

Then there's a reprinting of the renegade knights pamphlet, which is nothing special, and a ridiculous Tau formation that has waay to many special rules for me to bother reading.

And finally jiggered points values, which seem to see lots of drops across the board, and some consolidated / updated data sheets for new units (like fiends of slaanesh) and units who've seen some new wargear options (like intercessors).

Vigilus Defiant

I'm really impressed with this book actually - it's a really solid campaign book with lots of juicy general-purpose rules as well. Lots of the book, of course, describes the history of Vigilus and the war on it, and rules for campaigns set there, and I've just skimmed most of that so far. The fact that different armies get different thematic bonuses and penalties depending on the stage the war is in (as determined by campaign round) is a neat idea, though, and again gets my gears whirring a bit. Lots of new (Narrative) missions that could easily get repurposed for Matched play as well, and rules for making thematic tables with appropriate special rules and such too. Just a whole lot of stuff to use to put together battles, really, either in a supervised campaign-y way, or a "let's try this stuff out" way as well.

The big rules thing is Specialist Detachments, which are, well, specialist detachments - in general, you pay a CP before the battle begins to say "this Marine detachment is an Indomitus Crusaders detachment" or "this Guard detachment is an Emperor's Wrath Artillery Company," or what have you. This gives some of the units in the detachment (depending on what kind it is) a specialist keyword, and unlocks warlord traits, relics and stratagems for the specialists to use - potentially very CP heavy. Like Indomitus Crusaders for marines costs 1 CP to give you the option to spend another CP to upgrade Intercessor units to Veterans (giving them +1 attack and leadership) and allowing you to spend another CP on stratagems to beef up those veterans' bolt weapons for a round. They're big buffs, to be sure - doubling shots on regular bolt rifles, allowing stalkers to use sniper rules, or making auto bolt rifles autohit under 12" - but at the cost of a huge CP investment. And there's 20-odd specialist detachments altogether, at least one for every faction that's fighting on Vigilus, which is most of them. Overall, I like the idea - you get to spend CPs to unlock new stratagems that only effect some units in your army in a nice fluffy way. I've only heard about the 7th edition detachment rules in hushed whispers, but overall this seems (on the face of it) to be a good way to do this sort of thing.

[Miguelsan]

I saw CA 2018 and notice the point drops in general. I find funny that Commissars now cost less than half than in the original codex. Maybe if they keep dropping in points IG players will take them at last

M.

[me_in_japan]

I'll need to look into getting my hands on CA2018, and that Vigilus book sounds interesting. My brother got me the new(ish) Eisenhorn book for Christmas, so I'm reading it (and rereading the old ones) and I'm feeling quite fond of ol' 40k again because of it.

[job]

The ‘18 Chapter Approved is certainly pretty nice. I’ve enjoyed the City Fight rules and I really like the suggestions for character advancement in a campaign.

The sisters section is quite hefty and nearly a full fledged Codex. As ToD said, it looks like it is just missing rules for whatever new units they create for them.

The points adjustments are probably the next most notable portion. It is good to see GW working to maintain a relative ongoing balance between factions. Listening to a bit of Forge the Narrative podcast, one guest - a TO and player- participated in the rules adjustment process. It is good to see GW involving the communities of 40k players and taking some account of their customers’ wishes.

As for Vigilus, I can’t comment. I would be really excited for a 40k campaign - most of all one that has the Black Legion as a central protagonist/antagonist. However I have enough on my plate at this time and the formation rules are possibly too much for me to bite off and chew through at this time.

[YellowStreak]

I just bought the digital version last weekend, but have mostly skimmed the SoB beta codex. The Acts of faith seem to have been severely curtailed on first reading, but I haven't read it in detail yet.

Some of those ideas in Vigilus sound cool. I like the idea of different bonuses depending on the period of the war -- you could almost do something similar for Bolt Action, if you were doing a mini campaign.

[The Other Dave]

I just bought the digital version last weekend, but have mostly skimmed the SoB beta codex. The Acts of faith seem to have been severely curtailed on first reading, but I haven't read it in detail yet.

Some of those ideas in Vigilus sound cool. I like the idea of different bonuses depending on the period of the war -- you could almost do something similar for Bolt Action, if you were doing a mini campaign.

Lots of good ideas in there, yeah - it reminds me of some notes Too Fat Lardies gave about making campaigns for Chain of Command too. I guess that's the neat thing about fleshed-out campaign books like this, it lets you go all historical in a non-historical setting.