Thursday, April 16, 2015

One step backwards...

  Late last night, one of my buddies called me about a rules question...  Let's jump back to 
Rules I hate!!!

  So I don't know if you guys have seen, but GW released this little thing a couple of weeks before the Machine God came back.  To the wild acclaim of so many of my old-school gaming buddies, this book became very popular really fast.  You see, minus Kharne the Betrayer, this book took everything 'Khorny' and tossed it onto one army.  
  Enter the Khorne Daemonkin codex, probably the best book to be released by GW in a looooong time.  As a couple of my buddies noted, "I finally get to use my OLD Khorne army!".  I tend to have a lot of Chaos fans in my entourage, and Khorne is usually their favorite (we're all a bunch of angry people).  They used to use 'zerkers and Bloodthirsters to do terrible things to my army, and I was looking forward to it again.  

  
  Enter the artifacts...  The most powerful piece of wargear on this list is the Blood-forged Armour.  I say that because I wanted to use Grey Knights (finally) to kill me some daemons, and it turns out that a Daemon Prince can pop this little chestplate on and DESTROY all hope of my GK soul-zapping that bugger.  Wow!
  When my buddy and I played our game, he admitted that the wargear was really powerful and sort of apologized, but I advised that my Dreadknight pilot wouldn't have known better.  If there were other daemons on the board at the time, I could kill them instead!
Did you see the new model!?!  Damn, GW!!!

  Enter the Bloodthirster!!!  I want to kill him so baaaaaaaad!  My buddy chose not to bring one in the standard army list, instead relying on the Axe of Ruin to bring one in.  That is the second best piece of wargear on that list above.  I was excited by that because I would get to see a Bloodthirster on the table again.  Unfortunately, the game didn't work out anywhere near the level where we could have seen that, but that's another post...  In any case, what was going to be cool was seeing a Daemon Prince go down and a Bloodthirster replace him.  It was meant to be totally scary!!!

THAT'S precisely what I expected to see...
  And now back to my other buddy calling me.  Lacking his rulebook, he had a rules question.  This guy is desperately trying to avoid AdMech and he's focused on his Daemonkin army, and he got into a rules discussion with his gamer circle.  It was a rule I never thought about.  Like ever.  

  When the Bloodthirster arrives, does he arrive in Gliding mode or Swooping mode?  In other words, does he deep strike to the ground or does he pull a Goku and teleport directly into midair?  If I had to guess, he deep strikes onto the ground, like everyone else.  When the model is deployed at the beginning of the game, he starts on the ground.  Besides, Deep Striking and Swooping are both 'special' movement modes, and you shouldn't be able to do two 'special' modes at the same time.  So I open up my rulebook and search through the rules for Deep Striking (pg 162), Conjuration (pg 26), and finally Flying Monstrous Creatures (pg 68).   
  "Deployment...  If a Flying Monstrous Creature arrives via Deep Strike Reserve, it always counts as being in Swooping mode."  

BOOM!  This means that the character with the axe dies, then the Bloodthirster rips a hole in the air, has to spend the next turn landing, them finally get to charge the turn after?  Ouch!  In fact, this applies to the Daemonology power Possession- all Conjuration powers follow the Deep Strike rules for all intents and purposes!  I no longer fear, for at least three turns, a summoned Bloodthirster or even Daemon Prince.  

  Remember back in 3rd edition where Daemons popped up and immediately charged?  I hated that and then planned to use it for my cheezy army until the rules changed.  Remember the previous editions where Daemons are simply summoned and have to wait one turn before they can charge?  Yeah, that's normal.  Now we have Daemons that are summoned, then have to wait two turns to charge?  Wow, one step backwards each time...

  Now I'm supposed to be on the receiving end of this combo and actually looked forward to seeing it happen (I just have to get my Ultra-boys back to the range, apparently), but not like this.  This actually makes that combo very unscary (in that competitive way) and kinda ruins the point of this codex.  I mean, zerkers led by a Bloodthirster that might join the fray at some point?  That's not 'Khorny' at all.  That's just a rule I hate...

Let me know what you think!  

9 comments:

  1. He's not arriving from reserve, so he can come in gliding. Notice that reserve is not used in any of the wording for fury unbound (in the blood tide).

    Summoned is the term used. (That's how I read it)

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    1. Sadly, that's what I was hoping myself. But GW is better about rules than the blogosphere seems to give them credit for. Pg 217 of the electronic copy (I don't know how they line up with the physical copy):
      "Designer’s Note: When a rule indicates that a unit is summoned, a new unit under your control immediately arrives via Deep Strike within range of the specified unit(s) on the board."
      I were sad. Luckily, I'm on the receiving end of this combo, so I'll benefit right now. But Khorne isn't one for making people feel safe...

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    2. Aye, via deep strike.

      There are two deep strikes here.

      One is "deep strike from reserves". The other is just deep striking.

      When you gate, or ere we go (orks), you can violate deep strike from reserves rules.

      The bloodthirster isn't in reserves, he doesn't exist in the game at all until he's summoned. You can't use the "deep strike from reserves" rules at all, because he violates their rules in the first line.



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    3. Oops forgot the line in question.
      "In order for a unit to be able to Deep Strike, all models in the unit must have the Deep Strike special rule and the unit must start the game in Reserve."

      If you follow the RAW, you can't even summon anything :)

      Then of course I think I found our true answer :(

      "When the power is resolved, the new unit then arrives via Deep Strike, within the power’s maximum range; the new unit is under your control and is treated as having arrived from Reserves for all rules purposes."

      Conguration states it's arriving from reserves.

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    4. yep! I was trying to find a way out of it. I was letting 'common sense' overcome the rules that I hadn't bothered to read, so I was very surprised. Darn you GW!
      That's okay, I'm an Eldar player and apparently I'm about to have the most broken army in the game, so I can't complain? lol!

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    5. Oh yeah? Well I'm an ork player! Watch out! here come my walkers in 3-4 turns!

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    6. LOL! So true. My Orks have taken a bit of a hiatus as I don't think they'll be fun to use against Daemonkin (which I pulled out the Ultrasmurfs to face). Meanwhile, the sky has fallen with word of the Eldar getting released, and I still have a Battlewagon and Gorka/Morkanaut to put together! My poor Greenskins are again falling victim to cruel timing...
      On that note, any suggestions for fighting Daemonkin with Orks? I only have one of each unit (I hate me some spam in-game, but love it in real life), but I have everything except buggies. Do you think Orks can beat a gazillion 'zerkers? If so, I want to get that scrap on! I just need some survivors to go get more boyz! WAAAAGH!

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    7. (I'm going to be doing that 'Mek trick' here soon and depending on walkers all over the place- get some darn cover saves and make him use those Krak grenades!)

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    8. If you play orks, then you know they either fail horrible, or win spectacularly. There is generally zero middle ground. I play all ork walkers, so I can't help you too much. I did have a royal battle of ork walkers and stompa vs daemon walkers and a brass scorp, and the orks came out on top :)
      http://www.feedyournerd.com/greggles-tabletop/las-vegas-open-friendly-round-3-ork-walkers-vs-daemon-walkers

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