Warhammer 40K: 10th Edition Army Building Makes It Easy To Field An Army
Games Workshop shows off the new way we’ll be building armies in 10th edition Warhammer 40,000 and it sounds easy-peasy.
Hopefully you know that Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition is coming in the summer and GW is previewing some of the big changes. Today, we are getting a better idea of what army construction will look like in 10th as they are following the mantra “simplified not simple.” Did they manage to do that with list building? It sure sounds like they were taking steps in that direction!
“For the new edition, the rules team have tried to incentivise the use of a wider range of units by ensuring that each one has a cool, unique ability to bring to the field. Troops are no longer a tax you must pay to unlock the units you actually want to take – but you’ll absolutely still be seeing plenty of classic front line squads showing up on the field.”
Mustering Your Army 101
There’s really 6 main steps when constructing your army. Let’s touch on each one and what they mean.
Battle Sizes
When working with your opponent to determine game sizes you’ve really got 3 standard sizes: Incursion (1,000 points), Strike Force (2,000 points), and Onslaught (3,000 points). These should be relatively familiar. While you can play 500 point games you might be better off giving Combat Patrol or Boarding Action games a go at that size.
Oh and it’s all points now. Say goodbye to Power Level.
Army Roster
The army rosters are just a list of all the units you’re taking. Ideally, this should be written down in a format you can easily share with your opponent and they should have access before you start playing the game. We’ll go into more detail about what the army roster should have on it later.
Select A Faction
“This step hasn’t changed – pick your favourite army and prepare for battle. This step also decides your Faction keyword.”
That means if you want to play Adeptus Custodes, World Eaters, or Orks…well, you pick’em and you’re ready to go. This step also helps to filter now to what Detachment Rules you’ll get. Speaking of which…
Select Detachment Rules
“Here’s where the differences begin to show themselves. Instead of choosing a subfaction or constructing your own, you now choose a single set of Detachment rules for your whole army. These include special abilities, Enhancements, Stratagems, and unit restrictions. “
The new Detachment Rules are what inform your army special abilities, Enhancements, Stratagems, and unit restrictions. If you want to swap Detachments then you’d have a new batch of those same rules. One other note is that Detachments are not going to be based on color schemes. So just because you’re army is Ultramarine Blue doesn’t mean you’d locked into only Ultramarine Detachments.
Pick Units
Now that you’ve got your Points, Faction, and Detachment selected it’s time to pick units. This is where things are also going to familiar and simplified.
In many ways this is the Arks of Omen Detachment from the current 9th Edition. Breaking it down it’s very easy to make an army fit in to this structure.
“Using the Faction keyword you picked earlier, you now select the units you want to include in your army, with the following stipulations:
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- You must include at least one CHARACTER
- You can only include one of each named EPIC HERO
- You can only include up to three units of each datasheet
- However, you can include up to six units of each datasheet with the BATTLELINE or DEDICATED TRANSPORT keywords
- Each CHARACTER can only have one Enhancement, you can’t include more than three Enhancements in total, and these must all be different”
That’s really it. Personally, I’m a HUGE fan of the easy of this structure now. It should be easy and fairly obvious when list building if you have more than 3 of any Datasheet or more than 6 of any of the same Battleline unit.
Select Your Warlord
Of your characters, you choose 1 to become your Warlord. They then get the Warlord keyword and you’re ready to pick your mission and start playing. Boom. Welcome to 10th Edition army building.
Now, there’s gonna be lots of choice to make with your army still. And the Detachments will provide a wide array of versatility and choices. However, the fact that most army rules will fit on a single page should make finding all those rules MUCH easier. Hopefully this encourages folks to swap around and try different Detachments out, too.
You might be wondering about allies or cross-faction armies. There are exceptions for armies like Chaos Daemons, Freeblade Knights, or Brood Brothers.
What do you think of this new simplified army construction for 10th edition? Are you excited to give this one a go?
