Last week's rules previews

So we have some new rules this week to look at this week. This week is overwatch and characters.

There have been some big changes to overwatch for 9th edition, some of which I am less than impressed with. For starters overwatch itself has now become a stratagem, rather than an inbuilt ability from the core rules. This means that it will follow all the rules of stratagems, the key one being that it is a one use per phase thing. That means that only one unit can fire overwatch in any given charge phase, reducing the very act down to a bit of a nonsense. Here is the stratagem itself;

However much i dont like this move, it is compounded by the way the stratagem is worded. When a unit is target as part of a charge move, it can fire overwatch before the charge roll is made but what if the charge fails? does that mean if a second unit tries to charge it cant overwatch them? If a unit has this played on them, it could at least last till the end of the phase.

There have also been a few minor tweaks to the overwatch rules, mostly just to clean up the various interactions, mostly around characters and the like.

Over all, I'm not impressed with these changes to the game. The is a minor upside to all of this but it come with the usual GW caveats, if ypu go down the Crusade force route, what ever that may entail, you can get overwatch for free and on a 5+. So take the new shiny stuff or suffer. Thanks GW.

Next up was a small bit about the new terrain rules, which grant certain benefits to models in some situations. The example we were given was infantry dug in to a defensive position, which grants the Defensible special rules. No i do like the idea of this but it seems to be adding more things to the terrain rules! by the end of this, were going to need a whole big rule book just for the terrain rules, let alone anything else!

These are a good little bonus, although with the fact that overwatch is now a stratagem, pretty much everyone is going to go for "set to defend" for the +1 to hit. This is going to be good for everyone but especially the likes of guard and Tau, who need every help they can in combat. 

Lastly, we have the new edition character rules. They have changed a bit and in some respects are better and clearer but in other respects they are just as flawed. 

Characters now have to be within 3 inches of other units to receive the benefits of being a character. While this is basically the same it eliminates the issue of having a character just standing out in the open miles from any other units, yet being unable to be targeted. 

  

Overall this seems to be a good move, as if I am reading this right, if a character is out in the open it can now be targeted, even if it's not the the closest model. 

One last thing to mention and that is the change to charges. In the past you could declare a whole range of charges, usually one short charge and a couple.of longer ones and then hope to get the longer charge but if not just move towards the closest one and not waste the charge. Now you need to be able to reach all the targets or the charge fails. That means that if you declare a 4 inch charge and a 9 inch charge at the same time and roll a 6, you can't just take the 4 inch and leave the rest, no, now you would fail the charge and be left with nothing. This is a good move I think and will force people to actually plan charges, rather than just going for everything they can and hoping for the best.

Well that's it for now, we'll see what this week brings! Hopefully the guard preview!