It’s Very Hard To Start Playing Warhammer 40K Right Now – Why?!

It’s suddenly very hard to start playing Warhammer 40K 10th Edition. Here’s what’s going on.

Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition has just come out. It’s a brand-new era for the game. It’s also an era of a big reset. Everything is fresh and new and, supposedly, simplified. This should mean that it is a great time to get into the game. Learning it and building a brand-new army should be a breeze. As a result, we should be seeing a big influx of new players. And yet, strangely, right now, 40K is actually almost impossible to get into. What is going on?

Trying to Get Started

Let’s say I’m a brand new, or maybe a returning player to 40K. I’ve mustered up the funds and am ready to get into the game. I missed the Leviathan box launch, but it wasn’t really starter set anyway. So now I’m looking to play 10th. GW has a handy group of starter sets out there, and I pick up the big one, the Ultimate Starter Set. Technically that’s it, I can now play the “game”. But of course, I want to get deeper into the game and play some competitive or tournament games.  Well, the first thing I need to play anything but the most basic mission is the Levithan Mission cards, so I jump on Games-Workshop.com to grab some and see… this: 

The Mission Deck is currently out of stock, and has been for some time. Indeed tanks to some misprints, very few stores have any left. This is a major hurdle, so the Mission Deck is essential to actually play the game as designed, but you pretty much can’t get it. That’s a big issue right there.

The Starter Sets Are Mid

In fact, if we look at the new Starter Sets we can see that they are actually not ideal for getting new players into the real game. While they will technically allow you to play, transitioning from them to building armies and playing the full game is pretty hard. They don’t come with the mission cards, which is an odd choice. The core rules also don’t come with the absolutely necessary Rules Commentary documents. This is something you really need to play the game, but isn’t in the starter set. Now for the core rules, they are free online, but how would you know you needed it?  But on top of that the model collections you get are kind of lacking. In some cases, you get characters without units they can join. The Marine, by far the more popular side, doesn’t come with any Battleline units! You know the kind you should want to have in every army. Instead, it’s got the new Infernus Marines, which are a meh unit. It’s just not a great set of boxes to transition from, especially when compared to past starter sets.

Bloat Out Of The Gate

Well, what about the rules? It’s a new streamlined edition right? So everything should be pretty easy to learn. The starter set does at least come with the core rules, and it’s pretty easy to figure the rest out, right? Well it’s not that easy. What you will actually need to play is something like this:

• The Core Rules
• The Rules Commentary
• The Leviathan Deck
• The Leviathan Deck Insert Rules
• Your Index(es)
• The FAQ for your Index
• The Munitorium Field Manual

You might also need:

• The Leviathan Tournament Pack
• Boarding Action Rules
• Crusade Rules
•  One or More Imperial Amour Indexes.

That’s a decent amount of documents you need just to play the game for real. Most, but not all, of this information, is at least given away for free right now. Good job there GW.  A lot of it is also in the app, which is free… for now. However, you still need to know that you need all these documents. And of course, pretty much any rules you actually paid money at this point probably either incomplete or outdated.

How Do You Buy An Army?

Let’s say however you overcome all those hurdles. You’ve got everything you need to play and want to build your dream army. You pop onto GW’s webstore and start looking to buy models. Suddenly you start seeing this notice a bunch, “Temporaily out of stock Online”. Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. And while it changes, on any given day right now a large perentage of the 40K products on the official GW Webstore are out off stock. Many armies have only a handful of random units in stock. There are claims that GW has prioritized sending stock to Retailers, but that’s very hard to tell. Many items have been out of stock in any form for weeks or months. If you are a new player, it can be impossible to buy the new army you want to.

It Always Changes

Even if you manage to buy the army you want, the sad fact is that it likely won’t be good for all that long. In an attempt to keep the game balanced GW regularly updates the points. These come in regular updates every few months and spot FAQs. Effectively at any given time your army is only good for a couple months before it will likely be illegal. Thanks to the new point system you can’t even just drop a few options as was possible in previous editions.  A minor point increase in a unit can force you to remove whole units from your army. Units can also get moved to Legends with little warning. Did you buy some Assaults Marines at the start of 10th? They did look good in the index. Well, about a month later they are now moving to Legends. This all makes it really hard to plan your purchases and build a compact army. While established players might have large collections allowing them to adapt, new players often don’t – and this is a big issue.

What Do You Do?

So what is a new player to do? Currently, there are just a ton of hurdles for a new player to get into 40K, which have nothing to do with price. The rules are expanding fast already (and not very balanced) and it is hard to even get many things you even need to play. Some players might turn to alternative sources. Copying and printing their own mission cards, 3d printing models and units. This is bad for GW and not great for the game, but what else can you do when the stuff isn’t available?  Many players will get the starter box and not go any further than that. And that’s just bad for the game. The game needs new players, fresh blood, to stay vital and active. It should be growing – especially at the start of a new edition. 40K should be easy and simple to get into. Instead it’s an uphill struggle to start collecting a playable army  – and GW needs to fix that – fast.

Let us know if you think this is a problem, 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.