The Faction Focuses Thus Far

CHAOS SPACE MARINES

Dark Pacts is just so fun and fluffy!  The best part is if the unit takes damage, its resolved after the attacks are made.  So you can happily sacrifice models knowing they'll get their damage in.  Very CSM!

Legionaries look fine.  We get their full Datacard, one of the few full reveals we've gotten.  Veterans is the first duplicate rule, being functionally identical to Genestealers' Vanguard Predator.  Depending on points cost I'd also always take the Icon and praise The Dark Gods every attack!

Abaddon feels like a significant downgrade, but he's no slouch.  He definitely feels like the commander that will be leading the army, as opposed to a demi-Primarch stand alone combatant.  He's our second Ld 5+ model, and he gains additional benefits from Dark Pacts to boot!  Drach'nyen wounds everything but a Monolith on 3's, and The Talons will rip apart basically any infantry.  He's got the whole "choose one of three rules" thing that started with Vashtor, what I call "Army Commander" abilities.  All of them are useful, but you're always going to try and set up for Paragon of Hatred.  These also confirm that not only are Auras very much a thing, but Core is probably gone.

The Baleflamer is a little underwhelming.  Twelve inches is such a short range, and with the changes to Toughness this is now solely anti-infantry.  Fleshmetal Guns is much more impressive.  Obliterators might be back.

We don't really know anything about Dark Obscuration except the demonstration of how some CSM rules will benefit specific Marks, since we don't know what Stealth does.  Given it specifically says that you can't be targeted if you're Nurgle, most of us are guessing this is either "Gain the Benefit of Cover" or -1 to hit.

All and all, CSM look like they'll be a lot of fun.

NECRONS

The new Reanimation Protocols is a significant nerf, but is so much easier.  It also means any multi-wound infantry now have Living Metal.  As we see in the Necron Warriors preview, there are rules that play with it.  So maybe we'll see ways to gain more of a benefit from it when we have the whole picture.

We get the Detachment rule Necrons will have on release too.  Necron characters now just grant a flat bonus to their units before we even get to unit special rules.  Considering Command Protocols was by far the worst of the "single faction army" special rule in 9th, this is probably significantly better.

We get another full Unit Card with the Monolith.  It's our Toughest model so far at T14 and 20 wounds.  This is also where we see that armies will have their identities often well represented in their weapon profiles.  Necron weapons appear to be very spiky.  That Death Ray isn't going to get sustained hits often, but when it does . . .  Also Portal of Exile means you're tying this thing up in combat at your own peril.

And then there's Eternity Gate.  You can now easily hide a powerful shooting unit behind cover during your opponents turn, then pop it in front of a Monolith to fire away.  The Monolith itself is both Titanic and Towering, which we know means it's not hiding.  So lets hope the reduction in damage really does mean it can stay out in the open.

I already mentioned that Necron Warriors get extra benefits from Reanimation Protocols, but their weapons also show the whole idea of Necron technology being potentially very deadly.  Maybe a Necron shooting phase will finally be something to fear.  That Doomsday Cannon certainly looks vicious.

I'm a little surprised the Spear of the Void Dragon only hits on 3s when sweeping, though.  I wonder if this is a typo.  Maybe they really want you to focus on killing vehicles with it while still giving it some ability to punish infantry that tries to hold it up.

The old Command Protocols now seem to be Stratagems.  Protocol of the Hungry Void definitely looks painful if used correctly.

I'm really hoping with every other army receiving nerfs to their fire power, that maybe Necrons will feel like the force of destruction they were meant to be.

ASTRA MILITARUM IMPERIAL GUARD

Yes, I'm totally going to keep that meme alive.

We're back to a nice, simple, and satisfying order system.  You'll always be trying to get into a position where you can either Take Aim or First Rank, Fire! Second Rank, Fire!  But what else is new?

We get the full card for Cadians, and it is very Guard.  I would say you'll always take the Vox-caster so you can try to keep your CP up, but that will depend on what units benefit the most from Stratagems.  But the real stand out thing is that you can now take a 20 man unit.  I'm wondering if GW is trying to steer us into taking one or two infantry bricks, then a bunch of MSU.

The Baneblade is bigger, but not tougher, than the Monolith.  And suitably it now counts as cover, meaning tanks might get to be used for what they're actually meant to be used for.  There's a lot of shots coming out of that thing, providing again that vehicles get to fire all of their weapons.  Guard fittingly seem to be all about saturation fire.  But not even the Demolisher Cannon breaks AP-3.

The iconic Battle Cannon feels like it's going to be left home again.  Again, it feels more suitable to anti-infantry then taking out big targets.  But AP-1 is just so underwhelming, even in this new world of lower AP.

The Volcano Cannon on the other hand is a whopper.  Not only does it get a decent number of attacks, but it's one of the few vehicle weapons we've seen with Heavy, meaning it can hit on 3s if you can maintain a good firing position.  But man, S24!  That wounds the new Land Raider profile on 2s!  This gun can easily take out nearly any vehicle we've seen in one round of fire.

Reinforcements on the other hand reminds me of the old Meet Grinder rules.  Depending on how Strategic Reserves work now, this could be fantastic and well worth saving up 2 CP for!  Still, my feel is always to use CP as offensively as possible.

GW also snuck in two rules at the end of the article for Guard Enhancements.  Of the two, Drill Commander definitely feels like my top pick.

All and all, Guard feels like they're going to play the way they're supposed to play, with tough vehicles and hordes of infantry laying down eye watering volumes of fire.

CHAOS DAEMONS

The Neverborn start off their Faction Focus right away with what is perhaps the scariest Army Rule we've seen so far!  As a Tyranid player, I'm especially wincing at it, even though our rules kinda neutralize each other.  The Shadow of Chaos allows Daemons to heal from Battle-shock tests while inflicting mortals anytime their opponent fails one.  Considering Daemons already have rules that interact with Morale, I'm expecting there will be plenty of ways to take advantage of this.

You are definitely not going to want to sit back and let Daemons come to you.  You're basically forced to take the fight to them, which is exactly what they want of course.  I'm guessing success against Daemons will require you to try and make sure you're picking the best fights you can while not leaving objectives open.  And with the Warp Rifts Detachment Rule, this is going to be pretty difficult.

Chaos Daemons are the first army we get to see allied rules for.  The rules they show are simple and a far cry from the infuriating forced use of Power Level in 9th.  It's interesting to note that you're only restricted to Slaanesh if Lucius is your Warlord.  So you're free to represent your army as Emperor's Children while still putting any demons in your army.  My guess is that will change if we finally get the Emperor's Children codex in 10th.

The Keeper of Secrets, while looking good, seems like more of a buffing piece than a combat monster.  But it doesn't have Leader or Lone Operative, so you'll still want to get it tearing up some elite infantry as soon as you can.  By contrast Be'Lakor is the scariest model we've seen so far.  He's got another Army Commander style rule, but the fact that he extends the Shadow of Chaos is what puts him above Angron for me.

They use this faction focus to explain Extra Hits and confirm that you'll only get to choose one of your melee weapons normally.  No more splitting attacks for us.  They follow this up with Skarbrand's Slaughter and Carnage, which continues the theme of named daemons being scary.

Finally they show the sticky objective Stratagem that is Corrupt Realspace.  They again use a rule to further explain something for us.  Models that have their OC reduced to 0, say from Battle-shock, can't take objectives.  You have to have at least 1 point of OC to steal an objective from an opponent.

All and all, Daemons look legitimately scary, as they should be!

SISTERS OF BATTLE

Acts of Faith and Miracle Dice return mostly unchanged as far as I can tell.  The big difference is that you can only swap a single dice during any Act of Faith.  This means that the most you can guarantee on a Charge or Leadership roll is 7.  Still knowing the result of a roll ahead of time is extremely powerful.  

Additionally, we get to see some mechanics that interact with this rule pretty well.  The Triumph of Saint Katherine gets to pick two Army Commander abilities until it's reduced to 5 wounds or less.  One of these lets you gain a Miracle Dice from a destroyed unit as a 6, and another lets a unit use as many Miracle Dice as you want.  Even better, this massive diorama turned model is somehow a Leader, meaning you can have it stick with a unit to keep it safe and handing out buffs.

The Battle Sisters Squad can use a Cherub to immediately regain a Miracle Dice, though there's no guarantee it'll be useful as you roll it as normal.  But more importantly, every Objective Marker with a Battle Sister Squad on it gets you more dice!

For our Weapon Spotlight, we get the Exorcist.  Conflagration Rockets should shred light infantry pretty nicely, while the Missile Launcher puts the Battle Cannon to shame.  Both of these weapons demonstrate the new version of Indirect Fire.  This is actually a slight buff from where it is currently in 9th Edition Matched Play.  Rather than inflicting a BS penalty and improving the targets save, this one uses a simple -1 to Hit and grants the Benefit of Cover.  As far as we know, penalties don't stack and Cover definitely doesn't.  This means at most you're only going to have that -1 penalty and the target will be +1 to save, where currently you can be at an effective -2 with the target getting +2 to save.

We get some stats for Morvenn Vahl.  It's just her weapon, but I'm pretty sure that Vahl will be more of a commander than bruiser.  Then we get Rejoice the Fallen, which will allow you to potentially retaliate with a unit.  This makes me wonder if Battle Sister might also get a buff to their model count.

Sisters were good in both 8th and 9th, and I'm pretty sure they'll be good in 10th too.

Leagues of Votann

Ah, our poor space dwarves.  It often feels like GW has a habit of punishing models and factions for the sins of the past.  In this case, automatically wounding just doesn't have much of a place in an edition where the designers are trying to make Toughness matter.  Still, I imagine people who were excited for the return of the Squats have been let down quite a bit at this point.  They went from everyone expecting them to be the new hotness to being a pretty middle of the road army.  And I don't think this Faction Focus is getting anyone's hopes up.

The interesting thing is that they're probably going to be better for it.  Eye of the Ancestors is good, and Ruthless Efficiency is the only rule confirmed to allow you to gain multiple CP in a turn.  Plus, from the look of the original points values, GW intended Votann to be a standard infantry based army, not an elite army.  With these changes, it might be easier to price units like Hearthkyn in a range that allow you to field big bricks of them.

This is the first of the armies we've seen to reveal another design decision that GW hadn't mentioned before: the return of 4+ armies.  We can now see that GW wants to make 3+ feel special.  As a result, more armies are going to 4+ for most of their weapons.

For all that, the Hekaton still looks like a beast.  It's tough as a Land Raider and bristling with even more destructive power.  I'm pretty sure that this will still be a fantastic centerpiece model for the Kin.  At the same time, the newly revealed Conversion rule reveals that Votann can still have fun with a 4+.

Reactive Reprisal demonstrates something I didn't mention with Rejoice the Fallen.  There seems to be a lot more interaction during your opponents turn now.  We saw this starting with both Age of Sigmar 3rd and Horus Heresy 2nd.  It looks like 40K is all in on this too.  Maybe someday GW will finally embrace alternate activations for their battle scale games.

We really need to know more to determine what these changes mean for the Kin.  If their priced like other 4+ armies, I think they'll be fine.  The faction isn't even a year old yet.  There's plenty of time to find the proper identity for them in the game.

WORLD EATERS

Man I'm wishing I'd come up with this sooner.  This is really turning into a Mega Post!  Oh well, onward and upward.  If I'm going to get angry about something, this is the faction for it.

World Eaters is about as simple an army as you can get.  No tricks, no sneaking, no psychic, not even a lot of shooting.  Just run up to the enemy and take skulls.  Blessings of Khorne takes the old Blood Tithe and makes it a simple, reusable rule.  Shout "Blood for the Blood God!" roll 8 dice, pick two rules you qualify for, then start claiming "Skulls for the Skull Throne!"

Of the buffs you can get, you're definitely want Unbridled Bloodlust.  And look at that!  The Icon of Khorne will help you fish for those 4s or 6s.  Khorne Berzerkers can still move after being shot at, though they can't if they're Battle-shocked.  We also see multiple weapons being consolidated into the new "Chainblade" weapon.

Angron isn't quite the unholy terror he is now, but he's still the last thing you want to be in close combat with.  He gets to choose his Army Commander ability in the Charge phase, meaning you can pick it on the fly.  He can still come back if he's killed, though now you have fish for 6s.  In return, not only does he come back with full wounds, but he doesn't appear to have any rules that will stop him from benefiting from being behind terrain.  This means he'll likely be much harder to kill.

For some reason we then get the Daemongore Cannon as our weapon spotlight?  I mean, I guess that confirms the Lord of Skulls isn't going anywhere.  Still no word about other Forge World kits though.  It's definitely a scary gun for an already scary army.

World Eaters also get a sticky objective rule, though I have to admit I'm a little disappointed in this one.  It would be nice to be able to claim an objective with your Berzerkers and then keep charging forward.

Other than that, yeah, these guys seem pretty brutal.

ADEPTUS MECHANICUS

Boy was this one a mixed bag!  On the one hand, we've got a Detachment Rule that definitely seems pretty scary.  On the other, AdMech is now a 4+ army again.  I've seen a lot of gnashing of teeth in both directions.

Honestly though, AdMech seems fine.  With the way Doctrinas work now, you're either going to be pumping out a bunch of Assault fire, potentially at an additional AP, as you advance up the board, or you're going to be firing at 3+ while also getting some additional AP.

As for Rad-Bombardment, I really don't think this is going to be that big a deal.  It does mean you can't just leave a few models on your homefield objectives, but that's about it.  In the first turn, you'll likely know what units you need to take objectives and which ones need to use a Stratagem.  So those units might take a few mortals.  Then whatever unit is holding your backfield will take 1 or 2 more, which likely won't affect things much.  It's a nice rule, but it's definitely not anything to lose sleep over.

The real kicker here is Skitarii Vanguard and their Rad-saturation aura.  This is going to make it really hard to take objectives once the AdMech player has them.  Oh and there's that CP regeneration rule again.  We then get a preview of how other units will have rules that allow them to benefit from just being around each other.  It has a very, "cogs in a machine" feel.

Then we get good old Belisarius Cawl.  Rather than join a unit, Cawl just gets Lone Operative if he's near another unit.  This is great considering how strong his Solar Atomiser is.  You can move him around without having to worry too much about cohesion to make the best use of it.  His Army Commander abilities are nice, but nothing to write home about.  Same is true for the Eradication Beamer.

Then we get Aggressor Imperative.  Ah, good ol' Advance and Charge!  This will be especially good for Sicarians advancing along side your Vanguard!  Meanwhile, once you've got those Vanguard on an objective, you can make double sure it's yours by using Bulwark!

Ad-Mech are currently a very difficult army to play that just doesn't seem to give a lot of benefit for learning it.  But now it looks like they'll still have that depth and flavor without being so complex.

AELDARI

First of all, am I really the only person who's noticed that the faction name and keyword are Aeldari?  Like, this is obviously Craftworlds they're showing off.  But they're not getting a Craftworlds or Asuryani keyword.  They're just Aeldari.  Even Tyranids are Great Devourer.  Are we seeing a hint towards a more consolidated Aeldari super faction?  We've already seen that a little in 9th, with Harlequins joining the Aeldari codex.  Will Drukhari have the Drukhari faction keyword, or will they be Aeldari with the Drukhari keyword?  Or maybe Aeldari will just cease being a super faction and now only refer to Craftworlds and maybe Ynnari.  Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Of course everyone has noted that Strands of Fate works almost identically to Miracle Dice.  However, Fate Dice are more frontloaded and practically designed to be used as part of an alpha strike.  This is especially potent when combined with the new Fire and Fade and Linked Fire rule, allowing for one Fire Prism to potentially do the work of 3 and then retreat back to safety.

This is important, as Eldar still appear to be quite squishy.  They've kept their 4+ save, which Skitarii appear to have lost.  And they're still a 3+ army.  But while AP has gone down, the quantity of firepower seems to be as deadly as ever.  The new blast rule will make quick work of Guardians.  It is interesting though that they can get an additional 2 wounds with their Heavy Weapon Platform, but only if they kill it before the rest of the unit is dead.

The Farseer at least seems to be helping a little with durability.  Fortune now flat reduces damage.  But unless damage spills over now like in Sigmar, that's not helping 1 wound infantry.  Also, Eldar melee currently looks quite underwhelming.  But then we still haven't seen anything like Scorpions or Banshees, let alone a Phoenix Lord.

Still, those are definitely some guns on those profiles.  And with a 7" move and rules like Fire and Fade and Linked Fire, just try to stay out of sight!