Guard faction focus

Warhammer community have started doing a series of faction focus posts and we recently got one for the guard, so i decided to have a look at it and give my initial thoughts. There are some positives and some negatives to what we've seen but on the whole I think it's mostly positive and I'm looking forward to getting more information. I'll not go through the whole article word for word but will just pick out the bits that I think are important or I want to say something about.

We'll start at the top of the article and work our way down, the first section, the overview contains a few little bits and pieces, such as confirmation that LRBT's will be getting tougher, alongside Bnaeblades and one assumes Rogal Dorms as well. We also get our Frist tease of double size guard squads!

Within the Faction Rules we learn a little bit more about orders. It says that we are getting 6 orders but doesn't specify if these are all the orders or if these are just the infantry orders. I suspect that they might be all the orders were getting for the moment, given that they talk about command squads, Castallans and tank commanders, so we will have gone from 9 core plus regiment orders (6 more?) To the 18 core orders down to just 6 in about 6months.  

Move! Move! Move!, Fix bayonets, take aim and take cover are pretty much as expected give the dropping of AP and  reducing stratagems. Duty and honour was introduced in to the commissar orders, and comes to the main orders loosing suppression fire! which was a bit useless and I never used it. One piece of information we got here as well is that battle shock will nullify orders. The question here has to be, are orders issued before battle shock tests in the command phase? Given the way it's worded I suspect that it might, which could be interesting.

In the Unit Spotlight we get a closer look at two units, the Cadian shock troops and Baneblade. Both of these have some interesting point of note on them. 

The Cadians have an ability called Shock Troops which grants you the sticky objectives ability, being able to hold objectives even if you move off them. This looks like the other squads will also get similar abilities, although under different names I guess, why they didn't just create a universal special rule for this I don't know. The second thing and possibly more important thing is that they can be taken in squads of 20! It's an either or thing, so 10 or 20, not 10 to 20. I like this, as I always use to run my fire base units in 20 man squads and I will do so again. Hopefully the rules will also be the same, so infantry squads can have 2 heavy weapon teams in a 20 man squad. Alongside these points and the confirmation that all the troop options are returning, we get some weapon rules and there are some interesting changes.

The majority of weapons stay the same, lasguns, las pistols, bolters and flamers but a couple have changed. Plasma has had a minor tweak, with the standard shot only being -2ap rather then -3ap the same as the overcharged option. Melta guns have gone up to S9, which seems standard now. The Cadian special drum fed auto gun, (which I realise I've been playing wrong as a 3 shot weapon rather than rapid 2) is now just 2 shots, no rapid fire or any other rules, a bit of a nerf if you ask me. The big changes are to grenade launchers though, with both profiles changing. Before Frag was assault d6, S3, 0ap, D1 but is now just blast d3 but S4, 0ap, D1 and Krak was assault 1, S6 -1ap, Dd3 but is now 1 shot, S9, -2ap, Dd3. Now if I remember right, blast give you an extra shot per every 5 models, so you could still get 6 shots when firing at a unit 15 models or more but mostly you'll be getting only +1 or +2 shots at most, meaning your looking at 3 shots most of the time. Being S4 is also good, meaning that if the wounding rolls stay the same, you'll be wounding marines on 4's rather than 5's and T3 models on 3's. Krak jumping to S9 and -2ap is now really good and actually makes it worth shooting rather than just using Frag for everything. Against marines, Krak will now be significantly better that Frag. Lastly vox casters are useless again. They might now get you a few CP over the course of the game but really they are not an auto include like they were. It's a real shame that you can't use them to bounce orders around like before.

Next up is the nightly Baneblade and there are several changes that jump out right from the off. It's dropped wounds, 30 down to 24, but it has gained toughness, going from T9 to T13. It's also not quite as quick as it was, loosing an inch of movement off the top end but with no degrading profiles it should be quicker over the course of a game. It's leadership, as far as I can tell, is actually worse as well but still seems standers for guard. 

One good rule here is the Rolling Fortress ability, meaning any units behind it gain the benefit of cover, which makes sense, it's a pretty big boy. The weapon profiles have changed a lot and one thing that really jumps out and surprised me was that they are all BS4+. After only a short time, we have lost the turret weapon rule, a rule that I thought was quite good. Most 9f the weapons have got stronger, with the baneblade cannon, autocannon, demolisher cannon and lascannons all gaining strength with the lascannon also gaining damage but the main gun loosing a point of ap, down to -2. I guess this is in-line with the whole reduction in ap across the board. It's disappointing to see the armoured tracks drop across the board though, even with the increase in WS. Going from S9, -2ap and D2 to S8, 0ap and D1 is quite a drop in output, even though getting run over by this guy's should be painful.

In  the Weapon Spotlight section we get a look as the Battle cannon and volcano cannon. The Battle cannon is a staple of.many guard lists or at least should be, mostly I think it's dropped in favour of the demolisher cannon. 

While the strength has gone up to S10 from S8, a lot has been lost. With reduced range, 48"  instead of 72" and only -1ap instead of -2ap, I'm not sure that this is an improvement overall. If the improvements from the baneblade demolisher cannon carry over to the LRBT, then I don't see many people swapping their demolishers of battle cannons.

The volcano cannon ISA other weapon that has seen more nerfs than buffs, dropping 24 inches of range and 2 shots and with the loss of turret weapons, a point of BS (even though it's a heavy weapon, you have to stay still now to gain this). The only bonis is that strength has gone from 18 to 24. Personally unless this gets some additional rules, like ignoring invulnerable saves or something, I don't really see this as a good options.

 Lastly We have the Stratagem Spotlight and we get quite a good one, one that I have been wanting for quite sometime. 

Returning a destroyed unit is very narrative, you just got to keep feeding units in until the problems solved. Being able to use this on a large range of units is great to, from infantry squads, scions, heavy weapon squads, field ordnance batteries, roughy riders or sentinels. This means we can be less worried about throwing a unit of sentinels or rough riders up the field early to cause as much chaos as possible before they are inevitably destroyed, as we can just bring them back and play a little more cautiously with them second time around. I suspect that this will get played on my Scion units most often after having dropped the HS volley\plasma squad in a death or glory move then bringing them back to support the castle.

At the end of the article we got "a word from the Studio" and there were a couple of quotes that caught my eye. 

Firstly "the Born Soldiers Detachment rule, which confers Lethal Hits on ranged attacks made by units that Remained Stationary." So if we stay where we are we get auto wounding shots again but only if we stay still. 

And secondly we got a couple of enhancements mentioned, with "Drill Commander to lend your stationary units Critical Hits on rolls of 5 instead of 6". Now I got a little confused by this. Critical hits are just dice rolls of a 6, but have no meaning other that that right? But Lethal hits means that a roll of a 6 auto wounds. So are the terms interchangeable or do they actually mean different things? Is he basically saying you'll get auto wounds on a 5+ rather than 6'samd they've messed up the wording?

Anyway,  "the Death Mask of Ollanius, which sees the Objective Control characteristic of the bearer’s unit drop only to 1 while Battle-shocked, rather than 0." This is clearer and a nice one, meaning that you can still hold or contest an objective, even if you fail battle shock, which guard are likely to do! So drop this on a character at the back with a 20 man infantry squad and your pretty much guaranteed to hold your home objective.

Overall I am positive about the guard going forward. After my initial disillusion with the idea of returning to Indexes and loosing my only recently arrived codex, I'm actually getting quite positive about 10th, although I won't be buying the launch box, as there is very little in there that I like the look of.