8th Edition Valhallans

There are times when if blogger was a person, I could kill them. I'd pick them up by the scruff of the neck and throw them out a very high window. Basically, blogger just threw a wobbly and deleted all the text on my post when I tried to move a picture. It probably wound have been fine, except for bloggers insistence on auto saving. Does anyone know if you can turn this feature off?

So, to start again.

This week we are looking at the Valhallan Ice Warriors, a grim and determined lot, where life is cheap (if not worthless) and only success matters.



The Valhallans doctrine, Grim Demeanour, is a pretty good representation of the Valhallan attitude to warfare.




I was expecting the Valhallan doctrine to help out with moral, and the doctrine does not disappoint. As usual, it is formed of two parts, one for infantry and one for vehicles. So how does it work? Well for infantry it means that you are going to loose a lot less men from failed moral tests and to some extent removes the need for commissars. With a standard infantry squad, normally if you loose half of the squad, you are in real danger of being wiped out in the moral tests, with this doctrine, you need to loose over 7 of 10 men in order for the squad to be wiped out and that's assuming that you roll a 6 for moral. In other words, your men are going to be hanging around on the table top a lot more, meaning that your enemy cant rely on the moral phase to finish off the job of destroying you. This means that they will have to dedicate more firepower to destroying your units and as such, this means that there will be less firepower to dedicate to the rest of your army, resulting in your troops lasting longer.

For vehicles, the same idea is represented by doubling your remaining wounds when consulting the damage table.  For most Imperial vehicles, they drop down a tier after loosing half their wounds, but with this doctrine, they will have to loose over three quarters of their wounds instead. This means that they will be on there top tier until they are down to about 2 or 3 wounds, before dropping down a tier with almost every wound. In reality this means that your vehicle are going to be working at full efficiency until they are destroyed. This is because most weapons that are going to destroy a vehicle are multi-damage weapons, and will usually remove 2 to 4 wounds at a time. Again, this means that your enemy cannot just cripple you vehicles by taking them down a tier or two and then ignore them, instead they will have to continue firing at them until they are completely destroyed. This means, that similar to infantry, your enemy will have to keep shooting at a vehicle until its destroyed, mean that they wont be able to fire at any of your other vehicles, saving them from damage and keeping them on the table longer.


The unit highlighted this time around is no surprise, as its pretty synonymous with the Valhallans.

 

There is also an ulterior motive for showing this unit off and that's the changes to the rules. Now, we all know that Conscripts have been ruling the roost somewhat at tournaments, even with there poor leadership and BS, once massed in to a 50 man squad with a commissar and an officer, they form a very hard hitting and hard to shift unit, soaking up shooting and combat with ease. The days of the massed Conscripts maybe number though. The two key rules updates have come in the form of reduced numbers and the removal of automatic orders.

The reduction in numbers has almost reduced the unit in half, dropping the maximum from 50 to 30. This is still a big unit but it does still drop the shooting output quite significantly. For a lot of people, this probably wouldn't change the situation much, as they would just split up the conscripts in to two 25 man blobs and carry on as normal, just upgrading the platoon commander to a company commander to get the extra orders. What really damaged the shooting output of these units though, is the fact that orders will now only work on a 4+. This means that it will only be a 50/50 change of getting that FRFSRF order off, and if you fail, that's it, no second chances. In some respect, this actually encourages the two 25 man squads, as at least your likely to get one of the orders off. If we think about this in terms of averages, over 2 turns, this will drop the shooting output potential from 400 shots (at rapid fire range with FRFSRF) to 150 shots (with one successful order and one fail). That's quite a difference is firepower, and makes quite a difference to what you will kill. I haven't run it through MathHammer, but I imagine there will be a significant difference in how many marines you could kill.


The next thing mentioned is the Valhallan order, Fire on my Command, is very similar to yesterdays, just the other side of the coin, firing IN to combat.



We all know that you can't fire in to combat right? Well now you can, there's just one drawback, roll a 1 and its your own men your hitting. As it stands, I cant think of any aura abilities that enable you to reroll 1's, otherwise this would be prefect. Being able to shoot IN to combat is great, as it means that you can shoot in with whatever weapons you like and your men don't have to fall back from combat. You could issue Fix Bayonets to the engaged unit, let them take a swing at the enemy and then fire in with some other models to kill a few off before you went in to combat and had another try. If you were running a Vostroyan detachment and a Valhallan one, just imaging the look on your enemies face as he watched his squad getting shot to bits, while locked in combat. Very situational, but also very fun. Valhallans we looking to be a good army already and this just adds to it, while still keeping in with there play style and fluff.

After the order we get the Stratagem and also this is where the "classic and much loved rule" returns.




This stratagem is very reminiscent of the old rule, which use to apply only to conscripts but now applies to all infantry units. At its basic level it enables you to regenerate a single unit that has been wiped out. There's seems to be a couple of clear winners here, firstly, those expensive specialist units, such as plasma or melta command squads. With this stratagem, you can do those suicidal charges to take out a character or vehicle, without worrying about the repercussions. Kill that captain but loose the plasma squad in return? Ok, ill just bring them back next turn. If you have a chimera spare you can just taxi the units around all game. The other winners with this are conscripts, as now you can throw them at something, like a squad of dark elder wytches and watch them get destroyed, knowing that they'll be back next turn. Its a great stratagem and opens up lots of options for just pushing forward and dam the consequences.

But the part I really find interesting is the bit that says "the combined squad stratagem". Now, I've had a look around and it seems that this will not be a before game stratagem to combine X number of squads at deployment, but an in game stratagem to merge squads together, to form a reinforced composite squad. I guess the idea is to take two squads that maybe down to half strength and combine them to form a single full strength squad, however, if there are no limitations on it, then I can see it being used a lot for first turn amalgamations of squads to form good old blob squads and i'm assuming that it will limit things to just the basic infantry squads and not allow things like conscripts or veterans to benefit. Its not quite what I had hoped for as I would have liked to be able to form proper blob squads at the start of the game, but as long as its not an expensive stratagem, then I think it will work out just fine. We will have to see the proper wording to really see how good it is and how it will work best, but its good that the option is there.








The next highlighted unit is one of my favourite super heavies in the game, the Stormlord, with its Vulcan Mega Bolter. If I had the money, I'd have one of these in my armoury for sure. But why is it here? Well, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they Steel Behemoth rule has been updated to include the fact that heavy weapons no longer suffer a penalty to shoot after the vehicle has moved, which is good, it should really have been that way from the start, its a mobile fortress after all. The second reason for it being here is to introduce the next stratagem, Crush Them.



This card has several uses, as it enables you to advance and charge but also means that your hitting on a 2+ instead of your usual 5 or 6+. I can see this card being used one of two ways. The first way is purely to get a unit up the field, to contest an objective or to try and grab line breaker, yes you are going to need to charge, but with careful planning, you can pick a unit that has a very slim chance of actually doing any damage to the vehicle, that way you could get up to an extra 12 inches from your movement, giving you a potential total movement of anything up to 30 inches, depending upon which vehicle you use. The other use for this is to finish off a unit of enemy models, either in your own deployment zone or on an objective, this general means that you need to use a vehicle with a lot of attacks, which is another reason the Stromlord is being highlighted, as it has 9 attacks. Most times when your charging in a vehicle its as a last resort, as your not expecting to hit, but when you do hit you have a fairly good chance of wounding, with this stratagem, you can pretty much guarantee to hit. Getting hit with 3 attacks from a Leman Russ will do some damage, especially against some of the softer squishier units. This could clear out the last of a unit from you deployment zone or to remove that last model from the objective. As a stratagem I like it. Its not one that will be used very often but its one to keep in your back pocket for those last minute moves.

Overall, I think that the Valhallan doctrine is a good doctrine. While it doesn't directly help with shooting output or combat potential, but it does help indirectly by keeping your men on the table longer or keeping your vehicles firing at full power. I don't know if I will use this for any of my armies but its defiantly a strong doctrine.

Today see us looking at the Armageddon Steel Legion and is the last of these previews. That means that we will have to wait and see what the Cadians, Tallarns and Militarium Tempestus doctrines hold.

8th Edition Vostroya

Next up on the list are the Vostroyans, a regiment most noted for there first born regiments. Long story short, they didn't back the Imperium during the Heresy, in fact they didn't back anyone but decided to keep all the man power they had to keep there manurfactoriums going. This lead to some guilt and as an expression of that guilt they give over the first born sons of every family to the Imperium. This means that they are one of the few regiments that actually receive reinforcements from there home world. They are also know for there wargear, which is customised and quite often a family relic or something. I was unsure how they were going to transform this on to the table top and to be honest, its not what I expected. 

The basic premise is that all the Vostroyans wargear is master crafted and hand build to a level of detail and perfection greater than the mass produced wargear the rest of the imperium get issues. As such they have received the Hairloom Weapons Doctrine.

Unlike the other doctrines we have seen so far, this does not have two parts but is a simple one part, cover all doctrine and it really is simple. It leaves no room for doubt and makes a lot of the infantry weapons 30" and boosts up all the heavy weapons. There are good points and bad points to this. I'll start with the bad, so I can end on a high. The main bad point is that the weapons that really need it are not affected, i.e. flamers and meltas'. putting an extra 6 inches on a flamer or heavy flamer would make a real difference, with a melta it was really make a massive difference, yes, on a lasgun or plasma gun in  makes a difference, but flamers and melta are the ones that would benefit most from this. I can understand why they have taken meltas of the list, as that would be very powerful, and with a lack of multi-meltas, its not going to affect melta weapons much at all. Flamers on the other hand, would not become overpowered by this at all, but would be boosted sensibly. Other down points are that some of the weapons that benefit, don't really need it, I mean, lascannons can tough pretty much anything, to can battle cannons, 6 extra inches isn't going to make that much difference. It might open up so additional cover positions, but on the whole, its not a great improvement for them. 

The good points of this doctrine however, do put this doctrine in to the good pile. The are some real stand out winners to this, being Plasma guns, Punisher Gatling Cannons and obviously, the humble lasgun. Yes, there are some other weapons that benefit, such as heavy bolters, but those, I think, are the main winners. Adding an extra 6 inches to a lasgun means that you will be able to get shots on target that much earlier, and combining it with something like FRFSRF (if it still exists, which I would guess it still does) will mean 2 shots at 30 inches and 4 at 15 inches. This will really make the difference between getting 2 rounds of shooting in on an enemy before a charge and getting 3 rounds in. It will also pretty much guarantee at least one round of rapid fire, unless you opponent wants to risk a 10 inch charge. Plasma guns benefit in the same way really, that extra range pushes you threat range significantly, and also means that at deployment, you have a chance of really doing damage, as you can reach over in to the enemy deployment zone without having to move but if you choose to, there are very few places they can hide. The last one to mention here I think is the Punisher Gatling Cannon. This is an awesome weapon, kicking out a load of shots, but it is very short ranged for a tank based weapon, forcing you to get up close to the enemy, when really, you don't want to. Now, with the extra range you can hang back further, making sure to keep out of range of lots of weapons, like melta guns, and also well out of charge range. I think its defiantly a good fit for this weapon, especially with the rules we looked at yesterday. I also mentioned heavy bolters, now these things have always been a close call with autocannons, but have always lost out and still do but with the extra range, they do start to look good again, but remember, autocannons also gain that extra range.

All in all I think that this is a good doctrine and one I may well look at for some of my troops but at the moment, it looks like the weakest one of the three we have seen so far.

The highlighted unit this time round is the heavy weapons squad (HWS) and I can see why. With the extra range bonus granted by the doctrine, it means that heavy weapons can reach that little bit further and do that little bit more damage. Most of the heavy weapons have quite a good range on them, with most being at least 48 inches. The extra 6 inches doesn't make much of a difference but it does make it that bit more dangerous to you enemy. I don't think that this extra range on your heavy weapons really makes or breaks this doctrine, its nice but it doesn't swing it for me.

One thing that does make me sit up and take notice and that is the Vostroyan order; Repel the Enemy.

Now, this does catch my attention. being able to shoot any of your weapons while locked in combat is a huge bonus. Ok, so it only applies if you are actually locked in combat and it makes it one of the only times you might actually want to get charged. Now, in a normal squad of guardsmen, only the sergeant has a pistol, so only he can shoot in the shooting phase, alternatively you could issue the Fix Bayonets order (assuming all the orders are ported from the index to the codex), for an extra round of combat but with only 1 strength 3 close combat attack each, being able to use Repel the Enemy is a massive advantage. At the very least it is doubling the number of attacks you can put down, with the rapid fire lasguns, but any special weapons will benefit, as will any heavy weapons. Can you imagine a squad with a flamer and an autocannon? Or a grenade launcher? This could really hurt the enemy unit, and with being able to then strike in combat as well, you can really do some damage. This order will also be very useful against any combat units like some of the deamons (deamonettes maybe?) who get to strike first in combat no matter what. I think that this is better than the doctrine and does bring up the regiment overall.

The last thing that is mentioned is the Scout Sentinels. They have mentioned the scout sentinels ability to scout, which is the same as it is in the index, without any changes at all.

This is a basic ability to move before the game, in the fashion of the old scout moves. This means that you can push up early and put pressure on the enemy from the off. This does mean that you can expand the zone of disruption for deep strikers, pushing them further from your more important units.

The stratagem that is highlighted also related to the Scout Sentinels.

This means that the scouts have a potential first turn move of between 20 and 30 inches, or if you can advance in the movement phase and still use this stratagem, anything from 21 to 36 inches. Now i'm not sure if you can use this is you've advanced as part of you movement, as it says you can move instead of shooting, which you cant do if you've advanced, unless you've an assault weapon, which Sentinels don't have. So, my reading is that you can do this instead of advancing, so switching 1d6 for 2d6, for the cost of a CP. Its also worth noting that if you decide to do this on any other turn, apart from turn 1, you have a treat range of between 11 and 21 inches, which could be useful for last turn objective grabs, but it a bit unpredictable. So while its a useful stratagem, its not one of the best I've seen so far.

Overall, I think today's preview has been the weakest of the three we have seen so far. The scout sentinel info and stratagem does not excite me like the Leman Russ stuff did the other day and the Vostroyan doctrine is, I think, the weakest so far. The order however is one of the strongest, granted we haven't seen the Catachan one in full yet. As things stand, I won't be using this doctrine, as the others we've seen so far are better.

Today is supposed to bring us to the Valhallans and the changes to conscripts, both of which will be interesting to see. The last snippet of info is about the return of a much loved rule, which, combined with the Valhallans, could be the return of Chenkovs "Sent in the Next Wave!". Tomorrow will tell!

8th Edition Mordian Iron Guard

In part two of the Astra Militarum preview we get to see the Mordian Iron Guard in all there glory, well, maybe not all there glory, but the juicy bits anyway.



In the lore, these guys are the unbreakable anvil of guard units, holding the line until the last man and following order to the letter, no matter what the cost and i'm glad to say that it appears that they will be as similar on the table top as they can be. Now, its worth noting here, that GW could have gone one of two way for this doctrine, in terms of what regiment to name. The Mordian Iron guard were an obvious choice, but so too were the Praetorians, another regiment known for there iron will and fortitude. Granted, the Praetorians were not a widely available as the Mordians, but they looked better in my opinion. One positive of using the Mordians though, is its a dam sight easier to spell!

But what is the doctrine you say? Well, its this, Parade Drill



Again, we'll split it up in to its various parts, starting with the last part, the Vehicles. This is a simple one really, vehicles get to fire overwatch and now hit on a 5 or 6, instead of just a 6. Now, this is a very useful bonus for most vehicles, who usually have low number of shots, the exception being the punisher armed Russ. In a situation where every shot counts and can really make a difference, especially to the likes of turn 1 charges and charges out of deep strike. This is mostly because, many vehicle weapons then to be high strength or high Ap modifiers, and a successful wound is usually converted in to a kill. and in a situation where even one kill can cause a charge to fail, getting those hits in in critical, with this your looking at doubling the number of hits and therefore increasing the chances of wounding. the only downside to this, is that you need to keep your vehicle close to each other, but that's not always a problem. Running a couple of Leman Russ' together is not a bad idea anyway, nor is running several chimeras together, the downside come when your running things like Hell Hounds or Valkyries. The flyers is fairly obvious, not many people want to keep there flyers next to each other, with the Hell Hound, there are not many people I know who run multiples of them and not normally together, as they tend to go off hunting a specific threat. You could support it with a chimera or maybe a Taurox, but it will outpace most other vehicles. The is one question I have, but I will get to that later in the post, as it will either make this doctrine a but useless or great.

The other part of the doctrine affects infantry and in the day and age of no blast markers, doesn't make any difference to the how close you can position your models. In 6/7th this would have been unthinkable, bunching up was a sure fire way of loosing large parts of your army quickly but in this edition it makes no difference and in this case, its actually a positive. If every model is in base to base, they get a +1 leadership buff and a +1 to overwatch, echoing the vehicle abilities. Now this is an all or nothing doctrine, you cant get one without the other. Its going to mean forgetting everything that you've learnt in the last 7 editions, but I think it is well worth it. A free +1 to leadership, means that you are not going to need to spam Commissars or have to use up valuable CP's on moral tests. Granted it doesn't make your troops invincible to moral, but it does help, meaning that you'll need at least 3 casualties before you even need to think about moral. The +1 to hit for overwatch is also great, as it will massively increase you hits. I cant tell you the amount of times I've fired overwatch, only to look at a bucket load of 5's and not one 6. As I said with the vehicles, increasing your hits from overwatch, increases your chances to wound and therefore kill the enemy before they get in to combat. For guard this is what you need to be doing, as were useless in combat against everyone but the Tau. All that you need to do is remember to keep everything in base to base with each other!



This time around it is veteran squads that are highlighted, mainly to highlight the Mordian special order.



Now, this order is useful but highly situational. At first I though it was great, but much like my assumptions about the Catachan doctrines, once I sat back and properly read it, it has a catch and that catch is RAPID FIRE WEAPONS, so no issuing it to a Lascannon heavy weapons team and watching the carnage, because that would be awesome! No, its rapid fire weapons only, which in reality is sensible and not overpowering. It is situational though, as when we look at the rapid fire weapons the guard have, the list is small, Lasguns, Plasma Guns and errr...... Bolter? Yeah, not a great selection, which is why they have highlighted the vets, as you can pack these guys with 3 plasma guns for maximum punch. I can see this order being used a fair bit, but mostly by said vets with plasma guns and a platoon commander, loaded up in to a chimera for some rapid movement. The plan would be simple, nail it to where you need to be turn 1, de-bus from the chimera, issue order and toast character turn 2, die. I would also be unloading from the chimera in base to base at all costs as your going to need the +1's for the return fire and probable charge that will come back at you. I'm not saying that's the only use for it, but its definitely the best use, it will able be useful for taking out the buffing characters before an enemy charge, but at 24" range, its not going to take a smart opponent to keep any characters out of that range until the last possible minute, meaning you'll probably only have one shooting attempt and you'll have to decide which is more important, the character or the unit that is going to do the damage! I would have like to have seen this order be available to any weapon in veteran or infantry squads, not special or heavy weapon squad, as I think that this would have been better and still not overpowered, plus it would have made more sense, as if your going to shoot at a character, your going to shoot everything at it, not just the flashlights and shoot the big gun at something else.





Again, they have highlighted a particular unit from the codex in general, in this case its the Leman Russ and particularly the Punisher. They seem to be doing this for similar reason as they did with the Deathstrike, purely to highlight a rule that is not linked to a particular doctrine. In this case there are three items of note. The first is the comment about points costs adjustment, a small one downwards, which is good. how small this adjustment is I don't know, but any points reduction is welcomed.

The second item of note is the new rules for the Leman Russ; Grinding Advance.



This is encouraging you to go slow and steady with your tanks, rolling up the field, demolishing everything in its path. Now, this is really good, although it affects some tanks more than others. the likes of the Demolishers, Nova and Battle cannon tanks will benefit from this, as will the executioner, even more so if they are using the Catachan doctrine and rerolling the number of shots. Autocannons should be putting out double the number of shots anyway, so this just makes them what they should be but only at half speed. The Vanquisher is a real winner in my opinion, its got good range, ap and damage but was always hampered by the single shot, with this, you can have some backup and be confident that you should hit at least one of the shots. However the real winner here is the Punisher, being a high volume, low strength weapon, hits are vital, and doubling the number of shots on such a weapon is a massive boost. I cant think of a weapon that can kick out that kind of volume of shots, apart from ones on super heavy vehicles. yes, you have a short treat range, just under 30", but once your in range, your a massive threat, even to the likes of marines. Toss in a tank order as well and things get even better. The Leman Russ is a great vehicle, solid and resilient and now it has the fire power to match.

Talking of fire power, the Defensive Gunners Stratagem is also really good.




As I've mentioned a few times, when firing with guard, volume is key, and with overwatch, killing a model can be the difference between a successful charge and not. With this stratagem you are doubling the number of potential hits and with that the number of wounds and kills. Its simple and for only 1 CP I would definitely be considering this every time a vehicle gets charged. There really isn't a lot to say, its good, use it.

Now, skipping back a few points, back to the Mordian doctrine. This allows vehicle to +1 to there hit rolls for overwatch, therefore turning 5's in to 6's, but it also turns 4's in to 5's. Can you see where I'm going with this? Yeah, charging a Mordian vehicle just got serious. Charging a Mordian Leman Russ Battle Tank? Well, there they're hitting at normal ballistic skill, for overwatch. Yep, scary stuff. Can you imaging a punisher doing this? hey, if you moved in your movement phase, you might actually be hitting on a lower dice than you did in your own shooting phase!

Mordians are going to be a very hard army to fight against. They are going to struggle in Mealstrom games, where they want to stay close and move slowly, but they are going to be a hard army to fight against, especially if your a combat based army. Once your in combat, well, you'll cut through them no bother, but you've got to get there first and with these boys that's going to be no easy task.

As things stand, these guys maybe useful for the Hildasay PDF, in support of the Dagr Ormr Militarium Tempestus. They aren't going to be moving much, and the leadership and overwatch bonus' would be useful, especially as most of the units don't have Sergeants. I'm not going  to set that in stone yet though, as we still have 5 more guard doctrines to come, the next of which I'm very interested to read about, that of the Vostroyans.

(Again, all the images are from the warhammer community page)

8th edition Catachan

Just as I finished typing my last post I checked back on to the Warhammer Community page to find that the first of the new regiments had been previewed and it was none other than my favourite, the men of steel and blood, the Catachan Jungle Fighters

These boys are the very essence of brawn over brains in many cases, bred on one of the most inhospitable planets in the universe, yet they survive, even thrive, especially on the battlefield. But what is there role in this edition? Lets have a look;

The main Regimental Doctrine is this:




As you can see, there are two parts to this, a +1 strength bonus and also a +1 leadership bonus but also a bonus to vehicles', in this case the ability to reroll one dice when determining the number of attacks a weapon has.

We'll look at them individually, starting with the second one, the one for the vehicles. Now, it mentions that the doctrines will apply to both vehicles and infantry, so expect most of the doctrines to have two parts, one for infantry and one for vehicles. it would be nice if both applied to both types but that might be a bit strong, after all it would put Leman Russ's to T9 and 12 Wounds. as for the doctrine itself, it enable you to reroll a single dice when determining how many shots a ranged weapon has when it has to roll for the number of shots it can fire. Now the main ones that spring to mind are the Leman Russ Battle Cannon along side its Demolisher brother and also the Wyverns but the likes of the Valkyries MRP's and Hell Hounds flamers will also benefit. For some of these weapons, this could be a huge bonus, in one game when I took a Hell Hound, I was really disappointed with the amount of shots that the flamers gave me. With this doctrine I would have been able to reroll those dice to get a better number of shots without using up precious command points. For the likes of a twin flamer armed Hell Hound this could be a huge bonus, enabling both weapons to be rerolled, where as the likes of the Wyvern, this is less of a bonus, as its a 4d6 roll. now if it was 4x d6 rolls, it would be huge but as a single 4d6 roll, it means that 3 dice are fixed, although I suppose a CP could be used to reroll one of the other dice. For me personally, running the Hjaltland LI as a Catachan regiment just got better, as it will mean that all my vehicles will be getting a free reroll, with the Vyverns both having MRP's and the Wyverns having their mortars, it also makes the heavy flamer armed one a bit better, as those heavy flamer points start to look a bit better value for money. My only issue with this is that it only effects vehicles and not d3/d6 infantry weapons, which is a bit odd as the two weapons that the Catachan fighter love most is the flamer and mortar, both of which are d6 weapons.

The second part (or first, depending upon how you look at it) applies to the infantry and is itself a two parter. The bonus to leadership is always useful ad it wasn't until the last game that I played, which i'm still trying to type up the battle report, that I had serious issues with moral. Granted this only applies if your close to a friendly officer, but if your running guard you should be running plenty of officers, even running a platoon commander with a vet squad is a really good idea. This means that pretty much all your army should be benefiting from the +1, making most squads Ld8 or more. Some units will benefit more than other, mostly things like Ratlings and Conscripts, but even vets and command squads will find this useful. I'm assuming that you wont be able to apply this to commissars as that would mean that you'd be almost immune to moral. Now, the second half of this part is a +1 to strength and when I first read this I almost jump out of my chair in excitement, then I realised its +1 to strength and NOT toughness! So I got comfy on my chair again and continued reading. The +1 to strength is good, don't get me wrong, but its nothing compared to a +1 to toughness. As it is we have a +1 to strength and with the fact that you can only take power weapons on sgts it really does help out in combat. Against marines and the like it will help as its hitting on 4's now and against the likes of Tau we'll be hitting on 3's, which does actually make a difference when were talking about the small numbers of attacks that guardsmen get, any extra wounds you can do, really do make a difference. For those armed with power weapons, this is even better, as swords are user strength, it increases the change of wounding from 33 to 50% and with the likes of mauls, it can drop a wound roll from 3 to 2 when going against the likes of Tau warriors and tyranid guants. Its situational though, as guard are not a combat army and there won't be many times when you'll be charging across the battlefield to take the enemy in hand to hand combat, but this does mean that, if its a charge or be charged situation, you've got to charge and make the most of that extra strength before your wiped out.




The next thing that I wanted to talk about is the highlighted command squad. Ill have to go back and check if its been updated but is mentions that the squad can be armed with a heavy Flamer and FOUR flames. Now, unless the Catachan command squad has been changed from the index command squad, its a model over, as the command squad is only 4 strong, meaning a heavy Flamer and THREE flames. If it has been changed, that's cool, but i suspect the price will reflect this change. The Catachan order is also mentioned, Burn Them Out. This is obviously a Flamer related order only and I can only hazard a guess at its meaning but I suspect that it will either guarantee maximum hits or give you the option to reroll them, of course it may also add strength or increase the ap value as well. Personally, I'd take the hits over an ap modifier, unless it was a -3 or something.

The stratagem "vicious Trap" is also highlighted. It costs 1 CP and is played after an enemy unit successfully charges a unit of Catachans in cover.



Now, its only a 1CP card, so it might be worth a punt on the odd occasion, but I wouldn't be looking at this every time. Its only going to go off half the time and I guess if you wanted you could use your CP reroll to help and even if it does go off, on average you'll do 2 mortal wounds. Against squads of multi-wound models, such as terminators, this wont do a lot, you might be lucky and get it off and roll up a 3, killing a termie and a half, or you might just take 1 wound of a single model, either way its not overly useful. Against squads of single wound models its better, potentially killing off up to three models, but in my opinion its best use is against low wound single model units, or characters. If your getting charged by something like a Space Marine Captain, a 5 wound model, that could potentially do some real damage to a squad of guardsmen, then this could help immensely. With the potential to half the number of wounds before combat begins could be the difference between killing the model or being killed. Personally I will probably only use this if I feel I have points to spend, such as with my 14CP 1000 point list, where I struggle to actually spend all the points in matched play. Pushing this to 2000 points gives the potential for more CP's, anything up to 26! if you have then many, then spending one on this is worth it, if you only have 4 or 5, then I wouldn't bother, I'd save them for something more important and less likely to fail.



This section is going to be brief, mostly as I don't have a death strike and don't plan on getting one. The Deathstrike is a one hit wonder, and was fun in 6/7th and hasn't really changed much in 8th. Why they have decided to try and include it in to the Catachan page is unknown, but I guess they have to put something fun and random in somewhere, which basically sums up the Deathstrike. Yes it would benefit from the rerolls for the random number of shots, but the trouble is that when you read the actual rules, it doesn't benefit as much as they make out. The only roll that is affected is the 3d6 roll, and so you can old reroll a third of the dice, all the other rolls are either what is effectively a to hit roll or a to wound roll, neither of which are effected by the Brutal Strength doctrine. The Vortex Missile Stratagem card is also a fun addition to the Deathstrike and does pair well with the Brutal Strength doctrine, meaning that you can reroll the number of hits and also the to hit rolls, meaning that you should get a significant number of hits. The addition of extra mortal wounds, albeit on a roll of a 6, is also good, but only against multi-would models, against single wound units it wouldn't have any effect. What is also good, is that this appears to apply to not just the initial target by also any units that are within the blast radius, which thanks to the middle part, the +1 to the dice roll, your more likely to hit. So if your going to take a Deathstrike, then you should definitely be looking at this stratagem and doing what you can to get this thing off as early as possible, when the enemy are still bunched up in the deployment zone. In reality though, your probably not going to get the Deathstrike off until turn 3 or 4, by which point the enemy will be scattered and the rocket will not be as useful and the stratagem will be a bit of a waste of 3 CP's. If you manage to get it off turn 2 though, you'll be laughing, as most of the enemy will disappear in a cloud of smoke and fire.

So, all in all, I'm pretty impressed with the Catachan Jungle Fighters Doctrine, it contains lots of elements that are good, with a few great ones and a few not so great but overall I think its going to be the one to go for for the Hjaltland LI, as they are a Catachan style army, with lots of flamers and all the support vehicles are armed with random d6 weapons, all of which are going to be supported by the doctrine and orders and I suspect the warlord trait will also help, if not I can always choose one of the other traits. With this preview I'm really excited for the next ones, which is supposed to be the Mordian Iron Guard, so I'm expecting lots of moral bonus' and a stratagem surrounding fire discipline.


(All the images were taken/nicked from the Warhammer Community page)

8Th edition Astra Militarum Codex

Due to (un)foreseen circumstances we interrupt your normal service for an important announcement.

THIS!!!!!!!!

Yes, the (not so) long awaited Astra Militarum/Imperial Guard codex is here! What's more we have some early details on what will be in the codex, which I though I would go through and see what we can learn from this information.

With the release of the Space Marine codex we got back the Chapter Tactics that we all know and love, albeit with different rules. This continued through the Chaos Codex with the Traitor Legions and AdMech with the Forge Worlds and now we see that this is continuing on to the Guard. This is a great step, as the guard is such a vast and varied force, one setup for the whole lot just seemed a little silly. But what are the new Regimental Doctrines be and for who? Well, Warhammer /Community have given us part of the answer, as we know that they will be; Cadia, Catachan, Armageddon, Tallarn, Valhalla, Vostroya, Mordian and the Militarum Tempestus. So, the usual suspects and also possibly a couple of unexpected ones. We also know from the Warhammer Community site that each regiment will be getting its own unique doctrine alongside orders, stratagems, relics, and warlord traits.

Now, for the most part I would expect these to follow along the lines of the other codices, in that there will be several stratagems and relics that are open to all Guard armies and some that will be specific to certain regiments. As for warlord traits, well, I don't know how the other books do things, I haven't got any of them, but I think that there will probably follow similar lines, with general ones and a few specific to the regiments and their specific characters.

But what do we know of the various regiments? And what can we infer from their history as to there future?

Cadia - The general poster boys for the Imperial Guard, the general soldier, the all rounder. I see these boys getting a pretty much straight copy and paste job from the Index. All the orders from the index as very general, and so I don't think they will change much. As for relics and Stratagems, again, they will be very generic, and will suit a mixed force, a bit of infantry, a few tanks and some artillery. They will be "jacks of all trades, masters on none", as the saying goes, and their doctrines, order, relics and stratagems will reflect this.

Catachan - The light infantry, the decicated foot soldier. These guys are rock hard soldiers, slogging through jungles and forests with nothing but a pair of boots and a knife (a F*** off big one at that). These guys will be geared up to infantry fighting, supported by just a few vehicles. The orders and stratagems will all lean towards infantry units, either giving greater fire power or bonus to hits, I expect an option to advance and fire normally to be there somewhere, either as the doctrine or as a stratagem. The relics will all be infantry weapons, either combat or ranged. This army will be great if you don't run many vehicles, except perhaps scout sentinels.

Armageddon - The Steel Legion, armoured warfare specialists. These boys differ from the next lot in the fact that they are mainly an armoured infantry regiment, so lots of chimeras. I expect that stratagems and order will revolve around the use of chimeras, benefiting either the disembarkation or the vehicle itself. I suspect that the ability for the chimera to fall back and still fire will feature somewhere, maybe even ignoring the -1 to hit for moving with heavy weapons. Either way, these boys will revolve around the use of chimeras and infantry.

Tallarn - The dessert warriors and, if you didn't know, hard-core tankies. These guys are tank genius, as Tallarn was the sight of possibly the biggest ever tank battle the Imperium has ever seen (The Battle of Tallarn during the Horus Heresy). Expect these guys to be flavoured towards Tanks and heavy armour, with supporting stratagems and relics. I would expect some orders to be able to affect vehicles as well or maybe an expanded tank orders list, but this maybe handled by stratagems instead.

Valhalla - In the past these boys were all about overwhelming the enemy by sheer numbers and the was represented in there old rules about conscripts (Chenkov's send in the next wave). I expect there to be a few relics and stratagems that revolve around conscripts, either moral boosts or firepower/combat boosts. I think that this will be the go to regiment if you are running conscripts.

Vostroya - these boys are the real surprise in the line up. There is not much to go on with these gusy as to what they will be and where there speciality will lie. They are best know for there first born regiments and don't really stand out in a particular field that none of the other regiments here are more known for. They are regiments of high moral, but so are the Mordians, they are supposed to be winter troops, but none can claim that more than the Valhallans. As such I cant see a particular role for these guys in the line up. They are in a sense, the wild card of the bunch and I am keen to see where they get placed.

Mordian - The Iron Guard, men of iron will and determination. These guys will the unbreakable anvil of the guard world. Expect moral buff a plenty, both in doctrines, orders, stratagems and relics. These guys are trained to hold the line and follow every order to the letter no matter what.

Militarum Tempestus - Well, what can we cay here? Not a lot really, we all know what these guys will be specializing in, deep strike. The relics and stratagems for this regiment will revolve around using there deep striking ability, maybe giving buff to charging or shooting when doing so, or even giving benefits to cover, with the change in the deep striking mechanism, it removes a lot of the possible buff that can be granted.

In addition to all of this, we also get told that there will be some points changes, which is not surprising, as we knew that this was the main play all along. One unit that is mentioned by name are Conscripts and how there rules have changed in respect to their discipline. Now, this could just be a simple leadership value change or it could be additional rules affecting leadership. I suspect the latter, possibly one that means that their leadership can never be altered and that maybe the effect of Commissars is lessened.

There is also talk of new background and also kit bashing options, which is great. My one thought to end on though, is will we see the return of some of the characters we lost in 6/7th? Will we see the return of the great Commander Chenkov or the legendary Al'Raham? What about the man who was Sgt Bastonne or the barbarian Mogul Kamir? However, there is one name that stands above all else in deeds and that is the man known as Marbo.

Chapter symbols

You'll have to forgive the poor quality of the images, these were done while supervising the children painting. I have been pondering chapter symbols for my forces for a while and while I have settled on the Eagle knights symbol, the others are still WIP's.

Ill start with the Eagle Knights as this is now fixed, mostly as its been painted on to the shoulders of most of my army!

A Flamer from one of the tactical squads.

A simple design but representative of the chapter, a knights shield and the talon slashes of a eagles claw. Its also my first attempt at a free hand shape and so far repeating the shield two dozen times hasn't been to bad, there's only about another two dozen to go now! I like the shield, its nice and simple yet it still has a meaning, rather than being something random or sticking on a random transfer from one of the many sheets I have lying around. However, this symbol was actually fairly easy to come up with, some of the others were a lot harder and took far more effort. In fact I still haven't come up with one for the Emperors Disciples.

That's supposed to be a sword in the middle, just in case you were wondering.

The symbol about is my proposed chapter badge of the dark guardians. The main colors of the guardians is black and silver, mostly black armour with silver highlights with one black shoulder, for company and squad markings and a red shoulder for the chapter symbol. The red is supposed to represent the chapters blood shed in the name of the emperor, the green diamond (yes, it does look kinda blue but its supposed to be dark green) is to represent there progenitors, the dark angels and also to be a shield and finally the sword is to symbolize the other weapon of a guardian, which surprisingly is a sword. There, so the sword and shield of a guardian, over a field of blood. Oh you have to love the nice imagery of the 40k universe. Its not perfect, but I think it will work and it includes some element of the dark angels models that make up the bulk of the terminator and bike models the force is comprised of. 

Stone dragons chapter symbol, 90 degrees out, plus dark guardians mk1 on the right and mmk1lower left.

So, the stone dragons are next up and were actually Xxx while I was away on holiday. We were at a Viking museum, (because we don't get enough of Viking up here!) when I came across an exhibit of Anglo-Saxon writing and one symbol in perticular. Now with the space wolf/Viking back story, this intrigued and further examination of the "letters" led me to the second symbol. The first was Stan or the symbol for st, which also has the meaning on stone.

The second was the symbol for ior or io, which also means serpent. Ok so its not quite dragon, but a dragon is kind of a serpent, so it works in my books at least.

So it doesn't take a genius to work out where this is going. Combine the two symbols and you've got the chapter icon. Job done.

I'm pleased to have these sorted as I think that the chapter symbol makes a big difference to the look and cohesion of an army. Granted there are quite a few more complex symbols out there but I feel that simplicity is really key to how they look on the table, to much detail or an overly busy shoulder pad just ends up looking messy when the models are on the table top. For a golden demon model, great but not in game.

Hrossey yeomanry vs admech

I played this game a few weeks ago but its taken me a while to get it all typed up. The game itself was a a mealstrom games, Deadlock, played at 1000 points, on the standard deployment map (dawn of war?)

For this game I decided to try out some vehicles, namely Pask in a LR Punisher, a Leman Russ battle tank, a hell hound and two chimeras each containing a commissar, a platoon commander and a vet squad, one with 3 meltas and one with 3 plasmas guns.

My opponent was playing mechanicus and came with 2 tech priest dominus, 2 dune crawlers, one with the big Neutron laser thing and one with the Icarus array. He also brought two squads of rangers, one with plasma caliver and one with the sniper rifles, lastly he brought some infiltrators.

Both of our warlords took the resilient survivor warlord trait.

Setup

The board was set upand we rolled for deployment. I got first drop and we deployed. Surprisingly I managed to finish deploying first,  which is a rare feat!

Turn 1

Cards - 14,15,24,33,46,55 - Secure objective's 4 (x2) and 5, Defend objective 3, Domination, Psychological Warfare
scored - 14,24,33,55

The cards were good to me for my first turn, with three of the objectives easily reachable. I was already sitting on objective 4 and 3 was easily reachable in the centre of the table. While the hell hound moved to secure objective 3 in the centre, one of the chimeras also moved out to sit on another objective, objective 6, just for good measure, while Pask sat tight on objective 4. In the shooting phase, only the Leman Russ and right hand chimera were able to shoot, targeting the Rangers in the top right hand building, the big one at the top of the picture below. This resulted in a couple of casualties, enough as it turns out to cause them to fail there morale test, netting me another point. At this point I decided to discard Domination, as it would be difficult to achieve.

Moving up to take objectives

The dead pile on the left

Cards - 12,13,23,32,34,61 - Secure objective 2 and 3 (x2), Defend objective 2 and 4, Kingslayer
scored - none

For my opponent the cards were less helpful. Objective 2 was across my side of the board and I was sitting on 3 in the middle of the field and Pask was sitting on 4. Plus he'd have to kill of Pask to get Kingslayer, not an easy task these days. He moved up with the centre of his forces and the Dune Crawlers did some damage, but the main threat this turn was the Infiltrators, who dropped in near to Pask and then charged in, doing some damage but loosing two members to overwatch in the process.

AdMech forces moving up

Infiltrators drop in and......

.......Charge in on Pask

Turn 2 - score 4 - 0

cards - 15,22,35,52,54 - Secure objectives 2 and 5, defend objective 5, Blood and guts, Area Denial
scored - 54, First blood

After a good first turn, the cards weren't so kind. With both objectives on his side of the table, although, with some manourvering I could have achieved more. As for blood and guts?  Well not much chance of that. Anyway, Pask fullback from combat to free up the infiltrators for shooting and be LRBT did its thing, making short work of the squad, although annoyingly one was left alive. I also completely messed up on objective two, forgetting about it and moving the chimera in the wrong direction. The other chimera dropped of its commissar at objective 6, just to hold it in case in came up on the cards.

The guard continue to push forward

Cards - 12,13,23,32,61 - Secure objectives 2 and 3 (x3), Defend objective 2, kingslayer
scored - 13,23

Again, my opponent struggled with his cards, mostly due to the game type. Having not achieved any cards first time round, he was forced to discard a card and then had to retain the rest. This time however he was able to move forward and take objective 3 in the centre of the field, mostly by weight of numbers over my hell hound. He was also unlucky with targeting Pask, reducing him down to just a coupe of wounds and to his lowest level. The final infiltrator decided to charge in on Pask and see if he could finish the job, but was gunned down on overwatch, even hitting on 6's, 29 shots is still a lot of shots.

Turn 3 - Score 6 - 2

cards - 15,22,35,45 - Secure objectives 2 and 5, defend objective 5, Supremacy
scored - 22,45, Warlord,

I continued to gain points with so decent cards, being able to secure objective 2 easily and also gained supremacy, I was unable to secure or defend objective 5 as my chimera tried to advance in to range but came up an inch short. In the rest of the turn I managed to eliminate the central ranger squad, with a combine firepower of a hell hound, chimera and Pask. This was mostly due to the fact that the hell hound didn't perform very well all game, hitting well below average all day.

Chimera on the right failing to take the objective in front of it

The Rangers behind the centeral building are eliminated

cards - 12,42,53,61 - Secure objective 2, Behind enemy lines, No prisoners, kingslayer
scored - 53(1),61(3),WL

This was a great turn for my opponent and really put him back in to the game, with a bit more luck he could have pulled in to the lead. His hard work targeting Pask paid off with the Warlord finally being destroyed, in addition the laser armed dune crawler made short work of the chimera near by, reducing it to molten slag in no time and in the resultant explosion the platoon commander was slain. This meant that he claimed warlord and kingslayer (for 3 points) but was also able to gain No Prisoners, although he only manage to roll a 1 for the points. In an effort to maximise the turns destruction he tried to charge in one of his Tech Priest Dominus, his own warlord as it happens, unfortunately out of all the overwatch that managed to hit, it was one of the Melta guns, which promptly incinerated the priest before he could charge.

Chimera.....

No chimera or platoon commander for that matter.

And now, no Tech Priest Dominus

Turn 4 - Score - 9 - 7

Cards - 15,35,44 - Secure objective 5, Defend objective 5, Mission Critical objective
scored - 15,35,44

At this point I was pretty confident that I could deal with what was left of the enemy forces or at least I could win the game, with only the two dune crawler, both of which were still on full health, a Tech Priest Dominus and a couple of sniper armed rangers on the board, he was going to struggle to compete on maelstrom points. I decided to focus on eliminating the last of the rangers, doing so with the LRBT, which also fired at the front dune crawler, chipping off a couple of wounds. The vet squad that had been dumped out of its chimera, went after the rear dune crawler, destroying it easily with their three melta guns. I was also lucky with the cards, with the melta vets easily being able to secure and defend objective 5 this turn and the hell hound sprinted back to get the Mission critical Objective, which turned out to be objective 4 in my deployment zone.

Mopping up operations

Cards - 12,25,36 - Secure objective 2 and 5, defend objective 6
scored - none

With only two units (for a total of 2 models) on the board, it was going to be hard for my opponent to do much. The cards were not easy, as I held all the objectives in question. So he decided on a bit of a risky strategy and targeted the chimera with the dune crawler before charging in and also performing the same tactic with the Tech Priest on the vets. This time the Priest didn't take a melta gun to the face, in fact he managed to get in completely unharmed. Both combats resulted in dead lock, the priest did manage to take out a couple of vets, but with the commissar around, they weren't going anywhere.

Last stand of the Mechanicus

Turn 5 - Score 12 - 7

cards - 26,51 - Secure objective 6, overwhelming firepower
scored - 26,51

Now there was little that I really could do this turn. As it happens, the commissare that I dropped off at the start of turn 2 finally came in handy as he had been sitting on objective 6 for 4 turns, doing nothing, but now he picked up an easy point. The vets were locked in combat and could probably hold their own with the commissars help, but the chimera was not going to cut it in combat with the dune crawler, so I decided to disembark the vets and then the chimera fell back from combat. Now we couldn't find anything to say that this wasn't allowed or that the vets then couldn't shoot, I might have missed something in the rules, but its sounds fair to me. Anyway, the vets jumped out and supercharged their plasma guns, on the orders of the platoon commander that is, and as a result, the Dune Crawler was vaporised in a giant ball of plasma. On the other side to the field, the commissar charged in to the Priest, striking hard and doing damage, to which the vets added, finishing off the Tech Priest and with him, my opponents army.

Now you see it

Now you don't. The tech Priest can just be seen before his demise at the hands of the vets.

And with the death of the Tech Priest the game ended. Although I managed to table my opponent, on the maelstrom points I was also in front, with the points being 14 to 7 at the end game. If my opponent had managed to last until the end of the game, with only two cards available, being two from the three objective cards he had, he could not have made up the 7 point deficit. I think the only real game changer would have been if the vets could not have fired after getting out of their chimera before it fell back from combat, as the dune crawler would have survived to the end of the game. 

From my perspective I think that I played the game pretty well, I did forget about the tank orders at the beginning and by the time I did remember it was a little late as Pask was dead. The list performed well though and I was surprised just how resilient vehicles have become these days, they really are strong and durable, just like they should have always been. Although I still think that some of the rules around cover are far to over simplified.