Warhammer 40K: 10th Edition Might Have More Rerolls Than 9th

It looks like re-rolls are going to be all over the place in 40K 10th Edition.

Every since Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition was announced, we’ve been eagerly awaiting the rules updates.  One of the things it seems clear 10th is aiming to do is curb the excesses of 9th. The current edition has gotten out of hand, with too much going on and an out-of-control lethality. These are worthy goals. As part of doing this, the designers have mentioned that there would be fewer re-rolls and that the units would be more survivable. However, based on the rules previewed so far it’s not clear this will be the case at all. Let’s take a look.

The Re-Rolls of 9th

In 9th Edition re-rolls are pretty common. Indeed armies have a unit that hands out re-rolls of 1s to hit to, at the very least, CORE units within a radius. Most of the time, this is found at the “army commander” level, or “Captain” level. Many armies even have units that do the same thing but for wounds. These are commonly lower-ranked heroes. Thus at least for CORE units, it’s pretty trivial to get re-rolls of 1s on something. Some units give out re-rolls to both hits and wounds, and few allow full re-rolls, not just on 1s. But that’s not all.

In addition to auras, stratagems, unit rules, psychic powers, and even a few army rules hand them out. By keeping your units near characters you can get a lot of re-rolls, though most are of 1s. It seems hard to think that a game could really have more re-rolls than 9th.

The 10th Army Rules So Far

The very first army wide rule previewed for 10th was Oath of Moment. This rule allows you to pick a unit each turn and gives your entire army full hit and wound re-rolls vs it. No re-rolls of 1s. Full re-rolls. Depending on the unit, that’s a metric buttload of re-rolls there. In fact, with this rule it’s possible, if unlikely, for your whole army to re-roll hits and wounds. That’s the most you can have. You can’t get more re-rolls than “all of them“. And sure, most likely, only a couple of units will get to use this each turn. But most likely, it’s still going to be on par with, if not more, than you were getting from having a few units in range of a re-roll 1s aura. It’s also not dependent on being near friendly units.

The Other 10th Re-rolls

OK, but Oath of Moment is just for Marines. Maybe other armies won’t get a lot of re-rolls. Say hello to twin-linked. Back when this used to be a USR it was pretty common. I’m guessing we are going to see a lot of it in the future. And what does twin-linked do? It gives our full re-rolls on wounds. That’s another pretty big pile of re-rolls going around.

Or how about the Falcon’s new Fire Support rules? It’s a rule that I love, but it also allows you to hand out full wound re-rolls to units. Now it’s a lot more limited than the other rules we’ve seen so far. The unit has to have disembarked from a Falcon that turn, and Falcons don’t carry a ton of models. But it still can hand out a bunch of re-rolls, and potentially to some very powerful units. We don’t yet know if other transports will have a similar rule, but we do see a lot of units getting re-rolls.

The Difference In Re-Rolls

So far, we’ve only seen a very small amount of the rules for 10th Edition. Out of them, three that we have seen provide re-rolls. While one, Fire Support, is pretty limited, the other two are wide-ranging and will give a ton of units in a ton of games re-rolls. Now maybe this it is. Perhaps there aren’t a lot of other ways to get re-rolls. Maybe the ability to get them will be a lot less common in 10th vs 9th. We don’t know if that’s true, but it’s possible. Even so, I’d argue 10th might very well see more re-rolls than 9th.

See, the majority of re-rolls we say in 9th were of 1s. Whether it was to hit or to wound, you could only re-roll natural 1st. Full re-rolls were pretty rare and hard to come by. However, so far all the re-roll rules we’ve seen in 10th have provided full re-rolls. Even if it’s hard to get re-rolls in 10th, if all the re-rolls you DO get are full instead of only 1s, then you are going to end up re-rolling a ton more dice. Obviously, we’ve got to wait and see the full rules, but right now, it sure seems like re-rolls are going to be a very common feature in 10th.

Let us know what you think of these new rules, down in the comments!

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.