The Legion in 6th Edition?

So...
The long awaited 6th edition is here, and with it a few changes for the army.
Not necessarily composition-wise, but with new rules there are definately som pros and cons to know about:

PROS:


- Hammer of Wrath 
It is a sweet extra attack, which can add a lot for these small elite squads, especially against hordes which normally might tarpit you. You have to be very careful about whether you want the extra milage (JP in movement phase) or the hard hit (Hammer of Wrath) though, so be selective about using the Hammer only when you're sure you'll reach the lines (or can assault with more squads and it's not a tragedy if not all of them make it into close combat). As mentioned by I believe a Silver Skull Marine in the lore. "You don't want to rest i front of the big guns..."

- Deep Striking
Deep Striking is still a bit tricky in 6th, and a gamble you might say, which we have to consider carefully, especially viewed in concert with the cons to come. The mechanics are almost identical to 5th edition with regards to the chances of mishaps occuring, but the mishap table is more in our favour now.

In 6th only on a 1 will you loose your precious 200+ point squad outright. On 2-3 the enemy gets to place it without scatter in another location. This is surely to be the most uncomfortable plae you could've landed on the board, and might quickly end up with the same result as if you've rolled a 1, but at least you've robbed your enemy of some serious firepower to do it, possibly saving your other squads.

4-6,  that's 50% of the table just shoves it back in reserve. Now this is not a good thing in itself since your army needs to attack in force to achieve something, but it's infinately more preferable to the above examples and an increase from 33% chance of this happening, to a solid 50% now is a buff for an army where every squad might deep strike (though sadly not at the same time!)

- New Power Weapon Rules:

Now there are some debate about how the new power weapon rules should be interpreted, but I've chosen to view the Glaive Encarmines as two-handed master-crafted power weapons. As such this gives you a lot of room for variation in your army between games as you can make them glaives (lances), axes, mauls or swords. Lances would be good for that first turn charge making it a +1 S Power sword. Sadly it becomes  AP4 after a round so you can become bogged down against marine players. Power swords are AP3, so they are essentially what they were except against termies. Power Mauls will not see much use I feel. AP4 is not that good for this weapon since you have to rely on an unsaved hit to get the concussive effect. There are scenarios for this of course, since it would for instance allow your squads power fist to hit at the same time as the concussed foe. Axes will see a lot of use vs. termies and the like I feel.

The main strength of this rules change isn't your ability to customize though. It means that most power weapons will give you your full sweet 2+ save anyway now and the axes which might hit you will always strike after you, so you can hopefully remove them with a well placed charge!


CONS:
- Flyers: 
With 6" range for our Melta the basic Sanguinary Guard squad takes a pounding while the flyer is in zoom mode. Hitting on 6s when you usually have just a few weapons able to hit hard enough to really dent a flyer.

Of course this can be remedied with starting a squad behind an Aegis line with a quad gun, but since there is little else to hit than your aegis line since you try to have most of your squads behind some cover, the lines might take a pounding.

Of course the situation is slightly remedied in Hover mode, but a good player with a few flyers will minimize these possibilities.

This can of course also be aided by having a very anti-flyer ally component, for instance...


- Furious Charge:
It is now "only" +1 S. So no more I5 destruction of the basic MEQ, they now hit at the same time as you do.This is a major bummer for my army since I needed to hit first with my 5 man squads to be able to survive what's coming in return! and is probably the biggest nerf to the way I wanted to play my army. I had hoped that lances would give you +1I when first hearing about these news (in addition to more strength and penetration on the charge), but sadly that's not the case! One can only hope for a FAQ.

- No more "Boh!" from the beyond!
You can only reserve half your army, and thus one of my main points about the army (fluff-wise more than effectiveness, although that's a big bit too) disappears. I wanted them to arrive myseriously where I needed them, take and give a beating and vanish again. Now half my army must footslogg it "onto the pitch" only to have the enemy blast them with whatever they have. Daemons for instance don't get this bit, but then they HAVE to deploy from reserve their whole army, we had choices.

- We need more character, mate!
- Your basic troopers, so to speak, is not characters. Thus you cannot "Look out, Sir!" to keep the weapons you want in your squads when casualties acrue. Thus you might be in big dodo, loosing that power fist, or whatver against that enemy that you just needs that special thing to be effective against.

- FNP hit by the nerf-bat (or not)?
FNP has decreased from 4+ to 5+, which of course is generally a worse save. You do get it on all but instant killing wounds now though, so the AP1/AP2 weapon which doesn't have double strength (yes, I'm looking at you, plasmagun!) will now warrant this save. Whether this is better than getting the 4+ on the whole depends on what you're facing of course, but while knowing this statistically worsens my whole armys survivability on the board, I feel it was a necessary change since every army and their aunt now sport something with FNP. It is also a lot more streamlined. No instant kill? I get my save...
 
Any and all constructive comments are welcome...