This morning we were given a rumor that sideboards were going to be included in the revised rulebook that is set to go up for pre-orders May 24th. With that I thought we would take a closer look at what exactly sideboards are and how they work, as well as a few more snippets on how the new revised edition will look.
Please remember that this is still a rumor. Even though we are getting contradicting rumors about percentages, these are still from a good source who has been right more often than not in the past, often giving us information way in advance about mini-dexes and more.
via a must remain anonymous source on Faeit 212
Right, so let's say you're playing 1,000 points.
You have a Primary list that comprises 75% minimum of the total, in this case 750. This primary list abides by all of the new tenants: 1-25% HQ, 25-75% troop, 0-50% FA, 0-50% heavy, 0-50% elite.
Then you'd have a 2 secondary lists (because of the bracket) each up to 25% of the total points, so in this case 250 points. If your primary force was more than 750 though, each secondary would be proportionately smaller. It can be any units, ignores concepts of 6th edition FoC, but cannot bring your values above the maximum limits. i.e. if your Primary had 0% elites, 0% heavy, you could have 250 points of Elites as one secondary, and 250 points as heavy as an alternate secondary.
If you were at 50% heavy already (500 points), then neither secondary could have any heavy support.
If you choose to take a secondary from another book, then you will need an HQ for that selection, and it will still fall into your 1-25% HQ maximum.
Alternatively, you can take a Formation, or Heavy Support.
No Army can come from more than 2 books.
So when you're sitting down to play, the first thing you do is look at your opponent's primary list, and their potential secondaries. Note that you can have up to X secondaries, but you don't HAVE to have them. You could just have one for instance, ergo an army with no flexibility.
You then roll for "going first." The player who wins this roll chooses deployment edge, deploys first, goes first, and also must pick their secondary first.
The person who goes second, deploys across from their opponent, but gets to pick their secondary once they know what their opponent will be fielding (but before any models are deployed), and goes second but may attempt to seize.
This means that if you want to bring a dedicated anti-Super Heavy "formation" (for lack of a better word) you can, but don't necessarily have to field it every game (especially if your opponent doesn't even have the potential of fielding a super heavy).
From a gameplay standpoint, it's intention is to bring the "list tailoring" we talked about a year ago into mainstream play. In the vacuum testing group people tell their opponent what race they intend to play before lists are drawn up. This makes armies naturally lean towards countering their opponent, but since both people have this fore knowledge it's fair and also nothing stops you from playing something "odd." Your opponent knows you'll be using orks, he expects hordes so he loads up on templates, then you turn around and bring an elite army of meganobs and dreads, etc.
This also means you won't get blindsided by things, such as mass flyers or superheavies.
It was mentioned in the past that it's "impossible" to build a take-all-comers list in 6th because there are so many things to counter: hordes, elites, deathstars, vehicles, flyers. You just can't fit a tool to deal with each into a list even at 1850, and so you run the risk of being dominated if someone plays a skew list. Now though, you're given more of a swiss-army knife when it comes to building an army. You have lots more options, but you can only physically unfold a certain number of them at a time.
From a marketing stand point it also encourages people to buy more stuff and flesh out collections then just purchasing their tuned X-hundred point list. The idea for the hobby is to really have a lot of options, and change your list from game to game, but a lot of players lack the models to do so and thus play the same army every game. This then leads to them being upset when they feel like the army is under performing and discouraged from trying alternate tactics because of the purchasing requirements.
Effectively, this means that an 1850 point list, can now comprised of 3,250 points worth of models, which is great for sales really. But granted, a lot of these "25% secondary lists" will have overlapping models (as it's not like you need to separate the detachments and have all the models if it's just a tactical squad, etc). But you can if you want, and that's the point.
Look at someone's list and their core is cron-air? Time to bust out the secondary with the quad gun. They have a Knight-Titan? Let's bring the meltaguns. If you're going first, you're making this decision based on the potential of them bringing XYZ, if you're going second you know that they're bringing it, and in a way you might even just discourage them from taking the thing you bring your counter for which in a way makes the counter have worked just the same.
I don't want to rant about it, but it's certainly been a ton of fun, building lists with more variety and options, experimenting with components and making more decisions based on pre-game interaction. It's also nice not to just unpack your army, see the opponent's and start putting your models away again because "I can't actually deal with that."
The other changes are all just a mixture of logic and quality of life and definitely bring things to a new level of fun.
It doesn't solve all the complaints that people have had for 6th, but it goes a long way. Allies lose battle brothers and can only be 25% and armies can only come from 2 books. This solves a lot.
2+ rerollable remains a thing, but with the above changed it's a bit trickier to get. My favorite change is bulky models getting Hammer of Wrath making terminators a lot better than they were, but ... that's just me.