Infiltrate Rules and Eldar – Discordian

So a lot of people are talking about the new Eldar codex. Two of the standouts are Karandras and this pathfinder sniper. Both of them have their only own little purposes and rules, but they both have infiltrate.

That last part is the problem; a lot of people are already talking about infiltrating any unit with them, not just other infiltrators. The problem is you can’t attach an independent character with infiltrate to a unit without it and infiltrate them.

The infiltrate rules says the following:

Page 38, first paragraph of infiltrate

“Units that contain at least one model with this special rule are deployed last,…..”

Page 38, fifth paragraph of infiltrate

“An Independent character without the Infiltrate special rule cannont join….”

This is usually the point that people stop reading and go like hey “well it doesn't say anything about attaching a character with infiltrate to a unit so that means it should okay, covered by the first paragraph right?” Fortunately it’s not.

In order to clean this up we have to jump to independent character rules:

Page 39, first paragraph under “Joining and leaving a Unit”

“An Independent character can being the game already with a unit, either by being deployed in  unit coherency with it or in reserve, by informing your opponent which it has joined.”

What we have here is a classic “cart before the horse” situation. In order for you to infiltrate a UNIT must have one or more the models with his special rule. An Independent character can’t be a part of the UNIT until it deploys, since you can't attach beforehand his infiltrate rule can’t carry over to the UNIT until it’s too late to declare infiltrators. The only place you can attach independent characters to unit not on the table is in reserve and infiltrating is not a form of reserve.

The first part of infiltrate is not trying to suggest, as much as many people want it too, you can attach an independent character to a unit and infiltrate it. This was put in to allow units like Shadowsun with just her drones to work, nothing more.

So short story, only infiltrators or units with character like upgrades can infiltrate. You can’t attach infiltrating Independent Characters to non-infiltrating units and go boo.

….Unless GW plans to Errata/FAQ anything.

Apocalypse Second Edition: Khorne Lord of Battle and Necron Super Monoliths (PIC/SNEAK PEEK)

Hot on the heels of Eldar, a friend (Mesdoram) found this little jewel floating around the Internet. Apparently the next edition of Apocalypse is coming soon! And apparently that means LARGE KITS! Rooted in fluff at that- this appears to be a Khorne Lord of Battle:

Don't believe me. Here is the original from Epic 40k

I think I like the bull head more TBH

I wish though they'd remake these models for Specialist Games as well, but a new edition of Apocalypse is equally awesome! I just hope that other kits are a little more appealing. And maybe a plastic warhound? If they are building things as big as this and the Wraithknight, why not produce a plastic Warhound Titan? And I hope they keep with remaking battle engines already in the fluff, instead of making up new random stuff. That often is disastrous from a design perspective. Stormraven anyone?

EDIT-
Monoliths mentioned in Comments

I wonder if they are the same and the one on the right opens to be the one on the left

Deathwing Terminator Command Squad - Schlemazal

The last time I was here, I shared the WIP command squad I made with the new Deathwing Terminators kit, and the first painted model in the squad. Due to a combination of intervening projects and a general lack of time, it's taken me a lot longer to finish than I expected, but I'm happy to say that I'm finally done painting these terminators.

Even the Watcher that will likely never see use

As I mentioned before, this squad is the first time I've done Deathwing in their traditional bone color as opposed to a drybrushed white over black. I still wanted them to be a bit lighter than the standard though, so the armor base color is actually a couple of shades lighter than bone. It's hard to see the difference without a comparison model, but I think it turned out well. Overall, these guys were a lot of fun to paint. The new kit has a ton of interesting details to pick out, and I really like the designs on the storm shields. Looking back at them, I think I probably should have gone a bit darker on the armor shading, so that's something I'll have to address the next time I paint some terminators. Now then, have some pictures and let me know what you think!

I still don't understand why the apothecary loses his CC weapon

Next time I'll find a way to do a group shot that doesn't look tiny on this site

10 Things I Like/Hate about You Tau – Discordian

So now that Tau have been out for a while I figured it was about time I made a post about the things I like and the things that I hate.

Like

1. The last books HQ slot was mostly just a forced 1+ commander who unlocked an expensive crisis suit unit, which was about it. With the new dex they did something pretty great, they gave us 2-3ish usable characters (Can you guess who?) and an absurdly customizable generic commander. I don’t know if I’ll be using any of the special characters yet in my standard lists but, but my trusted 1+ commander will be less of a more wounds crisis suit and more of a super duper support general. There are the two infantry generic HQs but I’m not sold on them yet.

2. I've always liked stealth suits but until recently (stealth/shroud FAQ) they always came across as a really too expensive harrying unit. They haven’t changed points wise with the new book, but the changes to the burst cannon and fusion blaster has really stepped up their game.

3. Firewarriors like the stealth suits are a unit made better with the initial changeover to 6^th edition, more so than any dramatic change with the new codex. Always shooting out to 30” and being able to move really gave you a reason to not hide them in a devilfish. The point reduction and pulse carbine changes are neat, but for me it’s all about having 12 str 5 shoots from turn one slowly shuffling around to be where they need to be at end game.

4. The Book itself is amazing, new art and great book structure. I got the special edition codex and it looks really classy, haven’t seen a standard one yet but I’m guessing the interior is the same.

5. Crisis Suits having Black sun and Multi-Tracker standard is really nice, they basically bundled in the two things I always bought for my suits at -3 points. There are also a bunch of new support systems that offer actually hard choices. Sky fire is nice but how about interceptor; you could make them bs 2 for overwatch, or make any suit a special weapon/character sniper.

6. I actually want to field sniper teams. This is great because I have three teams already painted, probably have to dust them off though. The idea of finally having a sniper unit that is actually good at being snipers is great.

7. Pathfinders have tons of options to make up for their guards men armor downgrade. Awesome weapons and really neat rules granted by the drones, most of which are pretty unique. The added bonus of not having to buy a transport for a heavy weapons team is not lost on me either.

8. Hammerheads are the reason why I started Tau, when my friends where getting me into playing a far future scifi war-game I couldn't understand why things had treads. I saw the Hammer and didn't look back. They went down in points and largely what they do hasn't changed with the new book. There is also this ace pilot that gives you about a 50% chance to kill any tank armor 12 or below that will probably be popping up in most of my lists.

9. This is the first book I’ve seen that really addresses flyers. Skyfire/Interceptor are options for all the suits (you can even have them on stealth suits if you really wanted). Thankfully it’s not cheap to have both rules on the same thing so It’s not too overpowered and most things are still bs3 as is the way with new Tau.

10. I will be making a Heavy Arms out of the Riptide. That is all.

Hate (Rant On)

1. There is no FOC swaps of any kind. They really went out of their way to make this book build almost exactly the same way as the old 4^th edition book, and its bugging the crap out of me. I get not having cheap solo scoring crisis suits, but they could have done something. They could have said max units of something could be taken as a troop or even max units when you buy a special character or something. There’s no reason why special characters like Darkstrider, Farsight, or maybe even Shadowsun don’t do anything to change how you army builds, especially when compared to ever other 6^th edition book to date.

2. Firewarrior Cadre is disappointing to me, when I first heard about him I thought he would be my second HQ choice. But his buff only works on static gun lines and honestly I’d rather take Darkstrider instead. The Cadre has split fire….. why he doesn't just have a target lock? If he could take more wargear, any of those special pathfinder drones, different weapons, be 1-3 slot choice, or even be an elite option I’d see him as an option. Right now he’s overshadowed by Darkstrider and the basic Ethereal.

3. The Tau troops have a lot of cool options, but they still suck at holding ground. Kroot can infiltrate and take sniper rifles, Firewarrirors can shoot all day. Both are T3 and both fold in assault to most standard shock troops. Sure you can shoot people a lot, but I get the massively irritating feeling GW is expecting you to take allies if you want objective holders which really creates a massive hole in any pure tau list. Devilfish might be the answer to this but they still seem too cost prohibitive.

4. Why is it that the Fighter makes a better Bomber and the Bomber makes a better fighter? Putting aside the fact that the Razor-shark’s main gun can’t shoot straight ahead, I really think it should have been twin-linked. On paper the Sunshark has the same amount of str 7 and str 8 shoots as the Razor, also they are all twin-linked to make up for bs 3 and 2. The bs 2 shots do drop to 1 if Sunny moves more than 18”but the markerlight can bring this back up to bs2 twin-linked which is still better than a flat bs 3. Sunny has a ton of potential on the table with all of its rules interactions, and I think the Razor just feels lazy in comparison.

5. I wish Pathfinders and Sniper teams had some way to infiltrate. They are sneaky unit’s that deploy ahead of the main battle force, now I’m stuck deploying them with my main force. The sniper drones and heavy gun pathfinders losing target-locks really hurts their shooting.  They used to be able to split fire and have two different groups of guns being able to shoot at units they could hurt, now you end wasting one or the other depending on what you need to apply. With Pathfinders if you take the guns you end up taking away one of your few good marker-light units.

6. Markerlights. I like everything about the new incarnation of markerlight rules, except the over simplifying of the token options list. -1 per point for pinning is not that scary of a concept and having more options for marker lights would really have helped the not having psykers problem Tau face. Also everyone one I play seems to hate not having cover saves and they keep making me show them why it’s not like the BS version.

7. Broadsides are a mixed bag for me. On one hand their new models are freaking gorgeous; on the other hand they are now huge, take up too much space, no stat increase to make up for this, nerfed guns in range and str, and lost any relentless option. They also picked up these super awesome missile pods that scream for you to take them, because people couldn't be allowed to keep their old models. I get that having str 10 ap 1 anti-air guns is pretty rough, but it’s like they tried to balance the model after the new model was designed and then tacked on something to make you buy the new model.

8. Vehicles lost multi-tracker. For those who don’t know it made tau vehicles shoot like fast vehicles but not actually making them any fast vehicles. With this and the loss of vehicle target locks they just feel like hovering Lemon Russes. I’m not going to bitch about the disruption pod, I’m happy with the change as long as people don’t intentionally cut their flight stand down so they can hide things behind defense lines.

9. I’m not going to whine about the ion and nova reactor, it’s pretty easy to build a list without them if it really bothers you that Tau now has unsafe weapons after championing the safe plasma. What I am going to bring up is the fact that because of this new Ion weapon class Rail technology took a hit. Now we get two different kinds of unique weapons, but I feel they heavily pushed for Ion to be better because it was newer and different. Ion is pretty neat, but I’m going to forever wonder if those early rumors of all rail guns having blast modes were what was happening before somebody brought Ion weapons to the mix. I wished they had made ion technology more like how the cyclic ion gun used to be, low str rending shots, which would have still left Tau with two very unique different kinds of weapons but not having them compete against each other.

10. There is no freaking elaboration of the Tau origins, particularly the Ethereal and the crazy Tsunami warp storm in space cutting them off from the rest of the space jerks. Just few annoying inserts about how Ethereals are also now space jerks.

Overall I like the new codex. It has a ton of new options for my beloved first army, and I’m looking forward to throwing tons of curve balls at my opponents.

So what are some things you like and hate about the new Tau Empire?

Site updates, Specialist Games Forums and BFG News

First of all let me say downloads are back up and working. Using Dropbox, so no worries. I will work on getting more stuff up there. Try to get my old apoc datasheets and some new missions. One of them is even for a BFG Grand Cruiser I made, the Annihilator Class.

Not the Annihilator Class, but awesome non the less.

As well, I started creating a little Specialist Games portal on my blog here for the preserevation of the hobby. But that got me thinking, why stop there?

So I got involved in the Specialist Games forums again. If you are a wayward SG gamer, or you are interested in becoming one (even without the lines of minis, we are already finding solutions to such problems) then you should pop on over there and check it out. And even if the game you are interested in doesn't get much love on the forum, you maybe able to find out where the true community for the game lingers (such as the Conclave for Inquisitor). However, BFG and Warmaster seem to thrive there, so check it out.

It isn't too hard to make these models look freaking awesome.

Finally, let me put in a few Battlefleet Gothic specific plugs. For some time, BFG has been undergoing a community lead revision to the ships and fleets, and it is actually nearing completion YAY! You can find these awesome and well balanced rules at afterimagedan.blogspot.com. So far Imperial Navy, Chaos, Eldar, Space Marines, Tau Empire. Necrons, Adeptus Mechanicus and Dark Eldar are complete and I am proof reading Tyranids as you read!

Like I said, awesome.

He is also hosting a Global Specialist Games campaign that is easy to participate in, so check that out and fight for your faction! It is really easy to report and make a difference, and there doesn't have to be any official log ins or registrations. Any 40k based Specialist Game can be used and makes a difference!

And finally GothiComp 2013 is open. GothiComp is an annual BFG painting/conversion contest and it is officially done now through the BFG forums on the SG forums site. If you have BFG you want to show off, this is the perfect place to do it. We are also looking for some more prize support, so if you'd like to help out and promote the game and community, it would be most appreciated.

And maybe, if enough people get involved, we can see the sun rise on Specialist Games once more.