Flip Belts and the Difficult terrain rule

A number of people have been debating the implication of the difficult terrain rule and its interactions with the Harlequins and their Flip belts. I thought I'd go through and breakdown the rules that are relevant to the scenario.

*Pages 56, 57, 58, 59 and 60 – Troupe Master, Shadowseer, Troupe, Death Jester and Solitaire, Abilities, Flip Belt Change to read: ‘Each time this unit makes a Normal Move, Advances, Falls Back or makes a charge move, until that move is finished, models in this unit can move horizontally through models and terrain features (they cannot finish a move on top of another model, or its base).’From the GW Harlequins FAQ

On page 260 of the Grand Tournament Book there is a section under the subtitle 'Terrain Categories'. The following is written:

 'There are four categories of terrain features: Hills, Obstacles, Area Terrain, and Buildings. Some terrain features have a datasheet and/or terrain traits (see below) that will describe additional rules that apply, but the rules below always apply for these categories of terrain.'

It then goes on to clarify that Barricades, Ruined Walls and battlefield debris are classified as 'Obstacles', and that Models can move up, over and down Obstacles following the normal rules for movement. Ruins, Woods, Craters and other terrain features are 'Area Terrain'. 

Buildings are NOT terrain features and have data sheets as they are considered to be units and typically part of a players army, furthermore models cannot move across buildings. 

So it would seem that Flip Belts allow Harlequins to ignore vertical distances that other models would need to account for in order to move through, around or over, meaning that they get to move further. And because a building is a unit, and the flip belt allows them to move through it where other units could not.

So onto the difficult ground rule:

Difficult Ground

"If a unit makes a Normal Move, Advances, Falls Back or it makes a charge move, and any of its models wish to move over any part of this terrain feature, subtract 2" from the maximum distance that every model in that unit can move (to a minimum of 0), even if every part of this terrain feature is 1" or less in height. This penalty does not apply if every model in the moving unit can FLY."

So if a Harlequin Solitaire was to move through a barrier he would ignore the vertical distance needed to go up and over the barrier, and yet he would take a -2 movement penalty because it is difficult ground. 

 Taking the penalty for difficult ground is all kinds of wrong seeing as thematically Harlequins are supposedly acrobats using parkour-esque movements to traverse the battlefield. Then again this would not be the first time that GW has failed to match the lore with the rules. And yes, I've written to them about it. 

Oh Joy! More Space Marines......

So it was with great joy (apply sarcasm here) that I received the news that the Space Marines are getting more toys! If it wasn't for the fact that they get a new toy every month and all of their new rules seem to be coming straight out of the pages of Codex Craftworlds, Tau, Orks and every other faction in the 40K universe I might be getting a little bit pissed off!

I know the Games Workshop are trying to make money from their intellectual property but there are only so many ideas they can use. They keep adding extra rules with each new release and when they do this they dilute the individuality of the rule donating army.

Case in point, the Ynnari index was featured in the pages of White Dwarf back in May, at the time they took a very powerful army and nerfed it into a playable army, with a few bells and whistles. However, it would appear that nothing is sacred in the world of 40K and the Army attribute that Ynnari were given has now been given to the Space Marines.


Part of the reason that an individual picks an army is the uniqueness of that army and how it differs from other armies. If all the armies have all the same lines then they lose a great deal of their uniqueness. At this point, the game of Warhammer 40,000 becomes little more than chess with very expensive pieces.

Yes, the rules are more complicated, and yes the board is a little bigger. But ultimately all the armies have all the same rules is going to get stale very quickly. One of the promises that games workshop made when they released the eighth edition of 40 K was that they would reduce the rules to make the game simple to play. It's now pretty obvious that they've either forgotten this promise or they are choosing to ignore it. We now have the Army codices (plus Marine Supplements), twice a year FAQs/Errata, annual Chapter Approved, Vigilus expansion books, City's of Death, Urban Conquest, and that's just the extras that I can reel off the top of my head.

The Composition Conundrum AKA Comp Sucks!

This past weekend I attended the Call to Arms tournament in Wellington New Zealand. This was a 40K tournament consisting of 1500 point armies made up to 3 detachments. The composition score for this tournament worked by allocating between zero and three victory points per game, dependent on whether or not the army fulfilled specific criteria. 

The first requirement was to ensure that 40% of the army was made up of troops choices. This was quite a difficult quota to meet, as 600 points of troops for any faction is a rather large amount. As I play Asuranyi this meant I had to take 20 man unit of Guardian Defenders, one 10 man unit of Guardian Defenders, one 10 man unit of Rangers, one five-man unit of Rangers, a seven-man unit of Dire Avengers, and another six-man unit of Dire Avengers.

This left me with 900 points to fill out the rest of my army. For my HQ choices, I chose a Farseer, two warlocks, and an Autarch. These four characters end up costing me 300 points which left me with just 600 points to spend on transports and specialist units. Because of the inherent vulnerabilities of characters on foot, it was necessary to take a Wave Serpent. 

This isn’t really a bad thing due to the fact that the Wave Serpent is a very good unit in its own right and is arguably one of the best vehicles available to the Asuranyi. However, Wave Serpent’s cost just under a hundred and fifty points if you take them with their optimal mode optimal loadout i.e. three Shuriken cannons. I took two Wave Serpent’s meaning I had spent another 300 points which left me very little to use on my specialists. 

In the current meta, the Asuranyi army performs best when utilising flying units, otherwise known as flyer spam. Due to my lack of points, I opted to take two Crimson Hunter Exarchs. I would typically have taken a hemlock race fighter however the 210 points cost of the race fighter was beyond my means in this instance.

The second criterion required for the composition score was to take all of my army choices from a single codex. This limitation is rather tedious due to the fact that eighth edition 40 K is very much again of mixed armies, otherwise known as soup. However, these were the criteria and in order to reduce the handicap involved, I opted to meet them. 

The third and final criteria were to build the army from a single craft world. Obviously, for Space Marines, this would have meant building an army from a single chapter or if one was using Adeptus Mechanicum it would have meant using a single Forgeworld.

Anyone who has not had their head in the sand for the last three years knows that as an Asuranyi player there is really only one good option when it comes to taking craftworld traits and that is the Alaitoc Craftworld. The -1 to hit outside of 12 inches benefit associated with the Alaitoc craftworld is just too good to pass up. The only other contender would be the Ulthwe craftworld not because of the associated benefit of the 6+ feel no pain attribute that would be gained, but because of the ability to take the named character known as Eldrad Ulthran. In this instance, I opted for Alaitoc simply because when combining it with flyers the -2 modifier is just too good to pass up. 

Due to the restriction on points, I had to take the lesser strength star cannons loadout on the Crimson Hunter Exarchs rather than using the bright lance loadout. Normally the star cannon option is better than bright lances loadout however for this particular force taking bright lances would have been very helpful as my army was particularly lacking in high-strength weaponry. 

In my army, I had two strength eight weapons firing whopping (yes that’s sarcasm) four shots per turn. And in a meta saturated with Leman Ross battle tanks, Imperial Knights, Castellan robots, Leviathan dreadnoughts, and the myriad of other incredibly tough vehicles, two strength eight weapons is beyond mediocre. 

I decided to bite the bullet, suck it up or whatever other clichés you can use for being screwed over and I received the full quota of three victory points per game and decided to treat the whole tournament as an experiment as to whether composition scoring is actually valid in the current era  Warhammer 40,000.

In my first game, I faced a mirror match against Lara hold a late Jock elder. This was a good game against a rookie tournament player and despite his rookie status, he played a very good game. I think it’s fair to say that the missions that were used in this tournament were extremely erratic in their scoring at worst and wildly inconsistent at best. 

The irony with regards to this mission came in the fact that I made a rookie mistake by not properly reading the victory conditions and thought that I was scoring objectives at the end of the player turn rather than at the beginning which was the case had I read the mission parameters beforehand correctly I would have won this game however the cookie crumbles and I got little crumbs so moving on.

Game to pick me up against one of the best players in the New Zealand 40K community in fact in recent times he was the national champion of New Zealand. He was taking an Astra Militarium force otherwise known as Imperial guard. His army met the full criteria composition scoring and consisted of a bunch of battle tanks and a few artillery pieces coupled with a Scout Sentinel and some mortar teams. This particular mission was bizarre and featured a quirk that involved the playing area reducing by D6 +2 every player turn. I played the mission to its fullest in the fact that I used my vehicles to congest my opponent's deployment area causing him to lose half his army not to my shooting or memory capacity but to the quirk of the game. 

The outcome of the game was a draw which was good considering the calibre of my opponent. I consider a personal victory in spite of the actual score. In this particular matchup, I think I only really made one crucial error which was to place one of my Crimson Hunter Exarchs in a precarious position where it was not able to make it second 90° pivot and still land on the table. With hindsight, I should have flown my flyer off the table which would have meant it could have returned later in the game. Ha! A Eureka moment!

We live and learn I guess, and this leads me into my third game which is was again against the Astra Militarium a.k.a. Imperial guard. However, in this guise, they appeared as a spam list of hell hound flamer tanks and eight Scout Sentinel’s loaded out with Auto Canons employed to deny deep striking opportunities.  This mission required me to take 3 Characters and get them in the centre of the board and keep them alive for as long as possible in order to gain victory points.  I used my one of opponents Hell Hounds to my advantage by surrounding it in the centre of the board and subsequently wrapping it with troops and characters in melee. 

This meant that my opponent could not move the tank out of melee and could not shoot my characters or the accompanying troops. I then used my Crimson Hunter Exarch’s and Wave Serpents to systematically pick off his units one by one whilst employing my snipers to shoot his characters. The game ended after turn three with my opponent decided that enough was enough and he was happy to concede in the loosest sense of the term in that we were reaching the end of our allotted time period and he didn’t see the sense in playing another turn. This provided me with my first victory of the weekend and a final score of 7-1 which gave me a major victory in battle points.

Day two started with a horrible matchup which pitted me against an Imperial Knight, a Space Marine Black Templar sword brethren detachment and an Adeptus Mechanicum battalion. This game had ebbs and flows all over the place and although it ended up in a good victory for my opponent, I pushed him all the way and if not for a few lucky dice throws on his behalf it could have been a very different result. My lack of high strength weapons was pronounced in my both this game and my following game as I found it very difficult to wound the high toughness Knights and Dreadnoughts being used by my opponents.

 Moving on to game five which was against a lovely opponent who was using Chaos Space Marine force featuring the ultimate bad guy, otherwise known as Abaddon the Despoiler. This game was a great game that went down to the wire, and ultimately ended up in a draw when my snipers were able to dispatch his warlord in their last turn, which gave me the rather unusual record of one win two draws and two losses.

My final position in the event was 18^th out of 36 players. This isn’t bad considering the army that I had and my serious deficit of high-strength weaponry. However, it does highlight the fact that some armies are better equipped to run as a single faction than others. Troops choices were imperative to a winning list and this was highlighted by the armies that featured in the top ten. I can’t help but feel a little cheated by my results not because of the way my opponents played but because I was so limited in my choices yes I could have ignored the composition criteria but to do that would have defeated the point of the composition and to be down by three points against some opponents before this game has even started could have or would have been insurmountable in the majority of cases.

Thankfully New Zealand is slowly but surely adapting to the global trend which is to ditch composition scores entirely as evidenced by the proliferation of ITC tournaments that are now becoming prevalent in our 40K competitive scene. I welcome this change and hope that it continues as it will only improve our players and make them better equipped to face other countries in the international team tournaments that have become very popular in recent times.

The phrase ‘iron sharpens iron’ is very apt in that better players play newer players and teach new players the habits and techniques needed to compete at a high level. This can only be a good thing and I salute all local Wellington tournament organisers such as Hagen Kerr and Peter Dunn for adapting their tournaments to meet the demands required and necessary for New Zealand to become a force internationally. Long may it continue.

A Titanic Comparison

A Titanic Comparison

Wraithknight with two Heavy Wraithcannons
 and two Scatter Lasers (and no Invul!).

Recently I started putting together my Wraithknights with the intention of using at least one in a fluffy campaign I'm partaking in. One of the players in this group proclaimed that the Wraithknight is comparative with a Dominus Class Imperial Knight (Castellan/Valiant). I asked him how he qualified this statement and he told me that its guns ( I presume he meant the Heavy Wraithcannons) would wound a Castellan on 2s. He compared the stat lines and mentioned that the Invulnerable saves were similar. This is where his argument falls apart.

Castellan with every
gun possible!

Wraithknights only gain an invulnerable save if they are using the Sun Cannon and Scattershield weapon loadout or the Titanic Ghost Glaive and Scattershield option. What's wrong with that you might say. Well, that reduces the number of ranged weapons by either one (first option) or two (second option).  If the Suncannon is being used that the Wraithknight has a weapon that inflicts 2D6 shots at a range up to 48, that is S6, -2AP dealing 2 points of damage per hit. Not bad, although it tends to be a bit swingy whenever you have variable shot weapons, and it costs 60 points (it was originally 118 points and even then I had Imperial Knight players telling me that it was a fair price!).

Just for comparison lets put the Sun Cannon up against the Volcano Lance which was FAQed in April 2019 to the lofty cost of 70 points (from nothing at all). For that price you get D6 shots at S14, -5AP and 3D3 damage! So that's double the strength, more than double the AP, and a minimum of 3 damage per shot. BUT WAIT! THERES MORE! You get to re-roll failed wounds against Titanic Units, and you still get to keep your 5+ Invulnerable save.

I put these numbers into Mathhammer 40K and it worked out that the Suncannon would do on average 2 points of damage to a Dominus Class Knight with a 5+ invulnerable save. By contrast, the Volcano Lance would do just under 5 points of damage to a Wraithknight.

What is interesting to me is that it would appear GW have taken the Suncannon, halved its shots, doubled its strength, AP and Damage and given it to the Imperium. The kicker is that the Wraithknight might get a lot of shots, but it has to hit with those shots and then wound, and then hope the opponent fails his saves (so that's 5+ invulnerable for a Wraithknight with a Scattershield). The same can't be said for the Castellan's Volcano Lance.

At this point, I don't see any merit to the argument that a Wraithknight is comparable to a Dominus Class Knight. But for the sake of thoroughness, I will go through option two.

If you use the second option, then the Wraithknight can only take the Secondary Weapons for ranged attacks which are all S6, and of these weapons, only the Star Cannons have a fixed AP (-3) and multi-wound damage (D3). These are additional points, not free like the Melta Guns, Las-Impulsor,  or the Twin Meltaguns, Conflagaration Cannon, Thundercoil Harpoon, on the Dominus Class Imperial Knights.

Now obviously the Wraithknight has its awesome Titanic Ghost Glaive. The problem is that with only 4 attacks hitting on 3s there is a fair chance you will only get two wounds through. However, because of the straight 6 damage on the weapon profile, you'll average just under 9 points of damage. Now that better, but you'll have to survive at least two rounds of being shot at by the Castellan, and then the overwatch, by which time your Wraithknight will be hitting on 5s, and barely strong to hold the Titanic Ghost Glaive, much less swing it.

Spreadsheet Comparison

Now I could go go on to say how the Imperial Knights have multiple stratagems, relics, and warlord traits which can further improve their stats, and how the base cost of the Wraithknight is a lofty 402 points vs a Knight Paladins 285 points (which is less than the 337 points a Ynnari player pays for the 9 wound Yncarne with her S6 Sword).

I challenge any Imperial/Chaos player to tell me they don't have it really good right now. The new rules for Assassins are outrageous (see my article regarding the Vindicare Assassin) and the new Chaos Knight rules are obscene! And yet us Aeldari players still get lumped in the 'that guy' bracket. But hey, let me know what you think, is a Wraithknight equivalent to a Dominus class Imperial Knight?

Wraithknight Rejuvenation

So, with the points reduction in the Chapter Approved 2018 book, I decided it was about time I put my Wraithknights back together. A good year ago I had decided that I didn't like the look of my Wraithknight’s, so I stripped them of all their paint and their glue put them in little bags, and consigned them to the 'for the future' drawer.






Original pose and paint job

After pulling them out of their bags I decided to pose these particular models in a far more interesting manner than their previous incarnations. This meant that I would need to position them using wires and magnets, and thus make the process more time-intensive.

The key to getting interesting poses for these models was to make them look as though they were performing some kind of action, be that running, jumping, walking or slashing with their swords. To this end, I decided I was going to have one that looked like it was walking and one that looked like it was jumping.


Re-posed Wraithknights

Obviously standing a model of this size on one leg requires the standing leg be reinforced in some capacity. To do that in this model I took two pieces of wire which I then twisted to form a nice strong cable and super glued it at either end. The distal end of the cable was inserted inside the knee joint and the proximal end of the cable was inserted inside the ankle joint. I also ran a cable from the foot into the ankle.

I used a Dremel to drill the holes in which I would insert the cables. Typically, I would start the smallest drill bit and work up in size until the cable was able to fit the hole but still remain snug. Once achieved I needed to make sure that the tension on the wire was sufficient to provide the strength needed to carry the entire weight of the torso. The wire works like a hamstring in a human leg, with fixing points in the ankle and hip.

Internal 'hamstring' 
In this image, you can see that I have placed two magnets at the top of the Torso.


This allows me to separate the torso from the legs, therefore making it easy to transport the model. The magnets are strong enough to support the weight of the upper body. The importance of this cannot be over-stated as failure to support upper body results in a Wraithknight torso that just swings around wildly due to the weight of the large Wraith Glaive. The magnets towards the front of the torso are to stabilise it and stop it from spinning around. There are lots of voids and cavities where magnets can be placed without looking conspicuous making the Wraithknight a good candidate for magnetisation.

A Prime Example of Power Creep in the 40K Universe: The Vindicare Assassin

I am writing today to voice my opinion regarding the Vindicare Assassin, a prime example of the slow but steady power creep that is slowly poisoning 40K. The focus of this article is the Vindicare Assassin. This unit costs 85 points and for that, you get a mixture of the Asuranyi named characters Maugan Ra and Illic Nightspear all mixed into one, only he is far more deadly.

How do I qualify the above statement? Maugan Ra costs 140 points. His special abilities include the ability to shoot twice, hit on 2s, and re-roll 1s without suffering any modifiers. He has a 2+ save, no invulnerable save and no ‘feel no pain’. He cannot benefit from any of the Craftworld attributes, cannot have a Warlord Trait and cannot be included in a Ynnari detachment.

Illic Nightspear costs 80 points and his main ability is that he can snipe characters with his special rifle that wounds all non-vehicle units on a 2+. He has five wounds, a 5+ armour save, no invulnerable save, and cannot gain a ‘feel no pain’.  Being a Ranger, he has a +2 to his cover save, and -2 to hit outside of 12”. He is able to ‘deep strike’, this obviously reduces this ‘elite’ sniper’s ability to shoot and thus he hits on 3s when using this ability, which shouldn’t be an issue, however when you’ve only got one shot it’s surprisingly easy to miss.

The Vindicare Assassin will cost you 85 points. For this expense, your Imperial Army

will receive a unit with a 72” range strength 5, -3AP Exitus sniper rifle causing D3 damage. That sounds pretty good, but the icing on the cake is that this rifle ignores Invulnerable saves. He hits on 2s, and if he remained stationary in his previous Movement Phase (which means he can still charge in that previous turn!) then he hits on 2s regardless of modifiers. Sounds a bit like Maugan Ra to me…… only better.

But wait there is more. If he rolls a six to wound, he does D6 damage instead of D3. That’s amazing! But wait, there’s more! If he fails to kill your character from his range of 72’ with his strength 5 rifle, he gets to roll a D6 and on a 3+ he inflicts a mortal wound. If that doesn’t kill your character, he gets to roll a D6 again, on a 4+ he inflicts another mortal wound! And if he doesn’t kill your character, he gets to roll a D6 and on a 5+ and guess what? Another mortal wound.

Just to rub salt in the wound he also ignores cover. So, in a sniper duel of the best Aeldari Sniper in the galaxy (Illic Nightspear if you hadn’t clicked) vs one of numerous Vindicare assassins, Illic doesn’t stand a chance. Anyone else seeing an issue here?

If Illic was to get a shot in he would be -1 to hit, yet the Vindicare would ignore the -2 to hit Illic. The Vindicare would also have a save seeing as he has an Invulnerable save (an ability called 'Lightning Reflexes', that sounds like an Aeldari Stratagem does it not?) so the -3 on the Voidbringer (Illic’s supposedly Lethal Sniper rifle) could easily be rendered null. Illic has no such save and would, therefore, be dead as his cover save would be ignored by the standard issue Exitus Sniper rifle used by the numerous Vindicare Assassins. All of that for a five-point differential in points cost.  

And just in case you are shouting 'lock him up in melee', he has a pistol that also ignores Invulnerable saves, so that’s not going to work either! He also has FIVE attacks (more than the never killed Original Aspect Warrior Phoenix Lord of the Dark Reapers, or the Elite Sniper who has advanced knowledge of the webway. Yeah, that technology that the Imperium doesn’t know how to use….

‘His (Illic Nightspear) worth to the craftworlds' cause does not end with his arrival on the field of war; his accuracy with a long rifle is unmatched in all the galaxy, and Ork Warlords, Necron Overlords,Imperial Guard generals and Chaos Champions have all met their end under his watchful gaze.’(Games Workshop, Codex Craftworlds page 43)

Yeah ok. Next!

Maugan Ra has supposedly lived for ten Thousand years without dying, (according to the lore written by Games Workshop) in the game this is represented with a 2+ armour save but I'm sure we can all agree that 4+invulnerable available to almost every Imperial  Assassin and Space Marine character model is better. So what can Games Workshop do to balance this situation? 

Firstly increase the cost of the assassins to at least 110 points and make them unique like the Solitaire is in the Harlequin army. That's still good value for a model that kill any normal character model with relative ease. Secondly give every named Asuranyi named character a 4+ invulnerable save, and have Illic Nightspear always hit on 2s and ignore modifiers. This would restore Illic to his rightful place as the best sniper in the galaxy and put the Phoenix Lords on a par with other faction's character models.

This is a clear indication of power creep. It shows how a new ruleset is clearly superior to an older set and starts down the path of using rules to sell models, rather than just the rule of cool. Why is this important?

Well, it creates the gulf between the 'haves'' and 'have nots'. Those with the financial means to buy every model released will have an advantage when it comes to playing games. It also devalues the importance of named characters when 'run of the mill' units are cheaper in points and more points efficient. Indeed the whole point of named characters is that they are more deadly and powerful and therefore limited to one per army. Yet an Imperial player can have multiple Vindicare Assassins, where is the logic in that?