Hobby Thoughts: Warhammer 40k's Eight Edition

Hello friends,

So with the arrival of the eighth edition of Warhammer 40k my gaming group is officially hot for the grimdark. There are multiple people building and painting new armies and Element Games has been so overwhelmed with orders that I ended up doing a day of work for them to help out. The hype for the new system has been absolutely wild and I've definitely got caught up in.

I was sorely tempted to start a new army but I made the more responsible choice of coming back to the Ork army I painted in the first half of 2016. I'm working to finish some backlog in a unit of Meganobz and Gretchin I assembled and airbrushed last year before stepping away from 40k. I've also purchased another trukk and some more boyz to make a unit of Tankbustas.

Partially completed Meganobz from last year.

A rokkit pistol conversion for a unit of Tankbustas.

Some initial Tankbustas that have since expanded into a unit of 10.

I can't say I'm thrilled about the prospect of painting another 20+ models for a GW system again, but I did get a game of the new rules in and I was impressed enough that I feel it will be worth it. I'll be temporarily putting my Infinity JSA army on the backburner as I wasn't enjoying painting them nearly as much as the Haqqislam forces, which will continue to be a priority for me in tandem with my 40k army.

The game I had was against a friend's Mechanicus army and I got absolutely slaughtered, inflicting a grand total of three wounds for the entire game while he wiped my whole army of 50+ orks. (to be fair I caused about five wounds on some Kastellan's but they kept getting fixed) Even though the game was pretty brutal it was largely down to my own player errors, and also not realising just how differently everything plays now. This was particularly noticeable in the way in which characters have changed, as I flung my warboss away to no benefit quite early in the game.

The rules are definitely very streamlined and the game ran very smoothly. They've taken the best aspects of Age of Sigmar and kept the nuances inherent to 40k, and overall i'm very impressed with how it played.

Deployment. I ended up with the first turn.

My warboss and biker buddies failing to charge a unit of Kastellans.

My warboss subsequently getting absolutely krumped by said Kastellans.

This image pretty much perfectly sums up the game...
hordes of useless small arms fire against an unstoppable group of big buff robots.

Some shooting and a charge later there was nothing left.

Here are some general first impressions about the new edition:

• The game is quick, streamlined, fun, and still really nuanced with a lot of depth. The system is solid and I enjoyed playing it far far more than anything I'd experienced in 7th edition.
• Lists need to be a lot more focused. Since most units are quite viable with the current indexes it feels like you can no longer take a random assortment of your 'best' units an expect a win. My army didn't feel synergistic and I didn't have a plan and it really showed.
• The 'battle points' system didn't feel very balanced. We used the BP system in order to set up the game quickly and my opponent had 69 points while I had 70. However in practice it felt somewhat unbalanced, as Orks don't have a lot of weapon upgrades to take advantage of for 'free' using this system whereas my opponent had some horrific firepower. One gun would have caused over ten wounds on my trukk in a single shot were it not for a lucky ramshackle roll to make it only eight. I will definitely only be playing with proper 'matched play' point values moving forward.
• Characters are fundamentally different both in terms of how they play and how they are positioned on the board. The new targeting rules means that even combat-focused characters will want to be 'bubble-wrapped' with screens of units in front of them, and in general I noticed less overall damage output from characters. The way that their command auras work is a lot more reminiscent of AoS now and it feels like there's a stronger emphasis on them as supporting units. For example my warboss now has a 'waaagh' buff every turn but it only affects units in perimeter around him, rather than having an army-wide buff that he can only use once per game. It makes for a hugely different unit!
• I've seen a lot of people talking about how Orks have been 'fixed' in this edition after being relatively weak throughout 7th, and there are aspects of it I agree with and aspects I don't. The new mob rule definitely makes an enormous difference in improving our moral, but at the same time it also felt like my overall damage and surviveability was significantly reduced. It looks like huge hordes of boys is going to be a really viable strategy but that's not the type of army I want to build or paint so it might prove challenging to produce a viable alternative. I'm optimistic about Orks in the new edition but I think we may struggle against heavy armour lists.
• In terms of defence: the elimination of jink saves, and the nerfing of cover saves to providing a flat +1 armor bonus means that all of the Ork footsloggers and fast attack options are much more fragile.
• When it comes to offence it appears that Power Klaws are nowhere near as efficient as they once where, which was previously my go-to method of taking out anything bigger than infantry. The new rules for "rend" regarding armor saves means that elite units will still be getting decent saves when they're getting hit with a klaw, despite them having a relatively high rend of -3. For example the Kastellan's in this game were buffed to have 1+ armor saves so they were still getting a 4+ armour save when my bosses and nobs were hitting them. It looks like Big Choppa's will be the new hotness, as their damage output is just as consistent for less of a cost.

Anyways those are my initial thoughts. I look forward to getting some more games in soon, and until then thanks for looking!