Tabletop Teacher

Hooray! The Psychic phase is good, and is going to be really good for Psyker heavy armies. The Sons of Magnus will now be able to fling their magic around like no tomorrow, and the standard unit of Rubricae has become a very versatile unit!  Image and information from Warhammer Community The quick and simple mechanic from Age of Sigmar has been brought into 40K, where each power is cast on a roll of two dice and meeting the warp charge cost. I'm very happy about this. With my Three Musketeer army. D'Artagnan, the level 1 Sorcerer, was often left at the back lines as a warp charge battery. Now, he can run up to the front and start laying down firepower. Or mind power. What's good in the new system is that it looks like some, if not all powers will have two versions based on how well you roll. This makes the psychic phase a little more tense for people, and in combination with the new mortal wound mechanic, could mean a pair of humble Librarians laying waste

Games Workshop revealed the Movement phase today, and has highlighted some really game changing rules... including giving everyone Hit and Run! As we knew already, from the stat block reveal , Movement values are back in. We haven't seen these since 3rd Edition, and I'm glad to see them back. Before, to represent slower movement units as opposed to normal ones, painful rules such as Slow and Purposeful had to be introduced. Whilst these had some benefits, they really hurt the unit overall, such as denying them Overwatch. For a unit with really good guns (like the Thousand Sons Rubricae), this really killed them competitively, as you were now paying a high points cost for a weapon that wouldn't be used in all situations. Now we can just give these slow and heavy hitters a lower Movement value. Okay, it's still a negative point for the unit, but it doesn't unfairly hamstring them. We can also see some variation in speediness, without resorting to extra

Re-posted without comment because it's late... Oh... okay. Well this somewhat hints at the Starter Box set that may be coming out. Space Marines are there (duh), but we may be getting Death Guard as the "bad guy" army in it. Undoubtedly it will be a Chaos faction, but despite the hints at Nurgle's influence, they'll probably play it safe with a generic Chaos army like in Dark Vengeance. Also... little hint at a new looking Chaos Terminator with a buzz-saw axe. Looks like Chaos are taking weapon design tips from the orks! Until next time! Thanks for reading. If you liked what you saw, and you want to help out, please leave a comment. Sharing this with your friends, and following me on Twitter , Facebook or Google+ would also be hugely appreciated. If you have anything you want me to look at, let me know in the comments below. I'll probably be able to write an article about that topic within a day! If you really love what I do here, you

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 hi

What initially put me off the Thousand Sons is just how badly priced they were. 8th Edition promises to change all that though! Despite some new shiny models, and some excellently fluffy formations, the standard Rubric Marine was hideously over priced for what it did (as I discussed here). It makes fielding them next to impossible in low point armies, and makes getting into them a case of diving deep into your wallet and points costs straight away. The common complaint is that they're not very resilient for how much they cost, being only one wound. They have a good 4+ invulnerable save, but that means nothing to massed bolter fire. They essentially go down to fire he same as any other Marine. The second complaint is that while AP3 bolters look good on paper (and thus you pay a premium on them), they're only good in an open field. Cover saves make a mockery out of them, essentially turning them into, well, standard bolters. So you end up paying double the points for

Damn Games Workshop, can we slow down a little bit? I've got books to mark! So, a few things here to unpack. First of all, the return to the movement value. This is going to give GW designers a lot more flexibility in determining speedy themed armies, and how units work together. We've already seen the differences and similarities appear just with the screen shots above. The Tactical squad and the Dreadnought both have similar moves values, which gives us the impression the Dreadnought is meant to be striding up with the infantary giving close support. The Terminators, on the other hand, despite being tougher than the average Marine, are a little bit slower. These are heavy hitters coming in after battle lines have already met. We all could tell that the standard WS and BS rolls were coming... I don't think anyone will miss them. With 7th Edition changing the close combat rolls to 3+, 4+, or 5+, then it was effectively all the same anyway. Ballisti

Things are moving fast indeed this week, with this Q&A Livestream uploaded to Warhammer TV's Facebook live stream two days ago: If you can't watch it now, here's a quick transcript written by user  n1ghtl1fe on The Warhammer Forum. Thanks very much dude! "Just in case people missed the live Q&A earlier today: Q: Working with a couple concepts, change movement, armor modifiers, new way of doing charges, if you charge you strike first, morale changes. A: Yes. these were concepts discussed at Adepticon. Q: Any specific rules around vehicles and armor values? A: No armor value anymore. All models use the same type of stat line. Big tanks get wounded (all have a damage table and stats decrease). Different for every model. Keeps vehicles through the game. Str and Toughness works where everyone can hurt everyone. (sounds like AoS there)"  What we have here is more confirmation of what we've been hearing all along. A lot of rules f

Image taken from Warhammer Community In a massively good move, Games Workshop is going to refund the cost of any codex you bought in the last two months. As long as you still have the receipt or other proof of purchase, GW will send you a voucher for the cost of any codex bought in the last 8 weeks. This is usually done for about 4 weeks, but they have double it for 8th Edition. I'm just going to quote word for word from the Warhammer Community web site: "You can claim a voucher no matter where you bought your codex and/or rulebook, as long as you have your proof of purchase and it’s dated between the 25th of February 2017 and the 22nd of April 2017." - Warhammer Community , 25th April 2017 So it looks like you can even get a refund for books you've bought off of third party suppliers! The wording suggests you may be able to get a refund for other books as well, such as the Gathering Storm books. As I still have my receipt to get reimbursed f

Knowledge is power! As you can probably guess from that title image... things went quite well for my Three Musketeers! This was the first outing of my starter Thousand Sons army. At only 450 points, it's nect to impossible to fit Rubricae in any meaningful way, but there is enough to lay down some serious psychic artillery. The Three Musketeers (War Cabal Formation) Athos: ML 2 Sorcerer, Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War, Bike, Force Stave [120 points] Porthos: ML 2 Sorcerer, Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War, Bike, Force Stave [120 points] Aramis: ML 2 Sorcerer, Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War, Bike, Force Stave [120 points] D'Artangnan: ML 1 Sorcerer, Mark of Tzeentch, Veteran of the Long War, Jump Pack, Force Stave [90 points] TOTAL: 450 points This is the very definition of high risk, high reward, as they stand a good chance of getting tabled in turn one. Rocking the Telepathy discipline, and harnessing charges

Okay... so it looks like the entire galaxy has been ripped a brand new rectum: Taken from Warhammer Community Well, I say rectum, but really an ulcer. The big band of purple stretch across and staining the galaxy is called the CICATRIX MALEDICTUM. Running that through a translator reads THE CURSED ULCER. Not going to lie, cicatrix sounds more intimidating. (10/05/2017 Edit: Anonymous commenter corrected me on this. Translates more effectively to CURSED GASH/SCAR, but now we know it's referred to as THE GREAT RIFT .) It appears as though Magnus did way more to advance the plot than we dreamed possible. With that thin band of what we can only assume to be warp rupture (because of the skulls and teeth trying to get out...), the Eye of Terror is now linked up to The Maelstrom, and some massive big black hole of scariness at the center of the galaxy. As a physicist, I know we currently believe there to be a black hole at the center of every galaxy. I will now reveal

With school now in for Summer (much to Alice Cooper's consternation), the club has finally gotten back together to fight some battles. With a brand new member, and one returning after a term's hiatus, we did a quick and easy start up battle.  Blood Angels advancing in defiance of Tau firepower! The armies are very simple, and actually are really good for new players. The Tau are many, have big guns, but are not so good at using them. The Blood Angels are few, have some special weapons to play with and can punch faces better. Two 5-man Tactical squads plus flamers face off against two 6-tau Firewarriors. The board is teeny tiny, to avoid long foot slogs. if you think this give the Tau a disadvantage, well not really. At 15-inches, they are a right fire hose of hot pulse rifle death, and return Marine fire is somewhat muted at medium range by the flamer. The battle is over a downed Eldar jet biker in the middle of the field, the Tau wanting to claim him for the Gr

I had a request from a newly made reader on Facebook last night, asking about their Start Collecting! Chaos Space Marines kit. The wanted to know what options they could put on their miniatures, with the intention of getting some games in. First of all, let me say it again; Welcome to the Grim Dark future, Shi! You'll forgive me for not using your full name, but I try to keep this site as PG-13 as possible for any potential student neophytes who might be reading. As I mentioned last night, you will need to get a codex so you can start building your own lists, and in addition to that, the Traitor Legions codex supplement is near mandatory for Chaos Space Marines. However, to get you in the Long War as soon as possible, this is an army list that should get you someway towards winning games without you needing to buy any more miniatures. Image taken from the Games Workshop webstore The army is going to be an Alpha Legion Combined Arms Detachment. This is because Alpha