So we’ve heard quiet a few things about the New Chapter Approved Warzone Nephilim which is set to release later on this month. I’m gonna have a quick look at a few of the changes which seem like they will have more of an impact on the competitive scene as a whole then others.

The first change i want to talk about is 2 secondaries which will no longer be present in the new book. I am talking about Stranglehold and To The Last. Now I absolutely love this change, personally I believe it’s going to make games a lot closer and more tight fought. The reason for this being that some armies had such a big advantage over their opponent in 5 objective games because it was really easy for them to hold 3 objectives at the end of their own turn. Now I am currently playing Eldar at competitive events and I have been taking Stranglehold and To The Last in every single one of my games. The reason being is I have enough firepower to clear my opponents units off the centre objective and then I have insanely cheap units like 40 point Vypers which will score me stranglehold each turn by standing on that objective and I am then only trading away a 40 point unit. To The Last is the secondary that I am most happy to see gone as it was way too easy to abuse. The fact that I have been able to take Baharroth and 2 units of Swooping Hawks as my To The Last choices and score 15 points easy in most of my games is insane, because it’s not like they even had to sit at the back of the board the whole game, they shoot every single turn even if they have to go into bad spots on the board in order to get good angles on units because they just jump away after and don’t get hit back. For that reason I am happy To The Last is now gone, but I would also like to see some sort of change to Swooping Hawks aswell, such as their Skyleap ability being changed to “Once per battle”.

Another change I am a big fan of aswell is some faction specific secondary objectives being changed, for example the Purge the Vermin & Herd the Prey secondary choice has now been made a little more difficult, every time I was using my Drukhari i’d take Herd the Prey because I could get the maximum 15 points just by keeping my opponent out of my half the board, which was just way too easy, secondary options should be good and it should be possible to get 15 points on some of them, but they shouldn’t really be easy to max out. That was my issue with this secondary, it was just too easy to max out, now it’ll be a bit more challenging and has become more of a 10-12 points out of a possible 15 but it looks like if you perform better on this secondary then you will have the chance to regain some CP aswell which is a really cool new mechanic. Yes, that’s right, some secondary objectives will not only earn you Victory Points but will also give you the opportunity to regain CP’s if you score well on them.

Now, the next change I am very 50/50 on and I would love to hear you opinions on it. This is the changes to Command Points in general, the first change being that now you will have a starting amount of 6 Command Points before army construction in a 2000 point Strike Force game instead of the 12 Command Points we’re all used to having. So overall I am a fan of how it’s being changed, before we had 12 and then gained 1 per battle round for a total of 17 CP’s maximum, now we will start with 6 and then gain 2 per battle round for a maximum of 16 CP’s plus whatever we gain from certain secondaries. This means we will still roughly have the same number of CP’s over the course of the battle but they will be granted to us in waves rather then a big chunk which means you need to change the way your army is constructed so that it slow burns through CP’s and it means certain lists which can spend 8 CP’s on turn 1 to completely table their opponents and end the game will no longer be an option and that is a big win for the competitive scene in general in my opinion. The only reason I am 50/50 on this is that certain armies who really rely on their CP’s and are even then not too great right now like Genestealer Cults will get punished by these changes more then top tier armies and that’s the only thing I dislike really. Hopefully GW will be implementing something to balance that out, but other then that it’s a great change. However the 1 Warlord Trait & 1 Relic we used to get for free is now gone, so not only do we have half the starting CP to construct our Rosters with, we will also have to shell out CP’s to take a single warlord trait and personally I thought it was pretty cool to get 1 free, but hopefully I’ll be wrong about this one and they balance it out in some way. We can always hope right!?

The next change is a points increase to both Tyranids and my Current Tournament Faction Asuryani. This change is definitely needed in the meta right now so I am a big fan of this one. It looks like Warriors & Raveners are each up 5 points, Pyrovores up 10 points, Tyrants up 20 points and Harpies with a different increase depending on which guns you arm them with, these all seem like fair changes to me but 1 seems a bit too harsh in my opinion and that is the Maleceptor. The Maleceptor is apparently going up by a whopping 50 points, now I know the Maleceptor has been super oppressive in the meta but since they changed its output and now it can only cast a maximum of 2 powers per turn instead of the original 4, I actually think it’s pretty fairly priced points wise, or maybe a 10-15 point increase would have been fair, but 50 points unfortunately means it may become one of those units which used to be in every list and now we never see one again, the Classic GW Double Nerf!!

Now the last change I want to quickly cover is the points changes to Custodes. I was literally sat here the other day thinking “Damn it’s such a shame that Custodes went from being top tier to just getting hit that hard by the Nerf bat that they are pretty much dead in the water now”, and most National Teams are currently struggling to include them in their top 8 armies for the World Team Championships, and as if that wasn’t enough it now seems they are also getting a points increase. If this is true then it’s going to be a devastating blow to Custodes players everywhere, they have already been hit hard GW, LEAVE THEM ALONE NOW!! Trajann is rumoured to be going up by 30 points and Vertus Praetors will be getting an increase in points along with most Dreadnoughts. It’s definitely time to put the Golden Boys back on the shelf and pray that a Balanced Dataslate drops soon that will bring them back into the fold.

So, overall I personally am very happy with all these new rules the New Chapter Approved is bringing into the Competitive 40k scene and can’t wait to see how much this is going to shake up the meta, that’s what will be the most fun. Rest in Peace Custodes, every one else get ready for a fun and exciting few months while we all adjust to this new ruleset!! These are my personal thoughts and opinions on the New Chapter Approved but I would love to hear what all you guys think about the rules too so please share your thoughts and opinions in the comments, Peace Out, Mani!!