Goatboy’s 40K: Grimdark 2020 Expectations
Goatboy here again with a little bit of fun looking forward to what we see for the new year. Let’s see how accurate my 40K crystal ball is.
I have high hopes that this year will be full of some rad plastic bits of goodness and hopefully have good rules associated with them. I also hope we see the story move a bit further as the plans of other bad guys come to the forward – so with that let’s dive into the crystal pond of foresight to see if maybe I guess something right.
New Edition
The first big wish is that we do see a new edition. I get the feeling this one will be more on the money as the current edition isn’t necessarily broken – it just needs to be condensed again and presented in a new big fat book. Of course we hope there are some tweaks to this but overall the current newish armies do not need a rework so just cleaning up the main rules will suffice. Especially if you mix in some sweet new plastic minis attached to a new release of rules. I thought the Dark Imperium release was pretty epic so having something else come along in a similar format would be pretty awesome. I’d also vote for the box set to not have a big super fancy book and instead give us an updated mini rulebook. Oh and maybe have some dice in it that had a symbol of the Goat on the 6. Ya know something totally doable.
New Primarch
The next big thing I expect to see is finally another Primarch. It has been too long since we had the two big bad guys and the “hero” of the Imperium. I have the feeling it is about time to get another one. Now I don’t want it to be another carbon copy of Roboute but instead we could look at how the new Saint Katherine is and some of the diorama Age of Sigmar guys are. Maybe we have a true Triuvirate looking release with 3 heroes stuck on a bad ass base to cause some issues? Would this be too much? Maybe let your play them individually or all combined into some kind of crazy Megaforce nonsense?
Xenos Help
After those big two wishes I would hope we see some power come to the Xenos armies that are not Eldar based. I don’t know what else we could do as the overall combo nature of Imperium and Chaos means Xenos miss out. Those type of combo things are also very powerful in Xenos builds so finding some way to force one Clan/Group/Etc would have generate some amazing rules to make players change their lists up. I do like the idea of making one sort of group the choice in an army as it makes things like telling what parts do what in a list easier.
Psychic Upgrades
Next up I expect Psychic Awakening to bring some crazy powers in the future. Endless spells do well for Age of Sigmar and we could see some show up in 40k. Remember the good ole vortex Grenade? Isn’t it interesting how mortal wounds really do well with these whole vortex of death type of things? Could we see some stuff like this come about as a way to sell “new” figures to armies? Will this mean we see Tau with psychic abilities? Or some other forms of dark arts for Necrons and the like? Speaking about Psychic Awakening how will the other rule add ons be? Faith and Fury was powerful but some of the others are kinda of ok? Are we going to see more middle ground releases? Or are we going to see true updates?
Fallen?
Speaking of that – I expect something to come out for the Fallen. There is just too much lore floating around with all the crazy Chaos stuff happening. They have to do something with them right? I don’t know if it will be any good but it was very interesting to see the Fallen drop in points this last CA. Maybe will see a small codex or even – gasp – a cool White Dwarf Mini book release they can shove into the CA at the end of the year?
Traitor Guard
On the new army front if you look at all the weird release stuff from Blackstone Fortress I expect to see a Renegade AM army to show up at some point. I would love to see that as converting some Leman Russ’s into chaotic doom engines would be amazing. Plus it would give me a chance to paint something new instead of just rehashing conversion ideas for my current go to red Chaos army. I could really see a fleshed out book with new lore and stories based upon worlds falling to the truth that is Chaos.
New Grey Knights
Finally to come back to something – I really hope GW takes a good hard look at the Grey Knights and works on fixing that army. I know there is still a lot of bad memories from the Psycannon storm days but it truly feels like a waste to not get these guys up towards the new Marine builds. I don’t know how to fix them but there has to be a way. Beyond just making them way t0o cheap there should be something to make them tougher and more like the books. Maybe some kind of massed army ability like Doctrines that you can shift around during the game? Maybe just making the regular Grey Knight marine better and not just a Primaris upgrade?
What things are you hoping for? I know I want to see more bad guy stuff (Bad Primarchs, fixed/updated daemons, Legion books) but there should be some good guy stuff out there that is missing. Are you tired of regular Marine/Primaris stuff coming out? How about just a fixed FW book for all the weird Marine characters that don’t have Warlord Traits? How about just some cool Xenos stuff? What about a Primarch sized Ghazghul?
~Tell me what you most expect for 40K in 2020?
