Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Things to Think About To Win In 10th
We mostly have 40K 10th Edition rules in our digital little hands. Here’s what you need to focus on to win.
I think we are just missing – the new Leviathan box obviously and some Matched Play discussion. That will most likely cause me to shift some things based on what I normally play. We’ll see how much it shifts as the rumors talk about “limits” for armies and other fun stuff.
But with that let’s talk about all of what we have seen and how it will shift things for players. There is a lot of changes to keep in mind. While the game feels like it plays the same, there are a ton of subtle nuances as well as big changes from now retired 9th Edition.
Movement
Let’s go with the first one Movement. Shake your bootie or what might be considered your army’s grimdark bootie!
Clean Movement
As you can see movement has been simplified in some areas like moving through your own units and positioning your self. That is a good thing as again – most players played this way and it felt intuitive to push your toys around like that. We all know those games where you had to be meticulous with your movement. So making it easier definitely helps.
Flying Movment
Of course with that thought, we saw a big shift in how flying works and you truly “move” your winged plastic dudemen. You no longer gain movement going up to a level and then only gain some coming back down as you “float” towards the enemy. This is a weird rules mechanic and while I understand the reason to limit flyers and their abilities in someways – it does feel just weird. Perhaps the future will hold changes to these rules but I doubt it as they want to limit some things.
In and Out of Cover
It is the same with the change where – you can’t toe in and see through terrain to shoot. It doesn’t feel right as you basically used to “peek” into the building and pump fire power to those you can now see through the wreckage. This was most likely done to limit that tactic, as the whole idea of touching the front of a tank into the building to shoot thru the window just looked silly. Now your tank has to fully fit into the terrain to see thru all the terrain. This will make for some weird things as you move in, shoot, then have to back on up and get out to continue moving.
Assault & Basing
Assault also again is weird too with having to base models if you can. I talked a bit about how you can circumvent this with careful placement of “farther back” models to allow for more movement so I would suggest practicing that if you are playing an assault army. I don’t know how good assault is right now but I am sure something will come out that wrecks face so fast those gunlines are stuck.
Shooting Is Hot in 10th Edition
Holy heck there is a lot of shooting in some specific armies. There are going to be sad days when a ton of indirect fire pounds your army and kills some things. I feel while the bullets allow you to have saves more, the sheer weight of firepower might be too much. Perhaps my fears come true but again I expect these first few months will be nuts but everything will calm down as soon as players figure things out.
Beware Devastating Wounds
There are some combos out there that feel too good and I bet get hit pretty quickly as the game moves on. I don’t think we should have had nearly as many Devastating wound options – especially on units you could purchase a lot on. A few of them is fine but when you start to see wounds that hit in the 10+ Devastating Wounds from a single unit’s attack you start to question how that was designed. It is one thing if Devastaging wounds would be the only way to ignore armor as it is mostly AP 0. But a lot of those weapons have high AP, high Damage, and high chance to proc sad faces. Beware!
I expect GW to tone Devastating wounds down a bit and really a lot of the game is so dependent on having decent terrain that time will tell. Perhaps we’ll see giant walls all over the place, or find some other methods for an interesting tabletop? Matched play rules and Matched Play terrain info is sorely needed.
Start glueing on those extra sponsons…
Points Are Kinda Messy
I am fine with combined points for units if all the options are decent. I am fine with an easy way to build lists as it just makes getting your army to the tabletop easier. I also like how it all is built around what boxes of minis you purchase (except cough cough – Plague Marines) thus making it easier for new players to pick up the game and build lists.
We just have some issues where if a unit is aggressively costed with a load out that feels too good – then that is all we are going to see. It makes me feel like instead of having differerent weapons we should have all moved things to just this unit does “x” style hits and damage. Would it be easier in the long run to just have guns like medium guns, heavy guns, assault guns, and they all do just those things for each unit?
Rerolls (And the Lack Thereof)
It feels like a lot of armies are set up like they were in 9th with tons of overlapping buffs and benefits while others are kinda left wanting. I was hoping for less rerolls and while a few here and there are ok – having so many in specific armies just feels bad. I hope again we see something balancing some of this on the Matched Play side to let other armies get a chance to work.
The Eldar Elephant In the Room
Oh and I don’t like all this “replace” dice rolls with some kind of locked in dice roll. It can create some “guaranteed” effects that are just not that exciting. Oops that Eldar player rolled a ton of 6’s so they will always be protected in the first few turns and doing max damage. This again combos into weapons with specific abilities that chain off of those rolls and makes me wonder – if they should have even allowed dice replacement things to count as critical hits. That might be the best way to limit some of this and let the desire to try for a roll out way the auto success.
Welcome to the New Normal of 40K
Right now it is going to be a crazy couple months as we wait for games to be played, armies to rise to the top, and thoughts on armies being too good. I personally think shooting is pushed a bit more and while I think I will play some assault stuff first it will most likely be a rough going for me. But hey – that is the life of an angry monster mash style player and I understand.
Are you guys excited to see matched play? Are you mad at what happened to your army? Is this a game to just wait awhile until all things kind of cycle thru?
