Funny How A Single Bad Ruling Can Mothball an Army...

These guys are sad pandas.

Maybe I'm just a bit testy today, but G. W. made an epically bad ruling. From the newest Chaos Space Marine FAQ:

Q: Does Warptime allow the psyker to pick and choose which To Hit and To Wound dice he will re-roll? (p88)
A: No. He can decide after each To Hit or To Wound roll but he must re-roll all dice or no dice.

Wow, this sucks. My Daemon Princes were the only way I had to break up assaults, and now they've gone and nerfed an already poorly written army. It's a good thing I don't use Slaanesh, because they made another bad call. Again from the Chaos Marine FAQ:

Q: Is Lash of Submission a Psychic Shooting Attack and must it roll To Hit? (p88)
A: Yes to both questions. Note that if it misses, it will have no effect.

There is no mention, or indication, of this psychic power having anything to do with shooting. Another unneeded nerf to an army that needs all the help it can get.

Well, that seals it. My Plague Marines are on ice until the next Chaos Marine Codex. Some will say that Plague Marines are tough enough without the old Warptime. I disagree wholeheartedly. There were already few enough viable units in the Codex, and now we're forced to take nothing but sub-par HQ choices. Literally forced. You must have an HQ choice. Were my Daemon Princes awesome in assault? Yes. Did they need to be toned down? Not at all.

Now that I have no viable leader for my army, and I can't use my Great Unclean One as my general, there's just no reason to run the army. What was at best an uphill battle has become an insurmountable challenge.

Now, a good general should be able to overcome such setbacks, right? Well, yes, but I never claimed to be an amazing tactician. I occasionally win games of 40k, but certainly not consistently. What was, admittedly, a bit of a crutch for us Chaos Marine players has been yanked out from under us. What was Plague Marines' only way to win close combats has been lost. Sure, they can grind, but any shock unit will table a squad easily. Yes, I'm on a rant now, but this is the worst ruling I have seen in a very long time. This is on par with Sanguinary Priests losing the ability to confer Feel no Pain. There's just no reason to field Daemon Princes any more.

It's a shame, I liked that army too...

Time to see if they fouled up any rulings for my Dark Eldar. At least they'll appear somewhere on the power curve, rather than an "also ran".