Warhammer 40,000: 9th Edition Matched Play Rules Roundup
We have a full roundup of all the 9th Edition Matched Play details out from GW today. Let’s dive in.
First off, the high level stuff from GW is here, including a sample mission. However, there were a lot of little gems of information from the Designer Interview as well that flew under the radar.
These are listed in the order described.
Mission Packs
The Edition will ship with three “Mission Packs”
- Open Play Mission Pack
- Crusade (Narrative Play) Mission Pack
- Eternal War (Matched Play) Mission Pack
Additional Mission Packs will come out during the Edition’s lifespan – in Chapter Approved for example.
There are 18 Matched Play Missions (see chart for sizes above):
- 3 Combat Patrols (500 pts)
- 6 Incursion (1000 pts)
- 6 Strike Force (2000 pts)
- 3 Onslaught (3000 pts)
Mission Pack Details
A design goal of the Mission Packs is to make “Solving the Meta” impossible.
Mission Packs are designed with a theme, that emphasizes a particular play style, for example killing things, or taking objectives, etc.
Winning a game is based on earning Victory Points.
Missions will have Primary Goals listed in the Mission Packs
Secondary Goals are not described in the specific mission, but are arranged in categories. You may take several, but not from the same category.
Additional Faction Secondary Goals will arrives in the new 9th Edition Codexes and focus on things that make sense for that faction to be trying to achieve.
Actions
Actions are a new thing that a unit can do in exchange of shooting or fighting in melee during a turn.
Actions are defined in each Mission.
Actions give the designers “more levers” to write missions around, and help emphasize the narrative feel of the game.
Sample actions are:
- Raising a Banner
- Hack into Teleport Homers
- Destroy an Opposing Shrine
- Various Psychic Actions
Preventing Shutouts
Mission VP scoring is designed specifically to minimize large VP inbalances, particularly early game.
There are caps in place and restrictions on racking up large early game VP leads.
The goal is keep a player who has an unfortunate turn in the game.
Army Construction
“There will be a reason to take TROOPS” that will become clear in future reveals.
Codexes have been redesigned to make the experience of building a Matched Play army much easier.
An example was the reduction of page flipping back and forward inbetween units and the points and weapon/equipment options compared to 8th Edition.
Points
Every Unit and Piece of Wargear in the game has been repointed.
“On average” the point cots of things has increased slightly.
This is to counteract the overall reduction in point costs of things that occurred during 8th Edition.
This has the effect of lowering the modelcount of armies in 9th to be closer to what it was in 7th Edition.
This was done to help decrease the time needed to play the game which had gotten longer in 8th Edition.
~Have at it.
