Welcome to possibly the final week of reviewing everything we know about 10th Edition. The week started off pretty low-key, with reveals of Drukhari (Swiftblade: HELL YEAH) and Genestealer Cults, before ending with a deluge of reveals, namely an absolutely bonanza of datasheets, which are likely to be reviewed and analyzed by the crack team of nerds at GH. To make it even better, there’s some pretty big news about Tenth, which you can probably see by panning your eyes down a few inches (or scrolling if you’re on a phone, I guess). And to top it off, we have the actual reviews of the game rules, which published right here on noted website Goonhammer dot com over the weekend.
Beforehand though, if you’d like to catch up with the last few weeks of reviews, you can read them here:
Table of Contents
The Reviews
Rob: Our embargo finally dropped over the weekend, and we published our first (of many) reviews of 10th edition. There is an absolute ton to cover, but we’ve started off with the core rules, the leviathan box and models, the Leviathan Matched Play Rules, and the Crusade review. So if you missed any of those, head over to our reviews to get the most detailed analysis of what’s changed anywhere.
- 10th Edition Review, Part 1: Core Rules
- Part 2: Playing the Game
- Part 3: The Leviathan Box and Models
- Part 3.5: The Leviathan Datasheets
- Part 4: The Leviathan Missions Pack
- Part 5: Crusade in 10th edition
- Our interview with Stu Black
It won’t be too long before we’re reviewing game factions so keep your eyes peeled for that.
The Big News
GW makes the FREE rules for Warhammer 40k 10th edition available for download
Swiftblade: So, in case you’ve been in a coma or deep in the wilderness the past few days, the core rules for tenth edition have been officially released by Games Workshop. You can download the rules for yourself here on the Warhammer Community website and feast your eyes upon its glory yourself. You can also check out some articles here on Goonhammer by Warhammer players much smarter than I, breaking down the rules, the changes, and their thoughts on them! Check out part one of that rules review here and part two here.
We also know that the Leviathan box set will be going on Preorder this Saturday, with a two week preorder period, meaning the release of the box set and the “official” start of tenth edition will be June 24th. Mark your calendars, Warhammer fans!
Sayonara, Horus Heresy
Swiftblade: Okay, well it’s not quite as dramatic as the title makes it sound, but it’s pretty damn close.
One of the articles this week focused on Horus Heresy models getting Warhammer 40k rules going forward in Tenth edition. From the announcement, it was made clear that many Horus Heresy models that were usable in 40k will get rules for gameplay in Tenth edition for both narrative and matched play. Neat!
They will be, barring a few exceptions, illegal in matched play. Not neat!
Some stuff has specifically been excluded from this, like the Custodes Forge World range. For most of the Horus Heresy range though, these units won’t be getting regular balance passes in things like FAQs, and because of that they won’t be legal in competitive tournament play. This is aimed to reduce the rules bloat attached to Marine armies of both flavors, and to make the 40k and HH settings more visually and narratively distinct.
I get the reasoning here, I really do. Having to explain to someone what a Contemptor Dreadnought does because it doesn’t appear in my codex sucks. There was a lot of bloat here that needed to be trimmed. But we just released so much of it in plastic, and especially when it comes to the dreadnaughts this was very exciting for 40k players who already loved these models and were told they would get continued support in the game in all forms. Additionally, there’s some models that take a weird stray shot from this change, like the Decimator, which was a 40k model first and foremost.
If Games Workshop wanted to split these two systems and make them more distinct, I think that’s fine. I would have much preferred it though that this distinction was made when the new edition of Horus Heresy came out last year, and not a year later.
Technically, these models are supported. I’ll be very excited to play my Chaos Contemptor next time I play in Crusade with my Chaos Space Marines. Removing these models from competitive play though means that most folks who bought Heresy stuff to support their 40k forces will be keeping these models on the display shelf for a while.
Rob: This sucks complete ass and makes no sense from a business standpoint. Imagine releasing a slew of new plastic kits which can be used in your most popular game, then removing them from said game. Also there was lots of Chaos Space Marine stuff that isn’t Horus Heresy related and seeing the Decimator and the Blight Drone go stinks.
The Kansas City Open Streams
Swiftblade: Over this past weekend, The Warhammer Kansas City Open happened to much rejoicing and rolling of dice. Kicking off this event was the first of several streamed games, and during these streams we got a look at a whole bunch of different datacards from various factions to build hype. More importantly, Thursday and Friday nights stream games were games of tenth edition, where we got to see the missions played out properly for the first time before our very eyes.
Even more importantly, Thursday night’s game was played between THE Mr. Rob “TheChirurgeon” Jones and Thomas “Goatboy” Reidy. Hell yeah.
There’s way too much that got revealed during these games for me to cover without the joints in my hands disintegrating from some sort of advanced carpal tunnel, so I’ll hit some of the highlights here. If you would like to watch these games for yourself, the VODs should stay up on the WarhammerTV twitch channel for a few more days after this article is published!
The first highlight has to be the second traitor primarch we’ve seen rules for so far: Mortarion
That’s a nasty datasheet right there. His aura is a huge deal for Death Guard on it’s own: We’ve seen a few units already who can reduce the movement characteristics of units with their rules, so being able to ignore that is big. Plus, ignoring stuff like stealth or indirect fire matters quite a lot too. His host of Plagues Auras are also neat, I think Miasma of Pestilence for survivability or Diseased Influence for offense are the winners here. Defensively, Mortarion is wildly hard to shift. During the game, it took multiple turns of Goatboy throwing pretty much everything he had at Mortation to take him down, and it was a pretty substantial amount of daemon firepower getting sent Morty’s way. Rob used Mortarion to put tons of pressure on Goatboy early, and without being able to deepstrike alot of mobile units and a bloodthirster behind his lines Rob would have very likely pinned Goatboy to his deployment zone for most of the game.
We also get to see what enhancements look like for the first time. They cost points now, and each detachment has four different enhancements they can pick from. The only restrictions on how many enhancements you can take is how many points you have to spend on them, and that characters can only have one enhancement. Goatboy’s daemonic enhancements on his Lord of Change were really important during his game to boost his killing power against Rob’s Death Guard when Rob was putting down some big pressure.
Last highlight from Rob and Goatboy’s game, we get to see all of the Gambits.
I’d say Emergency Evacuation feels like the most doable gambit for most armies, but its no kidding when they told us that these are a gamble. Still, despite all of these gambits being pretty long odds at success when things get dire, the one time that a gambit does work will make for an extremely memorable game!
Andrew Gonyo and Nick Nanavati played another stream game of tenth edition the next night, playing Astra Militarum and Aeldari respectively, and there’s a few more things to glean about tenth while watching. First, we got a little bit of a better look at the table layout used for these stream games. It’s still a work in progress according to the commentators, but these layouts will probably end up being the tenth edition GW layouts.
So the thing that jumps out at me first is that we’ve split the bit 12” x 12” ruins into 12” x 6” ruins and added a few more of them. I think some of the pieces got slid around here, but here’s my best guess at what the layout will look like when we see it in GT packs.
It’s wild speculation for now. Personally, I like the idea of splitting the big ruins, but I’ve got a nice setup of terrain at my local store that is set up for the 12×12 squares. Those old setups should still work at least, knowing what we know about the terrain rules in the mission pack.
The game between Gonyo and Nick gets to show off a whole bunch of new datasheets for both Astra Militarum and Aeldari, but the highlight was the full stratagem list for both the Militarum and Aeldari detachment for us to see.
I like how reading through these, there’s some notable theming in the stratagems, especially the Aeldari stuff centered around movement shenanigans. Detachments look to be a great way to add a lot of flavor and change the playstyle of a faction, and seeing these stratagems makes me think about what the possibilities might be for other stratagems and other detachments. Very exciting stuff!
Like I said above, I really recommend watching these streams yourself if you still can. There’s so much stuff that’s been revealed, and if you’re a Death Guard, Aeldari, Chaos Daemons, or Astra Militarum player then it’s been basically datasheet Christmas on these streams. Plus, you get to watch Rob Jones play Warhammer, and who doesn’t want to do that?
Rob: I played in the first stream game, and it was actually my third stream game – I was previously invited with some other content creators to play preview games of 10th at LVO and WarhammerFest, and there was a similar event I didn’t attend at Adepticon. These are interesting affairs because the way they work is “someone asks you what models you have/are bringing, then sends you a 10th edition list without points values in it,” and you show up and play with that list. In this case, my stream list was heavily influenced by the Death Guard army I was bringing to the Kansas City Teams event, and wasn’t necessarily what I’d have brought to a game of 10th where say, Blightlords have 4″ movement.
The Death Guard game was my first with that faction (my others were with Thousand Sons and Chaos Space Marines), and it was an interesting army to play. They’re definitely more of a shooting army than a melee army now, as they’ll rely more on high volumes of firepower with LETHAL HITS and ANTI-INFANTRY to kill things than they do in 9th, and even their bolters have become plague bolters. They also have a high amount of auto-hitting plague weapon firepower with their Spewers, Belchers, Spitters, Sprayers, and the psychic attack on the Malignant Plaguecaster, and this means they can produce some incredibly deadly overwatch – I smashed a ton of wounds of Be’lakor in Thomas’ Movement phase using Overwatch fire, and spending 1 CP on them to overwatch every turn would be a good investment.
Also great: Almost none of the Stratagems are limited to INFANTRY, so you can use a strat to heal Mortarion or make him harder to hit, or buff your PBCs or Defilers. This, along with the Lord of Virulence acting as a forward spotter, makes a huge difference in how the army feels when running bigger units and is something I’ve wanted for a long time. I’m not sure how strong the army will be in 10th yet – feels middle of the pack right now – but I enjoyed playing them and want to test out more list concepts with them.
Faction Focus
Drukhari
Swiftblade- Ah, the Drukhari. The evil space elves. My most special Warhammer pals. When it comes to flying fast and hitting like a truck, no one does it better baby. Based on this faction preview, it looks like the evil space elves still fly fast and hit hard in tenth, bless their blackened shriveled hearts.
Power from Pain is back, but it looks much different now than in its previous incarnations. Rather than being a new bonus every turn, Power from Pain focuses on generating Pain Tokens for your army.
Pain tokens can be spent on a Drukhari unit on the following at the start of the appropriate phase:
- Reroll Advance rolls for the unit
- Reroll charge rolls for the unit
- Reroll hits in shooting
- Reroll hits in close combat
Drukhari players get to start with even more pain tokens thanks to the detachment rule for Realspace Raid. You get an extra pain token at the start of the game for each type of Drukhari HQ you have (Archon, Succubus, and Haemonculus). So while it won’t affect Drazhar, a balanced Drukhari force in a 2,000 point game will start with six pain tokens before anything has died or failed a battleshock.
While it’ll be handy to have access to re-rolling advance and charge rolls when there’s no CP to spare, the real prize here is the re-roll hits to boost the killing power of a unit and help generate even more pain tokens. Before everyone panics, the rule does have some drawbacks. Power from Pain has no defensive applications, and it’s the only rule we have seen where it’s totally possible to mismanage your pain tokens and not have any tokens to spend, effectively losing your army rule. Overall though, Power from Pain is one of the strongest rules we have seen. With its drawbacks, it becomes a “win harder” rule, if you’re generating the momentum Drukhari glass cannon playstyle thrives on then you’ll have resources to keep hitting hard as hell. I love it.
Onto the datasheets, we take a look at the Venom first. For the discerning Drukhari eye, there’s quite a few changes to note here.
Maybe it’s just because I’m a Drukhari fanboy, but I think there’s a lot to break down here, so bear with me.
First, the stats. The Venom lost two inches of movement and went down to a 6++, but picked up a point of toughness. The movement stings a little bit, but honestly going down to a 6++ is probably appropriate to make sure the Venom isn’t too tanky, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that change across the board. Picking up one toughness is a great change for survivability though, as it means massed Strength 3 fire isn’t nearly the threat it was previously. It also picks up deep strike naturally, which rocks, unsurprisingly has firing deck six, and gets stealth for shooting defense. Current flicker field rules let you get the -1 in shooting at all ranges, but this durability loss is probably for the better in a faction not meant to be durable (outside of Covens, at least).
The two special rules the Venom picked up are also worth a look. Firstly, it looks like Drukhari took a page from the Votann and Ad Mech book and let you split a ten man squad between two transports. It’s restricted to Kabalite Warriors or Wyches, so six Incubi squads is a no-go. It may not see play every game, but it’s a nice ability to have at lost construction. It’s Atheletic Aerialist rule is going to see lots of play though. This rule lets you pick a unit within 6” that’s unengaged at the end of the fight phase, and that unit can immediately embark in the Venom. Lots of opportunity here to set up a combat missile to clean a unit up and have a Venom to pick it up to boost its survivability in the Drukhari pain piñata.
Lastly, we see new poisoned weapon stats, and you just love to see that Anti-Infantry 3+. Finally, splinter guns aren’t just worse bolters. I can’t get poisoned on monsters anymore, nor does the AP look high enough to really threaten space marines with the twin-linked splinter rifle here, but armies with lower armor but higher toughness infantry like Votann and Orks will hate being wounded on 3+, and FINALLY splinter weapons aren’t hilariously bad into T3 targets. The Splinter Cannon seems especially spicy with sustained hits here and retaining its AP-1 and dmg 2, I suspect we will see more of those when the edition drops.
Kabalites are next, and for the datasheet itself the big standouts here is the extra inch of movement and sticky objectives ability even while embarked in a transport. The extra inch of movement is more of a big deal for other infantry in the army that hopefully gets the same bump, but sticky objectives in a transport is very interesting. It’ll likely be best for backfield objectives, since I don’t see anywhere on the datacard where it mentions that you count the squads OC value into objective control and venoms only have an OC of 1. Maybe there’s a tricky play here with rapid ingress though? One way or another, sticky objectives are a nice thing to have access to so I’ll take it.
On the weapon side of things, there’s a few changes here worth noting. The Blaster looks like it kept assault and the same strength and AP, but also picked up a point of extra damage to make it a more appealing option. The Shredder is now a Strength 6 flamer, and the Dark Lance looks like an excellent tank killer with its Strength 12 shot. The Sybarite’s weapon option became all anti infantry 3+ as well, so gone are the days of trying to decide between power sword or agonizer for the unit champ.
Speaking of weapon profiled, the Twin Heat Lance from the Talos is up next and what a profile it is. Since you can likely reroll all hits with a pain token on a Talos Squad, these guns are going to be devastating against vehicle targets. Honestly, with twin linked and devastating wounds on the Haywire gun, the other options on the Talos are going to need to be really great in order to see play. Otherwise, Haywire seems like the way to go.
Lelith’s knives get shown off here too, and she’s an infantry shredder. Anti-infantry 2+ means her low strength doesn’t matter against her preferred target, and while she’s only dmg 1 on the knives she’ll clean almost any infantry squad nicely with sheer number of attacks. Especially since once per game, she can empower herself for a 3+ invulnerable save and 12 attacks total.
Finally, stratagems. Alliance of Agony gets shown off here, which lets you use one pain token to empower a Succubus, Archon, or Haemonculus and their unit at the same time. Since the unit gets the bonus too, it’ll be handy when you multicharge with at least two units you want to empower, to save a token and keep up with pain token management. Very importantly for Drukhari, we get a confirmation that advance and charge still does exist in the army, but in the form of a stratagem that affects wych cult units. It stings to see army wide advance and charge go, it’s an extremely strong ability to boost threat range on stuff, but keeping it on wych cult units that I presume will already be speedy means that big charges from downtown are still on the table!
Drukhari look great in tenth. Their stuff is fast, and it hits like a truck. It’s still elves, the stuff we saw today is definitely fragile, but Drukhari work best when they pack a punch to make up for that durability and with the new Power from Pain rules, yeah they pack a helluva punch.
Genestealer Cults
Genestealer Cults are back, and they’ve received some pretty major reworks. Cult Ambush, one of their two army rules, has been enormously changed.
A couple of fun facts about this: Battleline units will always go into Cult Ambush and generate a token. The more units that are destroyed and enter Cult Ambush in a single turn, the more crazy the shell game becomes.
I’ll just say that straight up, I’m not a fan of things that return destroyed units (Tide of Traitors, Unstoppable Green Tide), and I really, really dislike summoned units, which makes it even stranger that I think this rule is absolutely fantastic. I want to say most of that comes down to the fact that the rule offers a lot of counterplay for the GSC player’s opponent, since they have an entire movement phase to deal with the tokens, or prepare for them accordingly. Also, this rule is really, really fun sounding for the GSC player, and it’s the type of thing I’d love for Skaven to have in Age of Sigmar.
Their other army rule, Brood Brothers, allows you to spend 25% of your points on Astra Militarum units. There’s a list of keywords that you can’t include, which is basically Epic Heroes, Ogryns, Ratlings, Comissars, Aircraft, Tempestus and some assorted weirdos. This is pretty interesting mostly because of what you can bring along, which is pretty much anything on treads, or with really big guns, or both.
The Genestealer Cults detachment is called Ascension Day and the rule is called They Came From Below. It’s really simple and gives Sustained Hits 1 and Ignores Cover to weapons equipped by models from when they are set up as reinforcements to the end of your next fight phase. Considering all GSC infantry can deep strike anyway, and Cult Ambush now exists, this is a really fun little bonus to have.
There’s also two stratagems shown off as well. The first is Coordinated Trap.
+1 to wound rolls is never something to sneeze at, there’s not much to say about this in a good way, you’re going to have times you want to use this, and when you do, you’ll be happy when your demolition charges are wounding vehicles on a 2+, or your Genestealers are just blendering Marines…you get the idea.
The second stratagem is completely nuts, it’s called Tunnel Crawlers and lets you deploy a single unit via Deep Strike only 3” from an enemy unit, rather than 9”. The only drawback is that you can’t shoot. There’s nothing saying you can’t shoot, for a start, and being able to deploy just 3 inches away allows you do a swathe of absolutely annoying things, for 1 CP this sounds really, really good.
Neophyte Hybrids were shown off as well.
Both the abilities shown off here are pretty nice. Having a 50% chance to gain a CP per objective you’ve got these dudes on is really nice (I’m a fan of Command Points if it’s not obvious), and getting to bring back 3-6 guys per turn is also really, really good as well. Important to mention is the inclusion of the Deep Strike rule, which all GSC Infantry get for free. Besides that though, most of their more damaging weapons have received buffs, and the Webber has gone from a pretty long special rule to a D6 shot weapon with Devastating Wounds and Torrent.
The Patriarch has been tweaked a bit. It’s lost a wound but it’s gained the Infiltrators rule. Its melee profile has lost an attack but gained a point of strength, still re-rolls wounds and does mortal wounds on a wound roll of 6. It’s kind of a nerf, but the ability to battle-shock enemy units in the fight phase and give all melee weapons in a squad its leading Devastating Wounds has the potential to be very, very nasty.
Finally we got a look at a couple of weapons. Namely the explosives for the Reductus Saboteur, the Demolition Charges have been given a couple more attacks, while the remote explosives have been completely reworked to be an anti-horde, indirect fire weapon, with a good deal more shots. The other weapon we got to see was the hammer for the Abominant, not much here, a couple more points of strength, one less AP and the potential for slightly more damage (D6+1 instead of D3+3).
All in all, Genestealer Cults look like they have a really, really fun army rule and seem like they’ll be an extremely tricky army to play, both due to movement shenanigans, respawning shenanigans, and just being a bunch of slippery guys.
Imperial Weirdos
Agents of the Imperium got shown off…kinda. They’re explicitly a supporting faction, and their army rule reflects that. It’s called Assigned Agents and allows you to bring 1 Retinue and 1 Character unit with the keyword Agents of the Imperium per 1000 points, as long as the rest of your army is Imperium. It doesn’t break your faction, and the only restriction is you can’t make an Assassin your Warlord.
This is pretty self-explanatory and simple to understand and execute, so let’s go over what we get.
The Vindicare is back, obviously. It gains Stealth (meaning it still retains a -1 to hit when being shot at) and Lone Operative, which is absolutely massive, it flat out can’t be hit at all unless you’re within 12” of it. I’m also going to make an assumption that Precision lets you target a Lone Operative, otherwise you’re going to get extremely bizarre situations where two Vindicares have to run up to stab range in order to shoot each other (NOTE: Precision does in fact not do this, so the Vindicares will have to run up to stab range to shoot each other, I am a fan of this). It also gains Infiltrators.
The rifle itself has been tweaked as well. Anti-Infantry 2+ is gone and it’s lost some range (going from 72” to 48”), but it’s been bumped up to Strength 7 and does D3+3 damage flat, which becomes a staggering D3+6 mortal wounds on a wound roll of a 6, also the inclusion of the Heavy keyword means you’re now hitting on 1+ if you don’t move (so you can ignore a single hit reduction).. The ability to ignore invulnerable saving throws is now a once per battle ability, that just ignores all armour saves, you know, for when you just really want to kill anything up to a light vehicle.
Breachers are pretty similar, though their ability is a pretty nice change, especially in combination with the buffed demolition charge. The shield also goes from a 5+ Invulnerable save to a 4+. All in all, they’re some pretty nice changes, and they seem like a pretty versatile infantry squad.
Finally, we get a look at the standard Inquisitor and Greyfax.
Recycling CP is really, really good, especially in a pretty CP starved game such as 10th Edition. The rest of the profile is just generally ‘neat’. A 5+ Feel No Pain against mortal wounds is also something to pretty much never complain about. The weapons are just a nice little bonus, nothing to write home about, but the CP regeneration is very, very interesting.
Greyfax is pretty much a character sniper, able to do 5 mortal wounds to a psyker character per turn. She also makes the squad she’s leading very, very effective against psykers as well. Finally, her No Escape rule makes being in combat with her an absolute hassle if you don’t want to be.
Marine Chapters
There’s a lot of stuff here. Basically five Marine subfactions were shown off, each with their own detachment rule, and one or two datasheets for them. I’ll go over them one at a time to keep everything pretty simple.
Keep in mind, these replace the Detachment Rule Combat Doctrines (start of a turn, picking one of being allowed to advance and shoot, shoot and charge after falling back and advance and charge, which persists for that turn, can’t pick more than once) and not the army rule Oaths of Moment.
There’s also been a minor mention made with regard to possible restrictions in detachments (such as Black Templars not getting psykers), I’m pretty curious how this will go, and if it’s the type of thing that’ll be expanded on with xenos sub-factions as well.
Dark Angels
The Detachment rule for Dark Angels is called Grim Resolve, it causes Battle-Shocked units to have an OC of 1 instead of 0, which is pretty neat.
Believe it or not, but this sheet has been vastly, vastly trimmed down from before, but has also got some very nice buffs. The Terminators as a whole have gained a point of toughness, a better Invulnerable save and just generally more melee all round. The abilities are all really good as well, with the Terminators being buffed up to OC2, an essentially free Heroic Intervention, the ability to move faster with +1 to Advance and Charge rolls, and most cool of all, you can just bring back one dead Terminator a turn. These guys are already annoying enough to kill, and they get to keep coming back, I like it.
It’s the Lion! The most obvious changes are way more toughness (6 to 9!), an extra wound and a 3+ Invulnerable Save! The Arma Luminis has had its attacks doubled, and while Fealty does slightly less, it now has Lethal and Sustained hits, making it even more clear when you should use which profile. All Secrets Revealed is just unpleasant for your opponent to deal with. For you it’s amazing, you get a free CP, can possibly make your opponent waste one and just cripple their unit for a turn. Martial Exemplar is just a nice melee buff for everyone who isn’t the Lion, while No Hiding From the Watchers is situational, but useful when it comes up.
The absolute most scary change though is, if he’s within 3” of any friendly infantry, you can’t shoot him unless you’re less than 12” away. Leaving you with the option to get close, or melee him (you’ll end up in combat either way), where you’ll then be in for a very, very bad time.
Space Wolves
Space Wolves receive a pretty hefty detachment rule, which is called Deeds Worthy of Saga, basically at the end of a battle round, you see if you’ve fulfilled one of four conditions, if you have, you receive a benefit for all your units. You can only fulfil one condition per turn, but you can fulfil all four during the course of the game.
| Saga | Condition | Benefit |
| Saga of the Warrior Born | Have one of your characters destroy an opponent’s character model. | Melee weapons have Sustained Hits 1 |
| Saga of Majesty | Have a character be within range of an objective marker you control in your opponent’s deployment zone at the end of either turn. | All models gain +1 to their Objective Control value. |
| Saga of the Bear | Have a character be reduced to less than half their starting wounds, but not be destroyed. | All models gain a 6+ Feel No Pain |
| Saga of the Beastslayer | Have a character destroy a monster or vehicle in the previous round. | Melee weapons have Lethal Hits |
Most of these Sagas are conditions you should hopefully be able to fulfil during a game, with the possible exception of Majesty, and the prospect of having Sustained and Lethal hits in melee, alongside a 6+ Feel No Pain makes you extremely terrifying, in melee, obviously. I’m a big fan of stacking buffs like this, especially ones that happen for a thematic reason, and combining this with Oaths of Moment sounds pretty monstrous.
The Hounds of Morkai have received some pretty scary buffs (as long as you’re a Psyker). With both ranged and melee weapons, you’re dealing mortal wounds to any psyker on a 4+, and when you’re doing around 40 melee attacks, you’re going to do around 13 mortal wounds on average, more than enough to kill pretty much embedded support psyker, and probably enough to put some serious hurt into stuff like Grey Knights and Thousand Sons, especially in combination with Oath of Moment and Saga of the Warrior Born. Will Reivers finally be good, who knows?
Blood Angels
Blood Angels get the rule The Red Thirst, this is pretty simple and gives +1 Strength and Attacks for melee weapons equipped by models that charged that turn.
Death Company Intercessors have had minor changes to their special rules; most of it remains the same, but the extra attack on the charge has been rolled into their detachment rule, and instead they get the ability to re-roll hit rolls, albeit with a drawback that requires them to be babysat by a Chaplain. They can also essentially shoot or enter combat for free due to getting to use either of those stratagems for free.
Gabriel Seth is largely the same, except for the loss of his ability to fight twice. In exchange he’s been given more attacks and given the absolutely lovely ability to advance and charge, which also extends to the unit he’s leading, put him with a scary melee blender unit and just watch him go.
Black Templars
Black Templars get Templar Vows, at the start of the battle, you can choose to:
- Give all melee weapons Lethal Hits
- Give all melee weapons Sustained Hits 1
- Give all models a Feel No Pain 6+ and a Leadership of 5+
- Give all models a 4+ Invulnerable Save against Psychic attacks and all melee weapons Anti-Psyker 4+.
Feel No Pain and increased Leadership is a pretty obvious buff to survivability, the anti-psyker rule is a total gimme when it comes up, and Lethal vs Sustained Hits essentially comes down to the toughness of what you’re fighting, as explained in Hammer of Math.
A vastly simplified Primaris Sword Brethren profile was shown off as well, with the main change being the ability to choose in each fight phase if you’d rather make more attacks, or inflict more damage with their melee weapons. Something like this will generally come down to preference
Deathwatch
Deathwatch’s detachment rule is Mission Tactics, which are surprisingly similar to Combat Doctrines, just with different effects. Deathwatch get the choice of picking:
- All weapons have Sustained Hits 1
- All weapons have Lethal Hits
- All critical hits give the ability Precision
These apply for one turn each and cannot be chosen more than once. Once again the war between Sustained and Lethal Hits continues, and once again I will link the Hammer of Math article.
The Deathwatch Veterans profile is also much less bloated, though I will say the absolute funniest thing here is that due to how the rule for Death to the Alien is written, they’re going to be very, very adept at beating the crap out of anything that isn’t Imperium or Chaos, which is probably to include things like ‘a random building’.
Titans
The final faction shown off isn’t really much of a faction, but a collection of Titans.
The army rule that’s shown off for Titans allows you to field one of them in either an Imperium or Chaos army. I get the feeling there’s another army rule that hasn’t been shown off, possibly called Super-Heavy Walker, and possibly related to things like being able to walk over units.
We get a look at the Warlord Titan.
The total number of wounds has gone down, but you always have the 5+ Invulnerable Save against ranged weapons as opposed to it being tied to void shields, and the Titan doesn’t degrade anywhere near as hard, which is a pretty decent trade off. The damage and attacks of quite a few weapons have been increased, notably the volcano cannon and power claw. The two extra abilities are also pretty interesting, you’re able to force a battle-shock test on one unit that actually survived getting shot by this monster, while the other rule is both just really funny in an excessive way, and functionally makes it really hard to use 2 CP stratagems on this thing, which mostly means Heroic Intervention in this case.
A few other “Titans” are shown off as well, albeit for other factions. These range from the Aeldari Phantom Titan, which rather humorously is likely to benefit from both Strands of Fate and the Eldar detachment rule. The T’au Manta, which has the ability to select an enemy unit hit by one of its attacks and allow any friendly unit shooting it, that disembarked from the Manta, to re-roll wounds against it. Considering the T’au Manta holds 200 Infantry, 4 tanks and 8 Battlesuits, I’ll let you work out how effective that’d be, it’s basically a clown car that kills Titans.
On the smaller side, the Hierophant Bio-titan and the Squiggoth have had their datasheets shown. Pretty much all of the former’s weapons have received some rather nice buffs. While the Squiggoth has been given an alternate sweep attack as well, which helps it out against squads of well…anything smaller than Battlesuits.
Next week?
That’s it for this week’s recap but expect us to be back next week with anything new revealed, and possibly new reviews to recap and re-cover. Until then, if you have any questions or feedback, or if there’s anything you’re excited about, drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.
