It’s Hot Take Thursday. You know what that means.
It could mean a lot of things, we suppose – today it means that Games Workshop have just pushed out some updates to the 40K Tournament Companion and Rules Commentary, plus released further errata for the Adepta Sororitas and Genestealer Cults books.
This is good news for the game in general – timely updates to the core FAQs is something we’ve long wanted, but historically some very obvious problems have been allowed to fester for prolonged period. For 95% of players, none of the core updates are going to meaningfully affect how you play the game, but in the small number of games that run into an edge case having clear guidance on rare situations is excellent. For tournament players, it’s also really good to reduce the chance of running into different rulings at different events, because that’s always a huge headache and can cause some very negative experiences. More of this sort of thing!
Now, let’s dig in and find out what that means for you, the player. You have Wings and TheChirurgeon in the driving seat here, with some commentary from Stat Check’s Custode Cliff, the mighty Sky Serpent himself Paulie Wallis to look at Drukhari.
Rules Commentary
First up, there’s an extremely good quality-of-life change to FAQ/Errata documents. Red text is now only used to indicate changes to wording made in this update, with changes from wording made in previous ones now highlighted with a blue background instead. This makes it far, far easier to keep track of which things are actually changes, and which you just forgot about.
Custode Cliff: As someone who spends a lot of time parsing very technical language for the general public, I love these formatting changes. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of something like the new pivot table for players of all experience levels, and the updated approach to highlighting wording changes is a godsend (especially for the TOs and judges charged with interpreting rules for their community!). I’m hoping that the FAQ crew will have discovered strikethroughs by the next update, and that updates like these become a much more regular occurrence – a monthly effort to formally provide clarifications and easier-to-interpret presentations of 40k’s complexities would be much appreciated.
Movement and Pivoting
Change-wise, the first ones are some follow ups to the movement changes from the last major rules release. Importantly:
- Skimmers on round flying bases are treated like a ground-bound measure-to-hull vehicle would be. That means they now have a 2” pivot value (similar to the ruling at Tacoma), and a Falcon cannot magically squeeze through a gap that’s only as wide as it’s base while moving in a straight line.
- Non-vehicle/monster units on non-round bases drop to a pivot value of 1” rather than 2”, which is more in line with what they can actually get. There are a small number of Mounted units that this gives extra reach to (notably Logan Grimnar and Lords Discordant), but in general it’s a healthy change.
Also included are some examples of what constitutes a hover base or flying stand – good thing to include! These changes are going to be familiar to anyone who was following the rulings for Games Workshop’s Tacoma event, and they’re a welcome change, covering the remaining edge cases of the new pivot rule that needed addressing where models could gain movement by spinning in place.
Big Guns Never Tire
The -1 to hit from this now applies at the unit level rather than model level. This tidies up a loophole introduced in the Balance Dataslate, where a unit of Zoanthropes with a Neurotyrant was eligible to shoot in combat, but the Zoanthropes didn’t take the normal -1 to hit penalty.
Torrent and Indirect Fire
You can now never use Torrent with indirect fire. Sorry, Thousand Sons and Grey Knights.
Scouts
The Scouts ability gets a couple of minor tweaks. Firstly, it allows units that have a Scouts X” value where X” is higher than their Normal Move to move the full distance, which gives some fringe upsides to a small number of units (Zodgrod is the one who comes to mind). Secondly, it’s made clear that yes, Leader-bestowed Scouts on a unit in a Dedicated Transport does allow the Transport to make a Scout move, presumably tidying up some fringe arguments about whether these applied because of most abilities not working while embarked.
Modifying Stratagem Costs
Yes, you can use Stratagem discount abilities on Stratagems that target either two units from your own army or units from both your army and your opponent’s army. Great news for the armies with ready access to these, and particularly for Genestealer Cults.
Command Phase Stratagem Timing
Stratagems that are used in the Command Phase that do not otherwise specify their timing now always happen during the Command step. This is how these stratagems should always have been interpreted to work – more of a clarification than anything else here.
Disembarking from Transports
There’s five new items here, but only one of them meaningfully changes anything. The ones that largely codify what players were already doing are:
- When a Transport arrives from Strategic Reserves, if a unit Disembarks it isn’t bound by the requirement to set up within 6” of the board edge, because it’s Disembarking, not arriving from Strategic Reserves.
- When a Transport dies, you have to set up all models before rolling for wounds, so no hoping that your first unit loses some models to free up space for the valuable stuff, but…
- The player controlling the Transport chooses the disembark order. Presumably people were using Sequencing to argue that, since it was their turn and they shot a Rhino to death, they could technically force the opponent to set up units in a disadvantageous order. No more.
- Yes, you can Overwatch a unit being set up from a Transport, including one that just arrived from Reserves.
The only actual change is that if you use a unit-splitting Transport like a Venom or Immolator, then put the Transport in Reserves, the unit counts for half its points for the purposes of determining the amount of units you can reserve. Logical, but nice to have clarified.
Strategic Reserves Units
Yes, Strategic Reserves units are Reserves units, so bound by any restriction that a mission applies to Reserves.
Eligibility to Shoot in Reserves
Yes a unit in Reserves is eligible to shoot, but it cannot be selected to shoot unless it has an eligible target. Which it won’t unless we’re about to get some absolutely wild stuff in future books, but this means that if it has an ability it can use from off the table which requires eligibility to shoot, that’s now an option.
Large Units Arriving From Reserves
Aircraft no longer get an exemption on having to skip doing anything on the turn they arrive if they can’t fit wholly within 6” of a Battlefield Edge. RIP Tiger Sharks.
Ruin Visibility and Models Overhanging Bases
Here we get attempt two at writing a rule that makes clear that parts of a model that overhang the base of a non-Vehicle don’t count for determining if they’re “within” a ruin. The new wording does a better job of this than the previous attempt, but still ends up causing some weird potential edge cases. The tournament scene as a whole seemed to manage to take the previous version in its stride, and we hope the same will happen here – functionally, our believe is that this is just making clear that if a non-Vehicle is outside a ruin and has claws/wings overhanging it slightly, they can’t currently be seen through it (and conversely, if they’re inside a ruin and have a tail that hangs out, it doesn’t stop them seeing through it themselves!).
Pariah Tournament Companion
Four changes here, mostly housekeeping but one interesting subtlety.
In terms of the housekeeping:
- The wording on Scorched Earth is fixed so that it actually does what it’s obviously meant to.
- The measurements on map 1 are fixed. Huzzah.
- Burden of Trust gets a clarification that yes, the player going second only gets 3 windows to Guard something for bonus points. This does technically confirm RAW, but it’s a little weird – every other mission has equal scoring potential. Maybe player 2 should get to start Guarding something at the end of their first turn in addition to normal?
The other change is blink and you’ll miss it subtle, as it has the classic problem of being removed text, so doesn’t appear in handy purple. GW please, strikethrough exists.Now we have the blue highlights we’re so close.
Anyway – where previously there was a note saying that if an event was using “fully enclosed ruins or similar”, organisers could house rule mechanisms to make sure units inside could be charged, it now only says “fully enclosed ruins”. Some people really hate models 1” from a wall being hard to charge through it, but it’s pretty clear from this that GW don’t think it’s a problem unless you’re still using magic boxes, and it’s fine for units to just go round.
Adepta Sororitas
Only one change here, but it’s quite a substantial nerf. Devout Fanaticism now triggers after a unit has been shot rather than when it’s targeted, so it no longer shuts out enemy shooting if they try to open up at point blank. Not a huge fan of this – the ability could definitely be a nasty gotcha to walk into, but it’s a significant part of the detachment’s power, and probably needed to come as a balance change alongside discounts to Repentia in the future.
Genestealer Cults
There’s a big change for Genestealer Cults here, providing a massive boost to Cult Ambush. Now, once a unit is in Cult Ambush, you can either set it up via a Cult Ambush marker, or if it has the Deep Strike ability (which most Infantry do) you can set them up using that ability in one of your Reinforcements steps. This makes it vastly easier to get anything that ends up in Ambush back on the board and doing stuff, removes the risk of losing stuff if the opponent can remove markers (allowing you to take bigger gambles with them), and stealthily helps bikes too, as they can now have “priority” for use of markers. This feels proportionate to the hit that Ambush took in the Codex, and is particularly strong for the Xenocreed Congregation detachment, as they have access to a re-roll on Cult Ambush.
Elsewhere there’s also a small tweak to the wording on Hybrid Metamorphs, who can now take swap an autopistol out for a banner without losing their 6” surge, as long as they don’t take any hand flamers. That was pretty clearly what the rule was meant to do, so it’s a nice bit of tidyup.
Drukhari
While the Dark Eldar didn’t receive an FAQ update, the pivot changes hit them in a particularly meaningful fashion, and our resident Drukhari expert Paulie Wallis has some thoughts on what this means for the faction:
Paulie Wallis: The changes to pivot were expected and fair with Drukhari seen as an example with their Raiders. However it feels like it might slow down Venoms even more with their circular profile and reduced movement speed in 10th; it doesn’t feel like these changes will dampen the Drukhari’s recent resurgence at events.
A frustration for Drukhari players will be a lack of FAQ for Lord of Deceit and Archons, most TOs are ruling that it is the Warlord Archon only but this felt like the perfect opportunity to address this, the dysfunction in Commorragh continues.
Wrap Up
This has been Hot Take Thursday. May there be many more.
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