Lysere

I'm playing with the assumption that we don't get to use any of the Imperial Fist strats for now and will add them in after the FAQ drops. Really wish I had the points and models to run more than three assault centurions with my but I don't even have the points for the hurricane bolters. Still even three assault centurions can hit incredibly hard and make an excellent follow up to another assault unit.

I've been thinking the same thing. I haven't tested it yet but a jump pack vet squad in a LRC supported by a jump chaplain can cross most of the board on turn one. Support them with a drop pod assault of Helbrecth, Emperor's Champion, company vets, and cenobytes alongside a bunch of scouts and you have good odds of launching a mass charge on turn one. Edit: From the sounds of it crusader squads won't get a point drop which is upsetting, however, they may prove useful as a second wave. Mass drop pod assault supports by concealed deployment units on turn one to trap your opponent in his/her deployment zone and kill key threats while large crusader squads push up the board with Grimaldus. Hopefully, your initial attack will reduce the enemy strength enough to make those large crusader squads difficult targets, especially when buffed by Grimaldus. My current 2k list I'm toying with is double LRCs with one packing three assault centurions and the other six vanguard vets. Since most of my games involve fighting over the middle of the table it's basically vanguard for the turn one or two combat, assault centurions aiming for turn 2 or 3 depending on the target. The challenge is that combined it all eats a lot of points and between the number of characters I have and the minimum troops I'm very tight on points to change much. Been fun so far though. For Characters I have: Helbrecht, Grimaldus, the EC, Jump Lieutenant with MC Bolter, Jump Chaplain, Biker Captain, and for now a company ancient. Also have the cenobytes. Three squads of scouts, Three squads of Tacticals with Heavies. Combination of extra dakka, screen, and table presence.

So in regards to the mortal wounds on unmodified saving throws of sixes... do the rules disallow you from making a saving throw you can't actually pass? I get how it works anytime we have a saving throw but units do exist with a 7+ save. No one ever rolls saves they can't make but the strat calls for a result of a six, and it disregards modifiers. Of course with how things are normally handled you shouldn't neccesarily be able to roll every save in this case since it's all supposed to be one at a time but you could still get some good mileage out of large squads against high ap melee.

We can have basically guaranteed +6 charges from deep strike, with re-rolls. While this isn't the edition of close combat, that's still ridiculously good and will probably define all half-competitive BT lists to come. You know this trait and canticle doesn’t stack right?What makes you say they don't stack? Unless either of them explicitly say they don't stack they will. Different rules boosting the same roll or stat will stack. I guess with the wording that begs the question what is an ability, and what even counts as an aura. Might be good faq question considering we have several ways to boost our auras. Yeah re read canticle of hare. Honestly forgot it even said that. So with our warlord trait and strats we can get a similar effect as canticles of hate. So either that's a good reason to take different litanies or we can do that for several units at once.

Always fight first can be solid in the right circumstances, namely heroic interventions but the warlord trait one is pretty weak. The litany could be pretty solid depending on list and opponent at least but I expect it to be very niche. Good thing you can always take something else. The increased aura stuff is always useful especially now that we have plenty of reasons to take a bunch of characters. I expect the +1 advance and charge trait will be one of the more common defaults while the rest will just be given to a second character via strat when needed. Relics are the same way crusader Helm is solid, the chaplain one for insuring litanies go off is solid, the rest will just be a matter of who you're up against. I do like the variety we have and wouldn't mind if we lost access to the imperial fist strats and such now. Would be nice to keep some of it but can't win them all.

Pretty sure the advance and charge strat specifies Black Templar Infantry which bikes are not. Jump pack units would work well with it though.

Combine that, with the Chapter Ancient allowing Heroic Intervention to Infantry and such, while in the assault doctrine. Being anywhere near Templar on an objective could end badly. So much potential, only so many points to spend on characters.

So biker and Jump Characters are going to be very important I think. Move your armored Column up turn one, use smokes, use the shroud to make the important stuff have an invuln. Good to use with a second in command so you swap it out for something more useful if you aren't facing down lots of shooting. Next turn get out, move, advance, add one to the advance with the warlord trait, count as in assault with the relic, charge ignoring overwatch with up to a +3, and then trap a key unit. So much potential that I genuinely don't know how I want to use all of this quite yet. It will be glorious either way.

There are a couple lingering questions in regards to our rules that we really need before we can really decide how well GW did this time. The first part is obviously the rest of our rules from PA 2. While the doctrine isn't amazing, combined with the rumored relic and other buffs we have yet to hear about it has a lot of potential. How many attacks can we add to a unit? How efficiently can we buff a melee unit for one powerful round? How the traits, strats, relics, and litanies stack up will make all the difference as we saw with the iron hands. It wasn't one thing that made them super good, it was the combos that came about because of the various pieces, and we already have two solid characters for buffs. The other major question is how will all of this work with the Imperial Fists. Will we still have access to their special issue wargear? How about the warlord traits, the strats? I'm fairly confident we won't be able to have both super doctrines but the rest of it is still up in the air for now. While I don't think the traits and relics will be as great when compared to our own, if we are still able to use the stratagems then we will have a lot of options available to us. Curious to see what happens. That said I think a combination of on foot and mechanized will work well. The challenge will be the timing of litanies since targeted ones require the unit to be on the field while the aura ones just require smart positioning and planning. Still not sure about how they have litanies work though. Yes the start of round is nice and does kind of help balance them since otherwise your opponent has zero ways to stop them, but at the same time it means chaplains in a transport or deepstrike are even less useful than librarians. Just glad I have a jump pack chaplain.

For the former... the upgrade kit used to be good, it's not much good these days considering much of it doesn't really work well with Primaris. I certainly don't need any more regular upgrade kits, except maybe for shoulder pads if I did indeed get BT Primaris (which I currently don't plan to). EC model, really not the best single model either, but that's of course subjective. For the latter, getting shoehorned into a silly campaign book is a far cry from a "new codex on par with first founding chapters." While this may be correct in terms of fluff we are dealing with a campaign book here, not a tiny supplement book. Not including data sheets the Imperial Fist supplement has 7 pages of rules, and that includes needing an extra page because they have relics and special issue wargear. So 6-7 pages of rules is what the supplements have, and now GW is claiming that PA2 will have this level of support for several factions. This is laughably easy to do. Yes it means we likely won't see more than a couple of pages of individual fluff on the Templars if that. I understand people wanting to wait but save your judgement until the book is actually out.

Because Templars have a different personality but are still sons of Dorn. Templars can absolutely make use of the supplement and there is no reason for this to change. My reading of it thus far makes me think that some of the warlord traits and special issue wargear will be the most valuable part of it as many of the stratagems and the doctrine bonus don't mesh with most Templar lists as well. Useful but not super effective. The question is how will the Imperial fist book work with the Templar rules when they come out.

I'd heard directly from an employee that Templars would be in with the fists. Of course GW could have made changes since that information was given out. If we're in there, which we will see soon enough, great. If we get our own supplement or campaign book instead that's fine too. I just wish they'd hurry up and get this stuff released so I can figure out what the heck I need to start working on.

Redundant characters, bodyguards, and transports are all great ways to protect characters. Transports in particular are great for holding your backup characters since they can't be forced out until the end of a round. That and deepstrike allows for good ways to never have all of your characters vulnerable.

The big issue is people reading too much into the wrong parts. Overwatch uses the rules of the shooting phase despite not being the shooting phase. Anything that is normally active during a 'shooting phase' will be active during overwatch, except where noted. This does not mean that is actually the shooting phase as laid out in the turn order. Anything that must be activated during your shooting phase do not get to activate. Things would trigger a bonus during your shooting phase do not go off either. If the rule is always in effect and doesn't clash with the overwatch rules themselves it works, otherwise it can't be activated. As an example the Tech Priest Dominus allows you to re-roll ones to hit in the shooting phase. This is a fixed ability that will now work in overwatch because you are treating the shots as if it was the shooting phase. This is also the case with the Cadian bonus. Grinding advance however would not work as its a bonus granted by not moving too far in your movement phase, and triggers in the following shooting phase. By the time you get to overwatch it is now the opponents charge phase. TLDR: AS IF is not the same as IS. You have one Actual shooting phase per turn and several instances to use some of those rules outside of the proper phase. If the ability requires triggering or activating in YOUR Shooting phase then it can't be activated as part of overwatch unless it has clear exceptions. Just like not being able to change the only hit on 6 rule in overwatch without clear exceptions. My thoughts at least

The local group i'm gaming with has only seen this pop up in the last 6 months too. When I told them/showed them how it worked, the reactions were very much the same as your initial one! it's counter-intuitive, that's why. I'd argue that it's not counter intuitive, just the normal terrain rules are so bad at times that it seems weird. If anything the Land raider shouldn't even have to be touching the terrain to gain the cover save for being 50% obscured but that's 8th ed cover for you.