HoP Idol II: 6th Edition, what’s that?

And now ladies and germs.... the finally entry into the first challenge for HoP Idol II.  Don't forget to check back later in the day for open voting, but first you've got to check out this article from Dok and then go peep his daily self-deprecation over at "3 for Int."

6th Edition, what’s that?

Hey all, Dok here from www.3forint.com. I got to take an early look at the 6th edition rulebook and
while I would like to cover the whole book, it’s not really possible to fit it in one article. I mean, I could
probably write an even longer book just talking about all the rules! So instead of boring you with all the
details, I want to talk about the 5 biggest changes that are going to be sweeping the tables in 6 th edition
games:

1. Flyers – Obviously the biggest hoopla over the last year or so has been the release of flyers to
the various armies(and the various armies that don’t have them…). Dakkajets, Stormravens,
Vendettas, Valkyries, Stormtalon, the Voidraven, and the scythes from the necron codexes. In
6th edition, these will add a third dimension to the game as they cruise around above the heads
of infantrymen.
The problem with these flyers is that at the moment, it’s not really clear how every army will
deal with them. What I’m talking about is that if you don’t have a special rule called ‘skyfire’,
then you hit flyers on a 6. This means that to take an all comers list, you will need to have a unit
that can skyfire available to you. Unfortunately skyfire units need a 6 to hit units not in the air!
This means that you will have to take units that will be restricted on what they can fire on.

I'm pretty sure this is the skyfire icon


The transport flyers have taken a couple huge hits.
• If the transport is shot down, everyone inside takes a Str 10 ap1 hit. This is bad news for
everyone but terminators
• The missile bearing planes can now only fire two a turn
• To disembark, you have to go into hover mode, which means you are not hit on normal
BS. You will still have the 5+ jink save, but the amount of defense goes way down

I think the flyers will add a lot to the game, but they might imbalance it a bit. If you can’t kill
your opponents 3 vendettas as they kill all your stuff 3 things at a time, then the game could get
incredibly unfun.

2. Terminators – Terminators got several indirect buffs. Most power weapons are now AP3, which
means that they will not cut through terminator armor anymore. That’s a huge survivability buff
to 2+ armour in general!
I think that Deathwing, Tactical Terminators, and ICs with a 2+ are on the top end of this buff.
Now all you really have to worry about is weight of fire, but if you can get them mostly out
of LOS then you don’t even have to worry about that! In addition, terminators are generally
equipped with a fist or a thunder hammer so they will be especially good at taking out tanks.
With a 2+ save not failing to power weapons, they also can now return to having other wargear
options.
• The chainfist is a beast now and will rip open and wreck most stuff with AP1.
• You don’t have to worry about invulv saves as much with dual Lightning Claw
Terminators either since you can keep them away from fists and hammers.
• You can outfit shooty tac terminators with cyclone missile launchers and use the new
skyfire option to fill your flyer hunter role
3. Wound allocation – If you haven’t heard, this seems like the silliest change. They keep
monkeying with wound allocation to make it not something you can take advantage of and they
pretty much keep failing. Now, all wounds will be taken from the models closest to the firing
unit. I’m not 100% sure on how this will work with different armor groups, but it gives you even
more reason to keep your guys in vehicles.

This seems like it will hurt elite armies a lot more than it will hurt wound allocation shenanigans.
Now the wound allocation shenanigans players will just have more points to spend on dudes to
put in the front of the unit, haha!

The weirdest thing is wound allocation in CC. apparently you can allocate to the people you
are engaged with first and then spread from there. While it makes more sense than removing
guys that your model wouldn’t be able to hurt, it seems like it is going to slow the game down
tremendously! Just a tip to everyone from here on out, make sure you are certain where your
guys are when you start rolling. Arguments like this can take hours to settler!

4. Allies – While you may not see allies in every game, you will definitely see them. At the 2k point
level, another force org chart is unlocked as well as the allies slot. This will make the difference
in an 1850 tournament and a 2k tournament no longer just a TO’s preference. It will be a huge
game changer. It will be interesting to see if we start having tournaments at 1999 points.
There are many interesting combos with the ally system. The most interesting are the armies
that are “battle brothers” and can use each other’s auras, psychic powers, and join each other’s
units. This makes anyone that can take SM as a battle brother quite interesting as adding null
zone to a lot of armies buffs them quite a bit.



Some armies get limited or no allies and to make up for that they get access to a second force
org chart! This can be nuts for some armies that top out on power around 1500. Or even ones
that don’t. Imagine fighting someone with 6 units of long fangs? That’s not really a game I want
to play. I don’t really like these rules for tournaments, but the decision is in the TO’s hands.

5. Psychic Powers – The new list of psychic powers are kind of exciting and at the same time kind
of meh. Some of the powers(smite, woo!) are duplicated from the existing codexes which makes
for a pretty uninteresting read. But some of the powers will help certain codexes greatly. If you
are interested in reading more about that specifically then check out parts 1 and 2 of the review
I did on these.

We will all be going through a rough time learning the ins and outs of this book. Hopefully this helped at
least lay a foundation of knowledge about the new rules for you guys!

No comments: