Army Selection, Missions, Games, and Overall Impressions

Army selection and victory conditions have changed quite a bit over the years and that is definitely the case with this new edition.

Warlord: Select one model to be your Warlord. He must be a character. He gets one Warlord trait. You select from several tables (Tactical, Command, Personal, Strategic and Codex-specific) and roll a d6 to see which one you get from that table. Unique special characters normally come with a specific trait already selected.

All units are now able to hold objectives, not just Troops.


Army Selection: There are two methods you can select from, described below.

Battle Forged uses an army made up of Detachments. The basic detachment is called Combined Arms Detachment and it uses the same Force Organization Charts the game has had since 3rd edition. All units in a detachment must be the same Faction (army). There is another basic detachment called Allied Detachment and allows you to take a smaller Force Organization Chart for a different faction than your Combined Arms Detachment. Also, new Codexes now have unique detachments you can select from. You can have as many detachments as you want (or can afford). Detachments impose restrictions on your army, such as maximum of three Heavy Support units, but they provide advantages, too. For example, the basic Combined Arms Detachment lets you re-roll your Warlord Trait and gives your Troops a special rule called Objective Secured that allows them to control an objective even if an enemy scoring unit is also in range, unless that unit also has this rule. So basically, they become "denial" or "super scoring" units and can break deadlocks over objectives.

The other army selection option is called Unbound, which allows you take any unit you own with no restrictions. Personally, I think both players should gave to agree if someone is going to use this method. I think the intent is to allow cool theme armies, like a Space Marines First Company or a famous Big Mek and his army of Dreds and Kans. The only penalty is you don't gain the advantages of the Detachments.


There are rules for various types of Allies, but I won't go into them now as none of us are playing with any.


Missions: The rule book encourages players to make up their own missions and also suggests getting additional missions from other GW publications. But they offer two tables with six missions each as a starting point. It seems like it would also be acceptable to use any of the missions from the old editions of the rule books.

Eternal War Missions: These missions are pretty straightforward. There are six. Both players can agree on one or you can roll for a random one. They are all based on victory points. In four of them, holding objectives is the Primary Objective and worth the most VPs. In one, you just try to destroy the enemy and in the last one, there is a single objective (the Relic) that you can seize and move with. They all have the same set of Secondary Objectives that are also worth VPs, such as kill the enemy commander and kill the first unit. They use various deployment zones. They all have special rules, such as the possibility of a Night a Fighting for a turn and optional Reserves.

Night Fighting, by the way, is pretty ineffectual now. Instead of limiting how far units can see or target enemies with shooting like it used to, it now just gives all units Stealth on the first turn, which just improves cover saves by 1, even in open ground, to a max of 2+.

Maelstrom of War: These six missions use a table of 36 tactical objectives (there is also a deck of cards to represent the objectives and it helps to think of them that way because you hold and then discard them). These missions are all about the flux of a battle and represent shifting objectives and priorities. Before playing, you place six Objective markers on the table (numbers 1 - 6). These relate to some of the TacticalObjectives, but not all. At the start of the game, you get some number of Tactical Objectives from the deck or table (normally three). These say things like "If you hold Objective 2 at the end if your turn, you get 1 VP." At the end of each of your turns, if you accomplished one of your Tactical Objectives, you discard it, get the listed VPs and draw a new one. This type of game will limit the effectiveness of having one master strategy and instead will reward the flexible army that can best respond to changing conditions and priorities. It sounds like it could be fun and exciting with lots if twists, but it seems the result of the game could end up being more based on the luck of the draw then even a normal game.


Overall Impressions of 7th Edition:

Without having played, it is hard to have an informed opinion, but here goes. The new edition looks really fun. The rules for handling vehicles and buildings look clearer than in past editions. There is plenty of complexity and variety in the rules, while keeping the same core game since 3rd Edition.

The new rules seem to give a slight advantage to shooting over close combat, as I already mentioned. But, at least in the case of the Orks, they have also given a "close combat" army lots of new shooting options like flyers and more big gunz. They have also made shoota boyz cost more than slugga boyz so it seems they gave taken the improved effectiveness of shooting into account.

But that is not to say that assaults have been neutered. The new Hammer of Wrath ability adds extra punch to assaults with walkers, bikes and jump packs. Assaults can still be decisive with the ability to destroy the unit that loses with a Sweeping Advance. And most infantry now have the ability to run, which they lacked in 3rd Edition, so they don't have to slog through incoming fire for quite so long anymore. More than anything else in the news rules,I think this helps assault armies the most. Also, characters better come decked out for close combat because of the new Challenges! Any leader who carries a gun instead of a sword is going to have hard time going 1-on-1 with their character opponent in a duel.

It seems they mostly wanted to limit the ability to assault on the first turn or the first turn a unit arrives from a Reserves. And I admit, a shooting army should normally get at least  one turn to shoot before they are swarmed in melee.

I think the new Psychic phase looks balanced and fun. The only downside is that it adds a lot of complexity (and probably time) to games. The nice thing is that you don't NEED psykers; you aren't defenseless without them as you can still try to Deny the other player's powers. But all the new schools and psyker powers makes me want to try a more psyker-heavy army at some point. A lot of the powers are just special shooting attacks, but many are buffs for your own troops (Blessings) or curses on your opponents (Maledictions) that open up lots of new tactical and combo opportunities.

My only big concern is that a lot of the missions and Tactical Objectives reward you with a VP for destroying an enemy unit, normally in a specific way, such as shooting or close combat. It seems odd that they don't take the points value of the unit into account like they used to (destroying a mob of grotz or a mob of Mega Nobz is worth the same VP?), which seems like it would penalize armies with lots of cheap units, like Orks. Maybe they are trying to kelp scoring simpler or maybe they think that an army with many smaller units has a big advantage in taking objectives so they are trying to even it out. But the best part of 40k is the ability to change the rules and the missions to fit our vision and improve the fun and balance, something you cannot do with video games. So if we find that the the VP scoring system or Tactical Objectives are not balanced and fun, we can always adjust them, if we all agree. The best part about the new rules is they give you a lot of flexibility in how to play a game.

Let me know what you guys think about the rules. I can't wait to play a few games and try them out!