First of Sixth

I finally got my copy earlier - my preciouss...!

So what are my first impressions?  Well the production quality is very good, especially the artwork on the Holy Terra and the Space Marine Monastery foldouts, which are extremely dark and evocative of the whole grim future theme.

As for the rules, a few things have caught my attention.

I had misunderstood the changes to Rapid Fire.  Moving models can't fire twice to maximum range, but can now fire once at least.  Shooty armies will still like this.

The rules about snapfiring Heavy Weapons, either when moving or charged, will also be fun.  A Devastator Squad used to be a relatively soft target for assault, but they can now defend themselves a little better.  In particular, with the closest model being hit first, it will be the tooled-up characters leading the charge who could now get a faceful of lascannon!  I think this will also make flamers a lot trickier to employ.

There were a few comments in GW Newbury about the Allies matrix.  It's a shame Tyranids can't ally with anyone, but fluff-wise it make sense.  However, vanilla Space Marines now consider Tau to be trusted Battle Brothers, whereas the Inquisition are merely Allies of Convenience.

I had hoped you could buy more terrain than just fortifications, as part of your army, such as a morale-boosting statue.  However, the sheer variety of potential mysterious terrain on the board means you are unlikely to get any particular roll.  We will just have to improvise more.

The new Big Guns Never Tire and The Scouring missions each seem to encourage you to take Heavy Support and Fast Attack choices respectively, as each one counts as scoring in these missions.  However, as they are also worth a Victory Point for your opponent, this could make them less attractive.

My next personal objective is to make sense of the psychic powers, so I can start using the spell, sorry psychic power, cards I also got today.

Tuesday will be my first chance to try out the new rules set, and I can't wait!