40K 10th Ed. Discussion Thread

[Primarch]

Assuming you haven't been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you'll no doubt have heard about the upcoming 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000.

As 40K seems to be the primary game for a lot of local players, a thread to discuss the new edition seemed in order.



GW recently posted an article to WarCom about army building in 10th.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... mer-40000/

What do you think? Are these changes good? bad? heresy of the highest order? Have at it folks.

[me_in_japan]

I'm not super up to date with 9th ed list building, but the stuff here seems...fine, I guess? I'm a bit concerned that they make a big deal about simplifying the rules, then launch into this beauty of a paragraph...

For instance, you might be playing as the Gladius Task Force of the Adeptus Astartes. Your faction gives you the Oath of Moment army rule (more on this next week!) while your Detachment gives you access to six unique Stratagems – on top of the core group in the main rules – as well as four exclusive Enhancements for your Space Marine characters. It also bags you the Combat Doctrines ability, which allows you to pick from three powerful doctrines during your Command phase.

er...say what? That still seems like a lot of shenanigans, especially if your opponent has the same number of sub-things of sub-things to choose from.

I like (very much) the re-acquisition of USRs. It was silly to have a dozen different ability names all doing the same thing, and the game will be better for this return to generic terminology. Much more grokkable.

I approve of detachment rules not being...let's say "colour scheme specific". I saw a guy moaning about this over on facebook, actually. How his Imperial Fists wouldnt feel like Imperial Fists anymore if their special rule was called something like "Bolter Discipline" instead of "Dorn's shooty skills" or whatever it used to be. He got shouted down pretty hard, though, so it seems the general feeling is that generic names are better. You should absolutely be able to try out different rules combos without repainted your entire army.

Force selection being simplified is a good thing. The old charts, while I could see what they were going for, just advantaged/disadvantaged certain armies too strongly to ignore. Hopefully this way elite-heavy armies wont get penalised quite so much for playing according to the background. It'll also hopefully cut down on "my old army is now illegal, and to make it legal I need to buy X box sets" syndrome.

Overall, what little we know seems fine to me. I await actual stat blocks and basic rules before I judge any further.

Still not seeing reference to me getting my corsairs back, mind you...

[Primarch]

They said that FW stuff would be getting an Index too, but whether that will allow for an actual Corsairs (or Tyrant's Legion in my case) list is one of those questions that won't be answered anytime soon.

The blurb you posted does sound like there is a lot going on, but probably less so than the current 9th ed equivalent. The key takeaway for me is that each army will have several sub-faction options (e.g. For Eldar there will be Ulthwe, Biel-tan, Iyanden etc). When you pick your list you also pick a sub-faction and then get a two page spread that has ALL of your army rules on it. You probably won't be using all of them in every game, but at least they are all in the same place for you to reference and use as needed.

As for the rules not being "colour scheme specific," I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, not having to start a new army because you want to use a specific set of special rules makes it cheaper to get into the game. On the other, I think there will be a split in the player base between those who play to their army's lore and those who play to the meta. Having rules that are tightly connected to the lore and the aesthetic is something I personally enjoy, and I've never really understood the mentality of "My army is painted as World Eaters, but I'm using the Death Guard rules because they are objectively better." To each their own though. Generic names are fine for special rules so long as they are fairly easy to remember and make it easy to understand what they do.

[me_in_japan]

I think there will be a split in the player base between those who play to their army's lore and those who play to the meta.

Oh, I agree entirely. At least these rules allow for the players to make that decision on an individual basis, though. No more

My army is painted as World Eaters, but I'm using the Death Guard rules because they are objectively better.

can only be a good thing.

[Jye Nicolson]

As a huge 9th Ed fan, all the changes I've seen so far sound really great to me. Obviously we know basically zero specifics so who can say how it will work out, but it sounds like GW are setting themselves (and us) up for success.

Detachments: Huge fan. Good for balance, good for accessibility. I've played hundreds of games of 9th but my incessant army hopping gives me a bit of insight into the newbie experience, and I agree strats in particular are Too Much. Detachments as described are enough moving parts to express the character of a force and maintain interest for game focused players, few enough to be learnable and referenceable. Playing with a two sheet official printout and not needing to hit Wahapedia every five minutes is a huge win.

Balance wise they are self contained, and make life a lot easier for GW, allowing more precise buffs or nerfs, or the option to just *give* a struggling faction a strong new Detachment.

My prediction for a downside is I think there'll be a lot of detachments and as long as a faction has at least one competitive one, they won't spend a lot of effort keeping the others up to date. So if there's a detachment you really like for fluff reasons but its mechanics are mediocre or bad, they'll probably stay that way while other detachments for your faction tick the balance boxes.

This reminds me of Kill Team and to some extent AoS, and both are good.

Army Composition: Looks like AOS and that's good. I've enjoyed playing with Arks detachments, and I still often take troops if they're good enough (<3<3<3 Infiltrators, and while Matt hasn't had good luck with Noise Marines I assure those jerks get a ton of play). Detachments granting Battleline will make a lot of sense, other than that hopefully they do a good job of making each datasheet appealing. It won't work for Marines, but on the other hand not having such a brutal cutoff for space in say Elites will help armies with lots of units find some table time for their less played ones.

Combat Patrol: This sounds good. The idea every CP box is balanced against every other sounds *unlikely* but making it its own game mode with fixed armies lets them do things for balance here that won't escape containment into the main game so it's plausible. I really like that there's an incredibly simple way to start play for every single faction. This has the potential to mitigate my single biggest complaint about 9e (and many many other games I've loved over the years) - excessively frontloaded learning. If they've really got it to the point where a newbie can buy and assemble one box, play a few decent games into anyone with it and then move on to Incursion making more informed decisions then it's a huge win.

If it's even half as good as Underworlds' Rivals format it will be stellar (have we mentioned how good Rivals is?)

The downside is no cheeky Combat Patrol games with our wider forces to grab quick XP for Crusade or for folks who hit Higashi Betsuin at 9am waiting for later risers But to be honest I don't think Incursion is much slower now with practiced players so if Detachments streamline the game enough games should be brisk at that size.

USRs: These are the kanji of Warhammer, one you've memorized is your best friend, one you haven't is an annoying lookup problem. I think having no USRs creates problems when subtle differences creep into something you've reprinted a dozen times under different names, and they all need errataing if one of them does. I personally found 30K's USRs really hurt the accessibility of that game, making it very hard to eyeball what a unit or weapon actually does unless you've memorised a ton of the things, especially with them spread over multiple books. A small, canonical set in the corebook would be perfect.

"Not Colour Scheme Specific": I don't know what this really means until we see how Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels and Deathwatch work. I think in the vast majority of cases any time you weren't playing a well known Marine chapter you were effectively playing "not colour scheme specific" anyway. I would like there to be less incentive to paint a Marine in successor chapter colours as opposed to a First Founding, since in the latter case you're handcuffing yourself mechanically and you don't really get anything out of it. I have Marines in 5+ chapter colours but for most of 9th I've been playing them as part of the same Crusade, fluffwise they know each other and fight in the same theatre, so why not make it easier for me to put them on the table together without giving me the ability to cherry pick abilities from across the range (multiclassing is the devil but I'll do it every time if you let me )

Datasheet Changes: Seem good. Like the AOS/KT style hit chance per weapon. OC is a good stat.

All my Codexes going in the bin: I bought a lot of Codexes and for the most part I really like them; since the second 8th edition Marines Codex I've enjoyed how much they make the armies feel like themselves with mechanics that get deep into their theme. They are also the big drivers of complexity and 9th's periodic balance nightmares (9's had a lot of healthy metas but also a shocking number of Voidweavers). Anything bad you've ever thought or heard about 9th probably came from a Codex. So...bye.

Still big questions about the core rules. Terrain rules are crucial. I think 9th's are the best I've seen in Warhammer but they could be better (and tbh I just really like Obscuring, but it's still hard to set up a table that uses it really well. Lots of TTS tables are *garbage*). The Fight phase is one of the biggest drivers of complexity (and bad feelings for the unprepared) outside the Codexes so does it get a big revision? Overall 9th's core rules have done a good job, will they mostly stay in place?

Very excited to play!


@MiJ - I think the last time we talked about this we established the Legends rules for your Corsairs are surprisingly good and useable in 9th. I don't know if that's guaranteed in 10th; maybe you should take them out for a last hurrah in 9th!

[Primarch]

@Jye - I agree that 30K's USR's really need to be organized better. They are currently split across multiple sections in the core rules and the army books. Layout is probably my single biggest complaint in all of the games I have played so far.
That said, I do think that it is better to have one rule with different target numbers (e.g. Feel No Pain 5+, or 4+) throughout the game rather than have two similiar but slightly different rules. (e.g. Feel No Pain 5+, or Don't Feel Pain 4+). An easy to reference layout is important though.

As for less played units getting time on the table, that will still largely be dependant on them not being garbage rules-wise. Back in the day when I played Nids in 5th, you never saw a Pyrovore on the table for the entire edition. I had a couple of models, I had space in my FoC, they were just soooo bad you were better off adding more gaunts or warriors. (side note, the new gaunts look fantastic!). So long as units are generally balanced the army composition changes shouldn't be an issue.

Combat Patrol sounds great as a gateway for the game. Buy 1 box, build it, play with easy rules. Fantastic! I can also see a lot of hobby butterflies picking up multiple combat patrols from different factions for quick pick-up games.

There are still a lot of game mechanics I would like to see explained, and of course the whole thing relies on GW doing a good job with balance (#cough#LeaguesOfVotann#cough#), but so far, so good.

[The Other Dave]

I'm going to Kramer into the thread with a point about Leagues of Votann - I was listening to a podcast with an interview with one of the UK's more active tournament players and a couple of ex-GW folks, and they made what I thought was an interesting point that the probable reason LoV were so busted on release was that they were likely playtested against pre-nerf Tyranids and Eldar, who were likewise pretty overpowered (and that, in general, GW doesn't do a whole lot of playtesting, all things considered). Then the release cycle is such that 'Nids and Eldar got nerfed before LoV actually got released, et voila.

Not much to add to the discussion - I like AoS in principle even if I don't play it (as I've said before and probably at length, in general I'd prefer a game that is good and fun to one that is realistic, and one that is simple and fast-moving to one that is complex), and its fans certainly seem to like it a lot, so any cues New 40K might take from its design are likely to be good. (I do hope they slaughter the sacred cow of extremely granular assault rules, though, as again I've talked about before.)

[Jye Nicolson]

Votann are a good example of the people who wrote the codexes and the people who wrote the balance Dataslates being different people.

Maybe the same people at different points in time but nobody writing a Codex had been through the world of "autowounds counting as 6 to wound".

On release Votann are actually pretty balanced, with the points nerfs in place? I think they're a step behind Marines right now for most players because the points changes in both directions have meant you have fewer Dwarves on the board than Marines, but they have some very cool toys.

Just the book as written was wild. That would have been a lot of squats.

[Primarch]

A new article up today about stat lines on datasheets.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... datasheet/
It doesn't really say anything that wasn't covered in the Adepticon release, though it does go into a little more detail on Objective Control. "Troops" will be better at holding objectives than say "Elites".

A while ago we had a short 10th Ed. wishlist thread (here). Looking back over it and comparing it to what we know so far, it looks like some of our ideas were pretty close. Free rules on day 1 and indexes, a massive reduction in strategems, and leadership being more impactful (we'll see, I'm guessing some armies will have a way round it), all seem to be in 10th.

From my reading of today's article, it seems that WS will just be a target number printed on your datasheet. No changes in value depending on who/what you are fighting as standard. I personally like having opposed WS in the same way as S/T are opposed for damage, but it looks like they are keeping that part of 8th/9th intact.

[The Other Dave]

Lore- and product-wise, it looks like 10th is also going to be the point where it's long enough since Primaris first came out that we're just going to call them all Marines and make it the "true-scale" line refresh it was probably always planned to be. They're saying, for example, that the dudes in the terminator armor might be "primaris" and might be "firstborn," but the "primaris" keyword seems to be gone across the board, and the lieutenant model they showed off is just a "lieutenant" and not a "primaris lieutenant".