Warhammer 40K: Should GW Simplify Weapons Stats Even More
Goatboy here, to talk about how and why, GW should clean up weapon stats even more in Warhammer 40K.
Warhammer 40k 10th Edition has done a lot of simplify some of the games interactions when it comes to damage and damage potential. You can see this in how we have “collapsed” some of the weapon choice profiles to create a basic standard to help make things easier. I am all for this and while some of the simplifying nature of it feels a bit bland this is in service of the greater goal of just balancing those units and making things easier. What I want to propose are some methods to “help” this a bit more, collapse some choices, and see if we can create more opportunities to just let models look cool and still always be useable.
Simplified Character Weapons
First idea I have is to just collapse weapon choices on some of the characters. You could easily just say “Relic Blade of the Imperium” for each of the Space Marine characters and build off of that. Make them have a cool sword that sits at damage 3, less strength, and just a nice amount of attacks. Or just try and “create” these unique looking characters like they are within the Aeldari and some of the other Xenos style stuff. I like being able to take different things but wonder if all the heroes having a collapse style weapon load out profile might make things easier for players to engage with. If you always know this X hero fights like this then it is less time answering and looking up rules.
Multiple Attack Style Melee Weapons
The next thought would be instead of collapsing things into one profile why don’t we give more sweep, heavy attack, etc style options? This way you could put whatever weapon you want on them and just say I am doing the “heavy slash” attack to try and up my damage for less attacks. Or you want to do a cool sweep option you can do it as well. Or heck combo it into fighting styles too that give you better defense or other options you can give to the unit? There is a whole slew of things you could do that isn’t just an Aura or someone that makes the CP cost less.
Specialist Captains
The next thought would be to blow up all the profiles and make things like Captain with Powerfist, Captain with Relic Blade, and other fun things. That way you could “create” a bunch of unique style mini characters with different rules and abilities to let you create new things to add to your units. This would let you create some cool options like a much more aggressive hero for an assault unit or a very special shooting one for your plastic dudesmen. Just having a ton more options would be cool to have and help “fill” out some of the other armies that don’t have as much to play with while still keeping the same amount of kits on the shelves for you to buy.
Multiple Attack Style Ranged Weapons
I went hard on the character side of things but wonder if some of this “profile” shifting would be cool on shooting attacks? Take the Heavy Bolter and how you could “activate” different settings on the gun. You could have a heavier shooting attack that does more damage but less bullets come out. Or you could do an overload like option that lets it get hot as you shove more bullets out. You could have different choices to let these “guns” act differently so taking them could benefit you on the table top. The game gets so locked into what gun is best is always taken that you wonder how you could fix these things. Creating more options for cool interactions is one method of fixing and juicing up some aspects of 40k.
What do you think? Should GW go simpler on weapon profiles? Should we ease up on some of the choices and try to “cover” all the cool basics for a unit choice? Is it worth it to really try to clean things up as the game is easier in some aspects than it was before? Is it right that a Plasma pistols cost is now a part of the unit and no longer a random way to burn 5 points in your army? Should we have more Relic Pistols like we had in the past or other fun Enhancement options?
What style of weapons stats do you want?
