BREAKING NEWS: 8th Edition Weapons Profile Analysis!

Taken from Warhammer Community

Huzzah, the AP is gone! Rends are in, meaning scaling saves on units. This puts an end to the reason why Terminators were so frowned upon in the meta, giving them back their defence, even against the heaviest of guns.


Or does it?


What's surprising is how low the rends are. The Lascannon in 7th Edition was AP2, meaning nothing got a save against it, unless you were rocking an Invulnerable or hiding behind a tree. But this, the biggest anti-tank rifle the Imperium can hand to a single soldier is not actually enough to punch through standard power armour, let alone Terminator!


Here's the stat blocks from yesterday's Unit profile reveal:

Everything here will get a save against a Lascannon!


Marines and Dreadnoughts get 3-6 to a 6+, and the Terminators get 5+, oddly enough meaning they get their usual Crux Terminatus invulnerable save.


So what gives? The Lascannon should be the last word for anything getting hit, and here we are with Terminators largely being dealt with the same, and regular Space Marines actually getting a buff to survivability. We could reasonably assume this rend to only be beaten by melta guns, but I get the feeling that this probably won't happen.


I don't mean for this to sound negative, but it does mean that there is less variety of penetration types in the game.


The next intriguing thing is the rend on the Bolter and Flamer. Guardsmen and Orks will now get a massive boost to survivability, as they will now be getting their saves against the galactic standard weapon profile. The anti-infantry flamer is now a little muted in that regard, as it won't be able to reach it's stupid high rate of burning against hordes (only just today my students managed to fit 9 Firewarriors under a template), and even then they'll be getting their save.


Speaking of Flamers, what an interesting new direction! The auto-hitting is still there, and random hits give us the shadow of what templates used to be. That said, I kind of miss the little tactical decision of where to place the template unit. It was a small nuance, but positioning is a combat decision I enjoy.


But this new random number of hits regardless of actual models makes it a pretty interesting multi-purpose weapon. Flamer units could now conceivably be used as anti-monstrous creature or light vehicle units, simply through sheer weight of hits.


Things that are the same... well the strength of the weapon is the same. We'll need to see the Strength vs. Toughness tables to make a decent appraisal of what that means. Since the cap for Strength is no longer limited to 10 means we can expect bigger guns to roll off the factory lines. But since the Lascannon is revealed to be 9... how many guns actually get to beyond that cap?


Also sticking around seems to be the weapon types. We'll have to wait and see what this actually means, but Assault, Rapid Fire and Heavy are still around. Whether that still carries the restrictions on movement and charging of 7th Edition still remains to be seen.


Finally the big change... the Damage value. Once your wound goes through, this is how many wounds it peels off. This is a good move, as one of the criticisms of things like Hammerheads or Lascannon Predators is that you were paying a premium for something that only had a chance of doing one point of damage per turn. This makes them a lot better, as their damage potential on hits now averages out to be better.


You still may miss, or only do one bit of damage... but you do have a chance of taking out light vehicles in a single hit again.


Okay, one more reveal to write about tonight, so I'll leave it there. Until next time!



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