Okay. It’s happening. Are you ready? You’re not ready, are you? Okay. Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. In. Out. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
With a new edition of the game incoming, some of you may be wondering what to do. Perhaps this is your first time being around when there was an edition change, in which case this may all be pretty confusing. Or perhaps you’ve been around for all this before, but you brutally purged your brain of all memory of what happened the last time for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on. Well worry no longer, newbie and/or amnesiac, I am here with a simple six-step guide to help you get through all this!
Step 1: Consume All Previews and Leaks Obsessively
Games Workshop, as is traditional, will release a trailer and probably some Q&A videos where they deliver “previews” and answer “questions” by some “players” about the new edition. Note that these previews will, for at least the first month, contain absolutely no information of any kind about what will be changing in the game, aside from broad, sweeping statements that mean absolutely nothing. These statements will be the same every time, and are in fact rolled off of a d100 table by the PR managers immediately before the preview begins. Some examples:
- “This will be the best edition of the game yet, perfect for competitive players and real fans of the game alike!”
- “Troops will be a more valuable part of your army than ever, we swear, not like the last seven times!”
- “We reduced the randomness in the game! (We didn’t.)”
- “Yes, you can keep using your old models if you fear change and consider every new edition to be a conspiracy against you by nebulous entities!”
- “Melee is good this time, we swear. Even though some of the most dominant armies of the last edition were melee, we buffed it again because apparently you all think that this is WHFB!”
- “We think that [INSERT NEW GIMMICK IDEA THAT WILL BE IMMEDIATELY REJECTED BY ALL PLAYERS] is going to be loads of fun and will bring a totally new way to play!”
- “We heard a lot of the sounds our playtesters made and wrote them down on a piece of paper somewhere!”
All of these statements will be made in the same excited tone of voice that a man halfway into a mixed cocaine/Zoloft bender would use and accompanied by a rictus grin of deathly cheerfulness.
Accompanying this completely bland porridge of meaningless marketing drivel will be a series of leaks from sites of varying disrepute that purport to spoil each and every detail of the new edition. These will mostly be blatant lies, but they will still be repeated verbatim by Bell of Lost Souls, Dakka Dakka, Blood of Kittens, etc, because they still will get clicks from people who are desperate to have even the slightest shred of knowledge about what’s going to happen. Boltguns are gonna be S10 AP-9 DmgD100 in the new edition? Add a shitty meme image and click post, my friend, because that is money in the bag.
Make sure that you read and comment on every one of these articles, no matter how unsupported or impossible it is. Games Workshop will be sure to make absolutely no acknowledgement of any of this, which will further spur the rumor mill on, to the point where people will be posting full copies of the rulebook that are either A, entirely real or B, extremely clever forgeries. These fakes will continue to confuse players for at least several months into the edition, where made-up rules will be cited by people who insist they remember seeing them in the rulebook, and will spend a solid twenty minutes in the middle of the tournament looking for them.
Step 2: Be Angry and Tell Everyone
Now that you have seen what people are saying about the new edition, be FURIOUS. This is the worst shit you have ever seen! This is worse than when your dog fell into a wood chipper and ruined your XBOX! This is a literal war crime as defined by the Geneva Conventions! This cannot be allowed to stand!!!!
What you are angry about does not have to be consistent. Feel free to be furious about them changing one of the rules and also be bitter that they didn’t change one of the other rules; you are not required to have any kind of coherent view of what should be happening at all, merely a sufficient quantity of outrage at what is happening.
And don’t limit yourself to just rules, either; feel free to criticize the aesthetics of the new edition, the beards of the presenters in GW’s video, the possible future things that you heard might be released in a dream, or even just the general existence of life on Earth. The previous edition of the game and its fluff were perfect and inviolable and any alteration to that is tantamount to spitting directly in the face of God Himself, so make sure to let your furious howls ring to the very skies themselves as you explain why SJW cucks have ruined the game forever.
Note that your rants on the subject should be as long and incoherent as possible- eschew paragraph breaks and proper formatting wherever possible and simply let your hate flow forth. Make sure to reference how long you have been playing the game at least six or seven times, and be sure to pine for the good old days of the 2nd Edition vehicle damage charts repeatedly, because nothing says “fun” like a glancing hit from a Bolter causing a cascading explosion that destroys your entire Baneblade on the first turn of the game.
Step 3: Wait, They’re Doing What?
Whoa wait hold on. Are those the new Primaris Marines? Do they have two-handed chainsaw shields with laser spikes? Wow, that… that is pretty wild. We’ve only seen the one of them from the box in a blurry, zoom-and-enhanced screencap from the video, but I think he’s eating a dude’s head.
Also, a very reliable source said that flyers won’t be able to snipe characters anymore and you don’t have to roll randomly for table edges. I always hated that. Man. Jeez.
Wait what even is that thing? Is that a titan? They can’t put titans in regular 40K, there’s no way that would work. Yeah, I know Knights are in the game but that’s different, and no, Forge World doesn’t count. Hold on, did they say there would be dogfighting rules for aircraft now? This is actually looking pretty good…
Step 4: No, No, Fuck This, I’m Selling All My Models
I AM DONE WITH THIS GAME THIS IS SUCH BULLSHIT.
THEY’RE MAKING IT SO YOU CAN ONLY FIELD PRIMARIS MARINES ANYMORE OLD MARINES GOT COMPLETELY SQUATTED AND THEIR POINT COSTS NERFED THERE’S NO REASON TO EVEN FIELD THEM ANYMORE.
AND NOW EVEN SANGUINIUS IS A PRIMARIS MARINE WHAT THE FUCK THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE AAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHH
I HATE THIS STUPID GAME I’M DONE I’M OUT I’M GETTING RID OF EVERYTHING $50 ON EBAY I’M NOT PLAYING THIS STUPID, SHITTY EDITION AND ITS STUPID, SHITTY RULES WITH ALL OF THESE STUPID, SHITTY BABIES WHO ARE RUINING THE GAME FOR ME.
Step 5: shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
lalalalalalalalalalalai’mnotlistening
i don’t care what the new tanks look like i don’t care if they’re introducing a new faction i don’t care what they’ve done with psykers i don’t care what happened to the 5th expansion tau i don’t care about the new resin sculpts fw did i don’t care about the new multipose intercessor kit i don’t care about fulgrim getting a release i don’t care that emperor’s children are their own book now i don’t care that hrud are in the game again
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala
Step 6: “Yeah, I’m Starting a Reborn Warriors army, they look pretty cool.”
“Check out the Wiki, they have some really good examples of the paint scheme and I found a technique for doing a drybrush/airbrush combo that makes the purple-into-blue fade effect pretty easy, so I’ve been using it on the bottom of all the hover tanks to give that antigrav effect around the magnetic skirts.
Oh, are you going to the tournament next weekend? Can I hitch a ride, my girlfriend has the car for work so I won’t be able to stay past 4PM otherwise and usually the 4th round lasts past then so I wanna stick around for prize awards. Cool, cool, man, I’ll see you then.”