So I broke down and paid my 85.00 extortion fee for the new 7th edition 40k rules. I also bought the cards. After the initial sticker shock wore off, I was able to stop hyperventilating and actually open the book up.
Thoughts? It's pretty good! Since this edition came out so quickly after 6th edition, I fully expected this to be a cash grab for GW. I think it's common knowledge that their business model sucks and that it prices new gamers out of the hobby. And it's not changing anytime soon.
The Good
So what makes this a good edition, especially for Ork players? Well, first off, the new mission-based system is done really well and benefits the mobility of Ork armies. With the new mission cards, you basically draw mission cards and try to complete them in a turn. Then you discard the cards and keep drawing throughout the game. This is a boon to Ork players, since we have so many fast and mobile units. Most of the cards are "Take Objective X." We have a lot of units that can hold objectives.
Exhibit A: The Mighty Lone Deffkopta.
The next good thing is that all units can score again. Things like our Troop unit Deff Dreds can now hold objectives. The thing that makes it interesting is that Troops score over other units. And transports bought for units count in the same category of the unit it belongs to. So, a Troop unit of Nobz in a battlewagon is actually TWO troop units for the purposes of scoring. This is an amazing benefit.
Finally, the thing that really helps the Orks in the new edition is the opening up of the force organization chart. You can take multiple primary detachments of Orks. As long as you have an HQ unit and 2 Troops, you can open up another primary detachment. This is wonderful for taking cheap heavy and fast units that no one normally took because they were squeezed for slots. I expect to see a ton of units made of 1 Killa Kan, 1 Warbuggy, or 1 deffkopta just to split fire or zip to objectives.
The Bad
With all of that, there are some definite downsides to playing an Ork army in the new 7th edition. First, assault still sucks. It's been cleaned up, but the game is nearly forcing armies to shoot. Overwatch, no consolidation into another combat, and tooled up shooty armies all point in the direction of making an Ork Dakka army. Mine is and always was heavily shooty, so it's not a problem for me. But taking tons of slugga boyz is not going to be the way to go, unless GW throws in a ton of assault benefits for the new Ork codex.
Next, our antitank got worse. The new vehicle damage damage chart makes AP3 antitank weapons nearly worthless for blowing up tanks. Unless you have AP1 or 2 weapons, you're stuck glancing tanks to death now. And we already didn't have very much low AP weaponry. The deffrolla is an AP- weapon now, so that's not going to work either. We need high strength, low AP weapons in the next book. I am hoping Big Gunz get a lot better.
Finally, the daemon summoning from 7th edition is just nasty. We can't cast any of it. Much like Orcs & Goblins magic in Fantasy, we can't take any of the good rulebook lores. In 40k, we can take the daemon summoning spells from the rulebook, but we also suffera perils of the warp test on any double. While other armies are going to be summoning whole units every turn, we just die. Again, hopefully the new codex fixes our problems, but I fully expect to see the rulebook lores being really good and Ork Psychic powers just being mediocre.
The Awesome
Whatever happens, this ruleset has made me very excited to play 40k, which has not happened in a very long time. In response, I started working on stuff again. I decided to make another nob on treads. If I steal from my already made nobz, I can now make a nob biker unit. I've never played with one of these and I think they were the unit to have in 5th edition 40k and on. Hope you guys are as excited for 7th edition 40k as I am.
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