Thursday 22 June 2017

Getting in some games of 40k 8th ed

So after a our launch day experiments I got Alan over for a 65 power level game of  Blood Angels vs Dark Angels. 



Here is my 65 power list. I wanted to give the bikes another go (must remember they have TWO wounds each) and see how transports work. It is also a battalion so I got 6 command points (which were very useful, ish)

Here is set up, turns out terminators and jump packers prefer no to set up. It was a four objective mission with  Slay the Warlord, First Blood and Linebreaker)

Seems like a good position to Smite and shoot down some termies...

...until these two teleport down!, The Chaplain made it into combat but the Terminators failed their charge,  resulting in a very dead Chaplain.

The view from the Roof. Transports are interesting, it dropped off the troops okay but didn't really have any offensive impact, though it could hold an objective.

Sadly I did my usual think of forgetting to photo anything after the first two turns. The new versions of Deep Strike are pretty cool as it just keeps the game flowing.
The game ended turn five with me holding two objectives and scoring Slay the Warlord and First Blood with Alan scoring just Say the Warlord but if he had another turn he would have wiped out my units.

Observations:
- Alan is a statistical anomaly! Couldn't seem to fail the major rolls and I had an oddly under statistically normal performance for most of my big weapons 
- Thunder hammers are awesome! They just smash most things into the floor with a fair roll thanks to the straight three damage. My Captain may only have four attacks but hitting on 2+/3+ with the lightning claw/Thunder hammer and retooling 1's means he is pretty consistent with taking out bodies.
- Morale and Overwatch really seem so pointless as they result in lost of rolling/things to resolve that have such little impact that it feels you could have just removed them and sped the game up significantly
- Combat feels very underwhelming as you don't roll many dice and the result is often just being left in combat next turn with slightly less opponents, not that this is hugely different to previous editions but when the aim is to speed up the game this it really stands out when most combats whiff out
- Flowed pretty quick with the increased power
- The 'kill each other' games aren't going to cut it so interesting missions are going to be pretty key for add some tactical decision making

So final thoughts on my first impressions are that it is at least a game I am happy to play and do feel a pull towards finishing off some of my models and revamping some units. So if you want to know if I fancy a game of 40k then the answer will be yes, so well done GW, one step at a time I guess.

1 comment:

  1. ive had a few further thoughts. I totally agree on overwatch, less so on morale.
    I personally would be perfectly happy to houserule that overwatch just doesnt exist. but my concern with doing that is does it unbalance some things? for a start, that probably diddles any tau player right in their little blue bumhole!
    also means theres barely any risk to attempting those long assaults (unless your unit is just going to get mushed i guess) but im not sure this is necessarily a strike against ditching overwatch to be honest.
    I like that combat doesnt feel quite as deadly, personally. It feels like tying a unit upeven if you have no hope of winning the combat is a valid tactic, and then, sure, your unit can break off, but is still prevented from doing anything this turn, so mission accomplished.
    My main concern is the fact that, basically, everything is unbound now. I saw a clip from one of their 8th ed battles on twitch where the guy was saying 'you could just take an army of hemlock wraithfighters! theyre super cool!'
    And sure, you could make that a battle forged force using the flyers detachment. sure, its less troublesome to deal with now flyers are easier to hit and everything can wound everything, also you wont have many command points, but does that really balance out the strength of going all in like that? Im not sure it does (though im happy to be proved wrong.)

    I'm still excited about it, but not AS excited as i was prior to the release.

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