Competitive 40K: New Edition, New Meta
Adam here to talk about all the exciting times ahead for 9th Edition and competitive 40K.
Well in case you haven’t noticed, there was a big announcement from Games Workshop. After 3 years we are getting a new edition of the game.
The additional Q&A gave us a lot of answers to many of the questions on our minds. It also gave us even more questions to ponder as they teased us with hints at both what to expect and what to look forward to in the future. Using what we do know, we can make some educated guesses as to what to expect in the coming weeks. I know that last week we talked about what to expect coming out of the pandemic and back onto the tabletops but now things have changed a bit since the rules will literally be changing, some good and some not so good for players. So let’s take another look on how the changes we have heard about so far will most likely change the upcoming meta.
Well, hello there…
Vehicles on the Rise
The changes to how vehicles work has a very good chance to bring a lot of them out of mothballs and onto the tabletop. Now you won’t just be seeing Eldar vehicles but actually vehicles from other armies. the ability to shoot into, and I believe out of, combat is strong as they can now ignore that grot that is touching your Leman Russ and fire your battlecannon and the larger threat to your army. As we see more vehicles we will see more anti vehicle weapons or weapons that are able to handle both armor and lots of bodies. You may well see armoured battle groups make their return for a lot of armies. The addition of the Blast rule is another edition that will see vehicles return. Now we don’t know which weapons this will apply to but being able to get max number of shots at horde units can be devastating. I shudder to think of a Wyvern possibly getting max shots if it is labeled as a blast weapon.
Hordes on the Decline
Speaking of horde armies, this type of army build may take a hit with the new edition. As we just mentioned, blast weapons will have a huge impact on the size of horde armies. People are already talking about a way to get around the blast issue is to just take as many models so that they fall just under the blast requirement. This seems like a smart play but there could be issues when it comes to number of units and model count. If you have to break up your large unit into multiple smaller ones, that means they are easier to break morale, take up more slots than you may have, or add extra points since you may have to pay for additional squad leaders. Then there are the number of detachments to consider. With the new way to create your army it now costs you command points to get a second allied detachment. Now I am not sure if this is true if you stay with one codex but I can see Games Workshop rewarding mono faction players by letting them add more detachments is it is the same codex. Either way, there may need to be a bit of belt tightening or a need of more variety for horde armies.
More Single Faction Armies
Since we already touched on it, it looks likes Games Workshop is giving us more incentives to play your army as a single faction. They are going to give all armies the same amount of command points to start, depending on the size of the battle, and are even charging command points in order to ally other armies in. This will cause players to have to decide on how much do they really need that extra force. For many players the answer may be a simple one as they usually had a second detachment just to generate more command points. Due to the same amount of command points being given out to everyone, there really is no need for that second detachment, unless you really like those guys. AS we start getting more books after the initial release of the new edition I can see a lot of players at least trying to play a single faction army at their local tournaments before taking that army to one of the grand tournaments. I mean, we were seeing a lot of single faction armies before the new edition and now we should see that number increase.
~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know what you think, and how you see the meta shifting with this new edition, in the comments below!
