Preorders for Leviathan are up on the 10th, at 11am on the GW site, or whenever your FLGS lets you do it.
Price is supposedly 150 pounds, so unlikely to be cheap in yen but very good value if you want everything in the box.
Do you need it? Absolutely not, it should be very easy to play 10th purely with online resources and any models you already have.
Do you want it? Well, I do, but let's look at the contents:
- Book: if you like physical books this is the one to have, it will be extra pretty and include the first Crusade season. You can play Crusade without this seasonal supplement but it gives you a bunch of extra stuff, and Crusade is all about the extra stuff
- Cards: you definitely want these as while I expect you can simulate them with dice and the mission pack pdf playing with physical cards is nice as anyone who has enjoyed Tempest can attest. These will be available separately though.
- Models: Lovely models and like Indomitus, an absolute bargain in terms of quality/quantity ratio. The bonus this time is that it gets you two Combat Patrols, which makes them useful even if you don't intend to invest in one of the factions. Like Indomitus, these are push fit, single-pose, single-loadout minis, so they may not have all the options their eventual multipart release will (Terminators and Sternguard for sure, the dread probably, the bugs I have no idea
). It will be possible to get these models separately later but probably only convenient or discounted in the eventual Combat Patrol boxes and smaller starter sets. For Indomitus some of the special characters were a pain/expensive to get for years until they were released as pack-ins to a magazine; this is probably only important for the Nids this time as the Marine characters are fairly generic.So I think it's easily skippable if all the above doesn't tick your personal boxes - you can get into 10th purely electronically and for free, or maybe just pick up the mission cards for convenience.
I will definitely be getting a box but this time I'm going to be smart and just get one, I don't need three Marine halves.