Phew, after having a quick look through the new rulebook I am relatively pleased that no-one has brought the nerf bat to my nice, shiny, new Space Wolves, especially on the same day that I complete the thing, that said, overall I really like the changes that 6th ed brings to the game. It looks like GW have made more of an effort to close off obscure rules loopholes from 5th and although I haven't got to the hobby, etc, seegments of the book yet I very much look forward to doing so, just after I have finished learning the rules in full.
But anyway, as I've just had a quick look through, I'm just going rattle off my immediate thoughts about 6th edition. Rather than talking about the rules themselves, and suggesting how they will effect different armies (it's difficult to tell until you have studied the entire rulebook and all of the new FAQs that were released this morning), I'm going to hunker down on a couple of units (or specific types of units) in this post before moving onto individual codecies and their most effective builds from 5th later. So, let's get started. First 5th ed powerhouse unit up.
Paladins
The undisputed kings of kill points. I see a lot of changes for these guys coming up with 6th edition. Lets start off with the good things. First off, Power Weapons are AP3, meaning that they will no longer pose any potential threat to Paladins, yes you could always just allocate to the warding stave, but now you don't have to, as all of your Paladins can take the hit, which is important given the new wound allocation rules, which brings me onto my second point.
Wound allocation, Paladins have now shed their ability to take different pieces of equipment on each model to make them more durable. I personally think that this is big, as it makes it much easier to bring down a single model from that squad than it was under 5th edition rules.
Speaking of durability, I think that the Apothecary isn't really worth taking in a Paladin squad anymore. Although it is harder to cancel out it (the only way of doing so now is through instant death), it is now only a 5+, so not exactly reliable, and with a unit that has decreased in durability anyway, I wouldn't say that it's worth 75pts, especially considering that what I'm going to be hitting you with are things like Lascannons, Meltaguns and potentially Power Fists (if they live that long) anyway.
Segwaying like a pro, onto instant death, and specifically, Force Weapons, these are now broken down into 3 types, Force swords, Force axes and Force staves. Force swords are essentially the same as they were, but only come with an AP3, making them less effective against other Paladins (as well as anything with a 2+ armour save for that matter, such as Terminators), Force axes are like Power Fists but instead of doubling strength they give +1, and Force staves add +2 to stength but come with A4, although they do reduce models which take an unsaved wound from it to I1 until the end of the next assault phase (a bit situational as this will only really be useful against models immune to instant death.
A bit of a crappy segway now onto what for me is the most important change in the entire book. The missions. The reasons I say this is because your army could be as enhanced as anything by the new rules but if you can't achieve the objectives you aren't going to win very often.
First of all, I wish to say that I think that Paladins will do ok at the secondary objectives for each game, in fact, I would say that they do well. However, most of the points from the primary objectives. Essentially, there is only 1 mission that is similar to kill points, although there is one where killing certain types of enemy unit is a factor to the primary objective, there is only a 1/6 chance in getting a mission that the mission that Paladins will absolutely thrive on, although a single squad of the things will be useful in any game, as they can achieve some of the secondary objectives pretty well and you can guarentee that they will take an objective for you (provided that you have Draigo).
Well. I planned to talk a little bit more on some other units, but I think that I'm done for today, although other similar posts shouldn't be too far behind. Sorry for the likely spelling mistakes, I'm trying it without my word processor for today. I'm not a Grey Knight player however, so if anyone disagrees with any of the above please leave a comment, I like to learn.
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