Friday 4 May 2018

How the Big FAQ will effect me.


Well, we've had a few days to digest the new FAQ and look at the repercussions to our armies. While most of us who are not tournament players will probably find that there has been very little impact, there are a few tweaks that no doubt will need to be made.

First off, I will not be including the "rule of 3" in to the equation, as I'm not a tournament player and neither are any of the other players at my club. Were currently discussing the rules but it looks like most people are happy with the beta rules but we still won't be including the organised events rules, even in our ladder system. I will however be including the new beta rules, as these will become permanent rules in the next FAQ, which will probably be Chapter Approved 2018, although I suspect that they will be altered slightly, especially the reserves rule.

I'll start with the easiest army, namely the Stone Dragons as they haven't even been built yet and as such don't have a list. I have an idea of how I want to run them, namely elite infantry (non-TDA) but I'm still waiting for the Space Wolves codex before I finalise anything. So the Big FAQ will have no effect here.

The next list to look at is the Hjaltland LI. This list will also not be effected very much, apart from the points saved from the commissars. There are no tactical reserves in this list as everything starts on the table, therefore the list will remain unchanged and the play store of the army will continue as is.

The Hrossey Yeomanry will also continue as is, although if we were using the rule of 3 I would have some problems as I have 4 vets squads. Luckily were not and so there is no need to change the list.

Now we get in to the lists that will be seeing some changes. First up are the Dark Guardians. This list is based around bikes and termies. At present there are 4 terminator squads and two terminator characters forming 6 drops for a total of 66pl and 4 bike squads and a bike character for 5 drops and 27pl. Now the original plan was to just throw a random character in to make up the extra drop. Now however, I also have to make up 39pl. There is some good news however, as a friend of mine has offered me some extra bikes, including some attack bikes, boosting me to 5 bike squads and an attack bike squad. When including the bike character, it puts me to 7 drops and 61pl. This means that I am only 5pl short of the target. I'm still  not sure how I'm going to get around this problem yet, but it gets me closer to the target. Unfortunately I'm also right up against my self imposed 2000 point limit. Right now though the army is still in the unpainted and unplayed stage, so I can have a think and come back to it later, probably after CA18, so the problem may well have even sorted itself by then.

Next up are the Dagr Ormr Militarum Tempestus force with Hildasay PDF support. Now this is also going to prove problematic, as the idea is similar to the Dark Guardians, in that the PDF heavy weapons teams sit back and the scions drop in. At present the scions for 42pl and 10 drops, where as the rest of the army forms 42pl and 14 drops. So things are balanced on a knife edge, so to speak. I want to add in some transports, some Taurox Primes, 4 to be precise, 2 with Gatling cannons and 2 with battle cannons. This will push up the number of non-deep striking units and also the pl for these units, which should put me in the clear for running this list at 2000 points. Obviously dropping the points level will be require some calculations rather than just dropping units as I feel like it but on the whole this list does a lot better than I expected it would.

The last list to look at is the Eagle Knights chapter. Now these guys were originally conceived as the full on drop army, in the classic descent of angles style, but have been through several modifications, with the 7th BA codex and 8th index and now the 8th BA codex. Although there have been a lot of changes, one thing is for sure, I still have a lot of jump pack units. In my last game at 1500 points, I dropped 6 units on the board with 6 in reserve but that meant 32pl on the board and 64pl in reserve. Now 27 of the pl off the board were in the 15 man death company squad, which is about a third of the total points in total on unit! Even more so when you consider that they always drop in with a chaplain. To place it off the board I would have had to deploy 5 units on the board and completely had to rethink the rest of my deployment. One get around would be to take 6 man tactical squads, as this takes the squad from 5pl and 83 points to 9pl and 93 points each (running the same load out), a big jump in pl for a few points, 12pl for 39 points across 3 squads. It is a legitimate tactics but it feel like cheating, as I'm fudging the numbers somewhat.

The basic issue is though, that the army does not work as intended now. I can get around a few of the problems with stratagems and such but it really is no longer a descent of angles list anymore. I have always been planning more units, a second devastator squad and a sternguard squad, possibly even a non-jump pack assast squad. Now these units will become  even more essential to forming a valid and viable list. I will still be playing the knights as my main army for the moment as I have a lot to learn about them, sonin some respects it's good that these changes have happened now, rather than further down the line when I've got use to the current force!

I'll update my thoughts after I've played a few games with the new rules, which at the current rate shouldn't be to long!

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