40K: IA Index Xenos: The Big Ones
We’ve had some time to digest the Imperial Armour FAQs – let’s talk about the those key changes!
Hello BoLS Readers! I’m back from my awesome trip to the UK (more on that later) where I got to hang out with the awesome folks at GW’s Warhammer World for a couple days. I got to play on their AoS Stream (which you can watch HERE – if you’re a subscriber). I picked up some Forge World (and the associated books) I would need while I was there. However, I only had my phone on me for my internet fix and while I was away GW dropped the Forge World IA FAQs!
Having picked up a Malanthrope for my Tyranids, I was quite interested in what the changes were to the Xenos book – so that’s where I’m starting!
Tyranid players REJOICE! The errata cut the power rating in half – down from 10 Power to 5, and it got two pretty big buffs. Well, two pretty big fixes really. First off the BIGGEST change is the wording of it’s Shrouding Spores ability – which changed the word “models” to “units” thus making it much more powerful. Now, it still doesn’t stack with a Venomthrope, but unlike their shrouding, the Malanthrope’s shrouding will apply to all unit types and not just infantry.
The next tweak was that the Malanthrope also got the Fly keyword. I’m not really sure if the Malanthrope needed the Fly keyword or not as it doesn’t have any ranged weapons – but I guess it can land on buildings now? Cool.
The Orks got some love as well. Both Squiggoths got an “upgrade” to their stampede abilities. Okay – it was really more a correction to the wording. Turns out adding a “+” to the sentence is kind of a big deal! It magically went from a 1/6 chance to a 5/6 chance! Much better odds.
The Killkannon got hit with a nerf-bat. Sorry Ork players. It went from “pretty much auto include” to “oh that makes sense now” in terms of shots.
The Tiger Shark probably had one of the biggest oversights in the book. For those of you who might not be aware the Tiger Shark is equipped with two heavy rail cannons. Those have the weapon type of “Macro” as opposed to Heavy or Rapid fire.
Macro weapons are fantastic at doing damage to things like Titans or Buildings because you get to do double damage:
The catch is that if you want to fire them, you can’t have moved in the previous turn. The Tiger Shark is a flyer with a minimum move of 20″ – so I think you can see where I’m going with this. With the addition of the “Titan Hunter” rule the Tiger Shark is now a viable flyer and can be used as intended!
There are quite a few more tweaks in the FAQ for the IA Index: Xenos and you should check them out for yourself.
Imperial Armour – Index: Xenos £15
Now, I would like to address one thing about these Forge World books: Why does it seem like the IA books just don’t have the same level of “polish” as everything else? That’s actually really simple and very sad. Many of you might remember that in May Alan Bligh passed away. Now, I’m not here to give you excuses or a sob story – but the fact is that he was a driving force for all things Forge World. He was a key member of the Forge World Studio team and without him many thing slipped through the cracks.
These books aren’t perfect. They have some pretty glaring errors in them – but we have FAQs for them now and GW is listening to the players. Games Workshop might be some faceless Hobby & Miniatures company to you, but there are real people working there and they have good days and bad days, too. So maybe cut them a little slack on this one due to some extenuating circumstances.
…Now go blow up some Titans!
