Games Workshop - Warhammer 40,000 - Arks Of Omen: The Lion (HB)

Product Information

Assuming you have the terrain set available, the game board consists of two game boards laid side by side to create a long battlefield area. The terrain is the same system as provided by Into the Dark , consisting of columns, walls, and hatchways. The system is intended to be flexible and you do not want to glue the pieces into subassemblies, as all of the missions specify the board layout down to the position of individual wall section. Setup is very explicit about using the provided game board, which features a template where columns and walls can be located in a grid-like pattern. Each square that is formed by this grid is referred to as a Zone. Players start each battle with 1 CP, and gain 1 CP at the start of each of their Command phases. CP can only be used on three Stratagems: Command Re-roll , Counter-Offensive , and Insane Bravery . These Stratagems are provided in the book but have rules that are identical to the Core Rulebook. No other Stratagems can be used.

The second part of the book covers Boarding Action battles, a variant of Warhammer 40,000 played with 500-point forces in the cramped confines of a space hulk. These games take place on a Boarding Actions Terrain Set, which is essentially two sets of Kill Team: Into the Dark Terrain laid next to each other. In practice, these function as a stripped-down version of the 40k ruleset, with very strict limitations on what types of units players can bring and a very limited set of upgrades and Stratagems to work with. TerrainNow, obviously, the Balance Dataslate mostly contains changes for individual factions, including some massive ones, and we’ll largely focus in on those in the individual articles. However, there are a few changes there or in the Munitorum Field Manual that have major implications beyond their factions, which we’ll take a look at here. Aircraft Greg: It’s insanely funny how dirty they did Vashtorr, but also no one cares about the idiot wrench god. Reorganising their forces, routing their chaotic enemies under the Lion’s leadership, and evacuating, the Imperial fleet successfully blows the planet Wyrmwood to bits from orbit, along with any chaos forces still on it – but at great cost in Space Marine lives.

Being a daemon of calculated malice, his singular goal is to become a being of such power that he can rival that of the Dark Gods themselves. Vashtorr believes that the best way to achieve divinity is to fulfil the same prophecy that Abaddon pursued in the hopes of finding a weapon of incredible power. The pursuit of this prophecy would require the collection of multiple artefacts scattered across the galaxy which could be combined into something that Vashtorr called the Key. To find and return the Key-fragments would require vessels of immense power and capability, and Vashtorr had a plan for that as well: They would harness space hulks and form them into Arks of Omen that would lead Balefleets across the galaxy. The Arks of Omen A cap on the most extreme builds – most armies aren’t going to struggle to fit into the new detachment, but a few very extreme builds might previously have wanted more than six units in a non-Troops slot, and that’s now outright impossible (with the possible exception of Elites where there are extra slots for Character models). Rob: I’m going to say that aside from AP-1, the big winner here is AP-2 weaponry, particularly AP-2, 2-damage shooting that can take standard profile marines off the table. There are a ton of guns in the AP-2 range that just weren’t super playable because getting AOC + light cover meant you could trivially tank the shots, and meanwhile AP-3 and better shooting was still (and is even moreso now) liable to bump up against invulnerable saves on the units that have one. War Dog Executioners and Armiger Helverins, Hades Autocannons, and Broadside missile pods: Your time has come again. Still, on average dice Big Azreal will canonically die but also weaken the hell out of Vashtorr, which is fine because he also costs like half the points and is not technically a God, so you have to grade him on a little bit of a curve. Bad news for Terra and the slowly awakening Emperor of Mankind; bad news for the newly returned Lion El’ Jonson, and bad news for the Imperial Regent Roboute Guilliman, primarch of the Ultramarines.No more troop tax – if you don’t want to take any Troops, you don’t have to! This is great for factions where the Troop options are a bit mediocre, especially ones where the HQ or Elites slot was particularly valuable. Arks does create some other incentives to include Troops though, so you may still want to take some. The book features a total of nine missions in a familiar format, with each mission containing specific rules, objectives, Underdog Bonus, and a map for setting up the individual terrain sections. Every mission but one features four objective markers (Power Struggle features five). Every mission features a progressive objective revolving around controlling objective markers in addition to a secondary element such as an end game objective. All but one (Access Junction Primus) includes a caveat that objectives cannot be controlled in the first round and that the player who goes second scores their final turn at the end of the turn instead of at the end of their Command Phase. Unlike matched play there are no secondary objectives or bonus points for having a painted army. There is also no limit on the total points that can be achieved from securing primary objectives, outside of those specified in the missions. Norman: We’ll start with Vashtorr. Let me walk you all through my experience looking at this bastard’s datasheet: A space hulk is an immense amalgamation of stellar debris, starships, and other detritus that have fused together after having been collected together in the warp over the course of millennia. These vessels are at a scale that’s difficult to fathom, potentially hundreds of miles long and consisting of vessels that can be older than the Imperium itself. When the vagaries of the warp unleash them into realspace, they often are infested with all manner of horrors and monstrosities that have been corrupted from exposure to the raw energies of the warp. Others may be filled with Orks hell bent on turning the hulk into the vehicle for their next great WAAAGH!, or Genestealers patiently waiting centuries for the opportunity to descend upon an unsuspecting world and form a psychic beacon to draw the Great Devourer. In the hands of Vashtorr and Abaddon, they are purged of a significant amount of their taint and reborn into Arks of Omen.

All seems like reasonable stuff, but not revolutionary – the big changes this season are going to come from the army construction, Secondary and Balance updates. Balance Dataslate & Field Manual Behind Enemy Lines also gets an additional change, now rewarding 3VP if you get one unit into your opponent’s Deployment Zone rather than 2VP (and keeping the 4VP score for managing two). This is extremely good for faster armies and pressure builds, and this is likely to be a very common Secondary choice in Arks. The other change is that the rules for what happens if a player concedes no longer specify a fixed score that their opponent receives, instead just requiring that they remove their models from the table, and fixing their opponent as the victor. This stops salty losers being complete assholes and trying to cap their opponents score at 70VP to tank their tiebreakers, and while most TOs wouldn’t stand for that, it’s good to take a potential weapon away from the worst people in the game. Secondary ObjectivesDon’t want to take any Troops? You don’t have to! Once you’ve filled out your mandatory choices, you then get a fairly broad set of optional slots that you use to contain the rest of your army, and unless you want to include some allies (more on that in a second), that’s it for selecting your units. You might be asking how you get Lords of War or Fortifications into your army, and the answer is that there are optional slots for them within the Arks of Omen detachment, so they get included like anything else. This is especially important for Lords of War, as it means that you can now take one or two of them with Faction Traits, rather than being forced to take three and spend all your Command Points if you wanted to set up that sort of combo. Let’s start with what is simultaneously the most important and most limiting factor to Boarding Action missions: The Terrain. Everything here is designed around using the Board Actions terrain set, from the rules for interacting with doors to the missions themselves. they all have very specific guidelines for each piece of terrain and how the boards should be laid out for your games. For example, this is the deployment map for the mission Power Struggle, which sees players attempting to gain control of linked power nodes: You’ll also get a regular bulletin of the latest news and happenings from Warhammer Community, so really, everyone’s a winner.