First 7th Ed Game Impressions

[ElectricPaladin]

I got to play my first game of 7th last night. I'm fairly confident that we actually played 7th, as it was me (an experienced player) vs. a nearly new player (back after years away) so I got to look up every single rule as we played so I could explain it properly, which gave me the opportunity to reteach myself as well.

And yes, it was a success. The new guy will be starting either White Scars or Grey Knights, or White Scars with Grey Knights allies. He suffered a bit over becoming "just another" power armor player, but in the end he decided to go with the models and fluff that spoke to him.

So, my impressions overall are:

1) Not an awful lot has changed. It's still basically the game I learned back when I first started playing at the end of 5th. The game plays very similarly, but...

2) The psychic phase is fun. As the Tyranid player - I don't actually play Tyranids, but that's the demo army my FLGS had - I got to play around with a decently powerful psyker. The Psychic Focus rule gives psykers a nice boost. The psychic phase is a fun tactical experience. My opponent was not bored or turned off by not having a psyker of his own - in fact, he seemed to enjoy managing the resources available to him to pick which of my powers to attempt to deny. Psykers did take a hit, overall, in the sense that powers seem more likely to fail. In this particular game, I lost three powers; two failed to cast and one was Denied. This is far fewer than I usually did in most games of 6th with a Ld 10 psyker.

3) The changes to shooting are very intuitive, and my new player opponent understood them immediately and began making smart choices right away.

Of course, nobody here was trying to break the game. It was 500 points, fairly generic Space Marines vs. fairly generic Tyranids. I played pretty hard, and don't think I would have done much of anything differently vs. another experienced player (except, you know, bring my own army that I actually know what I'm doing with).

It was a fun game. No complaints so far.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Thanks for the impressions! I'm between armies at the moment so my first game is probably a couple of weeks away still.

[Defenestratus]

Funny how my impression of the psychic phase was the complete opposite.

Nothing but futility and frustration the entire game.

[ElectricPaladin]

Funny how my impression of the psychic phase was the complete opposite.

Nothing but futility and frustration the entire game.

Weird... maybe I'm just used to it from my Fantasy experiences? I can definitely tell you that my opponent hadn't played since around the juncture of 3rd and 4th, and he loved it.

[Caitsidhe]

Weird... maybe I'm just used to it from my Fantasy experiences? I can definitely tell you that my opponent hadn't played since around the juncture of 3rd and 4th, and he loved it.

In fairness, why wouldn't he? If he hasn't played in forever and now gets a game in with a regular who helps him do all the work, why wouldn't he be ecstatic? And let's be quite honest, 500pts is not exactly a test of the new psychic rules.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Also - not everyone has the same reaction you do.

[ElectricPaladin]

In fairness, why wouldn't he? If he hasn't played in forever and now gets a game in with a regular who helps him do all the work, why wouldn't he be ecstatic? And let's be quite honest, 500pts is not exactly a test of the new psychic rules.

Also - not everyone has the same reaction you do.

No, no, it's actually a fair critique. My one rebuttal is that I wasn't doing all the work - once I'd explained the rule to him, he took on working the rules for himself. I was there to help, it's true, but I wasn't telling him what to do every turn.

But honestly? It's entirely possible that the system falls apart at higher points levels, with multiple psykers with multiple disciplines on each side. I don't know yet.

From what I've experienced, I would argue that this system definitely has a learning curve. It's entirely possible that if a veteran 6th Edition player were to jump directly into 7th, the system will feel unbearably clunky, but by the time we're all experienced in 7th, it'll feel quite intuitive.

Maybe?

Let's stay in the mind of "we don't know what we don't know."

[Eldar_Atog]

Funny how my impression of the psychic phase was the complete opposite.

Nothing but futility and frustration the entire game.

Futility and frustration ruled the day at the shop. Played 1 game myself and watched 3 others. My psyker got 1 spell off successfully, 2 perils results, and about 4 denies. The success rate in the other games seemed not much better than 25%.

I would have no problem in comparing the psyker phase to a bucket of blood red urine.

[ElectricPaladin]

Futility and frustration ruled the day at the shop. Played 1 game myself and watched 3 others. My psyker got 1 spell off successfully, 2 perils results, and about 4 denies. The success rate in the other games seemed not much better than 25%.

I would have no problem in comparing the psyker phase to a bucket of blood red urine.

So... freaking... weird.

I mean, sure, I had to get used to the idea that I wasn't going to cast as many powers as I was used to. I threw more dice at the powers that I really wanted and used "just enough" dice on the throw-away powers. And honestly, I didn't mind that I failed more often. And I never Periled even once.

[Eldar_Atog]

So... freaking... weird.

I mean, sure, I had to get used to the idea that I wasn't going to cast as many powers as I was used to. I threw more dice at the powers that I really wanted and used "just enough" dice on the throw-away powers. And honestly, I didn't mind that I failed more often. And I never Periled even once.

Just to give more specifics, I was using 1 farseer and I usually had 4 or 5 warp charges. My opponent had no psykers and had 5-6 dice for deny. The powers that I was trying to cast were Guide and Doom so my opponent always had an incentive to deny. I usually rolled 2 dice per power until I got so frustrated that I started rolling 3 dice for Guide. Got a perils result every time I used 3 dice.

My opponent rolled at least one 6 every time he rolled to deny.