6th ed Rumblings

by Anonymous Foodie

I am going to say one thing about the current rumors of 6th ed...

Calm the Eff down!

I have played through three editions of this game - 6th will be my fourth.  Let me tell you a little secret about the past couple of changeovers...

Since 2nd, 40k has moved toward a simpler, more streamlined, quicker to play version of itself.  More "kid-friendly", if you will.  While I never played 2nd ed, stories of the "template phase", the unofficial phase used to keep track of and move all of the random gas clouds, vortex markers, and other things caused by various wargear and conditions, were still things of infamy.

Every time one of these new, "dumbed down" editions has come to light, people have complained.  For every one of you who is now looking at these rumors and saying "No way!", "Too complicated!", "Convolusion at it's worst!", there was an evil twin saying the exact opposite.

Despite all of this, I have been able to play, and find people to play against, through three editions so far.  There are always complaints, there are always cries of joy.  There is always change.

And, while I'll not say that no one has ever quit with a new edition, the game as a whole has continued.  People adapt, learn new ways to play, new ways to have fun.  Which, if you think about it, is kind of the point of this game.

I've spent this morning looking over the rumors... some skimming took place, and I haven't even made it all the way through.

But it's early... a lot of this could be true, could be false, could be half-true.  Like saying against a Tank Shock, you can't use grenades.  So no more strapping a Meltabomb to a vehicle in a last ditch effort?  I would think (read; hope) that this is meant to imply no normal (offensive/defensive) grenade use.

Now, I'll throw out a few notables with regard to my armies that I've seen so far... and a lot of it is nice.

First off, more varied movement (other than 6"/12") is something many people like from other games.  So is the "cover halves your movement, period" style of moving through terrain.

Fast Skimmers (read; Raiders) having the movement docked to 8" threw me for a minute.  Hey, the fastest army just lost a third of their speed... schwat??  So I kept reading, looking for the caveat... and I found it.

Surging.  Aka, moving twice your normal speed.  It's the equivalent of cruising speed, really.  So I didn't lose 4", I gained 2".  Because I can now move 16" and fire one weapon (or all, in the case of any of my vehicles that have multiple, thanks to Aerial Assault).  Suck it, Speed Freeks.

Now, there was that little bit about open-topped not allowing you to assault after disembarking, but I'm wondering if Fleeting will allow you to do that instead.  On the plus side of this, Open Topped no longer means the vehicle is easier to damage, and I can fire out of my vehicles on the move.  Even heavy weapons.  If I have to drop my Wyches for a unit of Trueborn that can fire massive amounts of splinter or dark matter fire while moving 16" around the board... I think I'm okay with that.  I've always been a Kabalite at heart anyway.

See?  Tactics can change.

Now, something that Nids will love.  Move Through Cover gives you an I-test to ignore terrain.  Period.  No more rolling mutated snake-eyes and cursing your ability to "navigate terrain well".  If I roll a 5 or less, my Genestealers just run at you.  No I1 penalty.  Just rending death.

Hormagaunts, with the Bounding Leap rule, don't even need the I-test.  Who needs grenades?  I just eat the trees as I go.

And perhaps even better - Assault weapons act as a 2nd CCW *if* you charge.  If I remember correctly, and I do, my ENTIRE ARMY is armed with assault weapons (if, that is, I bothered to give them a gun instead of a big stabby arm instead).

I guess S4, I5, Poisonous termagants (on the charge, near a Tervigon) weren't deadly enough... so now they get 3 attacks instead of 2.  If they had move through cover, they'd actually be head over heels better than Hormagaunts if this turns out to be true.  But they don't... which is good, because it gives you a reason to have variety.  Hormagaunts will always be Y good.  Termagants are only X good, but can be Z good under the right circumstances.

Now, all of this said... don't get too worked up just yet.  Fully comprehensive Codices (aka, Codexes) have been "leaked", only to be discovered as intricate forgeries later.  These same, or other, people have had plenty of time to get to work on a document of this size.  And they're obviously hitting buttons that are meant to be hit with how much I've heard/read about this in the past few days alone.

In the end... we'll see.