Tactical Objectives for 8th Edition

Alongside other purchases, I bought a set of 8th Edition Tactical Objectives for the new Warhammer 40,000 rules.

The quality of these cards is high. Or maybe I just used to play with dilapidated playing cards too much when I was younger? They are easily shuffled if needed and dealt out with ease. That said, these cards are matt finished, rather than anything else. I might grab some of my old Magic:The Gathering card sleeves for these cards perhaps in order to improve their longevity.

The design of the cards is very functional. This ranges from their rounded corners through to the rules themselves and the pictures on the (sub set of) cards that illustrate their point (or are gratuitous space marines!).

Now, I know that many people have a dislike to these kinds of tactical objective cards. And I for one can readily understand why. The lack of option to ditch one of these cards that is simply not obtainable is a royal pain. I would expect to see many house rules allowing players to re-draw a card that is simply not obtainable. That said, there are of course command points in play that can help a player do exactly that. So maybe its not all bad?

Of course, at its base level, the cards are adding in an extra random element to certain games of 40k in 8th edition. Whether this is good as a ground levelling concept, or bad just because it is too random is up for debate.

That said, I do like these cards and their implementation. I just had hoped for them all to be usable in all missions.

Horus Heresy Rules

I'm a bit late to the proverbial party on this one. But on the Warhammer community website, it has been announced that the Horus Heresy will be getting their own rules set. This is not new, of course, as we have known about it for a while.

What strikes me is the replies on the Games Workshop Facebook group. When asked whether the psychic phase was going to be revised or not, there were a lot of non committal answers given. Why would this be so? Have Forge World or GW not agreed upon the rules yet? Are things in such a state of flux that straight forward questions like this cannot be answered? Or perhaps are we saving ourselves up for spoilers that will be revealed later.

From what was stated though, it is clear that the Horus Heresy rules are going to be an updated version of 7th with all of the needless stuff eliminated from the set. So entries like "And They Shall Know No Fear" will likely be removed from this rule book and other rules (perhaps a full explainer of "Primarch" rules) will be inserted?

In all of this, I'm somewhat torn. I do like the effort they have made to keep things in 7th at some level. But at another level, its really disheartening that the community has been split like this. I'd still like to play against Eldar using whatever set of rules we can. But should that be 7th or 8th edition? I no longer know. No one does. Until there is a 30k Eldar book released, I guess we will do what we can. Which will probably mean I write a space marine army list for my Alpha Legion. It will lack all the character that I have grown accustomed to though. Equally, this is a fate shared by 40k armies like the Raven Guard (or basically anything that isn't vanilla marines). Hopefully the newer 40k codex releases will give some flavour back to these armies and I can write some kind of army list for 8th that would be an Alpha Legion analogue (perhaps based on the Raven Guard -- hence my mentioning them in particular).

8th Edition Command Dice - Thoughts

I decided to order a set of Games Workshop's "command dice" when I ordered my copy of the hard back 8th edition rule book.

These die are a bit of a novelty thing for me if I'm perfectly honest. In the picture above, I show them fresh out of the plastic cylinder tube (top of image) that they came in. The skulls on the die in the middle of the image make it tough to see or discern the actual number being rolled in my opinion. For die, it would have been better to just use pips or a single number in a recognisable font. 

That said, the express purpose of these die is to keep track of the command points that one has in their pool. It is for this purpose that I'm going to give them a pass mark. The thing is, these die are very obviously different to any other die in anyone's collection. As such, they are hugely distinct. This is fundamentally what makes them perfect for this kind of "keeping tabs" usage. I will personally be using them in this manner. Most assuredly, I will never be using them for rolling purposes. 

The final six die (lower part of the image) are for combat statuses. They make it simpler to keep track of various things that are going on during the game and the phases that happen. I am uncertain if I will actually use these particular die. I'm a bit on the fence about them. Take, for instance, the ones that show footprints inside an arrow. The design is precisely the same as the plastic counters / markers that came out with 5th edition. I never even used the full array of counters -- particularly the run ones! Hence, my feelings about these 6 die are exactly the same that I had in 5th edition. Just a bit of a gimmick really. 

Hence, overall, I'll be using some of these die, but not all of them. Would be interested to hear other people's point of view in the comments or via Facebook. 

8th Edition Story

Most of what I'm about to put in writing has already been stated plenty of times over. Today, I wanted to chime in with an old timer's point of view. As my long term readers will be (painfully or otherwise) aware, I have been involved in this hobby since Rogue Trader days to a greater or lesser extent.

Over that time period, I've seen a vast number of things change. Not just rules, but the setting as well. Back in the old days, Tau were nowhere. Necrons did not exist. Tyranids were gaunt looking things. Genestealers were beasts that lurked on space hulks and infected whole planets much as they do right now, but were not connected to the Tyranids. Unlike Zoats. They were a Tyranid slave race. Eldar were pirates. They didn't have any aspect warriors at all. Orks were orks. And some of them liked Khorne so much that they worshipped him. (some were also hyribized by genestealers). As did some of the Night Lords. The Alpha Legion might have been Slaanesh fanatics. The Iron Warriors might have been slightly too.

Many people will contend that the 40k timeline has never evolved. I would agree, but with the critical caveat that it has evolved by ret-con to a strong degree. Eldar were once piratical maniacs to be feared. But now they're the seed of a new victory over the chaos gods. The necrons were merely asleep. The Tyranids were always on their way, you see.

With 8th edition, the timeline has truly advanced for the first time in a long time. The return of Guilliman is simply unprecedented in all of 40k. And with him, the ten thousand year long plan that no one ever heard of, or discovered, to build better space marines. The Primaris Space marines. But they don't fit in rhino tanks much like terminators don't. Drop pod armies also seem to be a thing that is about to be dropped in to the past.

The new 40k seems ripe with new possibilities. Although I am cautious about the story line being advanced significantly, I actually don't mind. I think this has been coming for a while and I approve of it. I will be looking forward to seeing where it actually winds up in the months and years ahead. Will they truly consider other sweeping moves like this? Or is it better that we all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition after all?

Note to Self: Mission Design

There exist a wide variety of ways in which to design missions for Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer 30,000, Age of Sigmar, and all manner of other games. One of the defining features of the Games Workshop approach to mission design is that there is no "automatic win" button. In some war-games, the killing of the general might represent an automatic win condition and the game would stop at that very instant. This generally does not happen in 40k.

Indeed, the closest thing to an automatic win is usually (but not always) a complete massacre of the opposing force.

When this condition is met, the winner usually is considered to have won the "primary" mission. Arguably, they have also secured all of the secondaries and perhaps tertiaries (if they are being used) as well.

But herein is the point that I want to make. If the winner in a massacre is presumed to have achieved maximum points, what about the loser? 

In our recent tournament, we designed it so that both the winner and the loser had things to still play for even late on in the game.

For those people aiming for a massacre style victory, we awarded one additional point for achieving this goal. Hence we had some players attempting to avoid being completely massacred just for the sake of not giving away that final tournament point to their opponent if at all possible. This is a good thing and reflects not wanting to give up. Added to this, we implemented secondaries and tertiary missions that could be achieved even if a massacre victory was scored against them.

The most obvious one is "Slay the Warlord". This can be achieved even if one is massacred (and obviously happens by default if one is victorious in a massacre victory!). 

Another is "First Strike" -- this is the same as first blood, but either player can achieve it. All they have to do is kill an entire unit in the first turn of the game. This not only alleviates the bias from achieving first blood from who goes first (which is undeniably a huge contributing factor), but gives both players something to aim for.

Other examples include moving a particular unit to a particular destination during the course of a game. This can still happen for anyone who subsequently gets massacred.

Hence, when designing missions, we like to frequently include at least one or two (secondaries or tertiaries) that can be scored by someone who eventually gets massacred regardless. It still gives people something to play for. Of course, there are still aspects of the game, such as having a unit in the oppositions deployment zone at the end of the game, that cannot be achieved if one is massacred. Instead, perhaps award a secondary or tertiary for moving all of ones own units out of their deployment zone (and thus score secondaries that way) rather than depend on the state of the game on the final turn. In this way, both players have things to aim for that they can achieve tournament points for during the game, and not just at the end. Meanwhile, having that extra point for a total wipe out victory will drive the win-at-all-costs player onward, and probably to distraction (as we experienced the other week!). 

8th Edition Rulebook First Impressions

It feels like a very long time since I pre-ordered my copy of the 8th Edition rulebook. (Note to self: it isn't that long ago really!). It also feels like a long time since Games Workshop send me their notification email that it had been dispatched. (Note to self: it wasn't -- it was totally consistent with the expectation date of dispatch!). It feels like it has been in the postal system for quite some time. (Note to self: you are absolutely correct in that assumption, even if you're wrong about the other two!). 

But finally. FINALLY! It is here!

The shrink wrapping in the picture certainly didn't last too long, rest assured!

There are a number of facets of this new rulebook that I would like to comment on. I don't think I will do it all in one post though. So today, I'm going to focus on global impressions.

Organisation.

Firstly is the organisation of the book itself. Most of the background material is presented to the front end of the book, with a strong focus on the Imperium of Man itself. This is to be expected at some level. Yet, it does represent a deviation from some of the other core presentations where the rules came nearer to the front and the background materials to the back of the book. And of course, it differs from the 7th edition rule book that had three different volumes combine in one sturdy cardboard sleeve. 

I rather like the idea of having a lot more focus on the background and on the fluff side of things right up front. Being an old-timer (Rogue Trader) person, this certainly appeals to me. I just find it a pity that they could not small-font all the unit entries in to the back of the book as well instead of having several different pseudo-codexes produced alongside this (and codexes that are going to be outdated rather quickly if I'm reading between the lines correctly). That would have been much better, and probably would have harkened back to the Rogue Trader era a bit more for us very old timers!

Gaming Photography.

The second and final thing that I'm going to note for today is some of the photography. If I flick through the older rulebooks and search for people playing the game, they are generally (but maybe not exclusively) white males. Many appearing somewhat middle-aged. In this rule book, what is striking to me is how this has changed (for the better) to have more women visibly playing the game. Now, of course, these are probably staged photographs. But with daughters of my own who are getting in to the hobby, I welcome this change of focus away from men and encouraging women and girls in to the hobby. About (redacted) time frankly. Gaming should not be seen as a white, male, young person (possibly testosterone poisoned judging by some of the comments on various forums out there) hobby. It is for everyone who is interested. 

Good on Games Workshop for updated their marketing, sincerely from me.