New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[Karhedron]

I quite like the idea of split detachments. I play an Iyanden Eldar army so normally bring a few Wraithguard and Wraithlords. But the Wraithhost Detachment is not great and I don't run an entire army of them. So the option to mix it with something more flexible would be good. 

[Lord Marshal]

Mission preview article.

 

TLDR:

• Detachments unlock Force Dispositions (image) per yesterday's article.
• Each Force Disposition has 'thematic objectives'.
• 'Almost All' still score points for holding objectives, but the split will vary.
• Purge the Foe Primary.
• Disruption Primary.
• Potentially both players will have different Primaries.
• Force Disposition for tournaments will be locked-in at list building.
• Pre-game sequence is otherwise similar to now. Table image.
• Deployment cards will be 'familiar'.
• Each Mission Pairing has three recommended terrain layouts.
• Secondaries 'remain much the same', except you draw two Tactical Objectives every turn, keeping the ones you've not scored. 
• Primaries have a 45 VP cap per game and 15 per round, same for Secondaries.
• Twists are back as an optional mechanic.
• List construction, mission objectives, and terrain next week, plus why 11th is good for narrative.

 

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Earlier this week, we learned how new army building rules give you a wider choice of Detachments to pick for your force. Each Detachment will now give you one or more Force Dispositions, which are generally tied to how that force would perform in battle. 

 

In earlier mission packs, the way you built your army had no impact on the missions the game asked you to complete. Khorne Berzerkers might inexplicably race to stand on objectives in the corners of battlefields, or Tau Fire Warriors might find themselves assaulting entrenched melee units to secure a few extra Victory Points. The new missions encourage you to complete the sorts of objectives your army would naturally pursue.

 

When you build your army, your Detachments each unlock a different Force Disposition, one of which you will choose to represent your army's Force Disposition for each battle. This establishes the broad mission your army would likely be assigned to accomplish. Like any good general, however, you'll determine the manner in which you achieve that mission based upon real battlefield conditions on the ground. By comparing your chosen Force Disposition to your opponent's at the start of the battle, you find out the specific details of the mission you'll be playing.

 

There are five Force Dispositions in total: Take and Hold, Purge the Foe, Disruption, Reconnaissance, and Priority Assets.

 

 

Each Force Disposition is geared towards thematic mission objectives, so an army choosing Purge the Foe will often score Victory Points for wiping out enemy units, while one opting for Disruption might need to perform actions in enemy territory or while occupying crucial areas of terrain.*    

While missions are designed to create a narrative in every game, they're still tightly balanced around each other: asymmetrical in nature, but still fair, telling an authentic Warhammer story between two well-matched forces.

 

Almost all will still score some measure of points for holding objectives on the battlefield, so you can’t completely abandon board control for carnage, but the exact split will vary.

 

 

The Primary Mission for a Purge The Foe force taking on a Disruption opponent

 

This does mean that – unless you both pick the same Force Disposition – you and your opponent will have different primary objectives, creating a fun tactical challenge that writes its own story.** You’re not just shooting some Orks to pieces – you’re stopping some sneaky Blood Axes from booby trapping your frontline fortifications.

 

 

Primary Mission for a Disruption force taking on a Take and Hold opponent

 

In pickup games, you can choose a different Force Disposition ahead of each battle. In a tournament setting, you'll usually lock your Force Disposition for the event when you submit your list. Since each Force Disposition has 5 distinct missions (one for each other Force Disposition), you can therefore control the level of complexity in terms of what mission rules and combinations you need to learn.

 

The rest of the pre-game sequence follows a similar route to the one you’re used to in the current edition.

 

 

Deployment cards will be familiar to existing players, featuring classic set-ups such as Dawn of War, Hammer and Anvil, and Tipping Point. Each mission pairing also has three recommended terrain layouts using specific deployments designed to give both players a balanced battlefield to fight through, though you’re always free to come up with your own too, to match your own terrain collection.

 

Secondary objectives return much the same as they are in the current edition, allowing players to choose Fixed or Tactical objectives to either stick with their favourites or draw cards from a deck for a chance at higher scoring. 

 

Tactical objectives have one big change though – instead of only having two at any given time, now you’ll draw two objective cards every turn and keep hold of the ones you haven’t scored yet, so you don’t need to worry about an early draw scuppering your late-game plans. 

It’s worth noting that each Primary Mission has a total cap of 45VP per game, and a cap of 15VP per battle round, with the same for Secondary Missions. So you can’t wait and try to score everything right at the end!

 

 

Finally, Twists also return as an optional mechanic that can modify core rules or introduce unexpected challenges – one can allow all units to move through terrain like nimble infantry, while another causes both players to completely swap their primary objectives for extra chaos!

 

All of the initial mission rules and deployment cards come in the new Chapter Approved mission deck, which will be included inside the Armageddon launch box alongside another mystery deck that we’ll talk more about soon. 

 

Over the next week, we'll discuss the now tightly-connected concepts of army construction, mission, objectives, and terrain, and how New40K creates the best opportunity yet for telling awesome stories whilst engaging in tightly contested battles across the nightmare landscapes of the 41st Millennium.

 

* Got questions about terrain and objectives? Stay turned to Warhammer Community next week where we’ll be looking closer at this section of the rules.

 

** There’s even an optional Twist – Mirrored World – that lets you ditch this, and both use the same primary for when you’re in the mood for a more symmetrical game.

 

 

 

Edited April 3 by Lord Marshal

[Bouargh]

Quote

Over the next week, we'll discuss the now tightly-connected concepts of army construction, mission, objectives, and terrain, and how New40K creates the best opportunity yet for telling awesome stories whilst engaging in tightly contested battles across the nightmare landscapes of the 41st Millennium.

 

This is probably the part I am waiting for with the highest level of interest since the Adepticon announcement...

 

Rest of the WarComm article about missions looks OK. At least I find it easier to handle and more streamlined than 10th mission system. Let's see what the suggested table set ups will look like now.

[Lathe Biosas]

What's in the mystery deck?

 

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All of the initial mission rules and deployment cards come in the new Chapter Approved mission deck, which will be included inside the Armageddon launch box alongside another mystery deck that we’ll talk more about soon. 

 

[HeadlessCross]

4 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

Because the units and weapons have been made less flavourful and more homogeneous in the name of balance.

Sometimes you don't need granularity for the sake of granularity, especially when it comes to Character options. Generic Master Crafted Weapon just works. 

[Madao]

Huh. It seems 40k is a card game after all...

Edited April 3 by Madao

[Jukkiz]

17 minutes ago, Madao said:

Huh. It seems 40k is a card game after all...

that´s why they sell you 20€ "army specific card packs"

[Mogger351]

This continues to be a head scratcher of good and bad. If objectives are now terrain and the game is developed with premade terrain layouts, is this not a bottleneck?

 

I guess it feels like on one hand GW keep offering ideas and iterative changes. On the other they're inviting balance chaos whilst making a lot of choices very rigid.

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Madao said:

Huh. It seems 40k is a card game after all...

Paper has always existed when playing the game. The main problem is how much they charge for said paper. 

[Jukkiz]

If objectives are as funky as they´ve been, can i stack tanks on them still at 11th ed, is the question

[Emperor Ming]

Another mysterious deck?

 

No more cards!

 

For the love of the Emperor no more cards

[Stealth_Hobo]

I'd guess that the new mystery deck could be for Combat Patrol similar to the Spearhead deck in AOS.

[Grand Master Laertes]

As all the cards they have sold in the latest years have been limited runs that wen OOP almost immediately, I'm going to bet a cookie that the new app will integrate their functionality.

[Focslain]

30 minutes ago, Grand Master Laertes said:

As all the cards they have sold in the latest years have been limited runs that wen OOP almost immediately, I'm going to bet a cookie that the new app will integrate their functionality.

They did state they wanted to integrate scoring into the app. So yeah, very good chance of the primary and secondaries being in there.  

[SvenIronhand]

I can imagine this causing some extra mental load, but it looks like an improvement thus far.

[Silvereyes]

Detachments: I like the sound of this. I want more choice, and having the option of choosing 3 small detachments, or if people really just want a single all encompassing detachment. I do wish they gave examples of what a level 1, 2, and 3 detachments looked like. Because to me, I was interpreting it as basically being "small", "medium", and "large". Especially in regards to stratagems, because I seriously can't imagine being able to take 3 level 1 detachments with 6 stratagems each for a total of 18.

 

My prediction would be that when 11th arrives, all 10th edition detachments are made level 3. There are - I believe - 28 armies, including the Space Marine sub-factions. (Do Titan Legions count?) Double that is 56. So I reckon most factions will receive 2 detachments, a level 1 and a level 2 detachment, until their respective codex arrives. 

 

Really my only complaint is about detachment numbers. Space Marines in particular have had a mountain given to them, especially in the recent campaign books. And some factions seem to just get the bare minimum. And it can be a bit annoying. I remember feeling a bit jilted when T'au only got 4 in their codex, then only a bit later Chaos Space Marines got 8 in theirs, with the article for that book insisting that 8 was the minimum needed to represent the factions within the CSM. Granted, codex releases will probably delete some detachments, but I hope there is a bit more parity. And if my suspicion is correct that level 2 and level 1 detachments especially are substantially smaller than the current detachments we are getting, I really hope there is a far bigger number of detachments. Like at least a dozen, 4 of each level, per codex.

 

This is the number of detachments I believe. (Got this list from the 40K app, and making sure to also add the new detachments from Eye of Terror and Armageddon campaign books.)

 

1 Detachment: Deathwatch

4 Detachments: Black Templars

5 Detachments: Adepta Sororitas, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Imperial Agents, Space Wolves

6 Detachments: Adeptus Custodes, Chaos Daemons, Chaos Knights, Drukhari, Genestealer Cults, Grey Knights, Imperial Knights, Thousand Sons, T'au Empire, World Eaters

7 Detachments: Adeptus Mechanicus, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, Leagues of Votann

8 Detachments: Tyranids

9 Detachments: Astra Militarum, Necrons

11 Detachments: Orks

12 Detachments: Aeldari

15 Detachments: Chaos Space Marines

20 Detachments: Space Marines

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

13 hours ago, ursvamp said:

not sure why you would put flavor and variety in opposition to balance, here?

 

the new detachment system shows pretty well how good internal balance allows for more variety, and in this case is being used to allow more flavorful lists.

 

for instance; when making an Ork-list the ”War Horde” detachment gives your whole army a good buff, and some strong stratagems to boot. While ”Kult of Speed” only gives a buff to some specific units. So unless you go all out on Speed Freak-units you won’t get as much out of it (and for most armies you’ll want/need some units outside of that narrow focus, in order to have a working list). And sometimes you could even be better off going for ”War Horde”, even with a Speed Freak-focused list, since WH is just so strong.

 

now there’ll be more incentive to use the more flavorful detachments, and more options to experiment around with different units and detachment combos. Which could see an increase in variety in list-building.

but all that is relyant on the internal balance being good, of course.

How can you claim with a straight face the new system that we haven’t even tried once yet is balanced?

[Lexington]

Why would anyone make “suggested terrain layouts,” I thought this was a miniatures game

[ThaneOfTas]

9 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

Sometimes you don't need granularity for the sake of granularity, especially when it comes to Character options. Generic Master Crafted Weapon just works. 

Completely disagree. nothing ruins immersion more or leaves me as uninvested in the game as when units have been homogenised to hell and reduced to generic game pieces.

 

Come 14th edition every weapon will either be "Gun", "Sword", "Big Gun", "Big Sword" etc. no need for more granularity than that.

[Lord_Ikka]

Hmm. I wonder how the tournament scene will deal with this. It seems great for narrative games, but I can imagine that there will be some issues for tournaments. I guess we'll see how it goes. 

 

I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be a good thing for the game, but who knows at this point?

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, Silvereyes said:

I do wish they gave examples of what a level 1, 2, and 3 detachments looked like. Because to me, I was interpreting it as basically being "small", "medium", and "large". Especially in regards to stratagems, because I seriously can't imagine being able to take 3 level 1 detachments with 6 stratagems each for a total of 18.

Small = 2 strats, Medium = 4 strats, Large = 6 Strats is my expectation. 

[Silvereyes]

1 minute ago, jaxom said:

Small = 2 strats, Medium = 4 strats, Large = 6 Strats is my expectation. 

 

That's my expectation too. I actually think the level 1 detachments could be pretty tiny, like only take up half a page in a codex tiny. I'm expecting it to be one or two simplistic rules, 2 strats, 1 or 2 enhancements. For example, if it's for Space Marine bike units, a rule that just gives them 3" extra movement, maybe a second rule that gives each model an extra wound. A couple of bike strats, 1 or 2 enhancements for bike  units. Relatively simple and highly focused on a single unit type, or aspect of the army. And then level 2 would be a bit more comprehensive, the kind of thing that maybe focuses on a sub-faction, and then level 3 is what we basically have now, detachments which are meant to make the army play in a specific way.

 

Small detachments would make sense why we're getting 70 at once if a lot of them are far smaller. And hopefully it would mean that each codex would get a far higher number of detachments. Not to mention perhaps easier to release free ones at Grotmas if they want to continue doing some online content. 

 

All speculation obviously. Hope it won't take too long for them to show of examples of what they are talking about.

[Antarius]

5 hours ago, Lexington said:

Why would anyone make “suggested terrain layouts,” I thought this was a miniatures game

I guess answering that would lead us back to the eternal battle between competitive and narrative gaming.

 

As for the mission stuff, I am cautiously optimistic as well as a little apprehensive. On one hand, I like the idea that your army performs according to its core indentity, but on the other hand I am a little worried that it will mean some armies can eschew certain aspects of the game completely and only become more powerful by doing so. I mean, using the example from the article, shouldn't the World Eaters be somewhat limited by their berserk madness?

I took a hiatus from playing 40K (and WFB/AOS, basically all the "big games") back when 8th was pretty new, partly because one of my regular opponents and I had a game where he started out by saying "I'm not going to care about objectives at all, I'm just going to table you" and then got a bit snippy when it didn't work and I said "well, if you choose to play like that, it also kinda has to have the chance not to work". Now the main thing that annoyed me was his reaction (and, I guess to some degree that he hadn't asked me in advance whether I thought it would be a fun game, but that part is probably mostly an emotional reaction on my part), but I think it might be a little problematic if you can create a one trick pony army with this system and basically be guaranteed that it'll never be a problem that it can't perform other tricks. But we shall see.

[Rhavien]

15 hours ago, Madao said:

Huh. It seems 40k is a card game after all...

*Looks at Dark Millenium Box* Yes, it seems so...

[Mogger351]

6 hours ago, Lexington said:

Why would anyone make “suggested terrain layouts,” I thought this was a miniatures game

The concern for me now is how heavily does the game design lean on the suggested layouts and how suggested are they.