40k: The Expansions, Why Did They Fail?

More or less every summer G.W brings out a new expansion to play 40k in another exciting new way. Last year we got Spearhead which seemed to flop like a dead sardine. Looking at the other expansions all seemed to have more or less gone down the pan with the exception of one; Apocalypse.

CoD brought the rules for buildings and ruins that make them useable in games, and came with new ruins plastic model kits – which can also be used in regular games. The game used normal 40k rules and introduced the rules for buildings as mentioned (which have been incorporated into 5th edition ruleset) and along with stratagems. This stratagems just gave some kind of cool ability or special rule for a building or unit. For example: a unit inside a building could re-roll to hit, cool eh?

I’m not 100% sure why CoD didn’t take off massively, as it’s a pretty cool expansion. Like the problem with the other expansions, I think it’s cost. People perhaps are expecting a mass table of buildings with road networks, etc. This stuff not only looks great, but costs money and I think at the time people were happy playing on football fields with the odd scenery with gunline style armies back in 4th edition.

I think if CoD would have been released now it would have been received better as CoD would work much better with 5th editions cover save rules. It’s a shame G.W have just pushed it under the carpet and occassionaly just look at it when they lift the rug up. With some proper updates for stratagems, missions and hobby resources it could be great.

Planetstrike was hyped up a lot and seemed really cool having some major game changing rules, it also had some nice supporting models but it seemed to be destined to a early grave.

Planetstrike is CoD and Apocalypse mashed together. It brings destructable buildings, stratagems, and FoC changing. Planetstrike had some cool rules like different reserve rules – units which can deep strike can assault afterwards and scenery which had it’s own set of rules.

But with all those funky rules it made the game unbalanced, and I think that’s what brought it down. Unlike Apocalypse it still uses FoC, so if you want do a certain force you are still bound by the FoC, which you would find you might have a Planetstrike list and a normal gaming list; this results in more cost. Rules wise the players picked to be attacker and defender, the attacker gets to setup the terrain anyway they want which can result in some very very silly setups (like all terrain could be dangerous and difficult terrain!) and with units able to assault after deep striking that meant things like Terminators, Daemon Princes, etc. could just walk into a fight – imagine how a Blood Angel DoA list would fair in Planetstrike!

The idea behind Planetstrike is great and I cannot knock that. I don’t think FoC changes are too bad because some people have large collections and could easily use models without any problems. It’s the balance of being attacker and defender that can make some very short and hard games. If certain rules were changed then it could have been a better expansion, it just needs more balance!

Spearhead is the latest expansions released in 2010, where did it go wrong?

With Spearhead is was kept quiet – no one knew it was coming so it generated zero hype. While CoD introduced something new (buildings and stratagems) and Planetstrike changed the rules (reserve & deep strike), Spearhead didn’t do a fat lot. All it did was allow units/squadrons to have a special rule. Oh, and you can take a super heavy but it takes an auto hit when it comes on the board – wow! I’ve played with super heavies in normal games with opponents (as their consent) and they either take another X amount points to make up for the super heavy or a super heavy of their own.

I think it didn’t take off because it’s nothing new. It’s just really unit stratagems and if I remember correctly (but I might be wrong) it lets spearhead units score – so that’s scoring Carnifexes for the monstrous creature one and you can have a crap load of them…hmmm.

Author: Mark Mercer

Mark Mercer has been playing tabletop wargaming for over a decade. His specialty is Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. He began writing for BoLS in 2010.