Playtesting 10th edition? Without All the stats? WHO DOES THAT!

Preamble

Hello my wonderful readers, I have not posted in a time. Life has been... interesting. 

Today, I had the amazingly fun time to try out 10th ed using the Leaked Rulebook. No we dont have all the data cards for units, points, or abilities but thankfully GW's methodology is easy enough to analyze for pretty decent guesses (lets see later how off I was!)

Now, most of you are wondering why I would do this, or anyone for that matter. Well, Knights are simple profiles stat wise and Space Marines have the most information out. Thanks to this it is rather simple to make educated guesses based on trends and such. Look, I was trained in the Navy as an Intelligence Analyst and doing these sorts of things was our job. Making conjecture from historical trends or ongoing trends and making assessments. 

The Lists:

Now what was played? Well my lovely opponent Maxxie played Space Marines, she normally plays Deathwatch but we dont have any rules (and GW has stated via FB there are no plans to talk about detachment or faction rules for SM Sub Faction) Her list is as follows:

Captain in Terminator Armor (we treated this as Gravis Captain using the Termie rules)

Lieutenant

Apothecary (we did 6+++ for attached unit)

3 Aggressors 

3 Bladeguard

Brutallis

Kratos (Full Volkite loadout... what a BEAST if these stats happen)

The Stats used

I forgot to use the Apothecary but it didnt matter in the end. He died due to an explosion (more on that)

Now, what did I play? I went SUPER simple. 

Desecrator (I used his base stats, upped his T to 12, and dropped W to 22 and OC 10 to match Canis Rex)

1 Stalker with Slaughterclaw and Thermal Spear 

1 Stalker with Reaper Chaintalon and Thermal Spear

1 Stalker with Slaughterclaw and Avenger Chaincannon

1 Stalker with Reaper Chaintalon and Avenger Chaincannon 

Knights are SUPER simple to guesstimate stats and I have been right for all but 2 things so far. That is S12 Thermals (I honestly thought S10) and Medium Knights losing 2 wounds. So for this game I just lowered AP by 1 on everything else. Chaintalons are the same weapon as the Warglaive and the Demonbreath Spear is a Thermal sooo yea. 

We played Tempest of War here in order to simulate random objectives for 10th's new play (didnt matter really)

T1 Marines:

Now you may be wondering where the terrain is. This was player placed based on what the store had. While I do think we will need Ruins, I am currently of the mindset that we wont need the HUGE GW squares. L's will be more than enough and I will do more tests with more and less terrain in the future. 

Maxxie goes first, drops Oath of Moment on my Desecrator and proceeds to do 12 Mortal Wounds via Volkite due to Oath rerolls (this was 100% expected and has been discussed by many players ad nauseum). The LT drops a Devastating Wound with his Combi weapon. So large knight is down to 9 wounds.

T1 Chaos Knights:

I move up, aim to take some objectives. I had Tempting Target on the center objective, From Left to right, the left Dread backed up because the Brutallis only has 18" Meltas and we both came to the conclusion that if I moved all the way back that the Dreadnought was just a quarter to half inch out. 

The big knight advanced to the Tempting Target, the 3 Right War Dogs move up to confront the Kratos and pop shots vs the Blade Guard in the woods. 

After moving the Knight, Maxxie uses the new Overwatch Strat into my large knight. Did you know Oath of the Moment lasts in your opponents turn as well? Well I learned about it. OOF! Still only 4 MW via Devastating Wounds from the Kratos. 

In my shooting, the Desecrator (now Damaged) did strip 9 wounds from the Kratos but both of my Thermals fell flat (I do hope GW gives some form of rerolls to CK outside of just RR1's from a Large Knight). It felt horrible to shoot my Chaincannons into the Kratos so they went into the Bladeguard and stripped a wound or two there. 

After that sadness I charged the Desecrator into the LT and Bladeguard (we allowed the Apothecary in the squad with the LT, yes, I  do understand that will likely not be a thing but we adjusted to make it less stressful) 

Desecrator makes it in, kills the Bladeguard but they TANKED the 15 Sweep hits and died just to a man. The LT comes in and makes his attacks back. Now we were unsure about the Leader leading a unit if his Lethal Hits would still proc in this situation. I was fine with it going off and due to rerolls he gets 2 auto-wounds, and 1 normal wound and I fail all my saves! PURE SADNESS! 

So now I wont score my Tempting Target but there was a silver lining! My Desecrator got the last laugh with its DEADLY DEMISE! Dealing 4 wound to the Apothecary killing him, and 6 wounds to the LT killing him as well! MWUHAHAHAHA!

T2: Marines:

Oaths gets used on my Snakey Boi with the Slaanesh Scale sleeve. Maxxie passes Battleshock on the Kratos due to being at Half wounds (we did this wrong, its supposed to be at under half, so 8 or less remaining, lessons learned) 

Maxxie moves up as seen above. Aggressors and Captain take the Tempting Target objective I want. Brutallis moves up and is JUST short as we premeasured for its Multi-Meltas. 

In the shooting phase the Kratos splits fire, big volkite and all volkites on my left shoot the Oaths target, the others shoot the Stalker to the right of Snakey Boi. This kills the Snake but only does 4w to the second target. At least some blessing here!

T2 Chaos Knights:

Having little choice, I move up and prepare charges. Since the Oath target is dead the Kratos only deals 2 mortal wounds to the already wounded knight bringing it down to 6 wound! In 9th this would have been Mid profile but in 10th... blessedly fully operational!

I actually manage to wound the Kratos (I know understand how my space pupper buddy felt shooting Meltas into my Desecrator... S8vT8 was brutal at times for him). Sadly Maxxie rolls a 6 to save... pure sadness.

I strip a wound from the Brutallis with a Chaincannon shot. Time for the charge!

If you notice that Left War Dog is missing... well he Charged in, Tank Shocked, I bemoaned taking the Reaper Chaintalon as I rolled 2 hits of 4 on 3+, wounded once and then did 3 damage ontop the 3 from the Tank Shock!

This sadly left the Brutallis on 5 wounds remaining. I based his stats off the Bastillas but a 3+ save due to the light armor for the extra movement so he would be -1 to Hit at 4 or less wounds... Said dreadnought proceeded to deal 3 unsaved wounds and did over 15 damage to my poor war dog.

Everyone else basically fluffed but the Aggressors went from 3 models to 2 between shooting and melee. 

Marine T3... the Finale: 

As we see in the above picture, I had 2 models left, one knight on 4 wounds, one on full. Maxxie Oaths the Full wound knight the Kratos is engaged with, falls back with the Aggressors, no one fails Battleshock so all is good there. 

The Brutallis moves over, nukes the 4 wound Stalker and the Kratos unloads with full rerolls into the last knight wiping me off the table. 

Overwhelming Victory for the Space Marines!!!

Why we played this game:

This game was played with the goal to make mistakes, learn the game and figure out what the hell is different from now to 9th. 

Things like having to base the things you charge, other units being able to shoot my Knights while they are Engaged, how does battleshock work, etc are all things we will need to learn. 

Since I am working on an Escalation League and will be teaching players, learning as soon as I can is quite important to me. 

I am also sort of done with 9th. I am excited for 10th. I am nearly foaming at the mouth. Monday is going to be AMAZING! Sure I expect that Chaos Knights wont be AS good as Imperial Knights and that is fine. I love my Spikey Boiz and will play them regardless!

What was learned:

More terrain is likely a good idea. Looking at it, we needed 2 more pieces of ruins in the center to block Line of Sight but in the end it was just a delaying tactic. 

We used 9th ed points so we dont have an accurate idea if units like the Desecrator or the Kratos will be realistic to field. If Volkite are D2 Devastating Wounds... it better go up in price. Knights felt good. Having infantry like Aggressors just not straight murder my War Dogs in melee made me feel more comfortable with charging in even when its a bad idea. Especially with TONK SHOCK!!! (I love that strat)

I will need to open up my home game table and work out more movement and such. It will be VERY interesting and I cant wait. 

What is next?:

With 10th around the corner and the Chaos Knight Faction Focus in about 59 hours from when I am writing this post, I will be planning another testing game, figuring out how I want to run my Escalation League and write out potential tests to run with the 10th ed rules. I might even bring back my 40k Chess Scenario series. 

I will be doing a Chaos Knight article Monday, and am looking at some videos in the future to help people learn how to play the obviously best faction!

Enjoy your day, have fun, and lets win our battle against the Grey!