Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Blog blog blog

So those 5th edition rumors are floating around. The one that everyone is kinda all "What tha?!?" seems to be what defines a scoring unit. Now if the rumor is correct, and only troop choices can be scoring, then a lot of armies are going to have to change and I am sure a lot of stores are going to be happy as the normal troop choices for armies, will be bought in spades to help fill out some tournament lists. But lets look at how some armies might be hurt by this rumorlicious rule.

Big Bugs... Welp, they already run at least 4 troop slots and sometimes all 6. The issue comes from the fact that these troop choices usually die due to their threat level. They are never going to be there to score, they are there to either pull fire from the big bugs, or give a viable threat that can take out just about anything. So what happens now? Well you could always beef up each of your troop choices, make the genestealers out to their max numbers and hide 2 in the back to ensure that you have a squad that can rush out and try to grab objectives etc. You could switch from the stealers to Hormogaunts, since they will have a large range of movement and you can get huge squads that can sit on an objective. Really this change doesn't hurt bugs too much, it just makes the whole scoring unit thing fair for each and every army. Most likely changes to my own army, would be filling out all the genestealer squads and make sure I have all 6 troop choices. My big bugs will be slightly smaller to try and achieve the points costs, and maybe take away the extended carapace to my genestealers. The game then becomes a rush to kill the other troop choices, and it kinda morphs into a weird stealer rush list. That is just my thoughts on it.

Mech Eldar. They get hurt a lot more, because their falcons are no longer going to be the annoying objective takers they once were. Mix in some rumor changes to hull down for fast skimmers, and you got a big change a coming to Eldar players. So basically you are going to see wave serpants with Dire Avengers and lots of em. And then mix in some Falcons or wraithlords to give a hard smacking unit etc. Either way, it is going to be odd and different for Mech Eldar. I guess they become Dire Eldar 4000 happy elf pants. Or something like that.

Tau seem to be ok, most player run lots of Fire Warriors anyway, so I don't see much of a change in that. Hooray for the greater good or some crap like that.

Marines are going to be sitting pretty, with Blood Angels and Dark Angels getting a boost by having combat squads, and effectively doubling their scoring unit potential. Chaos will be chaos, with special troops that are fearless taking the place of normal troops. That sounds pretty sweet. I guess I will have to limit the amount of heavies due to needing to fill up on troop choices. Demon Princes lose some of their appeal since they were monstrous creatures and could score.

IG get like a major boon with their large amount of troops they take. Damned humans... Orks seem to be sitting fine too, with the ability to take 180 orks to take a part of the troops choices, and the ability to get some extra units to count as troops to help out (Deff Dread, Nobz, etc). Nobz in a Battlewagon could be a nice scoring unit that will be hard to break down etc with the limited heavy weapons choices hurting other armies.

It could be an interesting tournament season. And I am all for that. I think the top tier armies are going to be hurt in a good way, and this will be a nice big shift in how the game is played and what kind of army you are going to take. It makes me wonder if going second is going to be better, since you can be the last one to go after objectives etc. Interesting indeed.

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