6^th Edition

My first impressions of 6^th ed were very positive. I love the allies rules and was very excited about the other changes. However, I played my first game of 6^th last night, and I have my doubts!

Now, what follows are my first impressions having played one game – so more or less entirely irrelevant. I need to play a heap more games before I come to a conclusion. A lot of what I’m about to say comes from needing to rethink tried and tested strategies and ways of doing things and I guess that’s what I’m finding frustrating. Now you can argue that that’s all part of the fun of a new edition, and you would be right, but some stuff is just irritating, and makes very little sense.

Here’s 2 things.

First I wanted to bring my Tri Raven list, but I can’t any more. The ravens and their contents must start in reserve. Because I don’t have anything other than the stuff in the Ravens, I can’t comply with the only 50% in reserve rule, so the list just doesn’t work. What’s wrong with being able to keep more than 50% of your force in reserve!

Second (and this is the biggie) I found wound allocation really irritating. Allegedly it stops the wound allocation abuse in 5^th. Now I never found that terribly annoying to be honest. Yes Nobs and Paladins were irritating, but that was about it – the way you could allocate wounds on single wound models was mildly annoying, but no big deal. As I read the rules in 6^th, it’s open to far more abuse!

Now this may be because I’m doing it wrong, and if you think I am please let me know, but the big problem I see is in units with different armour saves.

As I read the rules in assault, if there is more than one model in base to base with the attackers, the defender gets to choose who he allocates the wounds to first. If there are different armour saves on those models he can allocate all the wounds on the model with the different armour save. The attacker rolls all the dice one after another until that model is dead before moving on to another model. The problem it seems to me is that if there is one model with a tough armour save then all the wounds can be “wasted” on that model before doing anything else.

Last night my buddy had wolf guard terminators in packs of grey hunters. I assaulted them with a BA assault squad, doing about 7 wounds. He rolls them one after another on the terminator and only if he rolls a 1 does he move on to the grey hunters…..how annoying is that?

Worse,  imagine a biker command squad with a captain in artificer armour. If you allocate all the wounds to the captain he has a 2+ and then a 5+ against everything that isn’t AP2. I’m no math whiz but isn’t that something like 30 wounds before he’s dead, given he has 3 wounds?  Even when the power fists swing he has a 4++ and then a 5+ FNP. Remember he’s T5 now so unless there is something swinging at S10, he will not be insta killed - so he gets all his wounds and his FNP. So it needs something like 10 or so AP2 wounds before he’s dead, so 20+ power fist attacks! A whole squad of power fist terminators! And let’s not forget that once he’s down to his last wound  he can “look out sir” that last AP2 wound to his buddy with the storm shield!

You might say “a ha, but I can challenge him with a sergeant and take him out the combat”, well yes, but if I refuse the challenge, while that takes out his attacks, I can still allocate wounds to him.

If this is right biker command squads are insanely hard. I suspect you could do similar things with Nob bikers – but I don’t know the rules for orks as well.

Please, please tell me I’m getting this wrong, cause if I’m not, this is way, way worse than Paladin wound allocation shenanigans.

EYIG