Horus Heresy: To Make a New Rulebook
Everyone is going bonkers for 8th Edition of Warhammer 40,000. Here’s what GW needs to do to jumpstart 30K.
With each passing day we are seeing more and more of 8th Edition. It’s going to be a big, big shakeup like the community hasn’t seen in 20 years – and to honest – it needs to be.
7th Edition has gotten too bloated and decentralized for a quality gameplay experience.
But the funny thing is – it wasn’t the core rules fault; it was the mountain of codex and rules expansions. How can I say this with confidence?
Because you hear little to no bitching from the 30K community. Those guys have been battling away for years with a small collection of the dead-sexy Forge World books and the core rulebook. You don’t ever hear people saying that X Legion is so unbalanced or that the Heretics can pull some crazy super-friends nonsense and ruin the game. Instead you get hobbyists and a narrative themed community really having a great time at the tabletop – which to me is what it’s all about.
That leads me to today’s concept of exactly what should GW do to keep 30K thriving.
- Keep the Current Rules – The last thing 30K players want is to have seven $150 leatherbound books invalidated. These are your super hardcore-customers and they should be rewarded for even taking the plunge into the hothouse flower world of all Forge World 30K gaming. They are content. Let them be, and leave the current rules alone.
- New Rulebook – GW will need to make a new 30K rulebook as GW certainly can’t keep printing the old 7th Edition core rules alongside 8th. That would confuse the heck out of everyone. Here is how I would do it:
Like this – but with WAY more heresy…
30K Core Rulebook
Take the current 3 book 7th Edition set and do the following:
- Update the core 7th rules with the latest FAQs
- Replace all the art, hobby and background sections with Heresy content. Go over the Primarchs, the Great Crusade, all the legions, and the Heresy itself. Famous Battles, uniforms, the whole 9 yards. There are tons of art and passages from Black Library books – this should be easy. Make sure the hobby book is gorgeous showing the best of what 30K gaming looks like with all the stuff from early Land Raiders to Warlord titans stomping around.
- Replace the Allies table with the 30K one
- Replace the Missions with the 30k ones
- Upgrade all the default Psychic Disciplines with toned down ones that befit the Heresy era. We all know which ones need to go… Librarians weren’t the level of crazy they are in 40K and you dont have all the Deamon and xenos insanity running around either.
- Put all 18 default Legion rules in the book.
Stick that all into the three book slipcover, or just do it is a single tome and call it a day. If you were extra fancy, you might offer it in the same red or black format the existing Heresy Forge World books come in.
Third time’s the charm?
30K Boxed Set
The next time GW kicks out a 30K themed boxed set (Betrayal at Calth, Burning of Prospero), just bite the bullet and make it a 30K starter set. You already have a core set of plastic kits to draw from, so pick two legions, drop in some new HQs, and a softcover 30k mini-rulebook. Don’t forget the whippy-sticks, and some cool 30K themed templates (like with the Aquila and Eye of Horus).
I’d be all over that!
~What do you think GW should do to grow 30K?
