So I posted these thoughts up on The 11th Company forums and then thought to myself, "I should make that a blog post!' So I will.

First up my list of initial gripes.

Mysterious Forests, Rivers (terrain in general), and Mysterious Objectives suck. I want the game to be against my opponent and not against the table itself!

It sucks they kept Kill points (even though they called it something different)

First Blood is waaayyyy too easy to achieve.

Lack of Skyfire for non-Imperials is depressing.

Not being able to assault out of reserves is stupid.

Not being able to assault out of a vehicle at all is stupid.

Random Charge Length sucks (not as bad as I feared, but still...)

Wound allocation is unwieldy and slow. Old version was too so this is kind of a wash, but I was hoping for an improvement not just some weird change.

That's about it for the initial Gripes. Now on to the stuff I like.

Hammer of Wrath

Toughness boost from bikes being permanent for Instant Death and other things.

Allies. I feared this at first, but after reading the actual rules and the FAQ's that help to tone it down I really like it. It should help to shake up the meta and will hopefully see the end of the netlist as their will now be sooo many options available to players.

Snapshot is Great.

So is overwatch.

Real Fliers will bring a whole new dimension to the game (gonna one out for the first time tonight!)

Improved Rapid Fire is long overdue!

Flying Monstrous Creatures are downright scary!

Focus Fire is cool.

And I'm adding one just for the Blog. Movement by model instead of by unit is great. I love that you can now move your bolter guys around and still fire your heavy weapon if he didn't actually move!

Well those are some of my initial thoughs. My two games so far have been fun and I really do like the new edition overall. It still feels like 40k but it feels fresh and exciting again in a way it hasn't for quite awhile. Only time will really tell, but those are some of my early observations.