What is Even the Story in 10th Edition (aka Why Can't BL Do Better?)

[Urauloth]

14 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I haven’t kept up with the plot at all. I know nothing about the psychic awakening, pariah nexus, Arks of Omen, Baal. Even Leviathan I don’t really know what’s going on except there’s another hive fleet turned up. I’m reading a ton of older books and HH series currently, but haven’t touched the newer stuff at all. There’s just a bit too much of it all to know where to start.

This is a real problem right now. If you want to know about War Zone X, where do you start? Is there a BL novel about it? Probably not. That means you need a hardback campaign book, and if you didn't buy it when it was available, that might be difficult, because they go back a couple of editions. I really wanted the lore, maps and artwork from the Charadon books and I was lucky enough to get both for £30 on ebay, but I'm late getting them because I didn't want to pay full price for new rulebooks when I'm not currently playing WH40k. Even these books don't give you a complete picture, though, because the Flashpoint articles from WD are pretty important companion pieces.

Psychic Awakening and Gathering Storm at least got put in the WH+ vault, but they stopped updating that over a year ago, so I doubt we'll ever see any of the 9th edition campaign books added to it.

 

It would make sense for GW to reprint the lore sections of their campaign books from past editions along with the relevant articles in edition-agnostic books. Or they could start putting stuff in the vault again, that was the point of it!

 

Anyway, for my money:
Psychic Awakening: You didn't miss a lot. There's more psykers than there used to be. Faith and Fury and Ritual of the Damned were the only memorable books in this series imo. Some of them (War of the Spider) have basically nothing happen at all. The short stories they put up on Warhammer Community to go with this series were more interesting, I think they're preserved on Reddit.

 

Pariah Nexus: If you read a summary of this you've got all you need. I think we're going back there at some point, hopefully something happens this time.

 

Arks of Omen: This is a really great series if you like Chaos and lore for renegade Astartes. Probably not so good if you like meaningful payoffs or resolutions or any of that stuff though because the series just kind of fizzles out. The Flashpoints in WD are essential here because they cover what the Iron Warriors get up to.

Baal: There actually is a BL book for this one. Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley covers almost all of it. There's Darkness in the Blood too, but it's not necessary.

 

Leviathan: No clue.

[SvenIronhand]

7 hours ago, Urauloth said:

It would make sense for GW to reprint the lore sections of their campaign books from past editions along with the relevant articles in edition-agnostic books. Or they could start putting stuff in the vault again, that was the point of it!

 

I'd definitely agree here.

 

7 hours ago, Urauloth said:

Leviathan: No clue.

I would suggest looking in the 4th Tyrannic War Crusade book, to start with.

[lansalt]

8 hours ago, Urauloth said:

Leviathan: No clue.

It got a tie-in novel: https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-40000/novels/ebook-leviathan-eng-2023.html , but it's more of a side story.

 

[Gamiel]

17 hours ago, Urauloth said:

This is a real problem right now. If you want to know about War Zone X, where do you start? Is there a BL novel about it? Probably not.

But is that not how it has been for most of the time ? How many BL books did Armageddon get when it was happening, how many books did the 13th Black Crusade have back in the day?

 

Also, I would recommend starting with the White Dwarfs that's about that War Zone.