G-Dubs brings us more info on the new edition of 40k!
Anyone who’s played a game of Warhammer 40,000 with a Battle-forged army will know how awesome it is to have loads of Command points to spend. In fact, for many players, much of their army-building process has been geared towards ensuring they would have as many at their disposal as possible* – and preferably a way to replenish Command points during the battle too. Well, the good news is that you’re about to get more Command points, so read on and find out all about it…
All is Fair in Love and Warhammer 40,000
You don’t just get more Command points in the new edition – both players will also receive the same amount according to the size of the game.** After all, the larger the army a Warlord leads, the more strategic assets will be at their disposal.
With both players having the same number of Command points, they will be on an even footing when it comes to the number of Stratagems they can employ. As the army’s commander, the onus is on YOU to see if you can use them to gain an advantage over your opponent in battle!
Mustering Your Army
So, if you don’t earn Command points by taking additional Detachments, do they still interact with each other in any way? The answer is yes, but how they do so has been turned on its head. Instead of earning you Command points, each Detachment you take will instead COST you Command points. However, it’s worth noting that the Command points spent on a ‘core’ Detachment (Patrol, Battalion or Brigade) are refunded if it also includes your Warlord, so your first Detachment is usually free. An army drawn exclusively from the same Faction and comprising a single Detachment is the most strategically flexible on account of their experience fighting alongside one another, and therefore offers the most Command points.
Let’s take a look at the workhorse of many Battle-forged armies as an example – the Battalion Detachment…
You’re the Boss!
This concept was heavily inspired by the narrative and enables you to manage your army selection in the manner of a real commander. You can either maximise your Command points with a single Detachment or choose to draw upon powerful assets and summon allies to your cause by using Command points to unlock additional Detachments.
But there’s more! Not only do you start the battle with more Command points, but in each of your Command phases – the new opening phase of your turn – you will receive one additional Command point.
Getting an additional Command point every turn ensures that even in the late game, you can still rely on having a number of crucial Stratagems at your disposal.
More Stratagems for Everyone!
With all these Command points flying around the place, you’re gonna want some awesome Stratagems to spend them on, right? Thankfully, the core Stratagems available to every army have been increased to seven. Have you managed to fight your way across the battlefield only for your enemies to flee like cowards before the fury of your chainblades? Cut them down as they withdraw with this handy, and aptly named, Stratagem!
That will certainly hurt if activated on a unit of 30 Ork Boyz! Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll be discussing the more structured game sizes that are being introduced in greater detail. Meanwhile, head over to the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page to let us know what you think of the new mechanics for generating Command points.
* Ah, the ‘Loyal 32’… they served us well.
** Note that the total Power Level is based on the combined power of all the models used in the battle (so the combined Power Level of both your and your opponent’s armies).
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
That stratagem is laughably bad.
my Orks don’t feel that way, but I do feel like it kinda sucks for custodes and deathwing types
If you assume “engagement range” is 1″ of 1″, then sure a unit of 30 boys might make it worthwhile, but I doubt you have all 30 within range AFTER fighting already and if you do then just wrap it like normal (Unless this doesn’t exist)
Second, for the majority of units that are 6-10 in size, it is 1.2 Mortal wounds, so basically useless and not worth the CP outside of very special use cases. Third, if you are anything less than 6 like a character, vehicle, knight etc, it’s completely pointless.
Why not discuss the new detachment system? That’s a HUGE change to the way the game plays.
What fun is that? It’s not really a big change though, I mean we all put 2+2 together, in the end armies will still be built around detachments that are fairly similar the only difference being they cost cp instead of generating them. No more needing double battalion and troop tax to make your army function but I worry about armies like Demons etc that will now see even less use.
It’s always funny to see what the community reacts to. I think when people go to write their lists it will start to dawn on them how much of a change this is.
I agree it’s a big change but until we see what the specialty/unique detachments cost it’ll be really hard to comment as if those cost 5cp etc it could make them prohibitive, the fact that a Batt costs 3 is surprising. I just hope things like Air Wing are gone, and really interested to see what happened with Sup Command and Super Heavy. I think a lot of character heavy builds are dead to be honest.
And is losing Character heavy armies a bad thing? It doesn’t really fit the lore, honestly.
But as I have been saying, it’s a new game. There’s still lots to see and some of the other biggest changes have yet to be revealed.
Oh I agree with you, I was never a fan of the Sup Command, but for some armies like Chaos it is/was a necessity. Hopefully with the new points changes etc mono faction chaos improves but we don’t even have legion traits on vehicles.
I’m loving this for my Ork army, and my budding Guard army as well. Both use brigades for the overwhelming majority of the army, so I’m thinking my force org isn’t going to change as much as everyone else’s will.
Yeah, if you use Brigades already, like, very little changes in army building other than it being harder to fit it all in due to points going up.
Sure, but why reveal a terrible stratagem as a teaser for a new edition?
The thing is just bad. It doesn’t address any of the issues with falling back from melee. It doesn’t make sense on a basic level (grots are better at killing people falling back than warlord titans? huh?). And it’s just bad mathematically – you need to have 12 models eligible to fight to make it valued at the normal “1 cp to do 1d3 MW in X situation” that most strats are valued at.
If this was buried in some codex nobody would care except to give it an “F” on their ratings. But it’s reasonable to be puzzled as to why they picked such a terrible stratagem to tease their new edition. At best, it’s an own goal.
Weeell… There’s a lot of to talk about, but that stratagem looks really awfull, while is it supposed to level the field within long range shooty armies, and slow melee armies.
It reminds me of Tyranid acid blood, and, while that stratagem have a couple of niches (basically when playing against non-carefull harlequin players), and having a cool narrative concept, it’s not the kind of thing you want to put your cps on.
Mortals on 6s are terrible. This kind of mechanic would be a lot better if all of them were at 4+/5+, with a maximum cap on the wounds they can dish (like salammanders do).
Well, not all strats are baller, haha. GW does have a history of picking less than stellar choices of rules at times for these teasers, lol. Oh well, there’s more yet to come.
Lols you got that right Reecius. Remember when they put up the rule for the new Necron HQ Szeras. With a reroll your opponents has a 1.4% chance of taking 1d3 mortal wound if they are within 9″ of the character and they use a psychic power.
Like what? They need someone that is ok with math to stop them from printing useless things. Or a least someone to stop them from trying to create excitement out of poor rules.
“Damn it Greg we are trying to make the fire bigger so more people see it, stop throwing on wet blankets!”
I assume “engagement” means something like “models that can attack,” in which case you’re looking at rolling something like 20d6 at least for a squad of 30 boyz. If it does mean 1″ then it’s not as good, but it’s still only 1CP.
If it was like over watch and allowed a d6 roll for each attack like overwatch, we might have something. That way dedicated assault units would benefit more. Why they didn’t just make it like overwatch but melee oriented and without costing a CP, I don’t know. Would be a more substantial penalty for falling back, and use a familiar mechanic that overwatch uses.
I really dislike the change to 3 CP for a battalion beyond your core detachment. That sound super steep. I like getting more CP during the game but that sounds brutal, especially with the tax to take detachments from other factions. Between the CP changes and the points increases I am getting more and more worried that they are changing too much from 8th Ed. which has been my favorite edition (and I’ve been playing since 3rd Ed.).
Sounds like they are brutalizing soup super hard. Which is a shame for the armies that could field thematic soup detachments and that needed synergy across similar keywords from different factions to be competitive. As a Chaos player I am wincing hard. Space Marines laugh at all this because it all benefits them. Kind of nervous that the kings of 8th Ed. will be the once and future kings of 9th Ed. as well. We’ll see once all is revealed.
Yeah I think anything past 2 books is going to be a nonstarter, and if detachments like Sup command etc are more than 4/5 we will never see them so even less variety in lists.
On top of the less variety of lists from people having less points and models to play with in a game 🙁 RIP 8th.
Yeah, you have to try and flush 8th from your head. It’s hard to do but 9th is a different beast. ALl of our armies will be changing a lot, the way we play will be changing, what we build our lists to do will be changing. Thinking about it in terms of how your list functions now just doesn’t apply to tne new paradigm.
Super bummer that they are changing the game so much when 8th Ed. was so popular and only getting more popular. I hope the massive changing to army building don’t kill my enthusiasm for the game once it’s all out. Odd to me that GW would risk strangling their golden goose.
I am all for the meta being mixed up. My concern is after playing Chaos Daemons primarily for all of 8th edition. Is that the codex does not have a meaningful shooting phase and even struggles to deal with high toughness units with melee. You need to pull in some flavor of CSM to round out the army and project damage at range.
If I am going to occur a soup cost to add range elements to my army and my daemon troops can no longer hug Vehicle/MC unit to prevent it from shooting, what value do Chaos Daemons even have?
You’ll have to wait and see and judge after playing a few games. The other part of the equation is the codexes, too. It is a big change though, yeah, no doubt about it.
So what I hear you saying is…..9th edition will be the same in every way as 8th edition, but my 2k army will now be an 1800 point army. Got it
Also I’m in the same boat as Jim trying to fit 5-6 characters into two detachments and it is hard!
Definitely looking forwards to seeing all the pieces of the puzzle as this whole 1.5 more months of speculation thing is making my brain hurt and it’s been 2 weeks ?
Haha, not quite. As I have been saying 9th at first looks very similar to 8th but as soon as you write a list and play you see just how different it is in the details.
Yeah, certainly less characters this go around and there’s still more to be seen on that topic as well that will change the way you look at Characters and how many you want in your list.
Basic idea is ok, but nowhere near the overwatch-equivalent that melee-armies needed (unless overwatch too becomes a 1CP strat for a single D6 per model MW-thing).
Just have to wait and see my friend =)
Interesting way to encourage pure armies (including mono-subfaction) without outright forbidding soup. I think the CP costs and Warlord benefits of the other detachments will matter a lot, though. Even so, armies will get a lot more CP unless they were running triple battallion or brigade.
That aside, it’s good that they realized fallback was too easy but that stratagem is laughable. It’s not worth the 1CP. Since we already have 4 universal stratagems that only leaves 2 to be shown, hopefully it’ll be something more substantial than this one. Maybe a universal deny for HQs or just the Warlord?
I could totally see tournaments increasing the points limit by 1 or more points just so players have that extra 6CP to work with. A 33% increase in CP for going over 2000 is just too juicy to pass up.
They could if they wanted to but the game wasn’t designed to be played that way for tournaments. We will be running ours at the 2k limit as intended.
That was my thought as well 2001 pts definitely seems sensible if they have tried to force mono detatchment the way it looks like they have
People can if they want but it is not the intention and most of the big events I can say for sure won’t be doing that.
I am just really excited to see what I can do with my space elves. The bits we have seen seem exciting. How detachments work seems pretty cool so far.
I really like this style – sounds right. Want to access more crazy weird stuff? Okay, it’ll cost you. Playing with a more cohesive and tight force? Your experience as a general can shine. Looks great!
For me – personally – my current army of GSC looks like they’ll need a HARD look over this edition from GW. GSC has always been an army that is designed to function because its mastery over the basic rules of the game, rather than its stats. All the changes I’ve heard so far are really going to hurt GSC. Being able to shoot while in combat? So long bad touches. Limit of +1/-1 modifiers? So long Biker Bombers. More CP to bring in other Cult Creeds? Yikes, combo potential down the tubes. Ld is going to matter more? Stick near the Patriarch.
So, yeah. GSC is going to need a big revision to make them work in anything close to the way they do right now. And if they don’t… I guess they’ll be accumulating dust while my more elite armies come back out to play!
I agree.
I like the changes “generally”. But looking through a GSC lense, it looks pretty horrific.
Every character having the “Tau-Commander”-once-per-detachment-rule, having their schtick of “everything can reserve” go to everyone, more abilities for armies to deal with hordes, “maximum CP ceilings” dropping (which is where GSC lives), etc.., etc
It just all looks “bad” (with incomplete information).
I think it really comes down to how expensive patrols are. If patrols are only, say, a 1CP tax, most of the issues disappear, both for GSC and for other factions that stand to be hosed by this – DE, quins, chaos daemons, etc.
If however patrols cost 3CP like bats – or even worse, more – a lot of factions simply aren’t going to be competitive until they get a codex that modifies their core rules.
It looks bad for GSC, but the codex has a lot of tricks to pull, there probably be a few effective ones. My fear is that they become a “one trick pony”, depending too much on some stratagem or unit, and my guess is that we will have depend on some sort of MSU shaming style, using lots of small units to take action VPs, while hidding on every piece of terrain.
Very curious to see what the new detachment rules will mean for forces like Ynnari and Dark Eldar. It seems like they’d need to get special treatment. Could be a good shot in the arm for Ynnari to get them boosted up as a good contender.
Can’t wait! I am sure like the start of 8th edition with the indexes the transition won’t be smooth at the start of 9th ed as GW had to do a game wide adjustments to new points and stratagems that will lack nuance at this time.
New command point system looks good. Hard to judge in isolation but I am hyped for the new edition.
So is this the “soup penalty” they were talking about – not actually a penalty for soup per se, but instead for additional detachments, whether soup or not?
Or is there an additional CP cost on top of these costs if the detachment you take is outside the main faction or subfaction?
LOVE IT!!!
If you want a more specilized army of Flyers and FA, it costs you CP
If you want a more rounded army of troops, Fa, Elite and FA, i love it
I was getting burnt out of 8th, i felt stale, it felt like strategems where honestly not working the way they where meant to, the massive soup armies felt bad and just killed my enjoyment, Stacting of too many abilites.
My armies like custodes, Marines, Tau, Guard are all going to love this
Reece, if you what you say is true and its a change, it mighr bring me back i have been buying other games but i still love 40k.
Also if you contributed to this, thank you
So my Custodes army with 3 dreadnoughts, 2 shield captains and a bunch of terminators got more CP!
Its still a bunch of dreadnoughts and terminators but that’s on me ?
Yeah, the playing field has been leveled for CP big time.
I think the most egregious thing out of all of this is the new detachment graphic. Where are the 3-D boxes, and the family tree connecting the HQ to everything else? Is nothing sacred anymore!?
lol
The change that piques my interest is the command phase. If that is what it implies, then, finally! Please please also have rules for “triggered” abilities and the like. Think the “stack” in magic.
Hope Dark Eldar get something to compensate. That faction does not function in a single detachment environment.
They said on stream they will.
After one Q&A and four sessions with Stu Black (the guy who taught me to play W40K); I’m getting more excited. The basic approach seems to be “take a battle-forged army” of your own choosing and play with it on a more level playing field.
We’ve lost the multi-codex soup approach to collecting CPs. We’re getting more stratagems for all armies AND specific things for each army.
Artificial constraints like tagging a tank to stop it firing, walking away from combat or ridiculous negative modifiers to aeldari flyers have gone. I’m interested in seeing if the terrain rules are based on ones already published in books by GW – eg CA2017 and Urban Conquest.
My biggest hope is that all the big tournaments use the same rules/missions etc. That will make head hurt much less.
the cut them down stratagems is hilarious, it change nothing about fall back, units will keep fall back as before, unless some extra rules exist, who care of 1-2 deads (maybe) instead stay stuck in melee. Pretty useless is im in melee with small units or single models… useless stratagem