Other 8th codices

So what of the other forces that I use? Well, currently I run the Disciples using Imperial Fists tactics, the Stone Dragons as Wolves, Brazen Hawks as Black Templars. Plus I plan on running an Inquisitional detachment with Grey knights, deathwatch and sister. So what are my thoughts on these armies?

Well, most of my thoughts on these armies are pretty thin, hence the single post, as I run most of these for the fun of it rather than for anything serious. Ill start with the Space Marines codex, for no other reason than its the first one I thought of.

So what in the codex would I chane, either in points or options? Points wise I couldn't really say what I'd change as I think that most things are pretty well coasted, well, the bits I use anyway. I also think that there are no gaps in the units, as there are options for everything and more often than not, several options. Granted some units are better than others, think grav-centurions over grav-dev's. There really are just two things that I think need looking at, the first being said grav-Dev's.

Now I'm not against grav or anything, but I think that a devastator marine should not have an amp, a centurion has a grav and amp as well, which seems odd. A normal marine carries a lascannon, or a heavy bolter, but a centurion can carry two lascannon or two heavy bolters, but a normal marine can carry a grav and amp but a centurion can only carry a grav and amp as well? Surely it should be capable of carrying 2 gravs and amps or a marine can only carry a grav and not an amp as well? Now a centurion with two gravs would just be silly, so I think that a normal marine should lose the amp. They will still be powerful weapons, but would be more logical in my view.

The second thing I would like to see I the codex is a change to bikes. I don't mean the actual bikes or anything but the weapon loads. Surely after several thousand years, someone has thought to pull off a bolter and stick something else on there? I mean the Dark Angels managed to do it with plasma guns, but no-one else has thought of this? Not even the White Scars? I don't think that everyone should be driving around with plasma talons, I'm more thinking that one bolter is removed and you loose the twin linked, but have the option to fire both weapons. I think it would be good to have the option for a melts or Flamer on the bike. I know that the marine riding the bike can take these weapons as well, and that would prob need adjusting but I like the idea of bikes with things other than bolters.

In terms of formations, the only thing I think is lacking is a proper formation for the Black Templars, with crusader squads as part of the core instead of tactical squads. There may well be on option for this already, and I might just have missed it, but as far as I'm aware, its only the standard gladius or the ones from Angels of Death to choose from.

For Space Wolves, my knowledge is even weaker but I do think that some of the recent rules and units are a little bit too strong, mainly the Wolfen. The Thunder Wolves are pretty strong as well, and possibly a little cheap for what they are. The only real question I see is with the various Claw units, blood, sky and swift, and the fact that they are still BS3. With all the other scout units being BS4 now, leaving these units as BS3 seems odd, but increasing them would change the whole setup of the codex. In truth I don't know what the answer to this problem is, lucky its not something that's going to affect me, as I don't really play SW and neither do any of my opponents.

The only other codex that maybe affected by the arrival of 8th is my Imperial Allies codex, one I dont actually have yet (birthday present sitting in the cupboard). Will this codex cease to exist? Or will it continue on? I hope it will continue on, as it solves a lot of problems for me, enabling me to field units and armies without having to buy multiple whole codices. Hopefully the new sisters codex (if there is one) won't be to much of a change as to affect the sisters units in the book, not that ill be using many of them and hopefully the same can be said for Grey knights and deathwatch. At the end of the day, I could always just sub units, like for like.

As for the other codices in the GW universe, in afraid in completely clueless, whilst I know of many units and some formations from other books, points costs and rules are beyond me. Yes there are certain units (wraithknight) and formations (Tau Stealth  Cadre I think its called) are either under costed or over powered, but then everybody knows these things and their are lots of people more informed than I am and able to make better arguments for fixing them. For me, the main thing I want to see from the other codices is a leveling of power and universal (and sensible) formations.

At the end of the day, its pretty much anyone guess what 8th will bring.

8th edition marines

Ok, so now were on to the other forces in my collection, the marines, or more specifically the Angels of Death (that's the original Angels of Death, the Blood Angels and Dark Angels).

I'll start with the Blood Angels, for no other reason than there my favioured of the two. Now, ill admit that my knowledge of the angels is not as good as my knowledge of the guard, so this will not be as in depth as the previous ones.

So, what units would I change or amend? Well, in my opinion the BA dont really have much of an issue in this department. There are a few odd choices, as in why are priests and techmarines HQ choices? I still think they should be non-FOC slots, not that that really means a lot with detachments and formations. The only real issue I see is that some of the units are the same as the main marine codex, yet they cost a lot more, ie terminators. Now, some will argue for the red thrust and all, but its effectively a chapter tactic and not an extra special rule. The other main Issue is the flyers. Now the vanilla marines have 3 flyers, but so far the BA's only have the one. Access to one of the fighter variants, or even a different version would be good but I think just the usual ones will be most likely. There is also the issue of hunters and stalkers, as the blood angels dont possess any anti-air capacity at the moment. It would be nice to get access to these weapons, or similar ones, to give us a chance against flyers. Then their is the issue of centurions and grave Dev's, both of which we dont have access to, but to be honest I'm happy not having them. I feel that they are not required, as there are other tools the Blood Angels have access to instead.

Having mentioned a number of units above, I think there is one thing that really needs to be said, I dont want the Blood Angels to just be red marines. In many respects I would like the next codex to move further away from the main codex. Yes, the Blood Angels are codex compliant for the most part, but we have enough special units to make us different. An anti-air platform based on the Baal predator would work and a flyer, based on the stormtalon would also be good. In sure with a few upgrades it could be achieved. All this would put a lot of the individual feeling back in to the Blood Angels which I feel is starting to be lost. We have librarian dreads, and close combat specific dreads, Baal preds and then there is the death company and the sanguinary guard, all units not in the main codex. Adding in new units to fill the current gaps, anti-air and attack figher, plus a few alterations to some existing units, terminators mainly, and I think things would good.

One other thing I would like to mention is heavy bolters. I really hope they change all the heavy bolters profiles to assault 3, as this would not only make them useful again but would also be really useful to my army!

I haven't got the Angels Blade supplement, but from what I know, the detachments are pretty good and I expect to see most, if not all of it carried over in to the new codex.

Ok, so Blood Angels rant over with, lets move on to the other Angels, the Dark Angels. Now this is a lot harder for me to do, mostly as I feel that the DA are pretty good where they are. They currently have a good codex with some good formations, yes there are some problems, no codex is perfect but there fixable.

There seems to be two main issues that I see mentuined over and over again, that the flyers are over priced and that you can't play pure deathwing. Now in regards to the flyers, I'm not sure that there over priced, yes there weapons are not the greatest but on the whole I think there where they should be, adding some special ammo (hellfire shells maybe) and adding armourbane to the missiles might be nice, give them that extra versatility and punch, but I think that there not far off the mark. As for running deathwing solo, you can, you just can't really run the formation from what I understand. In addition to this, there maybe a case for saying that terminator's are over priced compared to vanilla marines, but I think that they are pretty well priced for their rules. One unit I would like to see changed slightly are the company vets, as I would like to see special ammo made available, even if its just hellfire shells for their boltguns. Ok, so there supposed to be more of a vanguard vet squad rather than a sternguard squad, but the DA don't have access to special ammo, which I think wrong.

Right, I think I'm out of things to say on these guys. It want as in depth as the others, but that mostly because I'm not as invested in these boys as I am with my Guard. This year may change all that as the BA/Eagle Knights are the main painting challange and will feature onthe table top a bit more often.

8th edition Militarum tempestus

To follow on from my previous post about the guard in 8th, this post will look at the new Militarum Tempestus faction, or sub-faction if you will. Firstly, there are two options as to which way the codex will go in 8th, either the codex will continue on its own and grow in both size and units or the codex will disappear, rolled back in to the guard codex. If the codex is rolled back in to the guard codex, which is possible as the units are still in the guard codex, then expect to see a number of formations that are specific to the MT, enabling them to be fielded on their own. However, I think that the codex will remain a stand alone codex but gain some more options, namely in the HQ and support sections.

So, assuming that they remain a stand alone codex, what new u its will they get or at least should get and what units need changing or amending? First off, lets look at the current units and there's not many of them. Of the units that are in the book, there really is only two that I think need some sort of adjusting; The taurox and command squad. 

The taurox doesn't need adjusting as such, is more to do with the options for the vehicle equipememt that need adjusting. This is the same gripe as I had for the guard version, where some of the options are over priced for what they do. A small price reduction on certain options would be useful but again this is a minor issue really. The big issue is with the command squad. This is essentially a platoon command squad that had been raised from the troops choices to the HQ choices, but nothing has been done to allow for this move. They are in a sense exactly the same. In the Guard MT platoon, they perform there function perfectly well, but in the MT codex they are lacking. This is mainly due to orders, or the lack of. With only one order per turn still, they lack the punch that they deserve. The fact that they cost more than the equivalent guard PCS and more than the better guard CCS is negative. Now I sent believe that they need a points drop, just an extra order to make them the command squad they should be.

In addition to these changes, I would like to see some extra units appear. As it stands now the codex had some food options in the fast attack bracket with the primes and valks, but they still lack some proper punch. Now the army is supposed to be a light and fast moving army, so the likes of the LRBT is out of the question, but the vendetta would fit perfectly.  This would give some proper anti-armour, yet still keep the fluff and be easy to insert in to the heavy support options. Yes I said heavy support and not fast, as this is where I see it sitting in the MT structure, as a support weapon, not a strike weapon. The scions are the strike force and the vendetta comes along after to deal with any heavy armour that turns up. In a similar vain, I'd like to see heavy weapons squads back. We use to have them when were were talking about stormtroopers but they dissapeared a codex or 2 back. Dropping the squads in as a heavy support choice would be good to my mind, offering a range of options to deal with a number of threats that the MT's just can't deal with effectively right now. Yes, the taurox primes do a good job, but there is little dedicated along range anti-armour and no non line-of-sight weapons. Being able to add some lascannons or mortars would be great, as it would expand the options dramatically. Dropping a three weapon squad in as a heavy support choice would keep the fluff but give options.

Old HWT (pic of google, picclick UK, but I lost the link to add it in properly!)

So with points and units covered, we'll move on to formations and detachments and I don't expect there to be massive changes. We have the air assault and ground assault formations, which aren't bad formations, so we'll see them again, but I think we'll gain a few others, both smaller and bigger. I'm not sure if we'll see a detachment or not, there really isn't much to go on, as there isn't much in each section to use. This would basically mean we'd end up with a detachment version of the CAD, with command being HQ, core being troops and auxiliary being either taurox or valkyrie. That is unless they add in vendettas and HWT squads, then we might see some extra bits. I do expect a deep strike formation with some sort of deep strike bonus (re-rolls or D6 scatter) and a large scale formation including both armored and air assault formations combined.

Overall, I'm hopeful for the MT's in the next edition and just hope they get a few more tools for the tool box to really make them an army capable of dealing with any threat.

8th edition Imperial Guard

So, despite the recent rush of information I have decided to continue the 8th edition theories series, I'll try and keep on top of any changes that will occur due to the new rumours and information. In the mean time, let us look at my main loves of the 40k universe, the Imperial Guard (and that's the IMPERIAL GUARD and not the Astra Militarum). Name changes aside, what do I think and hope will occur with the 8th edition codices.

Well, to start, I expect that we will continue to have two codices, one for each faction, or failing that I expect that we will receive one codex with the option to run a pure IG or MT force through formations, if not through the CAD or imperial version.

Assuming that we get two codices, what will the guard one look like? To be honest, I doubt much will actually change here. I don't think that we will get any new models as such, but I do expect that we will get new infantry and heavy weapons boxsets, partly due to the demise of cadia and partly due to the fact the current ones are getting long in the tooth. Most sets have the options to build all combinations, even if not at the same time (think combi-weapons) but the guard only have the basics, the catachan box set doesn't even have a grenade launcher in, one of the two most basic of special weapon choices. What armies these boxsets will belong to is unknown, but I expect them to be very generic. Other than a redo of the infantry kits I can't see any kits that really need redoing. The Russ kits are good, as are the wyvern/hydra, the hell hound and chimera ones are good to. Only the sentinel kit is a bit weak, but it still has all the options. The same can be said of the command squad kits, ogryns, and MT squads (I'll cover these in detail later). The only 'kit' that needs an upgrade is the ratlings, as their still metal, that's if they still exist in the new codex and haven't been replaced by special weapon squads with sniper rifles.

So kits and model wise, I don't see much happening, but what about rules wise? We'll I see a lot of points adjustments here to start with. A lot of guard stuff is well costed, platoons, chimeras etc. The main one that springs to mind is the bulgryns/ogryns. They are more expensive than a terminator with no invun and a worse save. Yes their thought and strong, but that's not the same. They, as in ogryns, don't even have any weapon options, (flames anyone?) bulgryns do a little better but are still just as overpriced. I'd like to see them drop in points, how many? Not sure, but a fair few.

The only other unit I can think of that needs a base points reduction are the various Russ tanks. I'm not suggesting a big drop here, no, just a few points, 10 or 15 maybe. For me, they seem just a little high, if they were bs4, then I'd be happy as well, but lets face it there guard, not marines. The biggest issue though is the options, not just with the tanks, but overall. While most are fine, some just don't make sense. The main culprit is cam nets, while it maybe justifiable on a russ ( just about), on a sentinel its just stupid. There needs to be some sort of adjustment with a few others as well, nothing major, just maybe they need some individual tailoring for certain units.

The last big points issue though comes with the special characters. Now, some of them we know or at least speculate, are gonna be gone, Creed and Kell, so their points cost is a little irrelevant at the moment, so ill stick to Straken. Now this is a man with a serious points issue. He is more than a command squad on his own, and while his stats are good, there not THAT good! He either needs some serious rules buffs or a large price drop. I'd go with the latter.

So that's my main gripes with units and points, but what about the rest of the book? Well, one thing I would love to see are chapter tactics or rather regimental doctrines, seeing as were talking guard. We all know how well the chapter tactics have worked, so why wouldn't it work for guard? They used to have a similar thing in the old days, with the likes of codex; catachan, and some of the special characters, such as chenkov and al'rahem, giving special rules related to their regiments. Why this can't be resurrected in a similar fashion I don't know, but it would add a whole layer of fluff to the guard again. The question would then be though, what doctrines would you have? Cadian, Catachan, Mordian, Valhallan, Tallarn, Steel Legion, the list is long, almost endless in fact, at least with the marines it was pretty definitive.

What other changes will there be? Formations and detachments, but hopefully not the Cadian one! A smaller core choice, maybe the armored assault vets one, or just a slimmed down company (2 squads per platoon maybe?) There is no doubt that we will see a detachment in the book, but what it looks like is up in the air. If the bring in doctrines then its likely we may see more than one, maybe 4 or 5, with differing command and core options and requirements, maybe an infant based catachan option, armored steel legion, mech vet Cadian, aircav ???, you get the idea.

All in all, I think that the basics of the army will not change, the main units will remain the same with the same options and much of the rest of the book will be very recognizable. The main changes I feel will be that way the army is fielded and to a lesser extent how its played. For most of us though, little will change. Those of us with foot slogging armies will keep on marching, those who ride in (relative) comfort will ride on and the tread heads will keep on rolling.

At this point I was going to start on the Militarum Tempestus boys, but I think that will have to wait until a new post!