Shoot!

Once again, Warhammer Community returns with a new mechanic, shooting! Shoot, I don't mean new mechanic, it's an old one with a few changes.

Anyway, apart from the Ballistic Skill changes and the movement changes we had the other day - in case you don't remember, us pitiful Guardsmen can now fall back in combat, and even if we can't shoot, our other squads and platoons can shoot at those melee bastards - what other changes do we have?

First, we can no longer shoot at an enemy within 1" of us unless we have pistols. So pack up on those bolt pistols and plasma pistols, boys! Best, these guys can shoot with their pistols during combat! That's right, boys. Even if your pistol-wielding Commissar is locked on combat, you can still shoot your enemy with your plasma pistol or bolt pistol during the shooting phase, I think which comes right before the combat phase. Hooray!



The heavy weapons is a huge nerf to us tank users, unfortunately. Even if you move heavy weapons no longer snap fire. Instead, you have a -1 modifier for to hit rolls. Meaning your Guardsmen who hits at 4+ will only land a hit with his heavy weapons such as lascannon or missile launcher with a 5+ now. That sucks for my Leman Russ tanks, because their standard 4+ roll will turn into 5+ for their heavy weapons every time they move. Oh boy, the Leman Russ Punisher is going to be punished for its 20 heavy rounds. Ugh. On the other hand, you can at least fire stuff like heavy flamers and other pie plates or template weapons without worrying about snapfiring. I think. Actually, good question. How do blast weapons work now? They didn't mention blast weapons - since we no longer have Ballistic Skill, how do we account for Scatter? Uh...

Smoke launchers reduce the enemies' attack by -1 too, so if my Leman Russ tanks pop smoke the Space Marines firing their meltaguns hit at a 4+ instead of the usual 3+. Groovy.



Oh, and we were talking about cover saves the other day thanks to Jesse Sinclair, who mentioned how cover saves in Age of Sigmar is a flat +1 bonus to save rolls (thanks, Jesse!). Apparently it's the same for 8th Edition. Cover saves just grant you a bonus to armor saves now, and the type of cover you take will provide cover only to specific units. For example, craters only apply to infantry because obviously a tank can't take cover there despite your best efforts to hide 25% of it from view (no more cheating, in other words).

It also means the armor penetration power of our lascannons and so on can punch through cover and render those bonus saves meaningless. Hooray! Of course, we still have Ignore Cover weapons such as the Leman Russ Eradicator's nova cannon (I don't know if flamer templates still ignore cover, but based on the weapon profile of the flamers, I don't think they ignore cover any longer). And again, still nothing on scatter or how blast weapons work. Uh...okay. Never mind.

Anyway, we'll be charging into the charge phase tomorrow!