Happy Steamroller Day!
By now, most of you Warmahordes players will have already downloaded and voraciously devoured the contents of the 2015 Steamroller packet. But for those of you who haven't yet due to work or other reasons we're going to unpack it for you right now!
Steamroller
Privateer Press' premier casual tourney format has undergone some pretty significant changes in the current year. In addition to the usual revised scenario rules, this packet brought major changes to how objectives, terrain, and deathclock all will be played in the coming year. Let's take a look at what we've got here.
Objectives: This is a huge change over previous years. Where the type of objective on the board used to be symmetric and determined by the scenario you were playing, 2015 invites each player to choose one of the six new objective types and add that objective to their list! Effectively, the objective on your side of the board is a 0 cost model in your army, enabling you to prepare new synergies in your lists with the objective's abilities in mind. Time will tell if this is enough to get players to utilize the oft hated on light artillery models, as you can be assured that at some point you will most likely play in a scenario with an objective possessing the Firepower rule (While within 4" of this model, friendly models with the light artillery rule gain boosted ranged attack damage rolls).
Terrain: The big change here is the introduction of restricted and unrestricted terrain. Restricted terrain includes only obstructions and linear obstacles, while unrestricted terrain consists of everything else. Unrestricted terrain is now separated by a minimum of 2" as opposed to 3, while restricted terrain cannot be placed inside scoring zones, deployment areas, or within 5" of an objective, flag, or another piece of restricted terrain. Note that this does not apply to walls or obstructions placed as part of an in game effect or theme force bonus, but it effectively eliminates the situation where a huge based model could be locked out of a large part of the board by wall placement.
Deathclock: Ever have that moment when your entire plan has fallen perfectly into place, you've cleared all the enemy models from the zone, you've moved your caster in to dominate for the win, all you have to do is finish stating the activations for the rest of your army and... *beep beep*
...F*#&!
Worry no more! In 2015 if your clock times out and the game is in a state such that you would have won a scenario victory had your turn been completed, you immediately score the CPs and win the game! This is an awesome new way to combat people trying to clock you out, though putting yourself in the position to take that fifth CP is obviously easier said than done. I'm personally very excited to see how this plays out!
If you haven't checked out the packets for yourself yet, what are you waiting for? Get them here.
I'll be back later to tackle the very heated discussion surrounding the new Master's tournament packet, so stay tuned!
