Rules You get wrong: Multi Assaults in 6th Ed.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, read a ton of forums, and blogs and so far one of the rules I see people reading wrong across the board are the rules regarding multi-assaults.

What I hear most frequently said is this "You declare Primary and Secondary targets, then you must move all models into base to base with primary if possible before moving into base to base with a secondary unit."  In fact one podcast gave the example of a Trygon being assaulted by 10 marines and all the marines moving into its big base prior to being able to multi assualt.

This interpretation is just plain wrong and a misreading of what the BRB says.  What the BrB states is that models in the charging unit must attempt to make base contact with UNENGAGED models in the primary unit before they can charge into a secondary target.

Lets look at the example below.  Say the blue circles are a 5 man tactical squad, and they want to charge the Yellow and Green units.  Here is how the assault is resolved.

1.)  They have shot the yellow unit and declare it as the primary charge target, with the green unit as secondary.

2.)  Both charge targets can then declare overwatch if possible.

3.)After overwatch is resolved the Tactical marins roll their charge distance.

4.) Assuming they roll a large enough charge the closest model moves into base with the closest enemy model in the primary target.

5.) Next models 2 and 3 move into base with the primary target because they must engage models in that unit that are not already engaged.

6.)  At this point all of the models in the primary target have been engaged and the rest of the models in the charging squad can charge a second unit as shown below.

New Edition Whining

So 6th ed 40k has been out for a little over a month now and there is one thing I would like to see changed.  I really wish all sides would quit their bitching(or at least put it on hold).  Now there was plenty of this in 5th ed, and maybe I was not around as much of it but so much of what I hear or read seems to be people bitching about one facet of the game or another.  I get it the game is different, your army may not work the way it used to, but how many times do I need to read about people bashing the game, or tournaments, or fluffy rules...
I mean first we had the wave of people complaining about randomness.  I hate...
Random Charge distance
Warlord Traits
Mysterious _________
Psychic powers


because they might cost me the game.  Sure missing a critical charge might cost you, and you can gain slight advantages from the other random elements.  But they don't break the game, and you could have lost on random chance last edition as well.  Sure they have added a couple layers, and I don't expect most tournies will use Mysterious items, as they are hard to keep track of, but really I have yet to see them break a game.

Then we had complaining about rules.  I hate...

wound allocation- this one is a popular whipping boy, because people are playing it wrong in most cases that I see.  The complaint is that it takes to long, that you roll one save at a time, that you roll too many extra dice...etc.  I'll admit that there are occasions where it takes a while (mostly mixed save scenarios, which are fairly few and far between in my experience.)  In every other case you pick up the wounds and roll your saves, then (unless you have a character) you remove models...Done.  Not as cumbersome as many seem to be making it.  It will take some getting used to but many I see complaining about it are rolling every save individually, rolling LOS prior to saves for units with the same save etc.

Challanges- very annoying without GW FAQ.

Flyers
etc...

Essentially until you have fully learned the rules it is best not to complain about them.


Finally, people complaining about how they have to change their army.  Did they really think (after all the codex releases) that GW would leave it so that they would not have to modify anything to keep a good army.  Throw on top of this the constant back and forth between tourney players and non-tourney, players how much do we really need to hear from either side that the other one is doing it wrong.  Reading tactics/list building articles, and then reading the comments to see nothing but, "This article sux cause it is WAAC" helps no one, if you see an article about competitive list building (really the only kind of list building article that there is.) and you don't want to read about it...don't, go read about hobbying, or here is a novel idea write an arcticle of your own about how you built and play your fluffy list.  I see less of this on the other side because so called WAAC (read as competitive) players, don't read arcticles that don't interest them (they tend instead to post on message boards, competitive advice on someones fluffy list).  In both cases it is like going to a Sushi bar and being pissed that the fish is not cooked.  You knew what you were getting into when you started, don't bitch about it.

Essentially, I wish people would just quit their bitching, you don't like the change to the new edition, thats ok you have a couple options.
1.) Give it time, until you learn all the rules, maybe things will change.
2.)Give it up, sucks but maybe you need to move on if you really don't enjoy the game any more.
3.) Find a group of like minded people and keep playing the old edition.

Connecticon Info is up

Connecticon Open 1750 points
5 Rounds
 All models Must be painted to a 3 color minimum, and must be what you see is what you get (wysiwyg) compliant.
All games will be played using the 5th edition 40k rule set and the Games Workshop FAQs.
Missions will be using the NOVA format. ( For examples please see the Mission Primer located here http://www.novaopen.com/?page_id=906)
Check in Starts at 12:30 on Saturday with first Dice at 2:00.
 Rounds will last 2 hours.
Awards will be given for Best Overall (Combined Painting, Sports and Generalship) Best General, Best Sportsman, Best Painted.
 Schedule
 Saturday
 Check In: 12:30 – 1:30
 Paint judging: 12:30-1:45
 Round 1: 2:00 – 4:00
 Round 2: 4:30-6:30
 Dinner 6:30- 7:30
 Round 3 7:30 – 9:30
Sunday
 Round 1: 10:00 -12:00
 Round 2: 12:30 – 2:30 Awards: 3:00 -3:30

Reservations are not open yet, but if you are interested I suggest booking your Convention Pass soon (its $50 until May 20th, and goes up to $60 after that)

Any questions Feel free to Email me breng77@yahoo.com

Connecticon 2012 Warhammer 40k events

So due to some circumstances, I have been tasked with running the Wargamming events at Connecticon; a large Anime/Sci-fi convention here in Connecticut on July 13-15. Given the resources I have available and the price of the con. I am looking at running a 32 man 5 round tournament.

Having played at a number of larger tournaments, and given that I have enough rounds to produce a single undefeated player. I am leaning toward running missions using the NOVA format. Given the time constraints the con presents as well as some personal preferences I am leaning toward running the tournament at 1750 points with rounds being 2-2.25 hours.

I will also be running a 1500 point Team tourney on Friday night for anyone who wants to show up 1 night early.

So that said check back here for more information.  In addition entry for the event and general info can be found here Connecticon Tabletop mini events. Nothing is posted up yet, but I have submitted the events.  More to come.

Why Grey Knight players love IG players (or should).

I wonder if other players out there agree with me on this thought:  I love Imperial Guard players.  As a current Grey Knight player I love playing against well played imperial guard armies.  Many of the games I have played against such players have been my most enjoyable games since the new GK book came out, and win or loss(most have been losses) all of them have been great close games.  The biggest issue I have being a Grey Knight player in the current 40k tournament scene is the amount of whining you have to deal with.  "Grey Knights are so Cheesey/over powered/broken."  "Your army is point and click."  "X unit is so broken, GK players should be penalized for taking it."  I'll be the first to admit that Grey Knights are powerful (even over powered compared to many books), I'm just sick of hearing about it.  Which is why I love IG players.  I never hear these guys complain about how broken GKs are, or how they cannot win.  Perhaps this is because they can beat GKs or at least play a competitve game against them, or maybe because before GKs IG were the 400 pound gorilla in the room that everyone hated.  I really don't know.

What I do know is that the games I've played against IG with GKs are some of my most memorable 40k games.  They are what all 40k games should be, close, competitive, slugfests that come down to who makes the least mistakes/or best moves during the game.  I wish all codices were more balanced against each other.  Perhaps my biggest qualm with 40k as it stands now is that some codices stand very little chance against others simply due to a player's list.  For example Dark Eldar, pound pretty much any foot list (I'm looking at you Tyranids and Daemons) so badly that the game is not really even fun for the winner, let alone the loser.  I think matchup issues like this are bad for the game and are something GW needs to consider more when they create codices.  Ideal like all poinsoned weapons or force weapons are cool when it comes down to fluff, but in the game they end up being far too powerful against certain army builds.

Would 40k be better with less Space Marines? Would Marines?

I was thinking as I drove home from work yesterday (commutes are good for that type of thing), and a thought occurred to me.  Would the game of 40k be better if their were fewer Space Marine armies?  Lets face it, at most events, at least the ones I go to, I see maybe 70%+ of the field running some sort of Marine army:  Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Black Templars, Chaos Space Marines, or Codex Space Marines.  Power armored armies are undeniably popular, I mean who doesn't want to play super humans in the 41st millennium. Now I don't want anyone to think that this is just me hating on Marines/Marine players, I have 3 marine armies, and they are the armies I play most frequently.  My thought was simply this do we need to have nearly half (7/16 or 43.75%) of all Codices to be Marine Books?  What this means is that even if we assumed all the codices were equally popular (they're not) that you would still play against power armor in 4-5 out of every 10 games, or about 2 times in a 5 game GT.


Now what many people will argue (and they are not entirely wrong) is that many of those books are for "unique" chapters.  I mean Grey Knights are the super elite, Wolves have their own Norse flavor (theoretically), and the list goes on. To these people I would argue the following, if Marines themselves were unique, would we really need separate books for so many chapters.  In other words if there were not so many Marine books would we need marines to differentiate themselves so much.  I know the fluff says x-chapter acts like this, and y-chapter specializes in that, but what if there was some way to add a little flavor to your own marine army (though modeling, painting, upgrades, and unit choices.) that would set your own force apart.  Would this be enough?  Or do we really need 7 Marine books.

What I think further amplifies this problem is the "counts as movement".  I'm not against this movement in general as I believe that it provides players the opportunity to be creative with their models to design a force that is unique looking.  I've seen Skaven count as Guard, and Dark Eldar for instance, and both armies were cool and different.  Where I think this runs into a problem is with marines (and this is a GW created problem), if you own a Marine army, and paint it up in your own paint scheme (i.e. not Wolves, or Angels, or Ultras.)  you now just bought not 1 but 5 armies.  On top of that if you keep with that paint scheme, with a little extra purchasing you can move into the other 2 marine armies (chaos and Grey Knights) as the vehicles essentially all overlap.  Heck if you designed a renegade Marine chapter you could probably pull off using the Chaos Dex with no further purchases to speak of.  For me this is where I think a major part of the popularity of Marine dexes comes from.  Why buy models for one Xenos race (Necrons Counting as Orks or Nids is proxying in most circles unless you did some major converting, and any such army would probably not be a functional necron army.  I mean I could see a Flayed one horde being used for say a Genestealer army, but no one is running tons of Flayed Ones in the Necron book) when I can buy marines and get 5-7 armies in one.  Whats more is that because I now own 5 armies it is far more likely I will get a set of updated rules.  Dark Eldar went what 10 years, Crons about the same, in that time how many updates did marines get 10?  More than 10?  Why chance my army becoming obsolete(competitively) when I can play marines a basically guarantee I will always be able to compete on some level.

SO all that said let us consider what the land scape of 40k would look like if Marines had say only 2 codices  Loyalists and Chaos (I don't really see these books working well as one army book).  This would drop the army count from 16 to 11 and Marine books would make up 2 out of 11 or 18%.  I'm not going to go into what I think each dex should contain (at least not in this post) so lets assume for the moment that we are looking at the current books.  Would the game be overall more balanced if you took Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Wolves, Templars and GKs out of the game.  Well IG would still be on top, probably followed by Dark Eldar, but I think the rest of the books would be incredibly well balanced.  With a few tweaks to these dexes I think you would end up with a larger variety of armies (less marine players because fewer books, and as such more xenos armies), and a more balanced game.  If GW did not need to update 7 Marine armies then other armies would hopefully get updated more quickly.  Just look at releases for 5th edition, there have been 4 marine armies released (Codex Marines, Wolves, Blood Angels, Grey Knights.) and 4.5 Non Marine (IG, Nids, Dark Eldar, Crons, and Sisters).  Dark Angels and Chaos Marines were released just prior to 5th ed as were Daemons.  SO if we assume those as 5th ed updates we have 6 Marine Books and 5.5 Non Marine Books.  What this means is that we have had 11 full updates (and one White Dwarf article) or the same number of updates as the total number of books I have proposed, which means that every book would have been updated in the 5th ed cycle.  Which would mean no terribly outdated books, which in an ideal world would be more game balance.

My last thought on the subject is this:  would having fewer marine armies make marines better.  Space Marines are supposed to be the best of the best, super strong, super tough, and highly skilled.  Does the game make it feel that way?  Now I know we will never have space marines as they are in the fluff where 5 guys kill whole armies, but at the moment the Space Marine Stat line (4s across the board) really just feels average.  Part of this issue is that a D6 system only allows for so much variation (BS 5 is twice as good as BS 4, so it would be a huge upgrade), but part of them feeling average is that they kind of are when half the armies in the game boast the same stat line.  Would that stat line not feel a bit more elite if only 2 (plus some necrons) armies boasted those kind of stats?  Would marines (with a few tweaks) not feel a whole lot stronger in shooting and hand to hand, if they were not always fighting against other marines.  Bolters are a whole lot scarier for a bunch of Guants, Orks, or Guardsman, then they are for other marines.  Marines might actually be ok in combat, if not for the fact that they don't get enough attacks to kill other marines with a 3+ save (they actually do pretty well against guardsman or eldar guardians.)

Just some food for thought.  I know it will never happen, because GW wants to sell models, but what do you think?  Would 40k and Marines be better if there weren't so many of them?