Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition Review

Welcome to the Art of War-gaming. Since I have had a chance to really go through the Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition Rule Book I can give my opinion of the game compared to other war-games like Warmachine/Hordes, Malifaux, and Infinity.

Overall

The book looks really solid, It's a hard bound book full color with four hundred thirty two pages on quality paper. For the price of about seventy five dollars it feels a bit steep but in my opinion it feels priced right.

Introduction & Rules

The first section of the book is a simple introduction to Warhammer 40,000. It gives a basic idea of what you need along with a extremely short battle report between two army's.

The rules is the meat for this book, and it's a good thing they have it right up front. Now I barley played Warhammer 40,000 during 5th edition so I am going to be looking at this from a new/other war-gamers perspective.

The first thing they talk about is the models (we will refer to models but this can also involve units of models). Each model has nine different stats. Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Wounds, Initiative, Attacks, Leadership, and Armour Save. This stats will determine how well a model acts on the battlefield. The book then goes on to some basics of war-gaming in general. Measuring (Warhammer 40,000 allows players to always measure distance between models while other war-games only allow a player to measure after they declared an action), Dice and templates (I should also note that Warhammer 40,000 uses true line of sight which means that you need to get down and see what a model sees. If your model can see an enemy model they may take an action against it).

Turns are broken into three phases. Movement, Shooting, and Assault.

We will talk about the shooting phase first. In the shooting phase players will basically fire there ranged weapons or run. Players will use a models Ballistic Skill in order to determine if they hit who they are shooting at. From there players will determine the strength of there weapon vs the toughness of the enemy model and consult a chart. Once players determine how many wounds a model will suffer the enemy model will take any saves that they are allowed to.

During the shooting phase players may utilize cover from terrain and other models. Now the shooting player has options to try and get around this. They can declare they are focusing on shooting a target that has a different cover save then the rest of the unit. The enemy model has the options too though. They can declare that they are going to ground in order to get better cover (although the unit wont be able to declare any actions) or a model can jump in the way of the incoming fire to protect a character model.

During the Assault phase a player may declare a charge against an enemy model. Assaults in Warhamer 40,000 are just as deadly as shooting, since they will be charging in to enemy's with some form of a gun (Also the distance in which a model may charge is randomized by 2d6's). The enemy will get a chance to shoot blindly at the charging enemy in order to defend themselves. Once both model's are in combat characters can issue challenges or the models will duke it out till one side is defeated.

Special Rules, Unit types, and war.

The next part of the book talk's about special rules which is a lot of rules. It is twelve pages of special rules that models will ether gain or start with. Unit Types talk about how different models that are ether Infantry, Artillery, or Flyers and what special rules that they gain.

The war-machine of warhammer 40,000 includes a ton of different things from ranged guns to swords and Psykers. Psykers have powers that can enhance your own models or a power to lash out against an enemy model. Not including what a Psyker gets in his codex there are six disciplines with six different powers. In order to see what powers a Psyker has they will role a d6 and that's what power they have. If they don't like the power they got on there role they can opt for a seventh default one (the Psyker will re-roll any powers that they already have).

Vehicles and flyers are a big deal now in 6th edition. All vehicles have hull points and lose hull points when they take a glancing hit or penetrating hit. When a vehicle takes a penetrating hit the shooter will role on a chart to determine what the results are; which can be anything between having the crew shaken up a bit to the whole vehicle exploding.


Whew that's a lot of stuff so far. Stay tuned for a part two.