40K: About Those Next Codexes & Battletomes
So it looks like GW is staying on the Codex/Battletome fast track for 2019. Let’s see what’s been going on, and what the future holds:
In 2018, GW kicked it into high gear – and started kicking out armybooks like a machine gun. At a time in the industry where manufacturers make only a handful of books per year, if they print physical copies at all – Nottingham has only doubled down – on not only sticking with their physical books, but knocking them out at a rate of almost 2 per month!
Once the initial set of 40K 8th Edition books had been completed, may assumed they would slow down.
Apparently not.
What the new plan seems to be is:
Age of Sigmar
The 2nd Edition of AoS and the Eternal Spells with it has given the design team a chance to perfect the “new-standard-format” for a Battletome. These recent books all include Eternal Spells, some new units, and multiple sub-factions with rules. Now they are not only kicking out new books, like the Gitz, but going back and updating as many of the older battletomes as they can like say Flesh Eater Courts. With Sylvaneth clearly on the way after Loon Curse, I fully expect that any of the older but popular “old fashioned” battletomes are on the shortlist. My short list would be:
- Slaves to Darkness
- Something Orky-Destruction
- Something Vampiry
- Something Alef
- Free Peoples
I would not be surprised to see another 6 Battletomes this year. GW is on a AoS TEAR in 2019!
Warhammer 40,000
Based on the rumors and the teases we have something like this:
- Space Marines: all the new Primaris units, White Dwarf rules, Iron Hands characters have to go somewhere.
- Traitor Knights – Dark Mechanicus: This could go either way as there are Knights in the Ad-mech book after all. I’m certain that Knights are one of the most lucrative ranges for GW, so why not try to repeat the magic on the Chaos side of things. A single big Chaos Knight accessory sprue could go a long way…
- Sisters – It’s only a matter of when.
- Redos of a handful of the “one-week” codexes that got rapid-fired out the first time around. I’d put a Dark Angels, Ad-Mech, and such in here.
- Emperor’s Children – The Wildcard. We have nothing concrete, but the rumors just keep coming…
So in general we are realistically looking at probably close to dozen new books for both systems before the years out. It’s not gonna slow down folks – hold on tight.
~What Codex/Battletomes that got “rushed out” the door the first time do you think most need a more meaty re-do?
