As I launch into this article, let’s set several things straight. As the title says, players were never going to be happy with 10th at launch. There are several reasons for this, The first is that the streamlining caused some key flavor factors of 9th to become casualties. The loss of chapter traits, relics, etc has driven a lot of flavor from the game and annoys both competitive and fluffy players. Secondly, GW’s method of “F*** it, we’ll fix it live” meant that the points values were going to be bad at launch. Finally, some people will just never be happy with their rules. However, GW seems to have exacerbated these factors with a few bone-headed moves.
- GW knew it was going to make a lot of people annoyed.
This may be a tinfoil hat theory but I am pretty certain GW knew the changes to squad structure, wargear and other points were going to annoy fans. I think that’s one of the reasons they were meticulous about drip feeding the releases over several days, and once they had a good shot of selling out of Leviathan boxes. This built up a lot of anticipation among players and raised their expectations. The fact they were fairly straightforward about the benefits of the edition, especially those popular with players (think less stratagems, overall streamlining) meant people got their hopes up. Although, the codex release schedule raised some red flags. They also carefully hid the changes to squad structure in their previews as they knew it would be unpopular. - Many of the issues of 10th are caused by a fairly obvious laziness and/or rushed nature of the release.
Something I have said in the past, and will continue to say, is that GW was not compelled to release the edition in it’s current form. I understand they want to keep to a strict schedule but rushing things can have a negative impact. I think that is the main reason the Horus Heresy units were excluded and hwy there are no point values on wargear. I believe the launch of 10th was so rushed they simply did not have time to manage it all. This, then creates more issues. The sword version of the Wraithknight is mediocre, but how do you keep it from being hit by the nerfs to the D-Cannon Wriathknight? Do you create a separate profile? Does this risk bloating the game? GW has removed some granularity from the game through these changes, but they have also given themselves a lot less runway to balance the game. - As I mentioned earlier, GW’s “We’ll fix it in Post” approach has made a mess of the army rules on release. The two biggest victims of this approach have been the Death Guard and the Ad Mech but there are smaller casualties littered throughout codexes. A quick glance across multiple codexes will reveal a shambolic approach, with certain armies almost being designed for different games. It has been nice to see GW address a few imbalances early, but some of these fixes will take ground up rebuilds of the army. This is very concerning given the much slower release pace of codexes in 10th. They may patch them over time, but ti doesn’t instill much hope in me.
I am not going to sit here and threaten to do anything I wasn’t already planning on doing. I am not going to be laying much 40k this next year due to personal constraints, but it is a bit disheartening. I really hate how GW has made a joke about getting rid of Power Levels, then forcing “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Power Levels” on the players : / I think GW will be able to right the ship eventually, but I am seeing a lot of glaring issues at launch which make me question the decision making at GW HQ.
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Too me 10th is doomed. The game is fundamentally designed poorly. 9th was fundamentally an amazing game that wasn’t as good as it could be to insane power creep In the second half of the edition. 10th is just so fundamentally flawed it is unfixable. Yes they might get it to a tolerable level but the game and indexes are fundamentally flawed. To start with the rule set of the top 2 or 3 armies is so ridiculous that every codex in 10th will have to have so much power creep it will ruin the game or u have to increase the pts of those 3 armies so insanely that they will essentially be unplayable and then pretend they don’t exist which will leave them out of the game for over 2yrs. On the flip side dg admech lov and sisters rules are just so fundamentally awful with multiple layers of anti synergy they have to be so cheap to compete that they just probably end up stat checking anyone. And if don’t every codex release after will just make these armies feel even more inferior. Not to much the new ow rule makes any unit susceptible to torrent weapons basically unplayable unless they are dirt cheap like the 45pt gaunts. Try playing de right now and playing any models that aren’t in raiders or have long range weapons. U simply cannot. My wyches are 110pts i would struggle to justify taking them at 60pts. I’m a DE eldar and sister player. I was also a BA Tau player 3-7th ed. I was planning on picking my old armies up again to add to my current collection. Currently I won’t touch a single new unit of Warhammer unless about 40% of 10th is just scraped or fixed. Unless 8 index’s basically get rewritten ow gets reverted melee weapons across the board get buffed and wargear gets pts I’m just not buying Warhammer and sticking to what I have.
Full respect for this article.
This is probably some of the heaviest naysaying I’ve seen of this edition, and I’m a little surprised to see it tbh! As an invested, long term player of 40K this new edition has reinvigorated mine and my local groups interest in playing again after our shared dislike of 9th edition’s huge rules bloat, and beyond what is clearly an early version of armies pre-codexes it’s generally been pretty positive feedback from what I’ve seen online and heard in person.
The most important thing to me, you can put an army on the table with minimal stress and that if feels good to play (played a couple games already, and it does feel good), are both in place, and I’m genuinely excited for more!
I think there is a lot of good in the edition but the disjointed nature of the indexes caught some off guard. People always get salty when they lose access to models and there have been a lot of casualties this edition. I imagine it will die down as either GW or the community gives point values (and some datasheets) for legends units.
Dark gods, what a bunch of crybabies. Oh, no! You can’t abuse the relic and strat systems for broken combos anymore!
“But we mathematically proved that the optimal number of Buttsqueakers was 2 units of 6 and 1 unit of 8 with Squeakus Prime and that’s how many I built and now my army is ruined!”
10th looks great to me.
I don’t agree at all! I prefer 10th way more than 9th edition! I like how a vocal minority (my physical warhammer fronds are all excited by 10tg) is convinced that 10th is doomed without having not even played it!
Yeah I think people saying this is the end of GW are just wrong, this release has been bumpy but nothing compared to the 8th ed launch
Nah, 10e is looking like some long overdue fixes to a lot of unnecessary bloat.
This wasn’t a very well written post… it’s largely conjecture with zero examples which amounts to just baseless whining. Put something actually into it so you’re not just summarily dismissed.
The previous rules were a massive turn off and convoluted as hell… it did not help to draw in new players, WHICH IS THE GOAL (they’re a business remember?). The new rules are actually drumming up interest at the local shops around here… pulling in people that abandoned it and new people who want to try it. Now we’ll see how things go moving forward. It looks like they learned a lot from AoS.
So I have to say coming from someone who came from 3rd eddituon into 8th and 9th I hated the new rules. Looking at 10th and being a big fan of dawn of war soulstorm attached units I personally like the new rules. Will we be seeing more full armor divisions in competitive lists absolutely! But I have always hated (from a realism perspective) that infantry can fire enough bullets to Crack a tank in turn 1 or even fire at aircraft at all. I for one embrace the change. It’s refreshing to have less rules. And now finally my necrons feel like the army that never dies instead of oh you can’t afford to get and paint up a silent king? Guess every list will table you because you can’t guess what freaking protocol should be active at the right moment. Or sisters getting cool prayers but oh the rules for those prayers are so convoluted and difficult to practically use you might as well not have them. Sure I can see issues with some armies units not really fitting into any real battle role. But at least I can see a direction I prefer than staying in meta land where if you don’t have the best commander you might as well not even show up. One thing that annoyed me in 9th was that your leader choices did not effect your army order of battle. For instance a cavalry commander not refunding you the CP for taking an outrider detachment Etc. Every list was battalion. And the argument for war gear is warented some units just Strait up won’t take a bolt pistol or chainsword because why would they? No incentive and it’s why I stopped playing kill team 2e cuse there isn’t an option it’s either take this or take this worse thing we know you won’t tho. Like space marines get a billion bolter variants but sisters can’t have more than 3 flamer variants. Sorry tangent but ya I think 10th is looking fun so far. I’ll look at the other factions and have a better idea but I had no problems with any base rules so far really.