I know I'm a little behind the times on this but then again I usually am, so nothing new there! With Christmas just behind us, we have had the usual Xmas releases, battle boxes, Chapter Approved (in two parts this year!), and also, new for this year, Kill Team Annual.
While I don't have the manual yet and I don't plan on getting it just yet, I thought I'd put down a few of my thoughts. There's quite a bit to this book but large chunks of it are are copy and paste jobs from other sources, so the information is not new.
The book starts with the new build your own specialist, an open play thing only and something that seems a bit of a waste of time to me. Yes it could be good fun but it's not for me. I think that it's a little to WAAC for my tastes, ok so in the right hands you could create some very fun and interesting specialists, but I think a lot of people will just pick the good ones to create some super combo's with little thought for story or "realism".
The next section, which takes up the first big chunk of the book, are the missions, both for match play and also narrative mission. These missions are not new but are a collection from all the rule books and additional box sets, both the battle zones and the small force box sets. It should be a complete collection of all the missions released and a very good resource for players. Whilst I'll probably only use the matched play missions, I would still like to have all the other missions.
Next up is the compendium of points from all the books and it seems that despite this being a full collection of the points, there haven't actually been any points updates in this book, it's more bringing all the various updates that have been released through FAQ's, white dwarf's and the various rule books. I would have thought that there would be some updates, as there are some units that really need a bit of adjustment to make the more balanced. I think this is one of the biggest issues with this book.
The next section is dedicated to datasheets. Now this isn't a complete collection of datasheets but just the ones that were published in white dwarf and also the Sisters of Battle. Now most of these datasheets are not of any interest to me, as they relate to units I won't use. I don't own, nor plan to own, any Blackstone stuff. In addition I have no plans to ever own Kroot or Daemons. I may, at some point get some of the vanguard marines but not any time soon and there may well be an update before I do. The chaos CSM update is interesting but again, I don't plan on updating my chaos list from its current format any time soon. The final datasheets however are of great interest to me, as they are the sheets for the new sisters of battle.
The sisters datasheets include sheets for battle sisters, repentia, arco-flagellant, canoness and repentia Superior. I have plans for a sisters kill team but as yet I have not had a chance to study the datasheets properly but I don't plan on getting any arco-flagellants, as I don't really like the models and I really don't think that they sit with the idea of kill team, as in my eyes it a small stealthy team infiltrating an enemy area, not really somewhere for a drugged up crazy death machine. Repentia I can see being used as they might be zealous fanatics, they are at least in charge of there wits. I will go in to more detail in another post but right now, let's just say this is the bit of the book that most interests me.
The last section of the book has all the tactics and psychic powers for all the factions. The exciting thing about it is that there are some new tactics for various faction and also includes all the tactics from the faction boxes. There are a number of good things here. Firstly, there has always been some argument over whether the tactics from the faction boxes were legal to use in games or if it was just WAAC to us them and now they are all compiled in to one book, I see no reason why you should not be able to use them. This is added to by the second good thing here, extra faction tactics for those that didn't get faction boxes. This was always an issue for many people as it did give a distinct advantage to certain faction but this advantage should now be nullified.
While I'm not going to go through every single tactic, I will highlight a few that caught my eye. I don't know if these are new or not as I don't own every book to check. The one that everyone seems to be going on about is the marines Death Denied which has gone up to 3 cp! That is some investment and not something you can use every turn now. Another faction that got some updates are the AdMech, although at present I'm not sure what the updates are, apart from a slight increase in some of the tactics, so I will have to check that out in due course. The one that interest me most out of this section (apart from sisters) is grey knights. As far as I know, they never got a faction boxs and so have now received a number of faction specific tactics, which are useful. I will have to have a proper look through them before I build my team. They are going to be even better in the psychic phase. The last faction that I'm interested in is the chaos space Marines. The new datasheet are not of I interesbut a couple of the tactics look great, especially the one about killing a cultists to have the others pass morale, guard should so have this as well! While I have a nids force, I'm not bothered about there tactics and such, as there really there to play with my son.
Other that that, there are a number of factions that also got updates in here that I really don't care about. Custodies got a load of tactics, as did harlequins, death guard and thousand sons. Some of them look quite good, such as the quins being able to shoot after charging or 1k sons buffs against Space Wolves (situational but cool). Necrons and Tau also got a couple of new tactics, including Tau's retreat after overwatch, as if Tau needed any help in that area.
Lastly there seems to be some confusion about the cost of various Ork wargear. It seems that the points might have been mixed up or something. I don't actually know what the issue is but it seems that some models pay points for stuff they didn't use to and visa versa. Like I said, I'm not sure what the issue is, nor do really care.
Overall,I think that this is going to be a really good book and I'm quite looking forward to getting my hands on it.
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