New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[Ahzek451]

I suppose with these new templates, GW can now sell entire table/terrain sets. Buy this box and it comes with X theme, terrain, and templates. 

[Indy Techwisp]

Something I think people are missing here with the Tourney/Suggested Terrain layouts is the possibility or a Boardstate Balance Patch.

 

Say, for example, there's a rush of Tourney wins for Phobos armies, Blood Axes armies and Stealthsuit armies, but none of those are that strong outside of specifically the "Sabotage into Take and Hold" match-up.

 

GW could choose to nerf that specific mission's board set-ups to make it fairer for the opponent.

[Northern Walker]

55 minutes ago, Kommisar_K said:

It's a bummer to be sure, but I want to emphasize one point. This is a player problem. GW is doing great. Providing some templates for the tourney people and the competitive players while giving the rest of us the flexibility to play the game as we choose is a great plan.

Absolutely not, for me this is totally backwards. There should be the normal way to play 40k, and then modification for tournaments.

 

GW created this problem by incorporating the tourney crowd at design level and now they're trying to fix the problem in any way other than undoing the initial mistake.

[MoriyaSchism]

4 hours ago, Lord Marshal said:

Time for Terrain. Objectives later in the week.

 

 

Those terrain templates are the tabletop equivalent of 2Fort. 

[DemonGSides]

35 minutes ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Something I think people are missing here with the Tourney/Suggested Terrain layouts is the possibility or a Boardstate Balance Patch.

 

Say, for example, there's a rush of Tourney wins for Phobos armies, Blood Axes armies and Stealthsuit armies, but none of those are that strong outside of specifically the "Sabotage into Take and Hold" match-up.

 

GW could choose to nerf that specific mission's board set-ups to make it fairer for the opponent.

 

They could've done this previously (and did).  The tournament primers include what missions work on what maps, and when there was a busted one, they removed it/changed it in the next Tournament pack.  I find it hard to imagine that they're going to do the same thing with the 3 default suggested templates; they'll just release new ones that the cutting edge players can use and anyone who's more casual is fine with either doing it their own way or happy to just play a game and use whatever standards are available. 

 

Goonhammer did a good retrospective on the 10th Ed mission packs; according to other people, this site isn't a competitively minded site because they also do model reviews, so take that with whatever salt that requires; https://www.goonhammer.com/10th-edition-retrospective-mission-packs/

[Mogger351]

21 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

 

They could've done this previously (and did).  The tournament primers include what missions work on what maps, and when there was a busted one, they removed it/changed it in the next Tournament pack.  I find it hard to imagine that they're going to do the same thing with the 3 default suggested templates; they'll just release new ones that the cutting edge players can use and anyone who's more casual is fine with either doing it their own way or happy to just play a game and use whatever standards are available. 

 

Goonhammer did a good retrospective on the 10th Ed mission packs; according to other people, this site isn't a competitively minded site because they also do model reviews, so take that with whatever salt that requires; https://www.goonhammer.com/10th-edition-retrospective-mission-packs/

You linked a specific article in a competitive subcategory.

[Lord Blacksteel]

The Hidden rule is a little clunky with this part "...can be Hidden as long as their unit didn’t shoot in the current or preceding player turn."  So this is something we need to track across turns now? It may not come up a lot but what about something like a Grey Knights army jumping up and down from reserves ... "Ok this unit was where last turn? Did they shoot or not?".  Even if you throw a marker of some kind on the unit it's going to be tricky if there is a lot of teleporting going on.

Am I seeing a problem that doesn't exist here?

[Nephaston]

9 minutes ago, Lord Blacksteel said:

The Hidden rule is a little clunky with this part "...can be Hidden as long as their unit didn’t shoot in the current or preceding player turn."  So this is something we need to track across turns now? It may not come up a lot but what about something like a Grey Knights army jumping up and down from reserves ... "Ok this unit was where last turn? Did they shoot or not?".  Even if you throw a marker of some kind on the unit it's going to be tricky if there is a lot of teleporting going on.

Am I seeing a problem that doesn't exist here?

 

You just finished deployment; is the unit in a terrain area? If yes they are hidden and you can place a token on them. The token remains until they shoot or leave the terrain area and may only be targeted by enemy units within 15".

At least that's how i understand it so far.

[jaxom]

10 minutes ago, Lord Blacksteel said:

The Hidden rule is a little clunky with this part "...can be Hidden as long as their unit didn’t shoot in the current or preceding player turn."  So this is something we need to track across turns now? It may not come up a lot but what about something like a Grey Knights army jumping up and down from reserves ... "Ok this unit was where last turn? Did they shoot or not?".  Even if you throw a marker of some kind on the unit it's going to be tricky if there is a lot of teleporting going on.

Am I seeing a problem that doesn't exist here?

I think it depends. Some players like having marks for game-states (Battleshocked, Oath of Moment Target, Markerlight'ed, etc.) and Hidden would just be another marker. Some players are more minimalist; a new game-state to track does add to mental weight/tracking. 

 

For the GK example: They go off the board in Player A's turn without shooting that turn. Player B's turn happens and the GK Rapid Ingress into Terrain more than 15" away from Player B's units.

- Did the GK shoot in the current or preceding player turn? No

- Are the GK in terrain? Yes

- Are the GK more than 15" from enemy units? Yes

The GK are hidden

[Focslain]

Think it comes from the fact that you can re-hide if you don't shoot, which is a buff to melee only units. 

[Marshal Loss]

1 hour ago, Ahzek451 said:

I suppose with these new templates, GW can now sell entire table/terrain sets. Buy this box and it comes with X theme, terrain, and templates. 

 

I hope so, would be good to see better terrain offerings from GW (as hideously expensive as any full table set would be) 

[ThePenitentOne]

3 hours ago, Bouargh said:

Yet should these proposal not be mandatory, one shouldn't affirm neither that they will not anyway become the baseline/standard in many cases: such as pick and go night games or FLGS. As such, for the ones among us who have a well established gaming group, it will not cause any trouble and it will leave enough option not to use proposed lay out. But for more casual gamers that rely on FLGS for example, it might not be that obvious. And as such I understand the "not my warhammer anymore" feeling too. 

 

Yeah, this is what I meant when I said that it's worse now: the recommended board layouts are now actually in the BRB, three recommended layouts per mission. 

 

I think the fact that they're in the book, and they are connected to individual missions means you're MORE likely to have people use them than when it was just an extra PDF. And sure, they're footprints, so I can make the sides of the board LOOK different by putting rocks on one footprint and trees on another, but the point remains that I can't make the terrain BE different even if it LOOKS different. And now it's a part of your mission, not just an obscure PDF that most garage-hammer players didn't even bother to download.

 

If that obscure PDF screwed up game nights at your store by making all boards similar and soulless, writing similar rules directly into the mission, even if they're slightly more flexible in a cosmetic sense, isn't likely to improve the situation as much as promised. We shall see.

[Kommisar_K]

1 hour ago, Northern Walker said:

Absolutely not, for me this is totally backwards. There should be the normal way to play 40k, and then modification for tournaments.

 

GW created this problem by incorporating the tourney crowd at design level and now they're trying to fix the problem in any way other than undoing the initial mistake.

I'm gonna respectfully disagree, but I understand where you're coming from. Let me try and focus my angle around a few questions. 

• As the game stands, with specific layouts being the only option for tournament play, but simply an option for casual/narrative, do you think mission setup truly leans toward competitive play?
• We can surely both agree that players have the option to set up terrain as they please. GW has stated that for casual games, official layouts are optional. What do suggested terrain layouts actually take away? Granted, the optional rules tend to be focused on balance, but they are optional, suggested. How does GW restrict free building by providing optional additions/restrictions? 
• I gather you feel the game is skewed toward competitive play. The narrative playerbase is neglected and restricted by the current/proposed rules. If GW makes balanced/competitive/tournament play a simple modification, does that in fact achieve a fair balance? How does the competitive playerbase receive their fair share of support? And really, how is what we have now (an optional set of terrain layouts) not a simple modification anyway?

Some redundant questions mixed in there I think. Hopefully it helps? And please answer the questions I haven't asked as well :)

 

OK so I don't have self control & did write a little reiteration. Tryin' to articulate my own thoughts. Spoiler so the questions remain the focus.

Spoiler

The point I'm trying to make is that 40K players seem to latch on to the latest rules as the only way to play, when GW has been saying for years that that's not the case. Mission packs, terrain setup, even objective placement are up to us to decide. There's a wealth of both free customization and prewritten material to choose from. The stuff on the cards is just there for when you want a balanced game or can't agree on custom setup. With "optional" written over stuff like standard terrain layouts, I don't understand why people take it as the only option, whether to use it or complain* about it. 

 

Now they're struggling to keep both sides happy and balance narrative/competitive without getting flak for turning 1 or t'other into a whole different game (because there would be flak). The new edition makes an effort to meet in the middle, but players' belief that GW focuses solely on the tournament crowd means players focus only on tournament play/what affects it no matter what GW does. Tough situation for GW, tough for us. 

 

*I don't mean that offensively. Heck, I'm complaining. Just about the players, not the company. 

 

[Valkyrion]

In isolation, without the experience of playing 10th, I like the hidden rule. Your opponent has to dedicate movement to weeding out your units and the hidden unit requires a tactical choice - hide and be safer, or shoot and contribute. I think I'd like it if units that Run (Advance? Rush?) also couldn't hide so you won't see players just rushing (running? advancing?) their melee units on to terrain pieces, but maybe melee units need all the help they can get. 

Terrain has always been a difficult thing to navigate through the editions. My group isn't overly competitive, but we've just kinda settled on either 5+ cover saves, or -1 to hit irrespective of the rules of the edition, so it will be interesting to see how this works as part of the wider ruleset. 

[CastellanDeMolay]

3 hours ago, MARK0SIAN said:

This is exactly the reason why morale has never really worked in 40k. I’d honestly rather they just got rid of it. The vast majority of armies should simply ignore it. The Literal tag line for Space Marines is they shall know no fear! A bunch of Khorne berserkers aren’t running from a fight. Tyranids propelled by the hive mind will die in droves to achieve their objective and so on. There’s only a handful of races where morale makes sense, Guard, maybe Eldar as they can’t afford to suffer lots of casualties, perhaps Tau and Leagues too. The rest should just straight up ignore it.
 

I’ve been on both sides when a unit has failed a morale check and I’ve never known it be anything other than a feels bad moment. It’s not satisfactory to inflict and it’s definitely not fun to have it inflicted on you. 

I think the problem with Morale has always been that nobody wants to be forced to do things, like mandatory movement or losing a bunch of models because they ran off of the table. As much as the older morale and psychology rules were a good attempt at a simulation, we are still playing a game which tends to be less enjoyable when things happen outside of our control. I'm sure we've all read the conversations online back in the day about how best to position transport vehicles to force infantry to take a circuitous route to their board-edge in order to buy more chances for them to rally. 

My proposal would be to turn morale into another set of interesting choices. Take Summary Execution for example; the ability to sacrifice one model to prevent further "casualties" due to breaking/battleshock presents a choice, albeit a pretty straightforward one. Rather than compelling players to move or lose models, I think retreat should become a situationally desirable action. Rather than having models disappear from the game when they pass the edge of the table, they could regroup at their table edge to restore models to their unit, at the cost of not participating in the battle for a turn, or if you really need them to hold that objective then you can make them fight to the bloody end. 

 

The idea here being that we can provide incentives for players to voluntarily take actions that better simulate the fantasy of the game; essentially "tricking" people into some degree of roleplay, rather than giving them reasons to try to work against the rules. 

[ThaneOfTas]

3 hours ago, Northern Walker said:

GW created this problem by incorporating the tourney crowd at design level and now they're trying to fix the problem in any way other than undoing the initial mistake.

I disagree that the problem was incorporating competitive gameplay at the design level. The mistake is trying to make competitive and narrative the same thing. 

 

I don't object to competitive focused gamers getting a well made rules set focused on them. I do object to being handed that rules set and told that it's good for me too.

[Tastyfish]

1 hour ago, ThePenitentOne said:

 

Yeah, this is what I meant when I said that it's worse now: the recommended board layouts are now actually in the BRB, three recommended layouts per mission. 

 

I think the fact that they're in the book, and they are connected to individual missions means you're MORE likely to have people use them than when it was just an extra PDF. And sure, they're footprints, so I can make the sides of the board LOOK different by putting rocks on one footprint and trees on another, but the point remains that I can't make the terrain BE different even if it LOOKS different. And now it's a part of your mission, not just an obscure PDF that most garage-hammer players didn't even bother to download.

 

If that obscure PDF screwed up game nights at your store by making all boards similar and soulless, writing similar rules directly into the mission, even if they're slightly more flexible in a cosmetic sense, isn't likely to improve the situation as much as promised. We shall see.

 

Leaving the tournament crowd aside I think it's possible to have quite different types of games using the same board and match up, because the terrain does have it's own rules. So even leaving aside any movement restrictions

 

You could be playing in a jungle with armies moving between clearings and avoiding the denser patches of undergrowth. There's no vantage points, it's all about securing sight lines to prevent ambushes. This could also work as an attack across a series of Defense lines and bunkers (or a trenchline if the terrain you're placing is actually hits, so infantry can take cover in the trenches and dugouts, but if ambushed from an attack across no man's land will be completely open).

 

You could be playing in a ruined city, with multiple high vantage points offered to smaller units, that also sees them safely away from the smaller skirmishing units looking to hunt them down by virtue of being that many more inches higher up. 

 

You could be playing in the heart of a sector mechanicus forge district or on a promethium rig, with huge quantities of gantries effectively creating a two layered battlefield, favouring units that can deepstrike onto these platforms and those that can move rapidly between the layers or jump from platform to platform. Bigger, better equipped units will be taking advantage of the high ground and there might even be vantage points where you can shoot down onto the upper layers with full effect as well. However all this costs movement up and down and many of the objectives might be on the ground floor, with the control systems and databanks residing in the shadow of the high gantries - where small fast squads can also hide.

[Nephaston]

I'd argue both skews of play having the same base is a good idea, with narrative just getting an additional layer in it's own segment.

I just wish there was a clear answer what, if anything, is happening on that front. Though we might just have to wait for the drip feed to reach that point until we can stop guessing.

[Jings]

Honestly the most exciting thing about this is the footprint tiles which will be nice to just decorate the board a bit, particularly if they're double sided and are (for my purposes) urban. I'll buy a pack for Heresy just to give the table a bit more character. 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

Having skipped 9th entirely and only played one game of 10th over two years ago its hard to judge these rule changes for me. Though if pushed I'd say I'm on the skeptical side. I think I'll need to see how this actually all comes together on the tabletop. 

 

I do wish GW would just ignore tournaments though. The game should be designed around having fun and telling stories first and foremost. Not pleasing the WAAC crowd. 

 

I also can't help the feeling these rules are set up so GW can do a hard rest for 12th in 2029 - though perhaps that's because I'm jaded & bitter and just see corporate greed behind every shadow. 

[Lord_Ikka]

What I have found interesting is that everything so far has referred to modifiers to the unit's BS rather than to a to Hit roll. That is fairly different from the current system, in which modifiers to the to Hit roll are fairly common, but modifier's to a units stats (BS in this case) are not a normal thing at all. Really wondering how exactly this is going to play out/what this means to various interactions.

 

 

1 hour ago, The Praetorian of Inwit said:

I also can't help the feeling these rules are set up so GW can do a hard rest for 12th in 2029 - though perhaps that's because I'm jaded & bitter and just see corporate greed behind every shadow. 

Nope, this is pretty much what will happen given their last four editions- hard reset for 8th, modified 8th-ed ruleset for 9th, hard reset for 10th, modified 10th-ed for 11th. By hard reset here I mean that the rules change so much that GW invalidates the last edition's codices and issues out an Index for each faction.

[MARK0SIAN]

8 hours ago, CastellanDeMolay said:

I think the problem with Morale has always been that nobody wants to be forced to do things, like mandatory movement or losing a bunch of models because they ran off of the table. As much as the older morale and psychology rules were a good attempt at a simulation, we are still playing a game which tends to be less enjoyable when things happen outside of our control. I'm sure we've all read the conversations online back in the day about how best to position transport vehicles to force infantry to take a circuitous route to their board-edge in order to buy more chances for them to rally. 

My proposal would be to turn morale into another set of interesting choices. Take Summary Execution for example; the ability to sacrifice one model to prevent further "casualties" due to breaking/battleshock presents a choice, albeit a pretty straightforward one. Rather than compelling players to move or lose models, I think retreat should become a situationally desirable action. Rather than having models disappear from the game when they pass the edge of the table, they could regroup at their table edge to restore models to their unit, at the cost of not participating in the battle for a turn, or if you really need them to hold that objective then you can make them fight to the bloody end. 

 

The idea here being that we can provide incentives for players to voluntarily take actions that better simulate the fantasy of the game; essentially "tricking" people into some degree of roleplay, rather than giving them reasons to try to work against the rules. 

There’s still the narrative dissonance of a marine running from a fight but as well as that I think you’re right about not wanting to be forced to do things. Essentially these effects rob you of your turn. It’s a turn based game, you may have had to wait a considerable amount of time while your opponent played their turn and then when it finally gets to your turn you’re not allowed to actually choose what your models do or how they act. Your turn should be just that, YOUR turn. 
 

I still think I’d have issues with things like needing to sacrifice someone to keep the unit in the fight. It makes sense for a commissar to do that to a guardsmen but something like a Skitarri or a Marine would just hold the point until they died simply because they’d been told to at the start of the battle. But this kind of highlights the point, a one size fits all morale system just doesn’t fit with the kind of lore 40k forces have. They could make it more individual to the forces but like I said before, I don’t think it adds anything good to the game so I’d just get rid of it.

[Karhedron]

11 hours ago, Focslain said:

Think it comes from the fact that you can re-hide if you don't shoot, which is a buff to melee only units. 

 

I can see pistol armed squads opting not to fire before charging if they are assaulting enemy in terrain. If they wipe the enemy and consolidate into terrain, they can claim the Hidden bonus in the next turn and avoid retaliatory fire. Of course there may be some rule further on which prevents this but as it stands, it feels a bit odd that enemies cannot shoot the squad of Beserkers that just massacred their buddie in the woods because the Beserkers didn't fire their pistols and are now invisible.

 

"Hey, where did they go?" 

 

On a more positive note, I like the change to cover. Going back to being a Hit modifier takes me right back to second edition. On paper is seems like it will benefit tough armies like Marines while penalising lower skilled shooters like Orks but we will have to see how that shakes out. I do like the Torrent weapons are now better at flushing out infantry in cover since that is exactly how they function IRL.

[Antarius]

I don't disagree with the points about control of your army, exactly, but I think it is in some ways more that people think they want not to be forced to do things. I think the target priority rules went away for the same reason, but I am not at all convinced that the game has actually been better or more enjoyable because of it.

I don't want to sound like I think all this newfangled stuff is bad and everything was golden back in the day, but I think morale and target priority are good examples of rules that meant you had to think about how to make your army perform well, even if everything didn't go your way - and it also meant you could outmaneuver/outsmart the enemy in ways that were less about pure firepower. To me, that made the game tactically satisfying in ways that seem difficult to replicate within the current dogma of "restrictions bad".

 

"But morale is very random" you might say. To which I would answer "yes, but how you plan for it/try to provoke morale tests isn't". Similarly, target priority rules might mean nothing if you rolled well on your leadership tests, but they did mean troop placement became a lot more tactical ("how do I move my troops so my opponent might have to fire on a less ideal target?" and "how do I move my troops so their shots aren't wasted if they fail their LD test?" etc.).

I'm not holding my breath for these types of rules to come back, but they were impactful, easy to keep track of and - at least to me - made the game feel both more "real" and more enjoyable.

Edited April 9 by Antarius

[Antarius]

4 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

I can see pistol armed squads opting not to fire before charging if they are assaulting enemy in terrain. If they wipe the enemy and consolidate into terrain, they can claim the Hidden bonus in the next turn and avoid retaliatory fire. Of course there may be some rule further on which prevents this but as it stands, it feels a bit odd that enemies cannot shoot the squad of Beserkers that just massacred their buddie in the woods because the Beserkers didn't fire their pistols and are now invisible.

 

"Hey, where did they go?" 

 

It is more abstract, certainly, but I actually think that makes perfect sense if you don't frame it so as to make it seem ridiculous (Berzerkers specifically wouldn't be likely to hide, but who knows - some units might have rules that say they can't hide for fluff reasons). They don't become literally invisible either; units might go to ground, crawl or creep along the ground, utilise terrain and cover so as not to be immediately visible etc. - and it's not like you're supposed to have no idea they're there - you just can't get a shot off at them.

As a counter-example, if a couple of guys who have just fought some other guys run off into a ruined building and hide (which is literally what the rule represents), I still know they're probably in there, but that doesn't mean I know exactly where or that I can see any of them well enough to shoot them.

Models and terrain are only representations after all and they're not supposed to be quite as static as the minis make them out to be.