FFG actually listened to the playerbase and made small adjustments to existing rules for the Hades update. I am especially happy with the additions to the axis rules.

1) GIving grenadiers the option to take grenades ++++

2) Making laser grenadiers useful again, but at a price ++++

3) Making radioman teams spot for vehicles +++

4) A transport for the Axis +++

5) Fligerfausts with air penetrator? Not sure that is worth 2ap since all flyers so far are vehicle 2

So far so good. I have not read the new battle builder or campaign rules yet so cannot comment. I do hope they will work on fixing the existing battle builder so that it reduces the camping and hiding ftw aspects.

Haven't received my book yet, but….

slainex said:

1)The lack of Grenades on the Axis side has always been a slight issue, but only a slight one. The biggest problem was that a lot of people never understood that Grenadier was being used in the old context of "elite trooper" not the modern context of "soldier with grenades." The proliferation of grenades within the other armies, almost every Allied S2 unit and the SSU with grenades and/or molotovs, has become more of an issue.

2) ?

3) Do you mean From vehicles?

4) We knew the transport was coming since Gencon.

5) Not sure why they would do this unless the Allied aircraft is going to be damage resilient or in preparation for the new faction.

ItsUncertainWho said:

Good to hear that hades fas some nie new abilities for existing units as for that penetrator ability for the fliegerfaust i think this might be a sign that we are going to see armor III flyers at some point and my bet will be on the SSU's next flyer.

I would say that's a good bet, given that the Sovs have had a penchant for heavily armoring their ground attack craft - the IL-2 Sturmovik and the Mi-24 (?) Hind come to mind.

Dreachon said:

Nah, it'll be the Vril Flying Saucer.

Major Malfunction said:

Vril Flying Saucer as Aircraft 3. . . that is exactly what I had been thinking.

2) All units have upgrades now, a few are specificaly for lasers.

3) No, observer teams can give the spotter ability to nerby vehicles now.

Interesting.

Observers can give their spotting ability to vehicles? Allowing the vehicles to spot for them?

What's the points of this? The only thing I can think of is since the vehicle might be a bit more survivable. But it doesn't seem to be a huge thing for me.

Duh… now it clicked! This of course means vehicles will hit on blanks. This is huge!

Agree about the F3: either the Russians or the Vrill.

Actually, the bit about grenadiers and grenades is less about the name - ALL regular German infantry have been 'grenadiers' since about 1875! - and more about the lack of grenades in a 20th century infantry force. It's completely retarded to have any front-line infantry that don't have grenades. I believe the problem came from Tactics, where the idiot french designers were more worried about 'game balance' - how I hate that term; it usually signals either a gross mistake, such as this one, or an even more gross prejudice, or both - since the original game had the infantry squads costing 2 points apiece (as opposed to the walkers, which all uniformly came in at 4 points), and since the Germans were pictured with panzerfausts and the Americans with UBGLs, the designers decided to just include those weapons and not grenades, since they were a weapon with a special ability. Of course, they soon realized their idiotic error and revised the points costs, generating a set of updated unit cards and showing the lack of game design chops in the basic game (the too-low point cost goof-up is tyro-level incompetence).

It's nice that at least someone has realized that grenades are a part of military life, and have been for well over a century (once we got fuzes that were more reliable than essentially a fire-works fuze). I look forward to Germans AND Americans who don't have them getting grenades.

Functionally, I found pre-Hades German very difficult to assault with. Multiple attempts to build a force capable of sustaining an assault without resorting to Zombies, Apes or Schwere basically brewed up beautifully. Part of the problem, after some play with SSU, is that Germans really have very few Burst or Grenade weapons. This single, cheap option to add Grenades to German units changes their meta sufficiently that it is a big deal indeed.

And Allies get sticky grenade, which in a local game right after the players gotten Hades brewed walkers up beautifully. Since it was utilized on an Allied Assault platoon, the change from Grenade to Penetrator is negligible as the Flamethrower is still around… And SSU gets the C-type Grenade, which makes them more powerful in CC, both offensively and defensively. Hellllo Zombie. xD