Competitive 40K: Missing Pieces of the 9th Edition Puzzle
9th Edition is almost here, but there are a few pieces of the puzzle missing to truly understand the game.
Well, it has been and exciting couple of days. We finally have a look at the core rules for the new edition of the game and the wheels in everybody’s mind have started to turn. many people are already seeing how these new rules are affecting their army. I have already seen a lot of different combos and ideas come forth from many of the groups and chats that I am a part of. In addition to all this, I have also been seeing some of the acrobatics people have been doing to get certain combos to work in their favor. I am sure that these will be addressed by Games Workshop, if not the judges at their events. If these continue, however, I may have subject matter for a future article, we’ll see. With all this going on, we still don’t have a complete picture to really see where the meta will go. There are a few pieces of the puzzle missing and we will discuss those in this week’s article. So, without further adieu, here we go.
Points Adjustments
We have seen some inkling of what some units cost. So far, this has only been for units in the Space Marine codex. Even looking at that it really doesn’t help us figure out the possible point costs for units in other armies. There doesn’t seem to be a formula that could easily predict how much units will cost. Due to this, it is still hard for a lot of players to figure out what they can include in their 2000 point army. Don’t expect the big 3 tournaments, Las Vegas Open, Adepticon, and NOVA, to increase the points for their games. We will most likely stay at 2000 points even with the price changes. This will cause players to try to make a list maybe in the 1750 to 1850 point level yo account for the possible increase for their armies. So what do you leave out? We are really only a few weeks away now so we should have an answer soon but we can’t really make any statements of what list may be strong or weak until we see what we can fit into our armies with the new point values.
Codex FAQs
We have the same situation with the FAQ for all the codexes. When we first saw some of the rules we noticed that it seemed to affect all the armies. As we got into later faction focus articles we see that some armies will be made exceptions to these core rules. The best example we saw of this was with the Tau and Overwatch. Many player’s excitement and rage were reversed when the special rules for Tau were revealed. The same could be in the works for other armies. Another good example of this is the Psychic Focus ability for Grey Knights and Thousand Sons. This rule has helped those armies a lot, especially since psychics is what they are known for. So far, we have not seen whether they keep this rule or if they go back to what they had before their Psychic Awakening books. Now, Games Workshop has said that the Psychic Awakening books are still good in the new edition but I think that Grey Knight and Thousand Sons players will breath a sigh of relief if it was in the new codex FAQ. Knowing what your army can or cannot do with in the confines of the new edition will help greatly in determining what units to include in your armies for the new edition.
Edge Case Examples
When Games Workshop first discussed the new edition they mentioned that there would be a section where they talk about the different types of weird rules interactions and how to resolve them. This is something that a lot of different rulesets actually cover as they know that there will be certain situations not covered in the normal rules, so they create an appendix for such situations. As I mentioned earlier, people are already coming up with situations that are not easily covered by the new ruleset. Since we have not yet seen this appendix we do not know if these edge cases have been addressed already. This could be a problem because if you think you have found a loophole, or something similar, and you start buying the necessary models to perform this action, you may be left out in the cold if the specific trick you wanted to do is already covered in the Appendix that Games Workshop created. I’m sure that they are happy you bought the models, I just hope you kept the receipts. Now this is all moot if Games Workshop didn’t do that but I would wait and see what is released before making any purchases for your new big scheme.
~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article. Be sure to let me know what else might be missing for you to build your army list in the comments section below.
