40k 6th edition tryouts

Yesterday we had a little 40k 6th edition tryout day down at the club. Everyone had a copy of the rules and was ready to get some dice and models on the table.
The day started with me and two others, being the first ones to get to the club. I did get my copy there and then, so I was a bit behind since I've only seen some youtube videos, and read a few forum/blogposts about the new rules.
I took some more or less random pictures during the day, I figured that trying to capture the whole of a battle was pointless when there was new rules to be learned.

My new and still shrink wrapped rulebook

Me and one of the others got going in testing out the rules, with the third acting as a rule compendium, answering any stupid question from me, and any reasonable question from my opponent. The game was between my guards and his eldar, and at just a 1000 point, to get the feel of the rules, and not spend the entire day with each battle. We did however spend most of the afternoon figuring things out, the changes was not in them selfs that great, but many small things and having to consult the rulebook at each turn did make the game go on for quite some time.

The game we played was The Emperors will, one objective in each deployment zone, and with Hammer and Anvil deployment, meaning that we used the the sort edges as our deployment zones, this felt a bit weird, but refreshing to see the table from that perspective as well.


My deployment

Tank heavy eldar, that was to be my doom

Guarding the eldar objective

More guardians in forward position

As the game went on, my inability to kill anything remotely tank shaped hindered my quite a lot, and in the end I lost both the first unit (my Rough Riders) and my warlord, resulting in a sound defeat for the imperial forces.


I used to have Rough Riders here, can you see the smoking remains?

Tanks shuffling forward, blasting my troops all over the place

Cornering a wave serpent with fire dragons, resulting in absolutely nothing, no damage what so ever, I really hate the new jinx rule for skimmers

My storm troopers got in from reserve, blasted some eldar in the first turn and in the next charged the guardians protecting the objective, resulting in the eventual defeat of the eldar

During the day more players arrived to our little gathering, resulting in a few more battle. Among others this shootout between some newly painted (and therefor doomed) Dark Eldar, and some more known marines in the form of salamanders. The mission was was the Relic one, and mostly they both stood around and looked at it, while trashing each other quite soundly everywhere. The result however was in the marines favor, and they walked away victorious.

Another game with Dark Angels vs Orks started just as I was packing my stuff and I only got to see the first half of the first turn. The Orks started by shooting with some wickedly good dice and got a Razorback blown up and quite a lot of marines killed, while swarming forward. They also played with the short edges, but their mission was to hold a bunch of objectives all over the place, each worth a different amount of Victory points. But since I didn't really see anything, here are some pictures of the event.

Overall I'm so far quite pleased with the rules, vehicles are a bit softer as they die quite handedly to glancing hits, but at the same time, they remain operational while getting shot up. The snap fire rule makes everything shoot more, but the effect is quite limited, not sure I really like it since it results in lots and lots of dice being thrown for more or less not effect, but at the same time it's nice to at least have some chance of hurting something even if you move your heavy weapons.

Assaults have defiantly been nurfed quite a bit, between not being able to assault on the same turn as you leave your vehicle hurts assault armies and being shot when the assault is launched is bad. In the Dark eldar vs Marines game, a character got killed when assaulting as a result of this. Perhaps not what something as fragile as Eldar needs.

Flyers are really good, they are a sick movement speed, and are very difficult to shoot down. As the game at present lack more or less anything that can shoot them down they will probably dominate the early battlefields of 6th.

The new missions have potential, they are defiantly different, and the secondary objectives is realy nice as breakers when you normally would have been playing for a draw.

All in all, I think this will work, I need to play some more, read the rulebook one or ten times before final judgment is called, but after the response at the club, I thing this will stay for quite some time before people wanders of and play something else.