7th Edition: Rules that have changed!

I will be taking a closer look on all the 'smaller' changes that were made in 7th edition, this means I won't be talking about the bigger changes like Unbound or the Psychic phase.

First off, night fighting has been changed to if it's on (turn 1) it gives all units stealth. No more max range or shrouded at one range band and stealth on another. No more if not night fighting on turn 1 it comes at turn 5. Now it's just plain and simple, if on: Turn 1 = all units have stealth! Easy to remember, thank the Emperor!
(Poor dark eldar, but it's believed that their new codex is coming soon).

Templates on building firepoints or vehicles that are open topped hit the occupants now. D6 hits with the template weapons Strength and AP. This is something I've heard people asking for like forever so it's nice to see it included. My Sternguard vetarns with combi-flamers and a heavy flamer are rejoicing and can't wait to drop pod and torch some Ork Trukks.

And they shall know no fear no longer gets the extra 3" regroup. Nice as it felt a bit cheap to get it as well as just getting to move and shoot etc like normal. Made ATSKNF a bit too good.

Sniper got a slight buff so they are now strength 4 on vehicles instead of 3. Meaning they can glance Armour value 10 now. I like it as it means that at least they can try to shoot out vehicles and when my Space Marine Sniper unit with a missile launcher fires at a vehicle, maybe the snipers get to shoot as well instead of just the missile launcher.

Assault vehicles got a little better as they can assault out of their vehicle even if it got shot to hell/blown up. The only time they cannot is if they arrived from reserve/outflank etc. My mental image of how this would work is a bit strange (guys charging out of a vehicle after it got blown up with them inside!) but I'm not complaining. Every little buff to assault is good at this point!

Area terrain got rolled into difficult terraint so now Difficult gets you a 5+ cover save.
Charging through difficult now reduces your charge range with -2 inches, a lot easier to remember than the old rule!

Jink got a major change, it now gives 4+ cover instead of 5+, but you have to choose to jink or not and if you jink you can only fire snap shots! A risk/reward kind of rule, I love it!

Split fire and Counter-attack does no longer require a Leadership test, nice improvement making these rules both better and faster to play with.

Smash now only lets you do one attack, instead of halving the number of attacks rounding up. Easier and Monsterous creatures got a bit of a nerf. Which is good because I felt like many times it wasn't even a question wether they should Smash attack or not.

Flying monsterous creatures can't charge while swooping (not new?) but they can also not charge right after they change into gliding, meaning they will have to wait a turn to charge. This is nice as before you would get a flying hive tyrant in your face, it would shoot the living daylights out of your poor unit, blast it with psychic powers and then charge and clean up the left overs.

Walkers have hammer of wrath now! a slight boost to assault oriented walkers like Ironclad dreadnoughts, deffdreads and the upcoming Gorkanaut.

Armourbane now says roll an additional d6 for armour penetration whereas the old rule said roll 2d6 for armour penetration. Almost the same but I guess you can now stack d6's for armour penetration with armourbane.

There's no more Git 'Im boss or whatever it was called in challenges. Now instead if one of the units that the challengers were with has no one else to fight, they will actually start hitting the opponents challenger instead!
As before they just stood there looking on, and every 5 on-looker would give his sides challenger a free re-roll.

Also in a challenge if one side defeats the other challenger and causes excess wounds, these wounds go onto the unit! So a sergeant challenging out a nasty enemy character and so getting annhiliated won't do much to stop the 'nasty enemy' from killing the sergeants men with the excess wounds it caused.