IG Leaks

So this information has come from Nafka (Faeit 212) and originated at CanHammer_yt's Instagram account (here)

I've been waiting for something like this for ages and its finally here, so who does it tell us? It actually tells us quite a bit, some good, some not so good.

Orders

The new orders are pretty much the same as the last orders, but just adjusted to the new rules. Many of them have got better, such as FRFSRF giving double the number of shots rather than just one, so 4 in rapid fire range. Take aim and bring it down give rerolls to hit and wound, but are no longer specific to a target type. Forward for the emperor and move, move, move are pretty much unchanged. Get back in the fight is very similar, giving the same basic ability to rally troops back in to normal actions, but its fix bayonets that seems like it could be most useful, giving you an extra fight phase, something that could be very useful to the guard, who are not exactly known for their close combat abilities.

Squads

Now, this is the first of two pages which has the not good bits on. Infantry squads are a troop choice, but special weapons squads are marked as elite! On the next page heavy weapons squads are marked as heavy support and vets are elite. So is this the end of the Infantry Platoon? Are infantry squads the only troop choice?

As for the squad rules, well, nothing really changes, apart from the sgts gaining a chainsword. One thing that stood out but isn't really unexpected is written in the vox rules. It mention friendly officers, which I assume means that officers will now be single models, not a surprise really, but what happens to the company and platoon command squads? Will they now act as the leaks suggest that the SM command squad will, being able to take wounds for the officer at the expense of every one becoming a mortal wound. If so, your going to want a few around, especially for your warlord.

Special weapon squads still appear to be useless, apart from demo charge spam, which still looks like it could be fun.

Vets

So with heavy weapons teams being relegated to heavy support, this means that they are now in one of the most congested slots in the FOC, good job we can take more of each of them now. As for rules, nothing seems to have changed. It will be interesting to know if the same rules applies to weapons strength as before, ie strength twice toughness causes instant death, if they do, then the squads are just as squishy as before. The only advantage I can see now is that I might be able to shoehorn these guys into my MT force as some heavy support.

The vets seem about the same as well. There is only one thing that is interesting. It says that one vet can take a heavy Flamer and that up to three other vets can take special weapons. There doesn't seem to be any caveat a out if you take the Flamer you can't take a third special weapon, so ill have to look at upping the number of special weapons in each squad. There is however a bit of bad news, there doesn't seem to be anything about doctrines, hopefully its on the bottom of the page that's been cut off, but it looks like we could have lost them! I'm still hopeful, as this was one of the key features of vets but then so was the platoon structure and we seem to have lost that.

Tanks

 The Leman Russ Battle Tank, the mainstay of the imperial armored might. And personally I think its pants, ok that's an overstatement. I still don't think its great, its a lot better than it was but its still not great. Stat wise its ok, and will take a bit to killing but there are a few problems for me. First the autocannons taken a nerf, as it was 4 twin linked and now its just 4, surely it should have been 8 shots? That would go with the rest of the twin linked world. And apparently an overheating supercharged plasma sponson  can destroy a tank in the blink of an eye. In the rules for tank commanders and I assume for LR demolishers, the plasma main weapon, the Executioner plasma cannon can overheat and only cause d6 mortal wounds and render the gun useless, but a sponson plasma gun can kill the tank outright? Seems a little odd to me.

One good bit is the fact that squadrons still exist, which I find strange as they seem to have removed platoons. Coupled with the fact that you now run the vehicles seperatly is good, means that taking different types of tanks, ie vanquisher and punisher, in the same squadron is not such an issue. It means that I don't have to take two squadrons to get my choice of tanks.

On the right there is a little peak of the demolishers variants, you can't make out much but they are more expensive, power level 12 instead of 11, hopefully they will have more wounds or higher toughness to show for the tougher nature of the vehicle as shown by the higher rear armour on the previous editions.

Tank commander

As with the rest of the characters in 8th, the tank commander has lost his buddy and is now flying solo. He remains the same in most other ways, with a similar stat line to standard tanks but with better BS, as before. His orders seem to be exactly the same and will be very important if you fancy supercharging your plasma guns, using the gunner, kill on sight order. Here we see the extra rule for the plasma cannons, which states the vehicle only takes 6 mortal wounds instead of being removed, hopefully this is just been missed off the page of the LRBT entry. There is not much else to say about the tanks apart from the fact that storm bolter finally make sense, rapid fire 2 is what they should always have been, as they are basically two bolter duck taped together. Granted assault 2 was the best they could do in precious editions, but now there defiantly where they should be.

So, what's my overall verdict? My feelings are mixed right now, there are some good bits, namely orders and extra weapons in the vet squads. But there are some bad bits, the potential removal of the platoon system, something that may well effect both the MT and the IG. Also the moving of the various squads, heavy, special and vets, is not something I'm in favor of yet. The main thing is though, were still lacking a lot of information, what will happen to platoon and company command squads, what are the rules for commissars and priests (although I suspect these will be similar to the sisters versions), what will happen with artillery squadrons? If the same applies as with tanks, what will happen to barrage weapons? One thing is for sure, there's going to be quite a few changes to my armies!

More Eagle Knights

Just a quick update on the Eagle knights. With getting sidetracked with the dreadnought and the additional characters that i forgot about, I didn't get as much done as i would have liked the other weekend. However, I have been pushing on with the knights. I have almost got all of the models base coated. 

The Box

There are still a few more models to go, but on the whole they are there and ready for a coat or two of orange. I have noticed that the colour of the primer is not having as much effect as I though it might have. Yes, the white primer does make the base colour lighter and the black primer does make the base coat darker, as you would expect, but with the various grey coloured primers I also ended up with didn't make as much difference. I was hoping that there would be quite a difference in the final colours and that the oranges would be different, creating a patchwork effect of power armour. The idea was that this would come across as an army on the move, constantly in battle and performing repairs as necessary, but I think that it will not show up like that. I still think that I can get the effect that I want, but only time will tell how well it works out.

In other news, there have been a number of leaks in recent days, mostly yesterday as far as I can tell, the show some info about the death company. Now, its good and bad. Looks like some new characters, namely ancients and champions, both existing as single model units, who or what these are I don't know, but I'm keen to find out. On the bad side however is the fact that the death company seem to loose relentless and rage, as its not in the data sheet, however it could be included in the death company key word? Not entirely sure how these things work yet. Plus my boltgun wielding thunder hammer armed dudes are now in trouble.  In the previous codex you could swap your chainsword and/or bolt pistol, now it just says "and". One of my guys is visibly wielding a hammer and bolter but one isn't, but the three other squad members are also wielding bolters and chainswords, and without relentless they are also going to need surgery. Ill hold off until the books drop but seeing as they are only base coated, now is the time to do any major reconstruction work.

Wargaming mat

So a while ago I got a war games mat for Christmas. It is a Micro Art Studios Grassland's mat in the standard 6' by 4', alongside this I also received some MDF buildings. I have only played a couple of games of the mat so far, also using the buildings, although only the first two sets (A and B) formed of the smaller buildings. I cant vouch for how hard wearing the mats and buildings are, but from what I have seen of them so far they are at least as good as any of the other mats I've used in the past. I will do another review in the future after i have had a chance to use both more, and also how it gets on being stored, as I usually have a long time between games and the mat will spend a lot of time rolled up in its case. This leads me to the only issue I have found so far. While the bag it comes with is of a good quality, its very basic. Ok, so its a free bag, but there is no handle on it at all. I would have liked just a simple handle on the case, just for manoeuvring it around more than anything. I may well look at getting a proper carrying case at some point, but for the moment the basic case will do.

Mat ready for battle

The table above was used in a game against Orks, and it really makes the difference to the experience and I really want to get all the buildings up and running and also get some paint on them, just a very basic colours scheme just to finish off the visuals.

Another view

The next plan is to get some foliage, to this aim, I have got hold of some cheap plastic plants for creating some tropical plants. I'm just trying to find some suitable MDF bases.

Dreadnought surgery

In the previous post I mentioned the dread I'd done for my Eagle Knights. I think everyone will notice that it was actually the Hellbrute from DV, with minor modifications. But the question is how do you turn the DV Hellbrute in to a marine dreadnought? There are probably some people out there who will think that this is a simple easy thing and I really wish I was one of them! Granted I could probably have done a lotmore than I did, shaving off some more of the symbols and faces carved in to the body of the dread, green stuffing various parts to make it more angular and slab sided, as per the marine dreads.

Hellbrute and Marine dread

With them side by side its easier to see the differences, and there are quite a few of them. Apart from all the spiky bits, of which there are quite a lot, the whole thing is more rounded, less brick like. There is also a lot more detail to the torso, and especially the legs. While I would quite like to have a proper dread, I have an agreement with myself that I will always try to use what I have before buying anything else and while a dread with multimelta and powerfist, foot slogging across the board is pretty useless, its cheap and I've only got one because I have to (but thats a topic I've covered before).

So what did I do to try and De-chaos the dread, probably not as much as I could have. I went for the basics of cut all the spikey bits off and lost the chains and bits from the torso. I could have taken off the spikes/arrows from the torso and legs and possibly the face from the left leg but that was going to be a lot of time and effort, both of which are a bit lacking at the moment. I also like the face, and think that with the right paint job it might look quite good and not at all chaos like, its a long shot as everyone knows what the model is and instantly jumps to the 'oh your playing chaos' conclusion. There are a couple of things I would have liked to change, but a) don't have the bits or b) don't have the skill. These are the middle of the torso, as I would liked to have put a marine dread center section in, but I don't have one and I'm not paying ebay prices for one. I don't really like the face but I don't know what else to do with it, so it willnstay for the moment and ill see what its like painted. I would have liked to have changed the exhausts at the top for more mechanical looking ones, as the current ones are quite organic looking, but hopefully a metallic paint job will do something to mitigate that a bit. The big one though, is the back bone/spine structure up the back. Its obviously a back bone and doesn't fit with the machine that is the marine dread but I have no way of dealing with this. Not only don't I have a clue as to how to deal with it, I don't have the ability with green stuff, and the like, to remodel it.

In reality the who thing is a compromise and not a very good one at that but its what I have, so ill deal with it. The one thing I can say is that I actually quite like the pose, he does look like he's aboutto wreck something or someone. Ill see what he looks like when the paint job is finished, but for now its a waiting game.