So after a few games into 8th ed 40k, thoughts?

Well first of all, I've noticed that game night attendance has been up and more games have been played which is really good for our group (which was on life support just a few weeks ago). Is 8th the best edition ever? Opinions vary, but in mine: no, not at all. So do I like everything about it? Obviously not. Can I still have fun playing it? Yup! Quite a bit actually (just waiting on Bob to eventually come around and reach that same conclusion as I have).

Let's face it, there has never been an edition of 40k where I thought every rule made sense or was okay with me, tis' the nature of the beast. But its still a pretty good game I guess. There are two things in particular though that are starting to really annoy me. 

In a nutshell, Mortal Wounds are a stupid fucking mechanic created for AoS, and they should of stayed there. Seriously, what the actual fuck is the point of an invulnerable save, if the model with one is...ya know, vulnerable to mortal wounds?

Example: Commander Shadow Sun, badly bloodied and falling back but still protected by -1 to hit, 3+ save and a 5++ invulnerable save, plus command points to help keep her in the fight. Sounds like a tough cookie right? Wrong! Psychic power, mortal wound, dead...get her off the table. The point to all of her fancy rules are what? Naught apparently due to an all to easy to cast psychic power. 

Very quickly our local beer and pretzels crowd group is devolving into how many mortal wounds can be SPAMMED per turn. For how many editions now have 'remove model from play/completely unsavable attacks' existed? 2-3 editions? Whilst few, they've all been the most maligned of rules, so clearly we needed to not only keep that BS around with Mortal Wounds, but make 'em omnipresent. 

The only two weapons in our particular Tau arsenal that can inflict mortal wounds are the Hammerheads' railguns, and even then only on a to-wound roll of a 6. That said, we found out that with good rolling a Hammerhead's railgun can still insta-pop a space marine dreadnought with one shot! Just like days of old...also like the olden days: Saturday a Dark Angels' captain has joined Tyberos the Red Wake in changing his last name to the Red Mist due to those same railguns!

Okay, you can spend a CP to make a reroll here and there, attack out of turn (by the way, can your opponent also use a command point negate that? It came up and we couldn't figure it out), or use a funky little strategem here and again. Cool. However GW gave the DA a warlord trait in which, on a 5+ roll a used CP is given back. So with good rolling (it happens to some people Neverness) its like having an infinite supply of CPs. So just about any failed armor save on someone/thing of better than average value is rerollable,  and almost every failed psychic test or perils is negated...yeah that shit gets real tiresome really fucking quick!

Also the 'wait, maybe I have a stratagem I can use to help/negate that' (followed by shuffling thru  2 dozen cards and the reading of too much fine print) slows the game down considerably. I can think of 2 rolls I should have used CPs to reroll in hindsight, but I think the never ending supply of them from across the board (till the railgun/red mist incident cut off that almost infinite supply) was annoying me so much that I just ignored mine altogether. I get what GW was going for, and they do have their uses, but they're easily open to abuse I think, especially in this particular situation thanks to that DA warlord trait. Dark Angel opponents should expect to encounter this frequently.

So...yeah, its still not the best game, and I'm having fun for the most part, buuuut those two complaints (the 2nd only came to the fore this past weekend) are starting to gnaw away the fun.