FOC Changes or "Unbound Armies"/"Battleforged
Armies"
Battleforged Armies are built much the same way as our
current 40k lists. The sole exception is that there are defined “in-game
bonuses” for taking a Battleforged Army. This is intriguing. I wonder if the
new mission cards will have different stipulations depending on your Army type.
From what I gather Battleforged Armies will be able to take multiple FOCS just
the same as now, so dataslates, supplements, and such are all in.
Unbound Armies are lists without an FOC. Examples given are riptide/Broadside lists or leman russ lists. There is a lot of potential for narrative gamers. Lots of fun things can be had here, when you just take x points of whatever fits your scenario. I'm very leery of this due to my competitive nature. I am already building insane lists in my head based on this free form style. I would think this type of game would require a little more fore-thought from the players involved, to ensure there is some reasonable amount of balance and a fun time.
Mission Changes
I think I'm most excited about the mission changes. The
Tactical Objective mission cards can be drawn during each turn (if you discard
your current one, or complete said mission)... this is cool. I like a more
dynamic battle with ever changing objectives and missions. It sounds like a lot
of fun. Multiple ways of scoring victory points has always been a good way to
help balance the scenarios. This is much the reason we use the LVO missions so
often. I think this is a good way to keep the game flowing and changing... as
every battle you have with an opponent is different and a lot of that will be
based on the Tactical Objective cards you draw. The game comes with 36, so
depleting that supply should be difficult, but I'm sure they will be easy to
replicate and reproduce, so we can expand upon them based on a campaign need or
something. This should help keep the game from getting stale.
Psychic Changes
I am in love with this. I always wanted a psychic phase and
now we are back to it. This is going to help people from casting out of
sequence powers (oops, I forgot to cast my blessings, do you mind?) as well as
add a whole level of tactics and strategy to the game. Much like psychics or
magic from past editions of Warhammer, we will have a limited number of resource
pool to draw from for nullify (yes!), as well as casting. Granted we don't know
the fine granularity of this yet, we do know you get a pool of D6 + total
mastery levels... this can give some armies an immense amount of dice to roll,
and the order of casting as well as the level of the powers are going to
greatly impact this phase. I have nothing negative to say about this, other
than I truly hope this helps balance the nids psychics with everyone else.
Also, Demonology seems interesting, with 2 subdivisions of its own.
Book-keeping
With all of that being said... the book-keeping in this game
has just gone through the roof. Missions/Tactical Objective cards/psychic
pools/codex abilities - there is a lot of things to keep track of so the speed
of a game is going to slow for a while, until we get accustomed. It is just
something we'll have to adapt to. Coming from a deeply rooted RPG and table-top
background, this is nothing any of us are new to, but it is something that
you'll have to deal with and something you'll have to ensure the enemy is
dealing with properly. So many times in 6th edition, the man who keeps better
notes and such, tends to do better because his thoughts are organized and he is
operating at full capacity... hopefully the new shuffling of phases and the
addition of these additional factors isn’t over-whelming, but instead
entertaining. I’m very much looking forward to cracking open the new rulebook
and settling in.
Keep rolling them 6's !!
-The Overlord
