Warhammer 40K: So When Will The New Edition Arrive?
This is the questions I’ve had for about a week now. When will Warhammer 40,000 9th Edition arrive? Let’s chat.
A little over a week ago Games Workshop announced the next edition of Warhammer 40,000 will be coming soon. They launched it with this kick-ass new trailer:
That’s great as it generated a ton of hype and even teased some of the new units coming to the game. They also hyped-up the Necrons as the antagonist – at least for now. That fits in perfectly with the whole “Silent King Returns” plot line they have brewing as well.
But that’s kind of what I wanted to focus on – the timing of the next edition as well as the current Psychic Awakening release. This past weekend we finally got Psychic Awakening: Engine War up for pre-order. That one has been a long time coming and a lot of the delay was out of GW’s control. However, we still have two more Psychic Awakening books on deck: War of the Spider and Pariah.
“Don’t forget about me!”
This puts us at a weird timeline of releases. If you looked at the releases and the previews, it made sense to ask when these products would all be releases. Would GW attempt to course-correct and do a “rapid fire” release schedule to catch-up with the Pre COVID-19 release plans? Or would they just shift their release schedule back a few months to compensate?
May 30th saw the release of Engine War. Next week, we don’t have a Psychic Awakening Book slated for a new release. In the previous release schedule we were getting a new Psychic Awakening book about once a month. If GW is just shifting things, then technically, Engine War was for May (even though it won’t hit stores ’till June) and that opens up the possibility that we’ll see War of the Spider in June and Pariah in July.
So does that put the new Edition in August? Maybe. What if GW cut down the release times in half and did a new Psychic Awakening book every two weeks? Well, then we’d see War of the Spider next week for Pre-orders and that would put Pariah as a late June/early July release. GW could then put out the next Edition mid-to-late July or early August.
But there is one other possibility: What if GW just drops the next edition in the middle of the Psychic Awakening books? It would be entirely possible because the rules are compatible, right? The core rules in the next edition are updates and not a complete overhaul – we know that much. In fact, your current codexes are 100% valid as are the other 8th edition supplemental books. So why NOT release the next edition in between Psychic Awakening books?
We could see a release schedule of War of the Spider -> 9th Edition -> Pariah. The biggest reason that we might not see that type of release would be for the sake of current plot changes. Pariah seems like it’s going to tie-in directly to the next edition’s story developments as well Psychic Awakening.
Then again, we’re all still waiting for the the “big event” to show-up in Psychic Awakening, right? There has been a lot of shifting but not a lot of progress in terms of story-line. GW has been planting seeds all over the lore and we have yet to see those things develop. My guess is that we will see those get worked up in 9th Edition as we move forward in the timeline.
Anyhow, back to the original question: When will we see Warhammer 40,000 9th Edition? Will it be a August release? Will it be sooner? Could the delays force GW to push it back even further? Well, Games Workshop’s fiscal year resets in June. It’s now June 1st. So if they were looking to end their fiscal year with a big release, it’s a little too late to pull that off. However, they could release 9th during their 1st half of their fiscal year and really get a big boost in sales. Which, at this point, a July/August release seems likely and thus a big boon to their bottom line.
All we know for sure is that it’s coming. And it will be here sooner than you think.
When do you think 9th Edition will hit store shelves? Do you think GW will wait to finish Psychic Awakening first or drop it before PA is done?
