It's this point I should be jumping up and down with excitement and to tell the truth, I'm not actually that excited. When 8th was released I was really really excited, at last all of the rubbish and bloat was going to be gone, all the stupid additional books and bonuses removed, the game simplified, back to basics. Then it just started all over again, we got additional books with new rules and benefits, sub-faction codices, "campaign" books with all their benefits and we were pretty much right back in 7th.
So, what's to guarantee that we won't have exactly the same with 9th? Nothing and that's what's turning me off the game. That being said, I will be picking up the new rules at some point, probably Christmas, and I'll pick up the new guard codex when it comes out or the nearest birthday or Christmas ( I suspect it will be the following Xmas), mostly as I have an army and I do enjoy the social side of the game.
The new starter set, if that's what the pictures are, looks pretty good. There's actually a lot of units that I would use in there, the bikes, the assault intercessors, the "devastators" and the first company vets. The other characters would no doubt be used as well, without much effort. All in all, this is a box I could see myself buy at some point, I won't however be rushing to grab it at launch. I'll take a closer look at these units later but for now I'll just stick to my thoughts on the 9th edition rules and mostly talk through the "big 9" that GW put out. So let's start with there point 1 shall we?
1 Rules fine tuning
While I can't say much about this but right now, there is plenty of speculation around how this is going to happen. cleaning up rule interactions and things like mission scoring. One good thing that was mentioned was the limit to +\- to BS and I presume WS being limited to just 1.
2 Crusade system
This seems like a good thing but very limited. It sounds a lot like it's geared to a campaign style system, one that would be great in small gaming group but I don't see (yet) how it would work in the wider world. I do like the sound of it though, building up your units one battle at a time. Something to look at but maybe not much use.
3 More CP!
Or maybe not. As a rule I run a fairly standard list at 2000 points, however this still nets me at least 22 command points and can net up to 27, if I'm being really cheesy. Right now it seems like I'm gonna be down a few, as it seems like you'll get a set number of CP per army size, so maybe 5 per 500 point of something similar. This is both good and bad. Yes it means that you are free to use whatever detachment you like to get the units you want and puts everyone's stratagems on a level playing field. However, it does hurt some armies, like guard and nids who tend to rely on stratagems more than other armies. It also looks a lot like your going to have to pay CP's for allies from a second codex, possibly even from the same codex but different detachment. There's a lot up in the air right now but I think this will be a pretty good move over all.
4 Vehicles in combat
This is a big one. Up until now it's be easy to shut down vehicles, tag a Leman Russ with a Hormagaunt or a Land Raider with a Grot and your not firing for a turn. It was always annoying when you lost such a key piece over nothing. For me it was always my Wyverns, as they are a key part of my army. Being able to keep shooting is going to be a big bonus, the question is, will doing so have draw backs, such as -1 to hit or having to shoot the closest units? Either way, it looks good do far.
5 Terrain rules
The current terrain rules were not that bad, I just feel that there was not enough types of terrain listed, which lead to a bit of confusion. That plus a 12 foot tall monstrous creature only bring able to fight at ground level was dumb. "Hey, may arms are at you height but I can't kick you with my feet, so I can fight you!" Yep, it was nonsense, surely if you can reach it, you can punch it. Terrain seems like a big thing this time around, hopefully they won't make it too complicated.
6 Game sizes
This sounds pretty good and something I'm app for. I have a couple of big guard armies and I'm planning on building some smaller primaris marine armies at some point in the (far) future to replace my current old school marine armies. However, these will be small, probably about 500 points and while I could combine them in to bigger armies, it would be nice to be able to play them on there own in smaller games and still have a nice balanced game. I just hope that it doesn't infringe on my Kill Team stuff.
7 Reserves reworked
From what I can gather, this could involve a few elements. One element Being the option to put units in to reserver for everyone, a standard stratagem as it were, giving the option to outflank or deep strike if the unit has that option. This could be very useful for many people, an added tactical option. I'm sure there will be lots on it, as I can't imagine outflanking baneblades will be very welcome.
8 Large blast weapons
They say this had been improved to reflect how effective they are against hordes and I guess it will work similarly to things like the demolisher cannon, d3 shots up to 5 models, d6 6+ models. Makes sense and is easy to work.
9 Flyers
This sounds like a return to some of the rules from 7th, with flyers being able to leave the board and then return. I imagine that you'll loose a turn off shooting, leaving one movement phase and returning the next, ready for another strafing run across the battlefield. Flyers in 8th always seemed a little constrained to me, only being able to fly around the board and basically being forced to hover or crash, either that or fly around in squares. Hopefully this will open up flyers again and make them what they really should be.
All in all there seems to be some good elements here and hopefully this really is just a case of tidying up and balancing the rules to make an even more fun and cinematic game that can also be competitive. I'm sure that we will get a lot more information over the coming weeks until release and I'll no doubt comment on anything g that I find Interesting. One last thing for now though;
We get a new lieutenant! This one is actually quite good as well.
Edit: this popped up yesterday evening and has some key point. Firstly the new command phase and there is a little nugget of information on command points.
The Command phase is a quick new addition to the turn sequence. In this phase, Battle-forged armies will acquire new Command points and spend the ones they have on certain Stratagems.
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