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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