First up are the general, army wide rules that every army has access to. These are grouped in to two main areas, the detachment rules and army abilities. First up we'll have a look at the detachment rules.
Defenders of humanity is the most basic rule here and is shared by all armies under one name or another. The main difference here is the inclusion of Leman Russ tanks when in a Spearhead detachment. As things stand there is one main issue with this setup, taking a Spearhead detachment costs CP, even if your warlord is within that detachment. Hopefully we will get the same benefits as things like Dark Angels received and that if the detachment contains your warlord, the CP is set to 0. This will make tank heavy armies a properly viable option again, especially at the smaller end of the points scale.
Regimental doctrines are, in my opinion, an excellent idea, giving each army a unique feel. There is little that needs changing to this core rules, although some of the individual doctrines need a little bit of work but I will go over those in a separate post.
Militarum Tempests doctrines follow very closely to Regimental Doctrines, following all the same rules. However, there is one thing that I feel should change here. Now, I know that what I'm about to suggest will be controversial but I think that if you mix MT units and AM units then each should receive the benefit of their own respective doctrines. I.E. the guard units receive the Regimental Doctrine and Scions receive a MT Doctrine, even though they are within the same detachment. There are several good reason for this; firstly they are part of the same overall force, unlike things like space marines where each chapter is completely separate. Secondly, why would the Scion, the cream of the crop, not get to have any bonuses or abilities? Surely they should get something. Lastly, the Scions do not have the ability to field a full force, only being able to field a patrol, battalion or vanguard detachment, and need guard units to field anything else. This change would not break the game and enable all the units to act and operate as they should. The alternative is to move to a system similar to the Dark Eldar patrol detachments and give guard the ability to bring different detachments without giving up CP. Being able to bring a free patrol detachment of scions for every other detachment would be one way of dealing with the problem. Either way, I feel that there needs to be a change to the way that scions are handled.
Lastly we have Advisers and Auxilla. These units can be included in any AM or MT army without affecting the doctrines received by the army. I think that these are generally fine, however, there is a similar problem with Tech-priet Enginseer's as there is with scions. These are supposed to be Mars (or whoever) trained specialist but they seem to have forgotten much of this when they are attached to the guard. Now I don't really see a solution to this problem as it would be silly to put all of the forge world dogmas in the guard codex just in case you want to take a Tech-priet. I think that really this one will just have to remain as it is and we'll just have to assume that the AdMech send us all the stupid Tech-priets.
Next up are the general army abilities. These are a bit more specific but are still applicable across a whole army. The first one is Grinding Advance. Now we've had a similar rule for quite a while, from the Lumbering Behemoth rules of old through to the various iterations of Grinding Advance. The rule is a good rule, however I think it needs a little bit extra to it. I think that it should apply to all weapons not just the turret weapons, maybe this makes it a little too powerful but I don't think so. I don't see what the difference between the turret weapon and the other weapons is really, they are all on the tank and attached to the same systems. Giving all the weapons the Grinding Advance rule would really make the Leman Russ the true beast it should be.
Next are guard orders or as they are properly known, the Voice of command ability. The base orders, the seven original orders, are pretty good and there is nothing there that I think needs changing. With the inclusion of hot-shot lasguns in to FRFSRF, all the issues I had with orders were solved. We must also consider the Tank Orders at this point. While I have no issues with the orders that exist, I think there needs to be more of them though.
There are also the Regimental orders, orders specific to individual regiments. Of these there are a couple which I think need some work. The two that jump out most are the Cadian and Tallarn orders. These are both tank orders and while there is nothing wrong with the actual order, it's the fact that they are tank orders that the problem. Personally I would have preferred to have each regiment get an infantry order and tank order, even if the order was the same for both, one such example would be the valhallan or vostroyan orders, which would work for both. Of the others the only others that I think need work are the Catachan order and the stormtroopers order. The Catachan order needs works as I think this is too focused, as most squads will only have 1 weapon that can take advantage of the order. Command squads and veterans can take more flamers but then your loosing out on the extra ballistic skill, so it's not very popular. I think expanding the order to include grenades and grenade launchers would be better. The stormtroopers order is a good order, however with the new MT regiments it needs changing. I suspect that what will happen is that we will loos the generic stormtrooper order and receive new Tempestus regiment orders, one for each of the new regiments. I think that there will be some duplication of the AM regiment orders but that's perfectly fine.
Next, Doctrines.
