First games in 6E

It didn't take long for me to hear someone say the immortal words that kick off every new Codex and every new Edition:  "They ruined Warhammer!".

Naturally the level headed among us find a slightly less hyperbole filled way to describe our concerns.

First, the Top 5 things to like about Warhammer now:

1.  Shooting armies stand a chance.  They FINALLY realized that different units do their damage in different ways and that should actually be okay with GW.  Shooting was nerfed by the simple fact that the shooting just really wasn't doing much.  Assault armies tended to be so hard to kill and fast to deliver, plus wrapped in armor with silly cover saves.  Shooting just was simply fruitless.  Even with high volume of fire it didn't matter because assault armeis attack the easist stat in the game:  Leadership.  Shooting attacks the most protected stat in the game:  wounds.

2.  Despite the damage threshold vehicles now have, your tanks can now keep pumping out shots a whole lot easier, and there's nothing saying, in our melta heavy world that a tank would have survived more than three solid hits in the first place.  Nothing more frustrating than taking a RailHead and getting it silenced the entire game.  They also made vehicles less of a target.  Now that they can't do anything to objectives, the tanks will get shot less.  So the threshold is a bummeron some levels but I really think that'll be alright in the end.  It also forces the armies to be a little more sensical.

3.  Fearless saves are gone.  Nuff said there.

4.  Warlord Traits.  They aren't very powerful in general, but they give you really goof fodder if you want to explain a battle, mix things up and write more interesting Battle reports.  You can have a Space Marine Captain name for every ability in your preferred column!

5.  Dawn of War deployment gone.  Good.

Thn there's the not so great:

1.  Wound allocation deserved quite a few illustrated examples just for ease of understanding.  While gameplay eventually untied it for us, the impression you gt from the book is fragmented enough for someone to easily misunderstand it.  Clarity on such an important point, with more pictures as well as words would have seemed wise.

2.  I'm lukewarm on allies at BEST.  I feel like some armies just cry out to be joined like Chaos and Daemons, or Sisters of battle reuniting with their IG vassals.  But then the oddball ones like Tau and Space Mariens make you go:  "whuuuuuu?  as Battle Brothers no less?".

3.  Game length appears to be affected.  This seems primarily due to the added complexity of close combat.  Makes it tougher to play in a tourney at least initially.

4.  The 1999 Point break is an annoying source of problems.  1999 games are what I want to play so the force Org chart expansion can be avoided.  I just assumed my opponent was doing the same and midway through the game I asked how he had so many darn HQ's and he told me innocently that he was playing 2K.  This silly point break seems capricious and now you never know what FOC people are going to take til you start the game.  I hope tourneys sort of adopt  1999 or even 1850 as tourney standard to avoid this sort of "surprise" happening.

5.  AP in close combat.  What a pain in the patooty.  2+ armor is now ridonculous to crack.  Terminators are just going to go buckwild in combat now and many armies will have no answer for them.

In the end, Warhammer looks like it will be fine.  There are gripes and there are plus's.  Big thing now is for you to go out and play 20 games so you can run into lots of rules questions and get them answered so that you're not left wondering what truck just ran you over at a tournament.

I hope everyone stays calm and doesn't judge each other harshly during this learning phase.