5th Ed Rules Playtest

So I went over to Marc's today and played a 1750 point game with the new rules. I had my 13th with pretty much the same loadout if you've ever played/seen it, and Marc had some chaos marines with two oblits, a chosen with a lascannon and two plasmas, khorne raptors, a dev squad with 4 heavy bolters, a slaanesh demon prince although not with lash, a termi squad and two 10 man troop squads with plasma guns and powerfists.

We used the new missions and got the take and hold mission which has an objective in your deployment and an objective in the enemy deployment and you want to take both of them. And only troop choice can capture objectives.

The other interesting thing is that you roll for board edge/deployment/first turn all together. The person with 1st turn deploys everything, then the other person deploys everything, then the first person gets first turn. This means that you know if you are going to have first or second turn before you deploy. No more "Well if I put them out here in the open I might get first turn charge" and then go second and get wiped out. We also had night fighting on turn 1 and random game length.

Long story short, I ended up winning pretty solidly. We called it with only Marc's devs left in their bunker objective, surrounded by the remains of my storm claws, one of the grey slayer squads, my rune and wolf priests and all my fenrisian wolves. I feel a little bad cause I emailed Marc a copy of the rules this morning, but he hadn't had much of a chance to look at it, so I kinda sprung some things on him, like I could have had a few 6+ saves with the get down rule against plasma, but I don't think he would have taken them anyway.

I brought along a plasma cannon to test that out and was woefully disappointed. I got to fire it 3 times (due to night fight). The first time it was shooting at one of his troop squads (near the left edge of the board, just outside his deployment zone) to soften it up for assault with my storm claws. Well it scatter off, and nearly onto my unit. Needless to say I was quite upset when I saw that 8 rolled, which would have been ontop of my heads, but then I remembered -BS so it was harmless to all. The second time I centered it on a termy squad that had just deep struck in. Here's where I need that hit which would have then hit all 6 guys, causing an average of 3 deaths. But no, it scattered 6" away into empty space. The last time I gave up and put it on the bunker housing the dev squad and it hit, with only 1 guy dying due to 3+ cover. This scatter would probably be fun with multiple units and with a very full board like against orks or nids or even gaurd, but with my super elite army against Marc's elite army there was a lot of open space being burned by plasma.

The other biggest thing was that scouts and infiltraters that choose to start in reserve can flank march onto the board. With my army being all scouts, I kept my storm claws + wolf priest, one unit of grey slayers + rune priest, my wolves and my wolf lord in reserve. I had first turn, I think I killed one guy, then Marc couldn't see anything and advanced the khorne raptors and the demon prince up the right side of the board and one of the troop squads up the left side, keeping them in cover from my lascannons, missile launcher and plasma cannon. This allowed my wolf lord, storm claws and grey slayers to make flank assaults on my second turn. The storm claws, helped with a little supporting fire from my plasma grey hunters wiped Marc's troops on the left side of the board. The grey slayers beat down all but two of the raptors, although were left with only three of their own. (The demon prince was out of combat) The wolf lord killed 5 of the other troop unit, but they ran away and managed not to be caught. This left my wolf lord all by his lonesome. On Marc's second turn one oblit squad and the termis deep struck in next to the rallying troop squad and melta/plasmaed my wolf lord. (but one of the oblits took a burn) In combat the Khorne lord failed his psychic test on a 12 to reroll hits and wounds and then whiffed in combat, allowing my rune priest to kill the raptors and my powerfist guy to kill the demon prince.

Now is where the run rule came in handy. My storm claws and plasma hunters were way over on the left side of the board, with all the action going on on the right side. Now the plasma slayers moved and ran D6 back toward my objective to hide behind it and secure the draw, while the storm claws jumped over a rock and then ran closer to the bunker and the heavy bolter devs. My rune priest + melta guy + PF guy charge the oblits and killed one with the loss of the rest of the squad (not the run priest) and the last remaining melta grey hunter squad charged the terminators and managed to kill three with the normal guys and beat them down with the fist + sweeping advance while losing only one of their own.

Marc's chosen then came on the board near my storm claws and another oblit squad came on near my rune priest + hunters and his 5 remaining chaos marine troops. They opened up on my grey hunter squad and killed all but two of them (yay fearless), the chosen and the heavy bolters reduced the storm claws to the three powerfists, a plasma pistol guy and the wolf priest took a wound. This was our first chance to really use the new wound allocation rules. The number of wounds caused by the 4 heavy bolters forced me to take saves on my plasma pistols and a powerfist that might not have ordinarily done that. Then when the chosen shot me, I soaked up plasma gun shots with my normal guys, and then opted to take a save with the wolf priest (which he failed) to save a powerfist.

The next turn the long fangs lascannons instant killed the two oblits that had come in (Yay T4 now) and the plasma cannon did it's one wound to the dev squad. The storm claws pistoled, then assaulted and wiped out the chosen, and the combined charge of the rune priest, melta guy, PF guy and the wolves who had waited until now to arrive finished off the 5 troops . At this point we pretty much called the game as Marc not longer had any troops and was bound to lose at least 1 objective to 0.

So things to learn, I'm pretty sure the fenrisian wolves will almost always start the game in reserve. 6" move + D6 fleet + 12" charge almost guarantees a charge on the turn the unit arrives and saves them from being mowed down from enemy fire before they get there. In the future I would imagine Marc/opponents will avoid the edges of the board. However this does force them into long fang fire. If the flank charge is effective enough, I may have to drop something to add another squad of missiles or something.

Lastly, this mission only had two objectives. In the recon mission you get the D3+2 objectives again. Now that only troops can hold objectives, I only have three units that can do this. If there are 5 objectives I would have to try and hold two with troops while my other forces kill off the enemy troops for the win. A very different style than previously.

A solid game and one hell of a "lessons learned" match. John pretty much nailed it on his recap.
Man he was quick to post this one

My big low lights were my Daemon Prince throwing two 6s on his Psychic Test followed by two 1s and two 2s for his attacks. He was then fisted. I cold have pulled the game to a solid draw until I rolled 3 outta 4 Termie saves as 1s allowing for a 2nd collapse of my left flank

Johns army moving 6" onto the board sides and then charging in was quite spectacular. Honest. I deployed perfectly for him to do this and he took full advantage. I was trying to envelope the objective with fast units while pushing icons forwards. Instead my units were caught and dispatched pretty easily as Johns scout reserves turned up. I like the fact the entire 13th is typed as Scouts which allows John to deploy nothing if he desires

My list needs tweaking as 2 Troops selections will not cut it. A simple combat squad with a plasma gun comes in @ 90pts and a pair of those should do it. Ah well, theres always the rematch

nice recap from both of you...I can't wait to get the Tau into action using the new rules.

Where you guys using the rules directly from the PDF or with the updates from BOLS?

John had printed out the PDF

There were some rules I could have used I wasn't fully aware of at first (such as I could have "ran" on the first turn and "take cover" on some Plasma/Melta fire, etc) but the outcome would have been at best a draw for me. I still fluffed my HQ 100%

Yeah, the get down might have saved a guy or two, but I think if you had actually run you would have been in worse shape cause both of my grey slayer squads and my rune priest would have charged your raptors at the same time, probably preventing your powerfist from getting a chance to swing. And then they would have been much further from the rest of your units, making it harder to shoot at them with your termis and oblits.

Nice review. The rules change sounds like a nice change for game play. More troops and you have to focus on objectives, not just killing. I cant wait to here how the rematch goes.

Yeah I'm pretty happy that the rules are changing, just a few things that nag me.

Thanks for the write up.

Oh and John/Steve, any thoughts on the flesh tearer list? Perhaps once I return we can start proxying it in 1k games to see how it does under the new ruleset.