On the Impact of a New Infinity Classified Deck

Corvus Belli, who make Infinity, run an Elo rated tournament season from September to August each year. We've just hit Season 10, and with the new Season has come an updated Classified Deck. These are secondary missions you secretly select for many of the game's missions, scoring you assorted points. It was introduced with the 3rd edition of the game, and with the lessons they've learned since the start of the new season, it's undergone a pretty significant overhaul.

The first obvious change is that it's now two decks of twenty cards, with twenty different missions. Before, it was one deck of forty with four sets of ten missions. You can read a summary of the misssions in the Season 10 ITS pack, available from the downloads page of the Infinity website, but it doesn't contain enough information to fully use the deck.

The second deck, in red, is a new "extreme" deck where the missions are harder to complete. This is simply a different option, but it will change the decision making process about whether your chase the points for the classifieds or the main mission.

When going through the new ITS missions, we saw a couple of comments like those above - which relate to symbols on the card.

There is some level of theming to these - the one that looks like a medic's cross are usually doctor's missions, for example. I've not worked out all of the themes, though, so I've not yet worked out if there's a particular reason for the extra rules. I suspect it's intended to be a flavour thing over a competitive thing - encouraging the taking of cards that suit the theme of the mission.

I was never hugely sure about "Intelcom" - which were used for a variety of things including cancelling a model's effect on scoring or scoring some points towards control zones. The former hasn't really changed, but the latter sort of has.

With the reduction to 20 cards from 40, the numbers on the cards, used as a points substitute, have a much smaller effect. A card in the mid 30s or even the 40 could hugely sway a game as you had to be really strongly winning to have a chance of holding off a card. Now, a maximum swing of 20 points rather than 40 leaves it still potentially strong, but not quite as overpowering based on a lucky card.

Finally, the number of classified missions have risen from 10 to 20. While some still rely on specialists, others require on troop types, troop classifications, certain equipment or even close combat kills. This means that if you want to be comfortable achieving any classified you draw, you will need to think a lot more about list composition and, in theory, take a more balanced list.

All in all, I'm in favour of the new Classified Deck. Some people don't like the randomness when both players get missions that are of varying difficulty for them to achieve, but it's not a huge number of points, and Securing the HVT on the field remains a viable option for builds that are bad at Classified Missions. The greater variety also means that you can build towards those cards that don't require specialists if that's not your army's strength, and still have a chance of getting missions that suit your build.

I'm not sure of the viability of or buy to of the "Extreme" classifieds. Outside of the Highly Classified mission, where all points scored go from the deck, most missions only have one or two points coming from the deck. I suppose it actually favours those who aren't in favour of Classifieds, as by making them all significantly harder, you're reducing the chance of people spending the time completing them, meaning more emphasis is given to the main parts of the mission.

At the time of writing, I've only played one game using the new Classified missions, so can't really advise on completing them - but I hope my first thoughts on how they may impact the game are of interest to people.

A Review of Codex: Imperial Agents

One of our focus group gets to work

The new Imperial Agents Codex came out at the weekend, and as a massive nerd when it comes to obscure little detachments and the weird corners of the Imperium, I was super excited. I've inhaled the entire thing through my eyes, so will now regurgitate some excellent and useful facts and opinions for my dedicated readers.

TLDR Version

This book is quite good and has plenty of cool stuff in it. Narrative gamers will have plenty of awesome ideas to plunder. More competitive gamers will find several old favourites thoroughly nerfed, and only a few 'good' options amid some really weird stuff. Some of the rules stuff is a bit unclear and needs a little clarification.

Cult Mechanicus

Broadly, this gives the Astra Militarum Tech Priest the Cult Mechanicus faction, a few more equipment options, and lets them have "Canticles of the Omnissiah" rule from the Cult Mechanicus Codex.

It doesn't help with Guard formations that have to include a Tech Priest, which is where most of them are likely to turn up in an army, but if you are not putting them in a Astra Militarum formation, use this to buy them, as you get some nice free rules.

Law of Unintended Forge World
Trojan Support Vehicles are a Dedicated Transport for Tech Priest Enginseers. If they are allowed for Cult Mechanicus Enginseers, that adds an extra unit with Canticles for cheap.

Aeronautica Imperialis

I want to like this so much, but it's really not very good at all.

So, you get a Fast Attack slot with an optional HQ, with the Aeronautica Imperialis faction. The only options available are Valkyries and an Officer of the Fleet as an Independent Character. The latter is amazing, the former is rubbish.

The problem is Death from the Skies. That supplement has a detachment for Valkyries that grants them Objective Secured in hover mode, which is spectacularly better than getting to reroll some reserve roles. Getting to hide away your Officer of the Fleet as an Independent Character rather than part of a Command Squad is great - but not at the cost of your flight wings losing Objective Secured.

Law of Unintended Forge World
This will be where this detachment could shine. If Forge World put out a PDF listing any number of it's fighters or bombers as Fast Attack options for the Aeronautica Imperialis faction, then they gain nothing from the Death from the Skies detachment and something nice from the Imperial Agents detachment, and you can take your improved Officer of the Fleet.

Adeptus Astra Telepathica

This is where good stuff happens. Primaris Psyker is more or less the same. The Astropath from the Astra Militarum Codex gets a nice tasty upgrade, getting an option of a second psychic level, and becoming an Independent Character. As cherry on the cake, the HQ option then gets bonuses if near a unit of Wyrdvane Psykers.
From a competitive standpoint, this leaves you with an excellent source of Telepathy Psykers for cheap. From a narrative gamer stand point, I really want more Astropath figures...

Adepta Sororitas

Most of the most recent Sisters of Battle Codex, with tweaks. Mostly, it has an impact on how Inquisitorial Warbands work later. The Ministorum Delegation is a fun little unit that lets you have a Priest, with a pick of optional miscreants to accompany them.
Arco-Flagellants, Crusaders and Death Cult Assassins are all now Adepta Sororitas units with tiny minimum unit sizes (the size, incidentally, of a blister from GW). You can then package them up with a Priest or Uriah Jacobus to form an Ecclesiarchy Battle Conclave, like the old unit.

Special Mention goes to the Mace of Valaan, which gains Fleshbane and Armourbane when wielded near a model with the Daemon special rule. Over in Inquisition-land, a Daemonhost can be put in a unit with a Priest, who can take said Mace... Do not take this combination when playing with people you want to stay friends with.

Deathwatch

Simple squad of Deathwatch, included as relevant for future options. Mini Kill Team detachment for the casual buyer who doesn't have the Deathwatch Codex - which has much better synergies. This stripped back approach may be worthwhile for people wanting a small Deathwatch investment though...

Grey Knights

See Deathwatch. Just a little bigger - you get a Troops or Fast Attack unit as Compulsory with an Optional Heavy Support. The key thing here is that you're not restricted to the units included in the book. They just have to have the Grey Knight faction. So, you can still have Purgation Squads, Stormravens and so on if you want (although I've not looked at which ones get good synergies with the detachment itself).

Legion of the Damned

Those whacky invulnerable saving, deep striking, cover ignoring ghostly Space Marines are back again. They don't have the Relics from the LotD book, but do get a command ability in their detachment to choose to automatically pass or fail reserve rolls. I'm not sure if that was there before or not.

They remain the Legion of the Damned. They're pretty good. They do a job. I kind of want some.

Officio Assassinorum

See Deathwatch, except it's basically every rule from the Assassins Codex. Including the formation.

The Inquisition

... what a show!

So, this is where it all gets a bit weird. There's quite a big overhaul, and this removes almost all the broken "competitive" combos people were using the Inquisition for before. Servo Skulls are gone, warbands are no longer a Codex entry, and you can get Acolytes, Jokaero and Daemonhosts.

You now get a Detachment with one Inquisitor and 3 Elites choices, and a Formation called an Inquisitorial Henchmen Warband.
And this is where it gets really weird.

Acolytes get Dedicated Transports from the Sororitas (Rhino), Aeronautica (Valkyrie) and Grey Knights (Land Raider variants). This is fine, despite people's panicking (p120, main rulebook - Dedicated Transports gain the faction of the unit they are picked with).

What is confusing is whether the non faction Dedicated Transports can use the vehicle upgrades from the Inquisition list (psybolt ammunition, etc) - current strict reading is "no", but that may not have been intent.

There's a light upgrade to Inquisitorial Rhinos as they theoretically gain Shield of Faith. I'm also not sure if it's intentional that Ordo Malleus Inquisitors can use Malefic Daemonology as well as Sanctic, as the other Inquisitors can't, and the wording for each is "Inquisitors".

The Henchmen Warband has some changes. You can't go all Death Cult Assassins in a Land Raider - but you can still have quite a lot of Death Cult Assassins in a Land Raider, with a few ablative acolyte wounds, a guy who can repair the Land Raider, and an Astropath to try for Invisibility. This is on top of the light comedy of the Priest with Mace of Valaan and a Daemonhost.

There's also a side option that you can take of a unit of Sisters, Deathwatch or Grey Knights to be a buddy for your Inquisitor. I already have some plans for this from a narrative point of view.

Final Thoughts

I really like this book - the updates clear out some old tired combos and give us new ones from a competitive standpoint. From a narrative stand point, we can achieve more or less the same thing as we could before with Inquisitors. We just have to go about it in slightly different ways.

I've actually found that I was stalling on inspiration for a lot of my Inquisition stuff because there was so much choice. With the formation structure a little more ordered, I'm finding myself thinking up an assortment of ideas I really want to try out. I'm really pleased with this, and am looking forward to using it!

Creeping into November

Goals from last month

• Progress in each of the "categories" I use on my tracking spreadsheet, which are; "Imperial Guard", "Malifaux", "Grey Knights", "Ad hoc projects" and "Scenery".

Failed. Progress only really in the Imperial Guard, basing the Conscripts.

• Get the Malifaux Collodi crew painted, if not based

Failed. Marionettes have started painting, but that's about it.

• My friend's Herald of Tzeentch at least undercoated and ready for paint.

Failed. Not looked at. I'm a terrible friend.

I did, however, manage to finish tidying my study, leading to me earning my 40K rulebook from Sim!

Gaming and some first thoughts on 6th Edition

Also, rather than have our local youngsters demand money with menaces from us on Halloween, Sim and I popped down to Darksphere for the casual 40K night.

I did not take photos. I fail as a blogger.

While my wife had the local cheese weasel (he'll be proud for me to call him that) show her the terrible things Grey Knight Henchmen can do at 500 points, I managed to grab a nice chap called Louis when he finished his game for a quick 1,000 match up.

Louis plays Raven Guard successors, using Space Wolf codex rules. He had a Rune Priest, a couple of Grey Hunter Squads (one in a drop pod), some Long Fangs, a Dreadnought and a Speeder. Tons of lovely kit bashing, which readers will know I'm a big fan of.

I took a trimmed back version of the normal list, with a small company command squad, a psyker, infantry platoon, Veterans in a Valkyrie, a Demolisher and a Hydra.

The mission was "Big Guns Never Tire", with standard deployment on a 4 x 4 board.

I was thoroughly schooled, with the opening turn being an absolutely canon perfect decapitation strike by the Drop Pod squad, coming in behind my lines to obliterate my Warlord and wipe out his squad with brutal short ranged shooting to earn Louis both First Blood and Slay the Warlord.

I won't bother with a blow by blow, but it ended with all my models on the table dead while the Valkyrie was off turning around. I learnt some useful lessons, however!

- The Imperial Pie Plate still scares the pants off anyone in power armour.
- Tanks can be more reliably taken down this edition, but can still be useful and dangerous
- Fliers are really useful, but Valkyries with MRPs are less good given the new flying rules - should focus more on using as a transport and less as a gunship. Also, may want to consider looking back at the standard one shots it comes with
- Hydras are dead good on skimmers and fliers, but at smaller point games may not make their money back
- Plan your flier movement from the start, so you have a good idea of where you're likely to go
- My current list still suffers from power projection issues - it doesn't put enough threat across the table fast enough
- Cover is still useful, even if its a lower number - your opponent has the same issue too
- Focus on objectives - while I was still wiped, I could have put a more credible threat out earlier on

And finally . . .

I have been selling bits and pieces on ebay, and thus had a little money to spend on bits on ebay too.

I realised a short while ago that my Imperial Beastman conversion was hamstrung by a lack of left arms (cursed lack of forward planning!) but a good mate mailed me more than I needed to complete the project in exchange for a couple of Cadian torsos for him to test out one of his projects.

I also picked up a couple of sprues of Glade Guard, which still had five hooded heads on! Woo! These are hard to find cheap. The remaining bits that don't fit guard have now been passed on for my wife's bits box.

I've also bought a few Dwarf Warriors to see if an easy Squat kitbash is at all feasible. I am somewhat doubtful. I'm still waiting for these to arrive, though.

Games Day 2012 - News, Rumours and Information (Part 1 - general information, Chaos Codex)

Firstly, a quick apology - there are no flashy pictures of swanky models here. My phone was stolen a while ago and I couldn't afford a new one, so I'm using a pretty archaic phone for my pictures.



What most people actually see at Games Day

I attended the first Forge World seminar and took notes of that, but for the rest of the day I'm going to rely on my memory. As such, I'll write that stuff up first before I forget, and then cover the stuff where paper is acting as my memory.

The sales area was much better laid out this year, and there were clear groupings and a separate queue for Forge World. I had pre-ordered the show only models like a sensible person, so avoided the Forge World queue entirely and just picked up the show only Blood Angels captain for the wife to paint. Everything else I can just buy normally at a sensible time and not cart it around a convention for a day. I still don't understand people who buy anything other than limited edition, show only or similar items at Games Day. It makes no sense to me.

Payment was quick and easy - they had put a lot of time and effort into sorting out last year's problems!

I saw the new Chaos Codex. I had a chat to Robin as I skimmed over it, but the main things I picked up were;

• Cult units are back to Elites
• Cult units are moved to Troops by taking their signature character or a Lord or Sorceror with the right mark
• Daemon Princes with the right mark does not move Cult units back to troops
• You can only move units to Troops for your Primary Detachment - you can't do this for allies at all
• Abaddon moves Chosen to Troops
• They're moving towards putting Troops choices in a Codex before Elites as that makes things a lot easier layout wise - as you've got to have a HQ and two Troops, it makes sense for them to be first.
• Weapons and wargear have been split to Ranged Weapons, Melee Weapons, Daemonic Gifts and so on, so that things don't have to be listed over and over in multiple unit entries.
• There are some unique chaos artefacts which the devs were quite surprised "aren't all over the internet already". I spotted one which was a Scroll, possibly of  Magnus...

I'm afraid I'm not a Chaos player, and there were people behind me who were, so I stopped at this point and let people check if their current unit builds were utterly ruined by the new Codex (those of you who take two Daemon Princes and all Cult units as Troops are going to have to have a rethink!).

I had a chat with a few of the studio about how they manage the creative process and meet deadlines. It seems that there has been a swing more towards the miniature designers coming up with cool model ideas and the rules guys coming up with mechanics around it, and less of the rules guys coming up with unit ideas first.

This apparently happens in cycles - Grey Knights was towards the other end of the spectrum, with some clear holes in what was needed for the army being covered by the rules team first and passed back to the designers. There's no hard and fast rule, though - sometimes someone will have a cool model sculpt half done but not be sure what gun to put on it - so they'll ask the developers what holes there are in the codex. The example given was "Well, this army has enough ranged firepower already, but anti-air is pretty new in 6th edition and we need more units like that".

They're working with small project teams with one lead developer being in charge of the background, descriptive text and flavour (I was standing too near to Jes and Jervis to use the word "fluff", even now I'm back at the hotel I keep glancing over my shoulder to check I won't get a ticking off). So one person writes up the descriptive text, and a team of people work on the rules to develop them and get them working.

There's usually two or three cycles between the writers and the editors, who will look out for both typos and clarity of intent. For example, one editor mentioned that one of their first books was in a system they were unfamiliar with - and when they couldn't make head or tail of some of the rules, they realised that they needed to make them much clearer before publication.

Generally, the studio might be working on around 10-12 large projects between the drafting and publication stage, at various stages in the pipeline. This is bigger releases such as Codexes and other army lists, rather than smaller things like 2 page iPad releases, which aren't tracked quite so heavily. There'll be around the same amount of projects again at the pre drafting / brainstorming stages that haven't got anywhere near the editors yet.

All in all, they do know where there are big gaps in the older Codexes - Sisters of Battle & Black Templars, for example - but without a good range of inspiration, both in terms of models and rules - they won't progress. They try and avoid early leaks because this leads to a lot of disappointment in buyers who were hoping for new models - especially if an early draft gets binned and they decide to come back to it later.

A good number of people are working on projects they still can't talk about. Those who've been working on the Hobbit can say "we've been working on the Hobbit", but nothing more. The Perrys have, for example, been doing that pretty much exclusively in terms of their GW related work, to no-one's surprise. Given that it generally takes a year to cycle through one of these projects, we probably have at least one more big release due other than the Hobbit relatively soon.

I had some other interesting discussions about scheduling and planning which will interest no-one who isn't a project manager. I will not bore the internet with this sort of stuff!

Some of the sculptors are now working entirely in the digital format - some use a mix and some still only sculpt the old fashioned way. There is definitely a move towards more plastic models - some of their sculptors have been doing nothing but plastics at all - there is likely to be more plastic than Finecast in the future, in general terms.

Given the size of this post already, I'll put up a separate post with the Forgeworld Seminar, and a further separate one with my personal experiences so the rumour hungry don't have to read through them!

My news & rumours post continues here.

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: FAQ update - Core 1.0, Codex 1.1

So, there I was, thinking I was out of the speculation about how Guard would be playing in 6th edition, leaving it for the people who play test regularly to overtake my early meanderings - and then GW put out an FAQ which seriously overhauled how Guard play on the tabletop.

Thanks guys.


Please read my disclaimer.

For more in depth approach, I would recommend pottering over to 3++, where they are starting a far more comprehensive analysis.

Company Command Squad
The changes to "Look Out Sir!" probably down-power bodyguards a little bit - but only when considered in isolation. My initial suspicions are that the guaranteed move of wounds around is now better in comparison to how other people's "Look Out Sir!" has been affected. Feel free to Math-hammer this one to death, I don't have the will right now.

Ministorium Priests
The loss of the re-roll for allies heads off an assortment of shenanigans at the pass. Not much more to say, though!

Techpriest
The servo arm is, for now, confirmed as ignoring armour saves completely, making this a surprisingly scary anti-terminator close combat unit!

Psyker Battle Squad
Given that the leadership drain is not a Witchfire power, it looks like Psyker squads embarked in a Chimera are once more unable to target enemy models. This is a significant down-powering, and probably not an intentional one (but probably the right answer).

Commissars
No longer accidentally execute Space Marines who've joined the unit. Makes sense for fluff, doesn't change much for me - people planning clever ally combinations are probably a bit happier, though.

Heavy Weapon Squads
No Flakk missiles for me just yet. Its a shame, as some variation in my anti-air would be nice.

Valkyrie / Vendetta
All reserve armies are formally confirmed as automatically losing on the first turn for having no models on the table. Not really a concern for me as I never used them to that numbers, preferring not to be the "special snowflake" of the air mobile division.

However, the units transported not being part of the 50% limit on reserves does greatly increase your capacity to have a high proportion of your army being reserved, if you're willing to take the risk!

Grav Chute insertion is now much more worthwhile - not having to slow to fast skimmer speeds makes the fliers much more survivable and capable of transporting units without committing suicide to let them out. I did kind of like the idea of it being dangerous to do an airborne landing under fire, though, so in some ways I hope I see some transport fliers at some point that do have to slow down to let people out. Its one of the staples of military true accounts and military fiction, and I think losing that is a bit of a shame.

And no, I didn't expect Scout to allow a Valk or Vendetta to deploy onto the board. Are you insane?

Rough Riders
The hunting lance clarification is no surprise - its pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, so no real surprises there.

Leman Russ Tanks
The move to "Heavy" does make things a little easier in terms of simplifying the rules, so I can see why it was done. But it leaves the Battle Tank and the Demolisher, the two Ordnance guns, at a serious disadvantage to the rest of the guns. I've barely _looked_ at which of the main guns has the Ordnance special rules before now.

Now, I've never been one for sponsons, and had a moment where I felt sad about the city fighting Demolisher with three heavy flamers no longer being able to use any of them . . . until I realised that if your target is within heavy flamer range, you shouldn't be using your main gun at all due to the risk of being hit by it! I never much liked plasma being overused anyway, so the plasma sponsons taking a hit is no great loss to me.

What this does do is move up interest in the other tanks with cheaper sponsons and the ability to put out a lot more mobile firepower. I'm not going to go into the various different combinations right now, because there's a lot to take in and its something I want a little more time to think about.

All in all, there are still lots of odd little combinations of turret and sponson I'm yet to try, so I'll be excited to give them all a go!

Hydra Flak Tank
I had a strange waking dream moment where I thought Games Workshop had lost all reason and given the Hydra Interceptor as well as Skyfire - to the point where I was actually confused to find it wasn't there while writing this blog post.

They remain good for their points, but not "insanely so good it is compulsory to buy them for everything ever".

Interesting observation: The Hydra's Heavy Bolter doesn't have Skyfire. This is the right thing, as it's intended for last ditch defence against ground based targets - but it does give it a tiny bit more flexibility than some realise.

Griffon & Colossus
No more minimum range at all is a wondrous thing. The Griffon I'm still up in the air about - we have plenty of generic anti infantry firepower already, and its competing for just plain excellent choices in the category. Its role as a "spotter gun" may still be valid, but I need to find out how unit barrages work now.
The Colossus is now a 'must test'. It is the Marine killer of choice.

Deathstrike Missile
I never expected that it would hit fliers, so that doesn't change anything really.

--

So, there you are. I hope this isn't too much restating what is actually there, and there's some actual commentary and thought here. As per the disclaimer - this is all about what to look at play-testing, not what is 'better'. No-one can tell you right now what's the truth in that!

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: Heavy Support

(Delayed due to watching Olympics Opening Ceremony)

Please read my disclaimer.

For more in depth approach, I would recommend pottering over to 3++, where they are starting a far more comprehensive analysis.

Leman Russ Squadron
I currently have three Leman Russ - two Battle Tanks and one Demolisher. I've tended to favour the Demolisher for tournament & competitive play as I've found that the instant death on T5 and the AP2 are pretty much priceless.
In the world of hull points, I think the rear armour of 11 also has something to be said for it, giving just a tiny bit more survivability.
I had considered the Executioner with plasma side sponsons, but with plasma now getting hot, I'm not sure I'd like to spare the glancing hits...
On the subject of side sponsons, I think the new wound allocation rules and new vehicle movement may mean that I start breaking them out rather than my habits to date, which has been main gun plus lascannon.


In the tournament meta of all the power armour in the world, I'm really not convinced by the Eradicator, Exterminator or Punisher, but they should probably have at least one outing each for me to see how they fair - but they won't be my first choices.


Things to try:
- All the side sponsons
- Cheap and plentiful Leman Russ with no upgrades at all and see if all the AV14 makes people sadder.
- Vanquishers - including against 'nids, where they are a bit of a points waste, but I if I take them for a tournament list, I'm going to have to cope.
- Taking mixed squadrons now wound allocation rules aren't so punishing

Hydra Flak tank
Still worthwhile, despite not having Interceptor. I am constantly shocked by people wiffling on about how the lack of it has "ruined" the Hydra. At 75 points, it remains a good deal. Twin linked snap fire still has some chance on ground targets, and I expect to see a lot of fliers about.

Things to try:
- Singles or pairs? Squadrons or no?
- When facing flier free armies - are some upgrades worthwhile to give them something else to do? Stubber & Hunter-killer are springing to mind, but that does up the points cost

Ordnance Battery
Underused last edition, possibly criminally so. I seem to remember reading that minimum range is no longer as bad as it once was, which may up the value of some of them no end!

Things to try:
- Basilisk, for the sake of tradition
- Medusa single & paired, with and without bastion breachers, and paired; one with and one without. One of my top picks for meta changing approaches
- Colossus, for all your marine killing needs
- Griffon on its own, plus also the Griffon as a 'spotter' tank for the other ones now wound allocation works differently - but I need to check how the new battery fire rules work
- A pinning list, with Psyker Battle Squads and a lot of artillery

Manticore
Not quite as good as before, but still a firm and solid favourite on the field. It will put a lot of firepower down  range, and while it's not going to be getting so many "destroyed" results without AP2, it will still be getting reliable glancing hits all the way home. My current guess is that it will be less spectacular, but a more reliable performer.

Deathstrike
Still requires a lot of planning to use, but as good as it gets in terms of strength, AP and ignoring cover. The huge blast will put a serious hole in a lot of armies. Much better against static shooting lines than armies that are closing with you fast. Also needs some serious thinking about where you want to close or don't.

Things to try:
- 1 Deathstrike supported by other army elements
- Army focused around 2 or 3 deathstrikes.
- Not wiping out my own army with the blasted things

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: Fast Attack

Please read my disclaimer.

For more in depth approach, I would recommend pottering over to 3++, where they are starting a far more comprehensive analysis.

Sentinels
I don't intend on covering Sentinels and Armoured Sentinels separately here. In short, they are gun platforms with a bit more survivability and flexibility than heavy weapons teams. I'm curious as to whether they'll be able to take objectives in whatever mission allows Fast Attack to. Outflank and shooting people in the pack with scout sentinels may be worth considering. All in all, I'm pretty open to ideas here, and a bit concerned they're going to lose out a lot to all the fliers in the world.

Things to try
- Different weapons combinations
- Scout / Outflank
- When to use Armoured Sentinels
- Heavy Flamers? Maybe for use in supporting close combat troops, when a lot of things will be closing the distance already.

Rough Riders
I do have a soft spot for Rough Riders, although they are a pretty much one shot glass cannon. If their speed has increased, I may want to consider some special weapons rather than just lances, but I'm not sure. Meltabombs also likely add some utility after the initial charge is done. Will krak grenades do anything useful?

Things to try
- Special weapons
- Meltabombs
- Find out if krak grenades do anything useful with light tanks
- Moghul Kamir now a lethal nightmare on the charge, definitely worth trying (and a conversion with the Engineer on Mechanical Horse will be pretty damned cool, too)

Hellhounds & Variants
I generally think all are worthwhile, but in the 5th ed tournament meta with a lot of power armour, the Banewolf & Devil Dog had the edge. Nothing special to do here, just go through all the potential variants and see how they go.

Valkyries and Vendettas
One of the gaming standards now - is your army capable of dealing with multiple Guard fliers?

Things to try:
- Valkyrie basic payload (because tons of anti tank missiles make me want to shout "Fox 2"). Highly undervalued as a skimmer, but I think slightly less good now
- Valkyrie with MRPs
- The Vendetta (which I suspect will be the flier of choice)
- Flier vs flier combat
- How many fliers in 1,500 points? Using both a low and high number of Valks/Vendettas to work out the right proportion
- Fliers as transports - is it worthwhile?

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: Troops

Please read my disclaimer.

For more in depth approach, I would recommend pottering over to 3++, where they are starting a far more comprehensive analysis.

For the Troops section, I am going to treat the different parts of an Infantry Platoon separately, for my own sanity and to break up the walls of text.

In general, I need to be painting and choosing far more infantry, and troops in particular in the new edition. I was definitely short of boots on the ground last edition, and I need to address that early on, as I am suspecting that infantry have a bit more utility now.

Platoon Command Squad
I generally see the Platoon Command Squad's job as augmenting the infantry squads it is taken with - with a few minor exceptions. It can improve their running, improve their going to ground and their lasguns. The only exception to this is if a squad is keeping up with Rough Riders, then Move, Move, Move becomes incredibly useful there.

I'm also becoming happier about PCS being deployed with a Chimera. I dislike fully mechanised Guard as they are, by canon, supposed to be the exception rather than the rule. Still, the idea of at least some of the officers getting their own transports makes a great deal of sense.

I generally equip with short range weapons such as melta guns and rock up field in a Chimera, although I've also used them with a static blob squad, acting as a "bubble" within which armour will be afraid to venture.

So what other uses could I see for them?

Things to try
- The all flamer in a Chimera option is viable, effectively the mechanised version of a special weapons squad. They end up doing little in the way of actual commanding and run off to flame-thrower things to death.
- Camping with a backfield blob is possible, picking out a suitable heavy weapon to round the squad out
- Will the medi-pack have utility here? I've generally avoided them as over-priced for what PCS bring to the table
- Snipers - while not as good as the CCS doing it, the sniper rifle still has something to give this edition
- Grenade launchers, for cheap, mobile and multi use firepower - hull point draining pain, in particular
- Close combat options should probably be considered
- Commissars and Power Fists given the difficulty of getting AP2 could also be viable
- Krak Grenades & Melta Bombs - how good are they, and what do they go well with? (The answer is not bacon, whatever my wife says.)

Captain Al'rahem
He's getting his own entry due to being so weird.

In general, I love Al'rahem as a Tallarn player. His fluff suits, he's got some nice clever abilities, and an instant death power weapon. What makes him interesting is that the platoon he's taken with must outflank, leaving a very significant portion of your force in reserve and ambling off to come on a random board edge. With my dislike of mechanised warfare, this leaves me with a real risk of utter disaster!

In addition, his equipment list is unashamedly close combat, but he lacks anything to seriously injure a tank up close.

Things to try
- Taking him - although this implies a radical rethink of how I use my main infantry platoon as is. I should probably take a second to bulk out my "on table" forces until he does show up - this also implies its a good idea to have a CCS with an Astropath. Already, a large portion of the army make up is decided for taking Al'rahem.
- Creed / Al'rahem combo. Unless 6th edition allows an independent character added to a scouting unit to also scout, this normally precludes the addition of a further independent character to back the squad up. Creed's ability to bestow Scout gets around this, allowing a Priest with an Eviscerator to both add anti tank punch to Al'rahem's squad, but also re-rolling those nasty instant death attacks
- Suddenly, anti tank! Take heavy weapons with Al'rahem, run into position on the flank, and actually go for a good old fashioned crossfire.

Infantry Squad
I've been taking pretty a well equipped and Commissared up 20 man blob up until now - melta guns, autocannons, lots of power weapons. This ended up with a static squad that camped an objective, but didn't contribute heavily to the game. It was a lot of points, but was ultimately out manuevered in a lot of games. There was little motivation to move the squad as the heavy weapons wouldn't fire otherwise, and they were rarely wanting to close to up close.

Things to try
- Much bigger blob squads with less equipment
- Specialising blobs into either special or heavy weapons to save points
- Krak grenades and melta bombs
- Mechanised? But I do hate it with a burning passion
- Partially mechanised
- Forty or fifty man squads with two special weapons and two heavy weapons, leaving flexibility as to whether they're two 20 man squads or one big 40 man.

Heavy Weapon Squads
I've avoided these so far on the grounds that they seem to attract a lot of firepower love fast, and die quick for an easy kill point. Still, revisiting things in the new edition and all that...

Things to try
- Lots of twin linked shots when "Bring it Down" comes up as a back up for fliers
- Missile Launchers. Doubly so when I bully someone from GW into telling me what a Flakk missile should cost and that its an option for Guard. Please?
- Lascannons, for all your anti tank needs
- Mortars - especially as this gets around the attracting firepower thing, and they're dirt cheap!

Special Weapons Squads
Never tried them, willing to learn!

Things to try
- Flamers, Demo charges & a Valkyrie / Vendetta transport
- More snipers. Still think Ratlings are better, but these ones can outflank with Al'rahem and show up at the same time. Team Ratling would show up on its lonesome.
- Melta is the obvious, but lacking in Chimeras - do Veterans do this better? Special Weapons squads do it cheaper! Once more, our fliers may be the answer here, and these guys are scoring...
- Embedded Plasma gunners with the larger blob squads for Terminators, Trygons and other deep striking surprises

Conscripts
I used to buy them for mobile cover. I find this a bit redundant now I can buy the Aegis Defence line!

Things to try
- 50 men, Commissar Lord, Tarpit.
- Volume of fire
- Checking for any dirty tricks that could be done with psykers for an incredibly cheap 50 man unit
- Consider 2 squads of 50 for sheer mass of men on the tabletop, and send them after objectives.
- Once I've got the hang of guard, maybe a "Battle Brother" HQ choice leading? Fearless, maybe?

Veteran Squad
So many options! I've been having a lot of fun with Demolitions, and I'll probably continue to do so. Currently, I'm running two flamers and a grenade launcher, solely to give them a variety of things they can do.

Things to try
- Forward Sentries, especially with sniper rifles
- Sniper rifles and a lascannon in back field, especially for the 2+ save types
- What use _is_ Grenadiers?
- Plasma. Still hating Monstrous Creatures and finding ways of taking them down.
- Is it possible to make them a close combat back up for a combat IC and / or Priest?

Penal Legion Squad
Well, I've been using my conscripts as Penal Legion to bulk out my available troops choices, and I've grown quite fond of them? Why? Well, in short, they're cheap and stubborn. Still, I've not used their scouts move as much as I could have, so some exploration of them as an objective chaser in multiple objective missions seems like a good idea. They have no options, so there's not much else to say!

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: Elites

Please, for the love of all that's holy, read my disclaimer.

Ah, the Elites section. The red headed step child of the Imperial Guard Codex...

Ogryn Squad
No real changes here beyond an increase in the charge range. They can be monsters to kill, but Force Weapons in 5th edition left me cold with so many Grey Knight armies stalking the tournament scene. They could be an interesting pairing to a Commissar Lord or perhaps even a Primaris Psyker.

Things to try:
- What can they win in a fight against?
- Alongside close combat guard.
- 10 Ogryns, Yarrick, and charging across the table yelling

Ratling Squad
Snipers got a little cooler in 6th edition. I've never quite got the hang of Ratlings infiltrating - they get close to the enemy and then close combatted to death. I'm more likely to use it to allow me a late deployment when I've had to deploy first.

Things to try:
- Larger squads (I've had a tendency towards 3 - 5)
- Finding ways of infiltrating them without being murdered to death

Psyker Battle Squad
Sure, they can't change their powers, but why would you want to? A reliable staple I've not really tried much myself.

Things to try:
- Using them
- Aggressive psychic defence (its hard to call on the Warp when your leadership is 2.)
- Controlling what enemy units run away (I need to look at when leadership tests are made and when in particular when I get the new rulebook)

Storm Trooper Squad
I've been starting to try these out recently, and so far, as a Deep Striking disruption unit they are doing very well. There's plenty still to do, though!

Things to try:
- Infiltration and scout options
- Plasma

Marbo
What more is there to try other than "suddenly, demo charge!"? He has a lot of special rules, but still too easy to instant death.

Things to try:
- Surviving more than a turn after dropping a demo charge

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: HQs

Please, for the love of all that's holy, read my disclaimer.

Company Command Squad
I have been running a pretty equipment heavy CCS to date: Lascannon, Regimental Standard, Medi-kit, and full complement of advisors including a bodyguard. In practice, I've found that while this has been really rather survivable with wound allocation shenanigans, it has not really been making an impact equal to its investment. As a threatening unit itself, I often end up deploying it too far away from other incredibly limited infantry, thus losing the benefit of its orders to everything but itself. One twin linked lascannon with a lot of ablative wounds is not worth that point investment.

Also, I put the Lascannon at the front. That is really going to go well now, is it?

Things to try:
- More assault based CCS (I normally use "Bring it down" with heavy weapons, but the same principle applies to melta and plasma)
- Lighter armed CCS of various stripes
- Camping as snipers with camo cloaks & sniper rifles, giving orders to heavy weapons squads
- Running two lightly equipped CCS at once, allowing for more utility for "get back in the fight" & redundancy
- Creed. If he's worthwhile, I have an awesome conversion in mind for a wily Tallarn Commander surrounded by "advisors" from lots of other regiments and other senior command staff.
- Go doubly assault based CCS and actually try Straken

Lord Commissar
I have never run a Lord Commissar in my army? Why? Because I hate them with a burning, fiery passion. The purpose of a Commissar is a political officer - they don't take command of a unit unless they've shot the existing officer in the head, and that's only until they can get a replacement leader to step in.
Lord Commissars were created by mistake when a certain writer of a certain bunch of chaos tainted Mary Sues from a destroyed planet completely misunderstood the purpose of a Commissar and wrote a bunch of novels that became very popular. The clamour to be able to take such nonsense eventually resulted in you being able to take the blasted things.

However, I am, in 6th edition, put my blind unreasoning hatred of poor research and compromises to sate the fan-boys aside, and actually try one out. This has the double bitter pill for me as, with the highest HQ leadership, this mug will always be the Warlord. It makes me sad.

Things to try:
- Actually taking one of the blasted things
- Seeing if any of those equipment thingies he gets are any good
- Ah, wait a second. He can take a dedicated Chimera. And he's an Indy character... that sounds to me like a ride for a special weapons squad.
- The infamous "Stealth Pants" is now gone completely. Thank goodness! As a Camo Cloak no longer grants  Stealth, but a +1 bonus to a cover save. Why is this relevant? Because an Independent character with Stealth granted it to an entire unit. You could take a unit of 50 guys, and because an officer wearing a camo smock joined them, they all gained its benefits. "That's a very, very big cloak there Commissar..."
- In combination with a CCS for a lethally effective series of heavy weapons teams

So, in summary, two main options - providing a ride to a squad that would not normally get a ride and needs to get close to the enemy to provide some violence, or just adding close combat punch somewhere. The risk with the first is that killing a warlord gains points, and this guy _has_ to be the Warlord. So the most effective way of achieving this is dual Lord Commissars . . .

Commissar Yarrick
I actually have a soft spot for this guy. He's a believable special character who's been defeated and his entire shtick is about being the kind of guy who takes a beating and tries again and again. As a signature character for the Imperial Guard, that's about perfect.

Things to try:
- He's a Commissar Lord turned up to 11 with some real problems in getting killed. Extra hilarious for secondary missions! He is an incredible battle line anchor and should be used that way. I'll be curious about what positions you can set up for him.
(Does anyone know if his Aura of Discipline applies from inside a Chimera?)

Primaris Psyker
Well, this goes without saying. New psychic rules mean this chap will be earning his keep a lot as I test them all out. Nothing extra clever to say here, just to go and try all the power combinations, options and tricks, and find what works.

Ministorum Priest
With "Look out sir", challenges and the ability to take Eviscerators, I can't see what there isn't there to love. Again, this is the province of a more close combat driven army, but this is certainly an aspect I want to try out.
(Even if my usual opponents of Space Wolves and Tyranids don't make that easy for me...)

Techpriest Enginseer
The dark horse. Servo-arms have been updated in the iPad Codex Space Marine Codex as S8, AP2, Unwieldy. He's already armed with a power ax, so this chap and his Servitor buddies will really rip a massive hole into a tank in close combat, and scare Terminators in close combat like little else in the Guard Codex - all while he sits there and adds hull points back onto the vehicles!
I intend to be seeing a lot, lot more of this gentleman at the earliest opportunity.

Imperial Guard in 6th Edition: Disclaimer

I still don't have the 6th edition rulebook in my hands, as my housework tax is not yet fully paid off to the wife. I've played no more than two turns of a 200 point game... And yet, this week I'm going to be working on a bit of a review of the Imperial Guard in 6th edition.

So, how can I truly "review" the Imperial Guard in 6th Edition? Well, bluntly, given the amount of verbiage on the internet, I'm aware of the majority of changes to the rules, and there's not much I'd gain at this stage from repeatedly reading them.

No, what is needed is repeated play. No blogger can really say that they understand 6th edition completely. There's a few who have a lead, the sort who are playing most evenings to thrash out competitive tournament builds, and they're the people I've given most credence to so far.

Yes, I'm going to be missing stuff - I only found a blog post today which explained that minimum range for Ordnance Barrage is now different, which is a big game changer for the Guard.

The only piece of advice I would give people is to go out there and play and find things out. One or two games does not cut it - you need a number of games against a wide variety of opponents before you can comment on the "game" as a whole. Otherwise you're just commenting on your local "meta".

What this is a simple commentary and observations and a mental checklist for me to go out and playtest every unit in the Imperial Guard codex, over and over. There's a number of units I never got around to playtesting fully in 5th edition given when I started playing again, so there's some units I'm going to be coming to "fresh", never mind comparing to 5th edition.

Oh, and I'm procrastinating from the housework. This is probably not helping in getting my copy of the 6th edition rulebook into my actual hands...

Some passing thoughts: Stats, News and Grey Knights

I am a little addicted to my blog statistics.

People who know me are already aware that I am the sort of person who likes my numbers, my spreadsheets and probabilities. I like having data, and reading it, and interpreting it, and working things out from it.

For those of you who don't have a Blogger, you get all sorts of shiny little tools you won't be used to if you only have Facebook or Livejournal or G+... You get a graph showing you pageviews by a variety of times, how many views your most popular posts have got, some common traffic sources and so on... I find myself enthused to post about different topics _just_ to see how many people read it, and from what source.

This has led, however, to my first mistake. Some spambots seem to read everything on the internet, giving a referral page as some wierd link which tries to get you to download all sorts of nasty things that want to do mean things to my computer. Fortunately, my various virus thingummies and firewalls said "no" loudly, and no harm was done.


I've also been looking at a lot of blogs recently in my lunch breaks and computer time, and I've noticed that a lot of the smaller blogs seem to mirror announcements and so on from the bigger blogs. I won't be doing that, because really, I just regard it as annoying filler.

I read the news forums on Bell of Lost Souls and sometimes Warseer for my 40K rumours, and maybe a dedicated news blog. Seeing six other minor blogs I read to get a feel for local hobby all repeating the same rumour over and over? It gets old. Maybe it provides a service to a particular local group of readers, and if so, fair play to the writers in question. However, if I do end up writing stuff up here about a recent release, it will be about my reaction to the news, in true gonzo style, rather than the news itself. You can get that anywhere.


So, I move on to my final topic of the evening: Grey Knights. It appears that the internet community as a whole is on a huge whine-fest following Adepticon (a big US convention with a large tournament) about how the Grey Knights codex is so "OP".

Firstly, emotive unsupportive statements make you sound like a petulant child. It's infuriating, dull and I have no interest on it. The only thing worse is reading the comments page of some of our more partisan newspapers, or more unfortunate sections of the BBC website.

Secondly, Grey Knights are popular because low model count reduces the barrier to entry for the army and are easy to transport - not just because they are a particularly effective army, or because they are easy to learn.

Small and elite forces in most wargames I've played have a tendency to be hard to plan to defeat. The Grey Knight Codex is very well written and has some beautiful sneaky tactics, flexibility and variation to change what used to be (in my opinion) a very dull, samey army into something you can do multiple successful builds with.

I also think that they are given a significant advantage by the US tournament scene. The US tournament scene has taken to running pre-written custom missions with a mix of objectives, kill points and victory points which the Grey Knight Codex is incredibly well suited to face. How can you really complain about game balance if you're playing with a bunch of what are essentially house rules which aren't actively supported by the games designers in the first place? Of course armies are not going to be playtested and balanced against those houserules, but the book published missions and deployments.

Finally, looking at the US metagame in particular, I think a lot of people are relying on safe army builds that were developed before the advent of Grey Knights. Going off the published 'high end' lists that aren't Grey Knights, they rely on a few tried and tested combinations, and while there is a lot of talk when a 'non standard' build or Codex wins, and people constantly deride 'netlists', they are still used as the basis of an awful lot of the lists I see published from the US game in particular.

I don't pretend to know or understand every current Codex - I'm still getting back into the hobby, you understand, and I'm not spending my money on buying every new Codex as its released to better study it and understand how to beat it. But if your local metagame is heavily favouring a particular build, army or similar - have you considered working more on beating it?

In my local GW, the veteran's night main challengers are Imperial Guard, Blood Angels and (my personal nemesis) a Tau list. I am constantly evolving and trying out new builds for my Guard to try and do something about these pesky Tau - but I won't expect to see that happen on the UK or US national tournament scene.

I think the two major considerations at the moment when dealing with Grey Knights is considering whether or not any local house rules (such as mission variations) are unreasonably favouring them, and secondly, whether your army is well tailored to address the unique issues fighting Grey Knights brings. They may have a game advantage, they may not, but perhaps rethinking how you're playing might give you some insight in how to improve your win loss record in future.