Landspeeder

 On last datasheet to look at, just in time for the release of 11th! The new Landspeeder is here, and it looks good. Very similar to the old one with a suitable scale upgrade with some additional weapons. Along with the Terminators, the new Landspeeder shows how's they should have done the SM refresh, well, apart from the Gravis models, cos they look good as they are. 

Anyway, the new Landspeeder looks good better than the other versions, the Storm speeders. 

It has the classical armament, with melta and "assault" cannon, with the option for a flamer. As with the original version, I cannot figure out why you would want a flamer. To me this unit is a fast moving fire base, designed to skirting around the battle edge, lending firepower where needed, not to be getting up close and personal with the enemy. 

The rules for the unit are good, with the move-shoot-move, even if the second move is not guaranteed. Popping the nose out of cover by and inch or two will prob work, as you can usually bank on getting at least a couple of inches of movement. I like this unit and he will be joining the Dark Guardians and the outriders. 

I guess that we will eventually see a number of versions of this, along the lines of the old versions, with missile pods and the like. There seems a lot of chat about this being the edition of bikes and cavalry, so I also expect we'll see some additional bike characters as well. The only thing I might pick up is the ATV, if it's still around. 

Alongside the model, we also had some rules for flyers or rather the FLY keyword. They seem to have taken a few hints from the old pivot rule, but actually made it make sense here! So flying units can declare that they will fly, subtract two from their movement and then be able to move anywhere in range, which is nice. 

This actually means that flying units will have a lot of versatility and actually be easy to use and understand. Sanguinary Guard have fly and a 12 inch move, so with this rule, they will effectively be able to move anywhere within ten inches regardless of any terrain or enemy models (taking care of engagement range though). No more worrying about movement up or down ruins or trying to figure out if it's better to go round or if the ruin is 2 inches or less. Just straight up and over, ten inches and done. 

I do like these new rules and this is one of a number of rules that I think are good. There's one or two that I still have to get my head around but we're still a week or so away from the actual release, so when I get my hands on the actual rule book, some of them may make more sense than they do right now.