Friday, July 6, 2012

6th Edition - First Thoughts

I'll be holding off any event announcements about 6th Edition until the end of July, to give the new rules time to get settled. Initial thoughts, however, are;

1) Allies allowed, with the limitation of no Special Characters (this is specifically to simplify potential special ability abuse)
2) Fortifications allowed. Scenery will be pre-set, and a fortification will replace one item of normal terrain in your deployment zone (for Fortress of Redemption, any other Scenery within 2" of it's final location will also be removed)
3) Event points to remain at 1500 (games will be slower, and this should also limit the amount of rules bending that can occur)
4) (possible) limitation on flyers. This will be dependant on if Skyfire weapons are introduced in an FAQ update. Currently there are very few counters for flyers outside of;
a) other flyers
b) Fortifications
The limitation will probably be in the form of a max number per army, if it happens. If Flakk is added to missile launchers, then this may go away. The other option is adding Flakk into the rules pack for missile launchers at x points per shot the missile launcher has.

5) (probably) no Relic mission. Of the 6 in the book, that one seems a little tough for some armies, and too easy for others.

Added 14/7/2012

6) The special abilities for objectives are easily forgotten. I think this may be worth omitting for this year at least.

7) There is some potential filth involving taking Independant Characters from  one codex and adding them to units from others (for Battle Brother partnerships), and them conferring certain special rules unit wide (Fearless etc). A simple fix for this is to say that for Ally IC's, USR's are not applied to joined units.

8) Going back to Fortifications, using the Fortress of Redemption you can seal away a section of the board in your deployment. Simple solution again...Fortifications may not be placed within 6" of the board edge.

9) As terrain will be fixed, and missions determined by round, the start of game will be;
1) Roll Sides
2) Place Fortifications (see (2) above for specifics and limitations
3) Roll for variable numbers of objectives (if required)
4) Place Objectives (rolling for first placement if required)
5) Roll Warlord Traits
6) Roll for Night Fighting
7) Deploy

10) List secrecy - there will be none. I consider this nothing less than good sportsmanship. Before, during and after the game your opponent will be able to ask about the equipment, abilities and rules for any model, and check your list. Everyone is going to be pretty new with the rules, and it sucks to lose simply because you were not made aware of some specifc rule.