Oh yea, the leaked photo cover is correct too.
Please remember that until these are in our hands, they are still considered rumors, at least mostly rumors at this point.
via Birdy /Darnok
changes reported as per new WD:
The leaked photo of the cover is correct, that is the new cover of the normal hardback rulebook. The collectors edition looks *******' sweet though, with amazing artwork and brass doodads, etc etc. The skull measuring tape is pretty cool too, and the munitorum dice come in a lasgun charge pack case, and are also pretty nicely designed. The special edition templates follow the Fantasy example of being somewhat visually-related to the game, except instead of faux-gold framing, they're faux-steel framed, with coruscating arcs of blue psychic fire spoking out from the middle of each (or the narrow end of the flame template)
- Hull Points are in, it is stated that Ghost Arks, Land Raiders, and Defilers each have 4 Hull Points apiece. Necrons have the ability to strip hull points for each roll of a 6 to penetrate/glance vehicles, making rapid-firing gauss weaponry very powerful at removing armour.
- Speaking of rapid fire, you can indeed move and fire once up to the full range of the weapon (it is explicitly stated that Fire Warriors can fire their weapons up to 30" away), no confirmation on the 3x fire for Relentless at half range though.
- Assault moves are indeed 2d6", but added together. Units equipped with jump packs can re-roll the dice to see how far they charge.
- The Rage USR gives you +2 attacks on the charge
- All flying monstrous creatures have the ability to fly 24", doing something called a "Vector Strike", which is a certain amount of automatic hits to a unit they fly over, at the base strength of the creature.
- Monstrous creatures' attacks are explicitly AP 2
- Every army must select a "Warlord" or single general to lead the army, this leader gets an ability. They can choose between three different types of abilities, "Personal", "Inspirational" or "Strategic". They then roll on one of those charts to see what ability it is. The two examples given were a Grand Master giving all friendlies within 12" his Ld of 10 (Inspirational), and a Chaos Lord being a scoring unit (Personal, the ability itself was called "Immovable Object")
- Flyers are a specific type of unit, and it is somewhat unclear as to the rules for shooting at them. Either all units require a 6 to hit them (unless they have a special rule called Skyfire), or this is still the case but only if those flyers move flat-out. Monstrous creatures with the ability to Fly also get this "6-to-hit" rule.
- You have the ability to buy different terrain (it even has its own slot on the new FOC), e.g, you can buy a Bastion with a Quad-Gun (which has the aforementioned Skyfire USR). There seem to be quite a few options for what terrain you can buy, but naturally most of them are typically represented by terrain kits GW sells.
- Now we're on the topic of the FOC, the rules for allies weren't laid out specifically, but it is heavily implied that its not the same as in WHFB. They refer to allied units as "Detachments", and there is an example of a player with a Chaos Space Marine force having some detachments of Chaos Daemons in his army. Basically, I was given the impression that it is far more common (and frequent) for a detachment from another 40k army to join a larger one, than it is for a Fantasy army to have Allies. Think more along the lines of the Storm of Magic rules for using TK, VC, or Daemons.
- Here's a biggie: Units -can- go on Overwatch, giving them the ability to fire upon an enemy unit which charges them, but at BS 1. Eldar (and any other army with access to the Clairvoyance psychic power set) can use a psychic power to give a unit the ability to fire at their usual BS.
- Monstrous Creatures have access to a special "Smash" attack, allowing them to halve their attacks, but double their strength. It mentions that this gives them the ability to destroy tanks more easily.
- It's somewhat hinted that AP will have some kind of affect against vehicles. This is because part of the Munitorum dice set includes vehicle damage dice. It specifies that some of the dice are "AP 1, AP 2, and AP 3 Damage dice", or something to that effect.
- 4 Disciplines of Psychic powers, basically what we were thinking in terms of Clairvoyance, Biomancy, etc etc. There's a chart near the back of the WD detailing which (if any) psychic disciplines a particular army gains access to. It's interesting to see that a large amount of armies don't have access to any at all.
- Land Speeders have the special rule "Jink", which gives them a 5+ save all the time, this changes to 4+ if they go flat out. (I'm reasonably sure all fast skimmers get this, I'm not sure whether it's a USR or just a quality Fast Skimmers get)
-Also,models are taken from the front when they're shot. Or, to put it another way, when a unit gets shot at, models from the part of the unit closest to the firer are removed first.