Warhammer 40K: 9th Edition Still Has A Ways To Go
There’s been a lot of doom and gloom about how Warhammer: 40,000 9th edition is coming to an end. But that’s a ways off yet.
Warhammer: 40,000 9th Edition has been a pretty wild ride so far. We’ve seen the game change quite a bit with a steady stream of codex releases, war zone supplements, balance dataslates, and White Dwarf articles. Lately, it’s feeling like the community might be winding down towards the end of the edition. On one hand, yeah, that’s not wrong as there is a light at the end of the tunnel. However, 9th Edition is far from over just yet.
Meta Is Still Changing
Love it or hate it, the Meta of Warhammer: 40,000 has constantly been changing this edition. With each codex that arrived the players would dissect it and see if it had any game breaking combos that would crush the current (at the time) Meta. Sometimes a codex wouldn’t make much of a dent. With others, you’d have a fundamental shift in the game and a new “top tier” army to deal with.
It could have been due to the new codex, some White Dwarf list, a supplement, or even a balance dataslate change — but the Meta itself has changed a ton since day one. In fact, this past weekend we saw some of that new Meta shake things up on the Tournament Scene. That’s probably due to the latest balance dataslate. In any case there is one thing you can’t say about this edition’s Meta — it hasn’t been stagnant!
We want to give credit where it’s due and the fact that Games Workshop has devoted a lot to keeping the Meta fresh this edition has been an improvement. On the other hand it’s been a bit overwhelming to keep up with. As a player would you rather complain about “not enough stuff” or “too many things” — in this case, it’s certainly been a “too many things” situation.
Codexes Yet To Be Released
We just got the new Chaos Space Marine Codex. And we’ve gotten a placeholder World Eaters codex from White Dwarf. But we’ve still got a couple more codexes out in the wild that need to be released. We know the Chaos Daemons codex is on the way next but they aren’t the only ones.
The Astra Militarum needs a new book for 9th edition. We’ve been waiting a LONG time for that one. Plus, we know the World Eaters are going to get a full codex at some point — hopefully for 9th edition. I want to see those Angron rules sooner rather than later!
And then there’s the brand new Leagues of Votann army! We know they’ve got rules designed for 9th edition as GW has shown off a few of them already.
So, in total, that’s 4 codexes that are on the way/yet to be released. That’s a fair share of codexes left in 9th edition. Keep in mind we might still see a few more War Zone books or some other supplements from Games Workshop, too.
Still No Roadmap
We don’t have a 40k roadmap to follow and that’s only adding to the mystery. We know there are certain things on the way but we have no timelines and things could be shifting daily. There is a Chaos book coming for Age of Sigmar towards the end of the year and that seems like a good time for many of these chaos daemon releases to land, but we’re in July, almost August at this point. That would put those releases 3-4 months out.
That’s a lot of time to fill between now and “winter” time. I’m sure the Horus Heresy is ramping up with kits and releases and there’s still a lot of AoS ground to cover. But does that mean GW is going to go “dark” on 40k for 3-4 months? Absolutely not! They’ve got to have something planned. We’re just going to have to wait to find out.
There’s still a lot of room to grow with 9th edition. There’s a handful of codexes and a boat load of new miniatures that could be heading our way before the “End of the Edition” hits. And while that day is on the horizon we’ve still got a long way to go to get there.
9th edition is far from done. What releases are you looking forward to?
