Similarly to what we did in 2023, the New England group is putting forward some changes that we will be testing through-out 2025. If they work out we'd like to put them up for an ERC vote in December. If you have other suggestions and/or thoughts or concerns on these please voice them here or on the Discord. The majority of these are innocuous and are the result of us playing with the lists the last couple of years. A few will definitely need some some more testing though.
Adeptus Mechanicus – Titan Legion- Remove the God Machines rule. New England has played this way for years and it hasn't been an issue for us.
Adeptus Mechanicus – Skitarii Legion- Sagitarii, Skitarii and Praetorian Maniple formations can access to a "formation leader" upgrade that works like Bonded Team from the Tau list. The list has no leader on infantry units beyond the SC, which is pretty rough for an army that's supposed to be lock step with its commanders.
- Reduce the Rapier upgrade on the Sagitarii to +0 points. Taking the upgrade means you lose two units and are hamstrung with a 10cm speed unit, +25 seemed too unattractive.
Ork – Feral Orks- Add the following underlined text to the Junkatrukk note: Units being transported may shoot and use their firefight value in an assault or to lend support. Dark Eldar have been using this and it hasn’t been an issue for us.
- Orkeosaurus and Squiggoth gain walker because they have legs... And it’s also weird that the Steam Gargant has it and they don’t.
- Add a Squigg Katapult Horde to get some more mileage out of the model:
Code:
Squig Katapult Horde | Five Squig Katapults | 125 | 225 | 325 |
* Add any number of Squig Katapults for +25 points each
* Add up to one Nobz for +35 points
* Add up to one Wyrdboy character to any unit for +50 points
Ork – Gargant Mob- Stompamob change from War Horde below.
- Change Mega-Lobba to Arm weapon mount only (effectively 0-2 of them per unit) to reduce BM spam.
- Change Ultra-Lobba to Arm weapon mount only (effectively 0-2 of them per unit) and change Firepower to 2D3+3BP to reduce BM spam.
- Increase Gatling Cannon to +50 points because it’s a lot of shots.
Ork – Speed Freeks- Wherever Nobz are referenced in extra units for +35 make it “Nobz and Trukk”. Also, in the Warband extras, the Nobz/Nob Warbike replacement should be changed so the Nob and Trukk have to be given up to get the Nob Warbike. Looking at the EpicUK list and Tim’s post here I think this has always been the intention.
- Add the following extra to the Kult of Speed: Add up to one Nob Warbikes unit for +35 points. This seems like an oversight given you can get Nobz in all the other formations bar the outriders.
- Add the following underlined text to the Trukk note: Units being transported may shoot and use their firefight value in an assault or to lend support. Dark Eldar have been using this and it hasn’t been an issue for us.
- Add a Guntrukk unit (LV/35cm/5+/6+/6+/Big Gun/-) for +25 to the Warband and allow it in the core units along with Scorcha/Warbike/Warbuggy. The CC and FF are reduced to keep the Warbuggy a competitive option.
Ork – War Horde- Change the Stompamob to 3 Stompas for 175/300/425. I think it was Rastaman that brought this up, but the 2023 change to 4 Stompas as core units would not be backwards compatible and that’s something I’d like to correct. So this roles back the core unit change while keeping the point reductions from 2023.
Space Marine – Codex Astartes (and others where applicable)- Reduce Vindicator formation cost to 200 points to make them more appealing.
- The Attack Bike is pretty under-utilized and uncompetitive compared to the similarly costed Land Speeder. As a proposed fix: change the Bike formation to the following (Multi-melta Attack Bike is same as the Salamander Attack Bike):
Code:
Bike | Five Attack Bikes | 150 points |
* Replace any number of Attack Bikes with an equal number of any of the following units for +10 points each: Bike, Mutli-melta Attack Bike
Space Marine – Imperial Fists and Dark EldarAdd the following notes to the Bastion and Barge of Pleasure to clear up how the WE rules work with transported formations shooting.
Quote:
Transported units do not have to disembark in order to shoot or use their firefight value if this unit is able to shoot, assault or lend support. Measure to this unit for the purposes of determining line of fire, range and suppression of the transported units. If the transported units are not able to physically fit on the this unit's model use an off-board piece of card to show their relative position for the purposes of suppression.
Space Marine – White Scars- Attack Bike change from Codex list.
- Add Scout Bike unit (INF/35cm/5+/4+/4+/Scout) and formation of 4 for 175 points to help differentiate the list more.
- Add Vindicator formation of 4 for 200 points to add some more list flexibility.
Tyranid
- Add a renamed Wraithgate to the army, +50 points, works exactly like the Eldar one. This is the biggest change here and the one most in need of testing.
- Change Tyranid Swarm 0-1 per army restriction on Dominatrix to 0-1 per 2,000 points. A 0-1 limit is too restrictive for higher point games.
- Drop Dactylis Swarm price to 250/475/675, extras for +75 each. They are too expensive right now at 300 points for a small formation.
- Add Harridan Swarm option for 4 Gargoyles for +75 points. Makes for an easier list build, individual gargoyles at +20 will stay too.
- Up War Engine formation limit to 1/3 total points. A few players were calling for this on the Discord.
- Give Carnifex Bio-plasma the following profile: 15cm AP5+/AT6+. Acquiescing for a certain player on Discord.
- Change the Genestealer Swarm to 6 Genestearlers for 150/-/-/. Same reasoning as the Stompamob above.
- Change the Trygon Swarm to 3 Trygons for 200/-/-/Add up to 3 Trygons for +60 points each. Same reasoning as the Stompamob above.
Necron Special Rule- Because I’m tired of always looking this up, add the following underlined text to the Necron rule: Formations can return one previously destroyed Necron unit in the end phase of each turn, before all formations attempt to rally, either on or off the board.
Summed Units Special Rule (all Chaos lists)- The following is a rewrite of Summoned Units rule with the intent to extract which units can be summoned into army specific special rules (e.g. Death Guard summons Nurgle daemons and doesn’t need to mention Tzeentch daemons in its special rule). There’s no gameplay changes here.
Quote:
Each formation in a Chaos army owes allegiance to Chaos Undivided or one of the four chaos gods: Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh or Tzeentch. The Chaos player must declare each formation’s allegiance before the battle, noting it down on their army list. Unbroken formations with Daemonic Pact are able to summon daemons with a similar allegiance to the battlefield from the Daemon Pool.
Daemons in the Daemon Pool are noted only as being lesser or greater daemons when they are purchased, they should be thought of as markers. The Chaos player must declare the number of lesser and greater daemons in the Daemon Pool in some fashion that is easily apparent to their opponent at all times. The Daemon Pool is kept off the board and daemons are removed from it as formations summon daemons to the battlefield.
A formation may summon daemonic units from the Daemon Pool as part of its action before declaring which action it will carry out. The formation generates 2d3 summoning points that can be used to move daemons from the Daemon Pool to the battlefield where they are converted to actual daemonic units. The allegiance of the summoning formation determines which daemonic units it may summon, while the daemonic units available to summon (and their respective summoning point costs) are defined in the specific Chaos army lists. Summoning points must be used immediately or lost, but un-summoned daemons in the Daemon Pool remain to be summoned by other formations or on later turns.
Summoned daemonic units must be placed within 5cm of a unit from the formation that was there prior to summoning, you may not place a “chain” of summoned units. They also may not be placed in enemy zone of control or in impassable terrain. Finally, an army may only have one greater daemon with a given allegiance on the battlefield at any one time. Summoned daemonic units count as part of the formation that summoned them while they remain on the battlefield.
Daemonic units that are destroyed are removed from play and not put back into the Daemon Pool. If a formation with daemonic units is broken then all the daemonic units are removed from play as well. If a formation with daemonic units loses an assault (see Work Out Result) the extra hits it suffers occur before it becomes broken and the daemonic units are removed from play. Also note that daemonic units do count towards the “For each kill you have inflicted during the assault” assault modifier of your opponent.
In the End phase, after all rally tests, all summoned daemonic units are converted back into daemon markers and returned to the Daemon Pool. Note that this may lead to the formation breaking. War Engine units that are returned to the Daemon Pool keep their current DC and do not heal back to full DC. If they are summoned again they will have the same DC they had before being returned to the Daemon Pool.
As an example of what the army specific rules for which units can be summoned will look like see the
Hedonic Crusade list.
