All for MEQ and MEQ for all

As a player of most xenos armies I'm starting to be a little bothered by a few things in 6th edition. The game has always been harsh on xenos but 6th is a little worse in some ways.

1 FNP.
Name an imperial weapon that is ap2 and less than S6. Most xenos armies have terrible saves and toughness. Some of them rely on FNP to make up for lack of armor or toughness. Orks benefit from This rule but tyranids and dark eldar rely on this. 6th will be the plasma edition but plasma is usually s7. In short fnp changes help orks and meq but hurt everyone else.

2 vehicles
Tau. Eldar. Dark eldar. Mobility and speed come at a premium. These barely exist now. All three of these armies pay to get the kinds of benefits imperials got for free in this edition. Flicker fields, disruption pods. Pointless.

3 fleet
Orks eldar dark eldar tyranids. Fleet used to mean 12+1d6 range. It now means units have a 6+2d6 rerollable. This is horrendous. From min 13 to min 8. The averages hold up but the garuntee is gone. Not to mention fleet used to carry a range bonus. Now fleet is just averaging faster but maxes the same as other units. Some units benefit as they can now always fire but allot of fleet units care less.

4. Power weapons
Some armies got right screwed when some of their best guys lose ap2 status. Most of them are xenos.

5 sky fire, flyers, psychics.
Name a xenos with competence in all 3. Name an imperial that cant nail one of them or do all of them. Tau hasa god damned unit that is specificily an AA platform yet no skyfire. Markerlights could even grant it but no. Tau is hosed. Eldar only get psykers. DE has shitty flyers and that's it. The new toys are rare for most xenos.

6 allies.
Tyranids. Enough said. It's not fair the one sided ness of the combos. If you can't balance your fluff to give a fair explanation of combo pairs don't introduce combo pairs.

Heavies. The new fleet

I've been considering ork heavies lately. Battlewagons still rock but their sides are vulnerable and 5+ isn't going to cut it.

Looted wagons and flash gitz are still crap.

Big gunz are amazing now. T7! Kannons are going to be a go to in the next few armies. There like missile launchers but tougher.

Orks & 6th ed

After a few games I have confirmed a few things.

-Meganobs are beastly, Unweildly hurts their output but now they hit on par with most enemies.
-Flash gitz still suck. They just cant produce enough shots.
-Dakkajets are superior to others as their main purpose is flyer targeting. Fighta Ace is a mandatory upgrade.
-Lootas seem to underperform in this edition. The randomness kills their ability to effectivly go after hull points but they lack the AP to go one shot hunting.
-Cover saves suck for orks.
-Warbikers are pretty much the same as they haven't been nerfed in any way. Its hard to tell whether bikers or mass nobs will be better. That will be the next experiment.

Fleet in construction

So with the battlewagon done, turret aside, my attention has focused on my two brand new toys.

6th edition charts WIP

So i started to Make some charts to replace 6th's mass of summary sheets.

So we played our first game of 6th last night. Very impressed. The game went fluidly.

Hull points is not much of a deal. The abundance of cover/jink saves seems to prevent auto wrecks quite commonly. Vehicles Acctually seem more durable. Well rhinos at least.

Snapfire and new movement rules means the game is allot faster. I can start my lootas out of LOS and move then fire!

AP is so big in this game. Cover will no longer save you reliably.

I'm looking forward to this edition.

The FAQs

So the FAQ's are up. Tau got hit. Half of our equipment does nothing anymore. And target lock got Destroyed.

Great now my broadsides cannot split fire like long fangs. Thanks gw.

Everything else is pointless for them.

As for orks, waaaagh got nerfed along with fleet. Bikers are now a healthy t5 all the time. Hmm. T5 4+ armor 4+ cover 5+ invulnerable 5+ fnp 2w lead by up to 4 bosses. Ork bikers might be the new shit.

DE got fuckin raped. 0 ap2 cc weapons. Jink was unnecessary. The entire edition makes everyone as fast as me. And then comes the kicker. Wwp units cannot assault the turn they arrive. Because I purchase a 30pt portal and 200 pts of useless sometimes twice just to bring my guys on the table closer to all my enemies guns. Yes DE want to face all your light weapons in one blast. We can take it.

Orks and 5.5

So we attempted a game using the rules we could confirm about 6th. What I found was that the new rules lend themselves decently to an ork gun line. Filling a double FOC is tough. I squeezed in 4 hq 5 elite 3 heavy 3 fast and 5 troops. It's nice but I think 2500 would be a better number for it.

Flyers are not ungodly hard to kill but having a flyer of your own makes it easier.

Casualties work nicely and remove allot of dicking around.

AP matters. With a cover nerf boom guns. Shock attack guns and flash gitz Acctually scare marines. This gives me hope for dark eldar.

6th seems like a really well balanced game that can remove allot of cheese. In the process armies change. Your old lists will not work. It's time to start over

Good luck and good dice.

6th and Orks

The cover nerf and FNP nerf hurt orks slightly. Vehicles being a little faster doesn't hurt. I predict the ork flyers will be an interesting element in army building.

Orks already had so many builds so I doubt adding units and many rules changes that. Considering orks rely on the power klaw alone we are probably the least ruined by the power weapon nerf.

Meganobz became very good all of a sudden yet not so much. The upside is power weapons won't scratch them. The downside is now people will bring power fists which invalidate the wounds. Still 40 points for a 2+ power fist wielding 2 wound model is a nice price.

Here's the best part, double FOC. Orks have always been an army of competition. It's not that a unit sucks. It's that it competes with another you want.
Now at 2000 we can feild 3 bosses for a total of 3 troop Meganobz with wagons a kff mek. And have room for 6 units of lootas!

Ork army building just got interesting.

I think I found my race horse.

6th Ed and Space wolves.

Wolfguaurd and thus loganwing just got interesting. Termies and raiders getting a boost. Using them as troops is a plus.

The double foc doesn't help much as they are so damned expensive in the first place.

The thing is if 2+ is the new thing the loganwing will need to keep that in mind. The idea of my termies vs yours is not very intriguing.

SW might make an occasional appearance but will likely not be my go to.

6th and Dark Eldar

So. Dark lances are s8 ap2. I can bring quite a few of them but they aren't enough. The volume is to low to reliably handle raiders or termies. Heat lances? To hard to get enough.

Jump infantry buffs are nice but hellions still can't kill tanks worth a damn.

Now the kicker. Haywire grenades auto kill after around 5-6 hits. FNP ignores ap2/1 and power weapons. Power fists still Hurt. Alrighty my wyches are looking epic.

Assaults are more risky. Shooting is more lethal. Defensive fire, over watch and a cover nerf. Ok power from pains got my back. Fnp is reduced to 5+.

So the rest of my army will be in tough handling the new black. But wyches get very specifically nerfed.

Yay I can survive terminator CC and kill land raiders. But you get destroyed by shooting now.

Bets that agonizers won't be ap2?

I'll pass on DE

6th ed. an my Tau

So 6th edition is a mere 5 days away and I was considering what army I should roll out for its debut. Not doubt 6th will be a learning curve and it will be much better if I stick with a single army. So in the enxt 5 days I have to decide what army I will play.

Tau

Vehicles have changed. Some say duarbility is down. Some are stupid. What has happened is the randomness has been removed. Vehicles now go down based on the number of effective shots they take. Destroying a vehicle is no longer a game of pen until a lottery gives you a 5/6. Vehicles have X hits they can take.

This only goes so far. Planning on Going for glances with under powered weapons will in most scenarios leave you out gunned.

This chart shows how many hits are needed to remove 1 hull point. As you can see when weapons can pen you need 3 or less to take 1 HP. If they cant Pen theirs little point in aiming that way as you are very unlikely to do anything. 

Given the changes to power weapons it is likely that more 2+ models want to CC you now. That means land raiders. Missiles aren't going to cut it. Imperial armies are likely to being bringing more lascannons as S9 AP2 is more effecive in dealing with termies and land raiders.

What about tau? 

Behold, the fireknife!

These guys pump out S7 at 36" S6 at 24" and double that at 12". They can reliably knock off rhino's and chimeras. For those of us lucky enough to pen with plasma we get a 1+ to our roll. 

Fireknives are going to be our goto in handling rhino's and termies. 

For those pesky landraiders we still have the almighty railgun. Which now gets a 2+ on pen rolls! Dont forget this! 

So Tau is ready for vehicles and termies more then anyone as we simply have always worried about them and are well equiped against them. 

However.

Skyray is likely to be our only AA. 

We have no flyers.

Or psychics. 

Or psychic defenses. 

Cover was nerfed.

Skimmers getting jink makes disruption pods less of a unique bonus.

everything is getting faster again!

Tau is just to out dated to play in 6th. Flyers will rape my shit if I dont take a skyray. Land raiders will if I take one. Marker lights are even less valuable. The only peice of wargear that got more relevant was the blacksun filter. 

Lets review.

Disruption pod- all skimmers have jink

Multi tracker- all vehicles have snapfire

Target Lock- remove casualties from  the front

Marker Lights- Cover was nerfed

Ya Tau are special now. Although it will be nice to see that allies mean everyone and their dog can take my broadsides.

Feild of war

Revamp.

So I placed my battlewagon on dakka for some input. The ideas I was given were great and am about 50% done now.

I also got better photos of devins razorback.

Vehicle photos!

My Fears About 6th

As the rumor mill turns more and more is beginning to leak out of the mighty citadel in notingham. Allot of what comes is disconcerting to me for many reasons. To better illustrate this lets do an experiment. Lets assume every army is equal. Now lets count all the rumors that benefit and hurt these armies and see what the spread is.

• FNP is now a 5+

-1 Nids, BA, DE

• New psychic powers

+1 GK, SW, BA, DA, CSM, Nids, Guard,SM

-1 Tau,  Chaos, DE, Orks, Necrons

• Random Charge Distance

+1 Tau, Necrons, Guard, Eldar

-1 Orks, Nids, DE, Chaos, CSM

• Cover is Now 5+

-1 Nids, Orks, DE, Guard, Eldar

• Defensive Fire

+1 Tau, SW, Guard, Necrons

-1 Nids, Orks, DE, CSM

• Hull points allowing vehicles to shrug of damage

+1 SW, GK, BA, CSM, SM, Necrons, Guard

-1 DE, Nids, Orks, Tau, Eldar

• Damage results stacking

+1 Orks, Necrons, Nids, Guard

-1 SW, GK, BA, CSM, SM, Tau, Eldar

• AP on CCW

+1 GK, SW, BA, SM, CSM

-1 Eldar, DE, Necrons, Tau, Nids, Chaos

GK           1

SW          3

Nids       -4

BA           1

DE          -7

Tau        -2

Guard     4

Eldar      -3

Necrons  2

Orks       -4

Chaos    -3

CSM        0

     

Is this what 40k Needs? Marines being fine with 6th but xenos taking a hit?

If FNP is nerfed in a game where terminators become the new thing and power weapons cant get them what happens to my Webway wyche list?

It seems as though 6th exists to justify as the big shinies of the marines and totally kills half of my options.

I hope these rumors are just that because I find it hard to think that 6th can balance Termyhammer so that my xenos can survive.

What's new?

Fists of Dice News!

• We have officially retired the HOTH table and have moved on to our new project, PASCHENDALE. Pics, to follow.
• My battlewagon is finished and I have purchased two dakkajets. Pics to follow.
• Devin recently bought a razorback that is to be the beginning of his Chaos Marine army.
• Since the break we have bought all the codecies less dark angels and sisters of battle. 
• Devin is now fluent in the following codexes: CSM, SM, IG, GK, Chaos.
• I am now fluent in the following codexes: SW,Tau, DE, BA, Tyranids, Orks.
• The blog will look alittle bland until I get some new pictures up.

Welcome

Welcome to the Fists of Dice Blog.

We are a club of 40k players based in Regina. In total their are five of us: Orb(jordan), Boo(devin), Rainbow(aaron), Soup(luke), Mr. Shiny(derek). However Devin and I are the two most regular players and are the main presence on the blog aswell. We aim to provide insight into 40k as we venture into 6th edition.

Good Dice Gentlemen.