Games Workshop changed the game of Warhammer 40,000. It’s time to pivot for freedom. Or maybe pivot to freedom? Goatboy has thoughts.
Goatboy here again with another hot mess to chat about. This past week saw a rather large and in charge update for the 40K game. A lot of changes, updates, and rules tweaks. It really feels like a 10.5 edition which is good thing as the game continues to evolve and change. We need to always be looking at ways things can change just due to the nature of new books, new units, and new game interactions. The biggest change we have had is a whole new update to how you can move models that can’t effectively “move” through terrain.
via Games Workshop – Core Rules Updates and Rules Commentary
The newest rule we have added to the game is the idea of Pivots and Pivot values for units. To give a quick broad overview of the rule – as a unit moves through the terrain it can shift around its central axis point to better move through pieces of terrain. Things like Vehicles, big Monsters, and other units that don’t have Infantry or Swarm keywords need to move around terrain as they can’t actively “kool-aid” man through a wall to get to the other side.
This type of movement was pretty annoying to do as you had to pay for the “space” you traveled as you pivoted the model around its central axis point. A lot of the time arguments would take place with players losing and gaining distance and causing distress. Most of the time I would always ask my opponent what do you think the distance is if I try to charge you or get to where I can see you.
Pivoting For/To Freedom?
Now we have a new rule called Pivot value that assigns a value to units with non circular bases and gives them a distance to subtract from the total move to help “pay” for the inches a pivot would cost you. Right now it appears the flat value used is 2 so that means if you are doing any pivots in your movement you just subtract two from your total move, pivot as many times as you want, and continue twirling for freedom.
This all sounds good for the majority of models out there save for a few corner cases. The Dark Elgar Raiders are notoriously long and very skinny. This leads you to gaining a few inches when doing a parallel move and “pivoting” at the end to gain extra inches. This is especially an issue coming out of Deep strike, going for a charge that should be 9 inches, and watching it become a 5 inch charge. You throw in some mortal wound causing strats and you get a unit that can spend 2 CP and throw out 8-10 mortal wounds on a target if needed.
On the other side of this whole thing is that any of these units on a circular base could also abuse some of this free pivot options as they don’t have to pay the pivot cost because of their circle base. The biggest offender here is the Monolith with its corners sticking out pretty far from the base which lets you do some fun pivots for freedom at the end. This isn’t as bad as the Raider one as still its 1-2 inches at most but it does cause all kinds of deep strike issues.
…So Pivotal Power Play Or Mountain Out of a Molehill?
Now of course this all could be for nothing and will have to see. I just expect GW to give an answer of you can never “gain” inches with using pivots. It is just to allow for easier movement around the battlefield as you curve around buildings and other fun stuff. The other weird thing with Pivots too is how they affect things like Knights and how they can’t really change their position beyond moving in a straight line. Thankfully they can go through buildings more now but still it isn’t perfect.
What do you think? Is it worth it to shift things up? Is the Pivot rule a good thing and it just needs to be tweaked a bit? Are you going to twirl like a Manic Pixie Dream girl and worry your boyfriend might be a glitter vampire?
Time to bust out the Land Raiders and pivot like no one is watching!
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Thomas Reidy, aka Goatboy, the ever-evil member of BoLS. I do arts, play 40k, and even paint a lot of stuff. I have been playing Warhammer 40K since the 1990s, and have won multiple national events including Adepticon and GW GTs. I’ve been writing for BoLS for 15 years. Look at my Instagram to see what I am working on – or working on for someone. I am always doing something hobby related.
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