All good things come to an end, isn’t that the saying? Love it or hate it, the current edition of Warhammer 40,000 will inevitably come to an end. Will you bear it with a stiff upper lip, or will you be creating YouTube videos burning your army? Only time will tell!
This winter we will see the release of the final codices from the Warhammer 40,000 setting, the Astra Militarum and the new faction specific book the World Eaters (featuring a VERY angry Primarch release). It’s been a hell of a journey. Released in the summer of 2020, 9th edition fixed a lot of issues from the reboot that was 8th edition 40k. This edition saw MAJOR changes within Games Workshop themselves to focus on a competitive rule set and release consistent FAQ, Errata, and point changes via Chapter Approved to help fix imbalances caused by codex creep. However, not everything has been peaches and creams over in the 40k Universe. This edition saw offensive output hit terrifyingly new levels with games being decided on the first turn if proper terrain placement was not utilized. So much so that the company that released the codices themselves had to step in month after month and tone down their own rules. With each new codex the community had to adapt to new abilities and ways to negate their defenses, which lead to a fair amount of burnout as players saw their armies being invalidated with each reactionary update from the Warhammer Community team. Things have come to a head recently, with the new faction release Leagues of Votann. Games Workshop was forced to update point costs and change a core rule mechanic before the army was even released. Obviously, things need to change in a big way. But when would we be looking at a new edition release and what would it look like? Lets take a look at some clues as to when and what we should be expecting.
The When
The edition release pattern has been fairly consistent since 7th edition. New editions are released over the summer and last for three years. 9th edition was released the summer of 2020, which puts us just about at the tail end of the three year release window for the edition. The fact that we will see the last codex releases this Winter also confirms that yes, we will more than likely see the release of 10th edition Warhammer 40,000 this summer 2023. I would put money on a campaign that runs through the Spring that ends with a huge reveal (Loyalist Primarch???) that leads into the new edition release.
The What
So what will we likely see changed with the new edition? It’s really hard to tell at this point. I think one thing we know for sure is that they will be limiting command points, this we already know via the latest Chapter Approved. Stratagems have become an issue, with too many combinations leading to devastating Alpha Strikes. Games Workshop curtailed this by giving a fixed amount to start with, and charging for pre-game things like Warlord Traits and Relics. I would say its safe to assume there will be more ‘general’ stratagems added to the new rule book. I mean its always possible that Games Workshop will do away with the faction specific ones completely, but to invalidate all the codices at once and release new indexes? I’m not 100% sold on that rumor. One thing that I HOPE to see is a return to some of the things we lost with the 8th edition reboot. I really like vehicle facings, as it makes you think more about model placement than the current abstract can see and fire 360 degrees for all weapons rules we have now. I would also like to see a return to true line of sight for cover purposes. The current rules of having a model with its base touching the outside corner of a building and counting as being in cover is abuse-able and while I do get the reason for it given the over powered nature of the game, it takes away part of the realism that I miss from previous editions.
So, what are your thoughts on this? Will a new edition of the game be released this summer? If so what would you like to see changed or stay the same? Let us know in the comments!
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I would really like to see vehicle facing and AV based on facing also. I really liked that mechanic of the older versions. I also miss the template weapons. But this is probably because of me being an older fan growing up with 2nd edition rules.
Firstly, since they shrunk the table size, they absolutely need to tweak the ranges on movement and weapons so that within 1 turn, so it’s not like even armies that aren’t specialized for long range could just threaten everything with overlapping firing arcs. That is causing the game to be too lethal, and people are throwing heaps of terrain onto the table to keep some semblance of a game intact.
Every range measurement needs to go down like 25% at least. Make it commonplace to give up shooting to footslog somewhere. Make combat one of several tactical considerations, not mathhammer city for days.
Secondly, they need to “unsquish” the strength/toughness wound chart. They need to introduce more flavour and differentiate offensive and defensive profiles more.
Ever since 8th, “generalized” profiles have been the way to go. The best games, and the best IRL warfare, feature a complex network of Rock Paper Scissors relationships. Nowadays they’re trying to add flavour with special rules like the railguns that ignore invuln saves, or demons with totally-not-invuln super invuln saves. A lot of weapon power even comes from weird buff stacking and stratagems. These are not inherently easy to balance because they interact very little with existing rules in a fair and consistent way.
All of that design space was used simply to replace what used to be a functional and extremely immersive and flavourful wound table. A table where regular rifle rounds just aren’t penetrating tanks. At one point in 8th or 9th, massed S4 shots (on aggressors?) was a very point-efficient way to take down a knight… what the fuck.
These two changes are to make the “base game” more tactical and functional. They can worry about army and faction balance after, once the game feels like an a normal scale wargame, and not some weird city-fight skirmish all about charging through walls and ignore LOS shooting and weird mechanics.
I get that this edition has had a rules blow out and it happened quicker than wed expected but I think A LOT of it has to due with now GW being attentive with what the community says, and the communitys is calling fire fire all the time withouy ever being happy a the while being in a meta chasing frenzy. I know yall are focused on tournament play but we have to admit that the tone of the community that is as if competitive is the only way to play is feeding alot of whats wrong currently in this game. If anything GW needs to keep tournament play separate from all rules, non of the armies of renown or any fluff, just give all blunt mathematical balance, and let the tournament community deal with it. The focused of GW should not be on this as tournament play is by its nature more exclusive than inclusive, no to.mention that one thing is going to a tour²nament to socialize other thing is to insentivise that tlonly ij winning the game can be enjoyed, which is a growing metallity specially for new commers as well as having a list building obsessive mentality in the community specially for new commer just isnt good on the long run . And they should also give more structure to casual play, and structure doesnt mean more rules, but more content in term of scenarios, an inbetween crusade and open play.
As for the rules of cover and vehicle facing, i do find them fun but with such an already high bar of entry to this game, making it more rules dense isnt the answer specially those rules that relly on the players having more to study pregame and the games will go back to taking evem longer thsn it already does, if anything it needs more chaos, there should be more randomness added in missions and focus on the things that can only be done the table, 40k need to go back to an experience focus game not a competiting metachasing game. And we need alternating activation, so the game is more active.