Sorry for the lack of posts, been gone and tax season for my business has taken a lot of time. But There really hasn't been a lot to talk about. Until now. In case you missed it, GW did a Q&A on their FB page on the new edition. The video is still up here. The video and a few more posts this week have started to clear things up and give us more details of what is in store. They are being coy on the release date, but did mention they will be talking more about the new edition at warhammer fest next month, so I doubt its coming in the next few weeks but likely release is early june.
So what is coming? Well Templates are gone, and vehicle armor value and such is also gone. I'm honestly not thrilled about either, but I don't hate it. While wounding vehicles with lasguns is silly, the fact that vehicles and monstrous creatures are now on an even playing field makes up for this in the long run. I'm worried how artillery is going to work, but time will tell.
One of the big thing that was discussed was Codex's. They are not going away in the long run. But all current codex's are going to be useless as far as rules, so they will be releasing 5 books that will have all the current armies in them with rules to use them. Codex's will then be released going forward giving you more granular rules for each army. With that, they have posted a voucher if you have bought a codex since the end of February, all you need is a proof of purchase and it doesn't have to be from a GW store. That is nice at least.
The movement stat is back, with Initiative gone. To this, close combat is resolved with the charging unit going first, though I must note that they did not comment on how charging through terrain works, as that really is a kicker. Hopefully it doesn't not force you to go last, as otherwise its back to square one for a lot of close combat units.
They didn't not fully explain ap modifier, but does seem that you will be more likely to get an armor save, just less than what you would normally get. Not really a bad thing, just different. Weapons will do damage now, so while you can no longer one shot a vehicle, certain weapons will strip wounds much faster so in balance this works well. Especially since multi wound units will lose effectiveness as they lose wounds so MCs and Vehicles will get less effective the closer to death they get. They have also mentioned that stats will no longer be capped at 10, so things can get more wounds, T, S, and such which also helps balance out vehicles as they can now be hurt by everything.
They also are directly tackling death stars. Basically they described it as a keyword approach to special rules. So a Dark angels chaplain will only confer his special rules to dark angels. So things like super friends will no longer be viable thank god. A very welcome change indeed.
Most of the rest is army building. They talked about how pts will be done 2 ways. For narrative and open, the pts are broad brush strokes like AoS. So you just pay for a unit. What weapons and upgrades it has does not affect it. Its a way to play quickly and narratively that gets you broadly balanced. But fear not, for matched play, which is how we all play any way, the pts are done the same as now. You pay for unit and all its upgrades.
For army composition, you will have multiple force org charts to use in the main rule book, as I assume these will be here till codex's come out with army specific force orgs. There will be command pts based on how "battle forged" your army is, which you can burn once for rerolling a dice or interrupting a charge to let your unit go first. Overall seems reasonable and in general sounds good to me.
WS and BS are different, but not really for BS. Basically you have a standard to hit roll that is in your statline. So units will always hit on the same roll, though its safe to assume their will be modifiers. But one good thing for close combat units is that it is finally possible to hit on a 2+, though this will probably be rare.
In all, 8th edition is looking to be a pretty good one, though I am still concerned about how artillery will work. I will not miss deathstars and ally abuse, and having MCs lose effectiveness as they take wounds will be welcome. Will see how things go as we get closer to release.
Cadia Stands!
GG