Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K – New 10th Edition Rules Look HOT!
Goatboy here again and I am LOVING the new 10th Edition 40K rules so far. Let’s dive in.
We got some fun new bits of info from 10th Edition. Let’s chat about how much it could change the game we all love to play, complain about, and build models for. We did get some big news on big changes from 9th Edition, and overall I am pretty excited about them.
Characters Joining Units
Let’s talk about the first one and the change that brings a ton of nostalgia with a ton of worry. I got back into the game around 4th Edition and have continued all the way thru 9th. I have lived thru the ages of Deathstars and have been a perpetrator in the realm of super units. Heck, one of my favorite armies was a double Deathstar combining Dark Angels and Space Wolves into 2 murder balls. Heck, I was one of the first to run Nob Bikers back in the day too.
The idea of voltroning up a unit of murder hobos is not new, and while it can be fun for the player running it is a nightmare for the opponent. Thankfully from the article’s bits of info, this will be a much more controlled effort in ensuring these old murder balls of death are not likely going to happen. From the initial limits of the number of characters who can join, the change in how they are assigned wounds, and just the hope that the playtesters would understand what not to build into a character will keep this from being an issue.
I never really liked how characters just ran around without a group or friends to make sure they don’t take a bullet. It never sat well with me no matter how many times I used those rules to keep my caster protected or ensure my Master of Executions got to sneak in and take someone’s head for Chaos.
I like the idea of Characters being more than just hidden VP for your opponent to take and making these command squads again just sounds fun. They should lead, but they should also lead a unit into battle. We’ll see what kinds of benefits they give to units versus some kind of Aura piece. That aspect of removing some of the bubbles of rules in 40K will hopefully allow for some less nitpicking when trying to move your leader around the table and ensure all your things get their aura. Will just have to wait and see what shows up in the next few months.
Mighty, Mighty Vehicles
From there, we got some info on how Vehicles got tougher. There are 2 bits of info that matter here – from the basic idea of making Toughness matter for them more and just removing the middle “hurt” profile. Both are good additions, as there are two things I thought needed more use in the game and just didn’t help out a ton when playing.
Playing with Toughness is just something we should see more in this game. It was annoying to think the true highest toughness that was commonly used was 8 with a few things hitting 9. Going above that for things that are not super heavies is a cool thing and can be a way to easily represent more wounds without giving the model more wounds. Adding more wounds becomes a tricky thing as it increases the unit’s ability to take damage and gives it too much of a resource that can be hard to point-cost correctly when calculating a unit’s value.
It is always better to have more wounds, but having more toughness can almost be as good. Moving in a direction that isn’t just making weapons less effective by not taking as many resources away is a better thing than oddball workarounds like – wound limits per phase, just more wounds, and other mitigation factors. Of course, will have to see how many Anti-Vehicle keyword weapons we have that just ignore toughness in people’s armies. I hope we don’t have a ton, as a few is good for “solving” vehicle problems. But if everyone doesn’t give a crap about toughness we just end up having 9th edition with all the 6’s to hit, causes 6’s to wound.
New Weapon Keywords
The last thing we’ll talk about is the whole change to weapons and utilizing keywords to bring benefits. Having the hit rate on a weapon be locked to the weapon type is a cool thing to me. We talked a bit about it, but it is something that lets GW have a lot more control over units and how they interact. Again we’ll have to see if something gets a too spicy datasheet in the future, but for right now, I have high hopes it will help make the game easier for players to rock on the tabletop.
From there, we saw a ton more keywords for weapons with things like Sustained Hits, Devastating Wounds, Melta, and of course, Assault and Heavy. I like having basic rules keyworded like Sustained Hits, as it is a common thing we all play with during games. We all know Exploding 6’s and having the Keyword locked with a number behind it makes things pretty simple to look at. This is also the same thing for Melta where they could do something like Melta 4 to show a really devastating weapon. Devastating Wounds is again a simple – 6’s cause Mortal wounds to-wound which show up all over the place, and just having those words on the weapon stat-line makes it easy to remember.
So much of this game is to remove the need to just float back and forth between each of your rule books, and instead you just say things like Devastating Wounds, Melta, or Rapid Fire. Along those lines, the talk was a drop in AP in general across the board, so we will hopefully have a game where you are not hoping to always roll a 6 for your save to stay alive.
We’ll see what shows up next week, as I am sure will see some more info on how the army pages are set up and maybe some mission info. GW is really pushing this game to be easier to play, better for new players to pick up, and by the looks of it easier to judge for those players who love to wear a brighter shirt during an event. We’ll have to see if the game is actually faster too, but I am excited to try it out – especially at the Kansas City event later this year.
What do yo think about the new rules so far?
