Regimental Doctrine – Resolute Heroism: When shooting at the closest target, an unmodified hit roll of 6 scores an additional hit. Why play them: With certain Aeldari units aimed at the correct targets, your opponents will drown in their own tears. It takes skill and grace to field them, but it’s immensely rewarding planning a well-laid trap. Relic – Relic of Lost Cadia: Once per battle you can activate this at the start of the turn, and re-roll hits and wounds of 1 for CADIAN units within 12″ of the bearer. Against CHAOS, they instead re-roll all failed hits and wounds. Relentless – 1CP: A non-TITANIC vehicle can act on top profile for a turn. Not being able to use it on your superheavies is a bit of a shame (but does at least suggest that they’ve learned from the catastrophic error that was Machine Spirit Resurgent), but because of the number of ways in The Greater Good to make one of your tanks somehow superior this is still helpful – if your opponent takes a swing at your Tank Ace and narrowly misses being able to run a full reprisal is good. A What’s interesting here is that it specifies the model in question – it’s not quite clear from the text how this interacts with the various bodyguard mechanics found throughout the game – Is it possible to make a save for a unit, take a ward save to negate the wound allocated to it, and then roll a dice to allocate it instead to a nearby bodyguard who in term may have the opportunity to roll a ward save? We suspect that this will need to be resolved by an FAQ, but overall it’s a significantly better situation than in 2nd edition, which got more complicated as more FAQs were released. Returning Slain Models

As mentioned before, we will cover the mechanics of Unleash Hell in it’s own article, but it’s important simply to note that charging enemy units that are themselves ranged, or near ranged units could now come with a potentially deadly response. The final big thing we’ve seen, and I think the one that’s surprised me the most, is much more active planning for how players are going to score secondary objectives. They’re crucial to achieving a respectable score, whereas in independent tournament formats that used them in the last edition, missing out on max points in a winning game was pretty unusual. Many players (including us) went into the new edition with that max-point mindset, but it hasn’t played out that way at all. Tempestus Regiment>: The keyword, but Tempestus Scions flavor. You’re only going to benefit from this one if every unit with a variable keyword in the detachment has this. Regimental Doctrine – Predatory Strike: When shooting a unit within half range, an unmodified 6 to hit scores an additional hit.Stratagem – Full Charge – 1CP: When a unit shoots, they get re-rolls to hit against targets within 12″ Advanced Counter Measures – 1CP: Upgrade a Valkyrie pre-battle so that it can hover without losing Hard to Hit. This is a very useful ability that goes mildly down in value because you often won’t see value from it till turn 2, giving your opponent a chance to “waste” your CP if they pop the Valk straight off (which they will often want to). Still a pretty hefty upgrade, and maybe worth trying out. C+ Regimental Doctrine – Brutal Strength: INFANTRY get +1S and +1Ld if they are within 6″ of an officer. VEHICLES can re-roll one of the dice used to determine a random number of shots for each weapon they fire.

Guard warlord traits are pretty easy – if you don’t know what you should be taking, Grand Strategist is a very safe bet. If you have more of a plan, Old Grudges looks good. Despite the absolute avalanche of options outside this table, you can’t go too far wrong with that. The HQ slot is stuffed full of good options. Note that Marbo isn’t in the core book, but has a separate datasheet that comes with his model. Every single one of these has turned up on a tournament table in 8th edition, with the possible exception of Lord Commissars which tend to be left aside in favor of their cheaper juniors in the Elites slot. Looking at the rest, then, we have: Colonel ‘Iron Hand’ Straken (NC, Catachan)Mike: Welcome, folks! You guys have covered Warhammer 40,000 extensively. What are your favourite elements of the new edition? What things surprised you the most about it six months later compared to your initial impressions? Primaris Reivers – again clad in Mk X power armour, these Space Marines carry heavy bolt pistols and combat blades – they distinguished by the sinister skull motif on their helmets, with the Sergeant featuring a half–skull faceplate. Weapon Expert is the clear winner here, but the defensive options will occasionally be what you want.

Suggested starting kits: Start Collecting! Tyranids, Hormagaunt Brood, Termagant Brood, GenestealersRolling Death – 1CP: A Taurox gets +1 to hit if it moves under half it’s speed. This does not make the Taurox happen. D Focused Bombardment – 1CP: Makes a Master of Ordnance’s once-per-game barrage heavy 6 instead of heavy d6. This is actually pretty OK, and increases the draw to include one of these guys if you’re bringing a bunch of Basilisks. B Note that due to the new coherency rules, you will want to take particular care to ensure units of 6 or more models remain within 1” range of at least two other models from the unit! Spreading out a unit’s front is almost muscle memory when performing a charge at this point for many players, but comes with significant consequences in third edition. Charge Phase Command Abilities Relic – Distraction Charges: When a model within 3″ scores a hit on overwatch, the unit that was hit halves their charges (rounding up). Given all that, then, we’ll be doing the following. Each slot will list out the options available to it, then will follow a brief paragraph highlighting anything which is an outright trap or otherwise irrelevant for the level we’re pitching at here (which is, roughly, “you want to take this to a tournament or other competitive event”), and then fuller discussion of the merits of things which actually matter.

Gunnery Experts is the winner of the lot, it’s a generally applicable partner that pushes it above the core choices is Spotter Details which works well with your most important Russ loadouts, the Demolisher cannon. Jury-Rigged Repairs (below) is maybe interesting in a very chassis-heavy list, but like all vehicles without invulnerable saves, guard tanks tend to get fully eliminated one at a time by savvy opponents. Still, Gunnery Experts and Spotter Details is a good enough combo that it has seen play in competitive lists, with named regiments filling out detachments that are sporting infantry, so it is worth knowing about Stratagem – Tactical Misdirection – 1CP: When one of your units destroys an enemy unit, your opponent gets -1 to hit when shooting against anything else if your unit is their closest target.Thank God for the Troops slot and its svelte 3 unit choices. Of these, Infantry Squads and Tempestus Scions are the most relevant ones. Once upon a time, Conscript blobs were feared throughout the meta, thanks to their ability to stand around and die but take a long time about it, but a succession of nerfs (including the stupid and reactionary errata to Commissars which, with the hindsight afforded by history, turned out to be unjustified) made them more or less irrelevant. Aerial Spotter – 2CP: Use at the start of the Shooting phase on a Basilisk or Wyvern, that unit can re-roll failed hit rolls. Handy for squeezing a bit more efficiency out of these units, and especially great if you’re also going to double shoot them with the Vigilus stratagem. However doing that does get very expensive, and unless you have an absolute ocean of CP the ceiling for that combo is a bit low for 4CP spent. Still OK, but not great. C+