Warhammer 40K: The Gamer Survey And The Future Of 40K
I don’t know the results but I took the survey and talked to many other who have. We all noticed the same thing.
So two weeks ago Games Workshop put out a survey for folks to take. It’s closed now – but I know quite a few players who took the survey. I chatted with them and, while this is all anecdotal evidence, I did notice a trend when we were talking about the survey in relation to 40k: It’s complicated. That wasn’t a negative to all the players I talked to but it was a bigger factor for those who have stepped away from 40k to pursue other wargames — particularly Age of Sigmar. I’ll talk more about those folks in a section below. One thing I wanted to know was where the complexity was coming from in 40k and these players all pointed in the same direction: The codexes and stratagems.
The Core Rules Are Fine…Mostly
When it comes to the Core Rules of 40k, most of the players I talked with didn’t have a problem with those. In fact, when it came up, they said this ruleset was clear and concise. The Core Rules were not where the complexity came from. Are there some funky rules interactions? Sure – but that’s part and parcel with a tabletop wargame. And those weird interactions really only come up when you started mixing in the army rules from (you guessed it) the codexes. Now, I will say that I didn’t have a lot of new players that I was talking to about the survey. Most of these players were veterans of at least a couple editions of 40k. So they had some working knowledge of the game before having to “learn” it fresh.
New Player (Not So) Friendly?
However, I did talk with one new player who told me that when they learned how to play, the person that taught them didn’t start with the army rules in their first couple turns. They started with JUST the Core Rules – movement, shooting, charges, and combat — they didn’t even do the psychic phase initially. As the game progressed they were then introduced to Psykers, and eventually the Command Points and stratagems. Initially, they only used the generic stratagems, too. Once the game was over they then got to see all the extra stratagems from their rules.
The next time they played, they had a cheat sheet and also a couple characters with Auras. Eventually, they got to use all the rules in the game for a full game. Only after they played a full game with all the rules did they get to sit down and build their own list (with some help from the person teaching them, of course).
That’s…a lot. Firstly, I wanted to hug the person that taught them how to play this way. The patience and kindness it takes to slowly go through all these interactions and build up the players working knowledge is just…well, they should get a medal. And secondly, how does a person who’s brand new LEARN this game? If you don’t have anyone to show you the way, what are you supposed to do? Watch Battle Reports and try and dissect the game as you follow along? Do you just read the Core Rules and your codex front to back and memorize everything? And how do you build an army from scratch — without knowing how to really play?
Crusade helps with a new army, but it’s also a LOT of extra rules on top of the ruleset, too. It’s complicated.
I Blame The Codexes
It’s actually not JUST the codexes fault. They are a necessary evil IMHO. You need a place that has all your army rules and special things that make your army unique (compared to the other armies out there) in one spot. Warlord Traits, Relics, Units, Crusade Rules, and even Stratagems all need to be in consolidated spot and the Codex is that.
However, when I was chatting with folks, they consistently brought up the Stratagems. There was always something to pick at for them. One person brought up the fact that every codex gets between 20 and 25 stratagems. That’s a lot. What’s worse, is that you really only ever using like 5 of them. The other 20 are just too narrow a use case and not really worth doing. What’s worse, is that some of the Stratagems feel like they take the army’s flavor away and hide them behind a CP expenditure for no reason.
Here’s just one example…Did the Blood Angels forget how to turn on their jump packs suddenly because I’m out of CP?
They all had other issues they brought up, but the codexes adding complexity and the stratagems came up consistently. This was a very interesting observation.
Jumping Ship to Age of Sigmar
Quite a few of the players I spoke with were also lapsed 40k players. They hadn’t really touched the new edition of 40k other than a couple of cursory games. These were players that had previously played for many editions but this new one was just a bridge too far. Maybe their interests were waning from burnout from 8th, too. But 9th just seem to push them out completely.
Plus, there was this shiny other game that folks were picking-up called Age of Sigmar. It played similarly but didn’t have ALL the complexity that 40k had. Plus list building was a breeze and made sense. Characters had built in abilities akin to stratagems but were focused on them. The Command Point System made more sense and were easier to use. And the game had a lot of surprising tactical challenges that weren’t as obvious until you started playing.
…And it was fun, too!
The players that had jumped shipped to AoS and took the survey also had similar feedback. “I get the same tactical challenge from AoS without all the ‘extra‘ that is 40k” is how one person put it. I gotta say, I agree with that statement. I might be biased here and again this is all anecdotal observations I’ve made (and my sample size is relatively small vs what GW is getting back). But if this batch of players is any indication I hope GW is taking notes on their feedback from the survey.
Or I could be way off — maybe these players are in the minority. 40k is doing just fine after-all. Players are still going to tourneys and playing at stores or at home. Everyone seems to be having fun with it. But if that’s the case, why did GW put the survey out there? What feedback are they seeing and why are they trying to gather this data? We might never know the answers but it would be pretty cool to get access to the results of the feedback once it’s been collected and collated. It’s also be nice to win the lottery but I doubt either will happen.
What does the next edition of 40k hold? Change. But we’ve got a long way ahead of us before we get there. There’s still a good chunk of armies that don’t have a codex yet. So don’t get the pitchforks out — but get ready for something to give in the next edition of 40k.
What did you think of the survey? What do you think the future holds for 40k?
