Why We Need Less Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Books, More Codexes
Let’s talk about the large number of 40K Campaign books that have been coming out.
This has been a strange couple of years for Warhammer 40K. Between lockdowns and supply line issues releases have been delayed and shuffled around a ton. GW has not always been super transparent on what is or isn’t delayed, which is fair, meaning that it’s often hard to tell just when a book or release was supposed to come out. Coupled with a new 9th Edition and a ton of books, its been an interesting time. However if you’ve been playing the game for the last two years, one thing your by now familure with is Campaign books, something we may just be getting too many of. Lets take a look.
By The Numbers
Within the last two years there have been a huge number of books released. If we take a look at the sheer number of books since late October 2019 we get:
- 10 Codices (9 from 9th Edition, 1 form 8th Edition)
- 5 Marine Codex Supplements (All 9th Edition)
- 12 Campaign Books (3 from 9th Edition, 9 from 8th Edition)
- 4 Crusade Campaign Mission Pack Books (All 9th Edition)
- 3 Chapter Approved Supplements (All 9th)
- An Imperial Armor Book (9th)
This gives us a grand total of 35 books, in 24 months, roughly 1.5 books a month. 25 of them have come out in the last 14 months, since the release of 9th Edition. That’s a lot to keep up with.
Too Many Cooks (Campaign books)
In the past 2 years there have been more new Campaign books released that full fledged Codices. If you combine the lesser supplements and Codex books, they do slightly beat out the campaign books, but if you add in mission pack books, then campaigns take the lead again. This is a just really a lot of non-codex releases. Now yes, a huge number of these campaigns came out in 8th, at the end of an edition when your normally get these sort of releases, and to some degree that could make them more palatable.
On the other hand however, a large number of the 8th books are still valid and needed to play today. Or at least parts of them are. Moreover if you’ve been playing the last two years, it might not matter a lot that some came from the old edition, if you’ve been following releases, then about half of what you’ve gotten in two years is campaign books, books which are generally less useful and exciting than a codex. On top of all that is the fact that campaigns keep coming out in 9th. Its pretty much unheard of for this many campaign books to come out this early in an editions life cycle.
Focus On Codices
What makes this extra frustrating for players is that a ton of armies are operating with older and out of date books. Even more recent books like many of the Marine supplements are outdated. There is a huge backlog of books that need to be updated. This makes it very annoying for people when they see resources devoted to campaign books or Scenario Pack books.
Sure you might get something in a campaign book to help, but often it seems like they are just throwing you a bone. Two buffs from Campaign books haven’t made Imperial Guard any better, what they and others need are new books. So maybe, just maybe, we need less campaign books and a faster update of old Codices. At this point it almost seems like we will get 10th Edition before Guard or Nids get a new book.
Let us know if you think we need less campaign books, down in the comments!
