What we know about 11th edition, and what we should hope they include.

[Orange Knight]

So GW announced the new edition of 40k, but they didn't reveal as much as I would have hoped.

 

We have vague promises about more narrative and more balance, but I personally have doubts about those two opposing forces existing in harmony. We have literally seen the narrative drain from the game as GW persued a more "balanced" competitive experience.

Let's look at what we have been told about rule changes so far:

-More detachment freedom, and being able to chose multiple detachment bonuses for your army. Example given: Rules that boost both Terminators and Bikes

 

My take: This sounds great in theory, but in practice this poses a significant challenge for the balance of the game. No matter what GW intend, there will absolutely be one or two bonuses that when applied to a certain set of units will have a bigger impact than others. In theory I could have the movement bonus of Gladius for my infantry, and the boost to the reliability of high damage, low rate of fire weapons from the Ironstorm spearhead applied to my vehicles. I'm also not sure how being able to chose bonuses that boost all your units is more narrative than a set detachment. Blood Angels gets great bonuses when they get into combat, but their tanks don't get additional rules to help with shooting. Now they could.

Also - they've promised 70 new detachments on day 1. How many of those will be assigned to the Space Marines and the various chapters? Are we actually going to have any meaningful variety or are chapter specific rules going to be replaced by detachment bonuses you can apply to any chapter. I'm sceptical overall.

 

-Faster dice rolling, more streamlined charges and consolidation

 

My take: In theory this is great. One particular downside is that this would impact high skill consolidation and assault plays from skilled players because everything will happen at once, but there's no way of knowing exactly how this will play out. Optimistic overall.

 

-Existing codex books remain usable.

 

My take: Great if you have a good codex, awful if your codex is bad or has been ammended/errata'd multiple times. If you play AdMech it means the existing book remains a useless paperweight. If you play Custodes your army remains boring. If you play Space Marines you get to enjoy more units than everyone else and probably more ways of gaining benefits from the new detachment rules. This decision is good if you bought a codex and don't want to buy a new one for a while, but it's awful for new players as anyone starting the hobby in 11th edition who intends to play Astra Militarum, as an example, will have to buy an outdated codex from the prior edition that will have myriad erratas and faqs applied to it from the get go. 
When a new edition drops, every army should revert to an Index and all rules should be free. This makes entry into the game easier for new players, it resets all the factions to a starting position, and is more friendly to players at the start as they can access all rules.

 

-Terrain rules sound interesting, potentially pretty wild

My take: Big change to alter hit modifiers instead of armour. I think this will be a significant alteration to how armies are built and Ignore Cover will become very important for something like Astra Militarum or AdMech. Did they say during the stream that models in ruins can't be shot at from more than 15" away? I've seen this mentioned a few times but I don't have any time stamps and don't want to watch the whole thing. If that's true then the game will potentially shift to melee in a big way and any vehicle that wants to get close to shoot at units will immediately be in the threat range of whatever is hiding in the ruin. 

 

-Leaders always lead + Stratagem changes

 

My take: The first change mentioned there is that a character gets to retain the use of their special abilities even if the unit they lead gets destroyed. This should always have been a thing and I'm happy it will be applied game-wide.
The stratagem change refers to the fact that any one unit can only have a single stratagem applied to it per phase. This is overall good but it does significantly change the way some armies were made viable. Currently you could multi-stack stratagems on a single unit, example: Give it +1 to armour saves and -1 to be hit to make it vastly more durable. I have no problem with this but it would require some game-wide re-balancing and it's another reason I wish they had scrapped all codex books. In general I think Stratagems are generally bad for the game and I would gladly see them replaced by giving the various units more unique abilities that can be activated under specific conditions. Sadly they are here to stay for the next edition...

 

-I hope the 11th edition codex books do actually focus more on narrative!

My take: How do I want them to show this? We need to see a robust custom character builer, we need to see a robust set of faction/sub faction unique wargear as well as relics. In the Horus Heresy games, the individual legions have unique weapon options that can be applied unit wide to multiple units in an army. For example; any Blood Angel with a power sword could instead have it upgrdaded to a "Perdition Weapon" which improves the AP by 1.  You would also have Inferno pistols as a unique weapon that can be taken by models in various units.

 

So, using Ultramarines as another example:
-The Chapter would have their unique characters and units.

-The Chapter would have a unique list of detachment abilities that can be assigned.
-The Chapter would have a list of relics that can be applied to custom heroes. These would be powerful weapons or wargear that have a specific effect, significantly altering the function of a unit.
-The Chapter would have a list of specific wargear that can be applied to units. In the case of Ultramarines you could have: Gladius Power Swords, Master Crafted Plasma Pistols, etc etc. Models should be able to take multiple unique pieces of wargear in some cases.

-The Chapter would have a unique selection of stratagems.

 

-I hope they clean up and consolidate factions and rules in 11th edition

 

I really don't want to see single factions updated piecemeal throughout an edition anymore. It's not fun if the Codex Astares chapters get more narrative and thematic rules when the codex drops, but Blood Angels/Space Wolves/Dark Angels/Templars have to wait a further two years for their proper update, in which time their armies perform to a worse level, and they miss out on fully benefitting from whatever 11th edition introduces.
Put all Chapter specific units and rules in a single book, Horus Heresy style. Release the new Marine Codex, and alongside it release the Chapter supplement that covers everything from the Ultramarines to the Space Wolves. Also, every Marine player will buy it and it will be a more succesful book than any of the individual chapter supplements.

 

 

That's all the ranting and wishlisting I have for now lol.

 

[Bouargh]

Promises are only bindding on those who believe in these...

 

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

So GW announced the new edition of 40k, but they didn't reveal as much as I would have hoped

 

 

Very true indeed. It was not a reveal but a teaser. All that has been said is for me an empty shell at the moment as we did not get enough input to exactly understand what is behind the words. So therefore the title of this post, setting the stress on the "what we should hop" is the the most accurate statement of all this annoucment stuff.

 

What I understand (and it is a bad mojo) is that the gaming principle will in the rule book get a single form based on competitive features (?); then other playstyle will be indexed as expansions. So no more crusade, at least initially.

 

Detachment freedom claimed is probably meaningless. Or, better say, the concept of detachmetn is likely to evolve and become rapidemy divergent from what we have now. I do not see any point in releasing 70 new detachments all factions wide at launch unless it anticipate that the existing ones will quickly become obsolete or unplayable with the new mechanisms.

 

Faster dice rolling, streamlining and existing codices that remain.... All of this has already been promised in the past and we all know how trustable it is. Old codices will drop as dead flies quickly and some armies will be at the tail of the cow for months or years. I wonder if the recent model release with the end of cycle campaign books are a clue for which armies will be updated first or if they indicate that we should be satisfied chewing this bone of a few new releases as th enext update is beyond the horizon...

 

Future codices that come back focussing on narrative? Great, a transversal way to promote sells of more BL books. 

 

It looks all pessimistic , but I have been quite disappointed by the current edition rules (whereas miniatures were great), and this partial reboot does not lead me to higher mood levels. I am afraid it mightl be in the continuity of what we already get, meaning a bloat of datasheet with multiple special rules (each and every unit has special rules nowadays). Limiting the additionnal layer of stratagems is maybe a way for avoiding the nefastious effect of übercomplexity it brought when added on top of the special rules crossed with detachment rules (i.e. being less pokemon style and more D6 ruled).

I consider that current rules are quite poor vs. previous editions and that all the changes it introduced and consolidated during 10th did not improved the game. Neither did they make it really worse by the way.

But it became less tasteful.

 

But, should I be more optimistic, my main hope is that a revisited set of rules for terrain might reinject a dynamic that has been lost with WTC layout type: indeed this trend led to cancelation of terrain parameter and tableside selection which eliminated an important factor of the game interrest. What symetry brings is understandable for competitive scene but becoming a standard in many cases ruined my experience for casual games. I like narrative battle with terrain that looks like a real environnement and not a centrosymetrical scattered objects distribution. This is my 1st hope.

 

Not good.

 

Please, come back as a standard!!!!

 

And my second hope is: bring back the expansions!!! :

 

and the other ones...

[Dark Shepherd]

Think they said you can hide INSIDE terrain once you havent shot yet, which is good

 

That and change to cover might mean less cluttered tables which is good IMO

 

What Id love is rules on destroying terrain esp buildings but really dont think that it will happen. Would combo well with terrain features as objectives

 

They released pyreblasters an edition too soon! 10 flamers would be great for clearing out objective buildings

 

[DemonGSides]

50 minutes ago, Bouargh said:

I do not see any point in releasing 70 new detachments all factions wide at launch unless it anticipate that the existing ones will quickly become obsolete or unplayable with the new mechanisms.

 

There's like 30 factions in the game currently.  It amounts to like 2-3 detatchments per faction.  Hardly a big deal, ultimately, and basically just like a double+ christmas-time drop from two years ago.  70 isn't even that big of a number in context.  Why do you anticipate older detatchments aren't going to be good in the new edition?  Or is it just speculative negativity?

 

50 minutes ago, Bouargh said:

What symetry brings is understandable for competitive scene but becoming a standard in many cases ruined my experience for casual games. I like narrative battle with terrain that looks like a real environnement and not a centrosymetrical scattered objects distribution. This is my 1st hope.

 

So... play on those boards?  I've had perfectly symmetrical boards maybe like 5 times across the entirety of 10th.  It's not a requirement by any means; not really sure why you think it is?  Did you only play tournaments?  I would expect the events that are themed around "Fair Competition" would skew towards symmetrical layouts, but if you're playing at home or just a casual game, go nuts.  There's not really anything stopping you besides one player probably having a bad game if you're on planet bowling ball.

 

 

This is just going to turn into another "Bash on modern 40k" thread, considering it's titled "What we know about 11th" which is quite literally "Nothing besides some marketing speak".  A bit of a cart before the horse situation, but the horse is already getting hobbled and pointed towards the glue factory with all the negativity.

Edited March 27 by DemonGSides

[Bouargh]

24 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

There's like 30 factions in the game currently.  It amounts to like 2-3 detatchments per faction.  Hardly a big deal, ultimately, and basically just like a double+ christmas-time drop from two years ago.  70 isn't even that big of a number in context.  Why do you anticipate older detatchments aren't going to be good in the new edition?  Or is it just speculative negativity?

 

True and fully agreed - If I anticipate issues it's because the current detachments were not designed to be combined. And as such it is a new disruption and potential source of unbalance.

 

25 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

So... play on those boards?  I've had perfectly symmetrical boards maybe like 5 times across the entirety of 10th.  It's not a requirement by any means; not really sure why you think it is?  Did you only play tournaments?  I would expect the events that are themed around "Fair Competition" would skew towards symmetrical layouts, but if you're playing at home or just a casual game, go nuts.  There's not really anything stopping you besides one player probably having a bad game if you're on planet bowling ball.

 

Probably a "geographical" bias: for friendly scheduled games I never use these layout, but for casual encounters with "out of the group" gamers (say the pick and go games at LFGS) this is from my experience the base set case. Often even prior you come and set by the Store staff so that it is prepared in advance, save time at the beginning of the session and neutralize by anticipation any querry from participants. But this is what is available in the areas I have been over the past years. Maybe different elsewhere?

 

36 minutes ago, DemonGSides said:

This is just going to turn into another "Bash on modern 40k" thread, considering it's titled "What we know about 11th" which is quite literally "Nothing besides some marketing speak".  A bit of a cart before the horse situation, but the horse is already getting hobbled and pointed towards the glue factory with all the negativity.

 

It is probably true; and it is also why for me the most important piece of info of the announcement is the invitation to "stay tuned". More input will come and will give us reasons for enjoying or for whinning.

[jaxom]

39 minutes ago, Bouargh said:

True and fully agreed - If I anticipate issues it's because the current detachments were not designed to be combined. And as such it is a new disruption and potential source of unbalance.

This is one of the more common misconceptions I’ve seen around the B&C. The presenters were up front that there are going to be two types of detachments: one covers the whole army and the other covers niches. The niche detachments can be combined, 2 per army, at certain play sizes. They said not all current detachments are being revised. I expect that is because some were deemed appropriately army wide (eg Gladius); and the revised ones were more niche (eg Attilan Jackel GSC detachment) and would be redesigned to combine with the other niche detachments.

 

It could still be a potential source of problems if the new things are designed poorly, but that is true for all rules. For example, I’ve always thought it unclear is slingshotting was an intended consequence of how the rules were written; and with 11th announcement it looks like the answer is no.

[Rowland]

Will 11ths change to the Charge phase stop the whole weird slingshot thing?  I’m trying to understand the importance of more accurately measuring movement.  Currently I think…charge that unit with this unit, one middle  figure is 6 inches away from another enemy units middle figure.  Roll, get a 7.  Move them all into base to base around the enemy using an extra 3 inches.

it seems that’s a bit “casual” and I should be using 7 inches for all figures and see where they end up and so on.  
It never dawned on me that you could “charge” a unit further away by feigning a charge at a closer unit but angling them toward that further target.  It seems like one of those loophole things that isn’t in the spirit of the game…maybe?

 

Edit: I see Jaxom alludes to this above.  My ossue being new to Warhammer and having limited experience of Napoleonics and some hex based wargames is I can’t work out if it’s a wargame or a skirmish game.

Edited April 10 by Rowland

[jaxom]

5 hours ago, Rowland said:

s I can’t work out if it’s a wargame or a skirmish game.

It’s a wargame that evolved from a skirmish game. It’s… weird is some ways because of that and that weirdness is often preserved on purpose as part of what makes it 40K. There are then unintended consequences….

[DemonGSides]

5 hours ago, Rowland said:

Will 11ths change to the Charge phase stop the whole weird slingshot thing?  I’m trying to understand the importance of more accurately measuring movement.  Currently I think…charge that unit with this unit, one middle  figure is 6 inches away from another enemy units middle figure.  Roll, get a 7.  Move them all into base to base around the enemy using an extra 3 inches.

it seems that’s a bit “casual” and I should be using 7 inches for all figures and see where they end up and so on.  
It never dawned on me that you could “charge” a unit further away by feigning a charge at a closer unit but angling them toward that further target.  It seems like one of those loophole things that isn’t in the spirit of the game…maybe?

 

Edit: I see Jaxom alludes to this above.  My ossue being new to Warhammer and having limited experience of Napoleonics and some hex based wargames is I can’t work out if it’s a wargame or a skirmish game.

 

When you charge in 10th you are rolling the distance each model can move.  You roll, you have to end within 1 inch of the enemy. You can go around and past if you've got the movement to cover that, and wrap around a unit. There's some chicanery you can do with pile in and consolidation, but most armies won't bother or care about it.

 

From what we know of 11th, the biggest change is that you don't declare the target of the charge, you declare a charge, roll for it, and then decide on the targets. So you're going to be incentivized to be within range of multiple units when you charge to have target options.