Friday, July 19, 2013

Dark Angel Weapon swap

By TheGravemind
This has been bugging me for a while now. The weapon layout of the new 6th edition books is pretty nice. But the arbitrary selection and wording in some of them is kind of stupid. Some examples below.


Tactical marine Sergeant has the following as wargear;
Power armor, Boltgun, bolt pistol, frag grenade, krak grenade.

He may take items from Melee or ranged weapon listing.
Under Ranged weapons, a model may replace his bolt pistol or Close combat weapon for one.

Melee weapons says may replace any weapon with one of the following.

So the sergeant that wants a combi-melta, has to give up his bolt pistol. He now has a boltgun and a combi-melta..... ugh.
 
Lets take this a step further. A chain sword is a free swap with a weapon. So the Sergeant can give up his Krak grenade ( it is wargear and has attack profile, it is a weapon), for a chain sword. This gives him a bolter, boltpistol and a chain sword.

And one step further. He could switch both his krak grenade and his bolter for two chainswords (for rule of cool) and still keep his bolt pistol. He could then switch all three in for three combi weapons! Though this is a bit costly.
And now we see we have to swap a bolter for a chain sword, to then trade that in for a combi-weapon. We have to do a step by step trade to get the load out that we want... Shouldn't be that way.

Taking it back a step now, I can see this being useful for trading in that Krak grenade for a power weapon (Mace is a straight upgrade S6 AP4), and so he will have his bolter for shooting, and a pistol and CCW for combat. The nice thing is that the Relic weapons are the same way, so Trade in those Krak grenades on your characters for some nice power ups.

The frustrating part is there is no way of purchasing a bolt pistol (sure it is a default equipment, but it is also one of the limited trade in items.

And of course factor in the new FAQ, that requires terminators to trade in powerfist and storm bolter for upgrades, means the sergeants with power weapons cannot upgrade their gear. Some requirements are too strict, others are too lax. It is nice that there are options, but it seems to be too much work to get the weapons we want on our models.

Anyone else notice these little quirks in the new codexes?

5 comments:

  1. Deathwing sergeants can trade in their armaments for 2x claws or TH/SS. They just can't get a powerfist and therefore no chainfist.

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    Replies
    1. Sadly, they no longer can. The FAQ specificly replaces the line 'may trade in their weapons for TH SS etc' with 'may trade in stormbolter and powerfist for TH SS or pair of claws'
      Since the sergeant does not have a powerfist, he no longer meets the requirements to switch weapons.

      Delete
  2. Ugh this stuff makes my head hurt, I really wish it was explained with more consistency!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do you mean in the post or in the codex? Cause I can't write it out more if need be.

      Delete
  3. Yeah yeah, the soft wording really hurts the codexes. I know that the writers knew what they meant, but that doesn't mean it translates. I wish that GW had a technical writer or just one rules editor that made sure that all wording was consistent and clear.

    Oh well, at least the books are pretty to look at.

    ReplyDelete