9th Edition Warhammer 40k - Hot Takes, Part One

I said I was going to write a post about my thoughts on 9^th edition (at least, what we know so far.) Here it is. Of course, we all know, at least those of us that pay attention to the Games Workshop aspect of the wargaming hobby, that 9^th edition isn’t out yet. All we have to go on is what GW has teased so far, but it’s enough for me to offer up a couple of hot takes of my own. This is going to be a long one, so strap in. It’s going to encompass multiple posts. It will probably take two or three articles to ramble on about what has me excited so far, so I might as well get the short bit of negativity out of the way first. I’m going to go over the things that I’m not thrilled about or have me concerned. If you want to hear my ebullience over the promised changes that make me happy, just ignore this one and wait until I post again.

First of all, it’s a new edition. Whether that brings good change or ill, it means re-learning rules, un-learning old habits, and potentially having units swing in and out of usefulness. GW is notorious for that last one; whether it’s a bid to sell more kits, or just an unintentional consequence of rules changes, it’s been a constant in 40k that whenever a new edition or even just codex drops, units that were awesome before become mediocre or even trash, while the models that were on the shelf or unbought due to poor performance suddenly become superstars. The wherefores and whys are unimportant; I could speculate as to GW’s conspiracies or greed or incompetence, but that’s not what this is about. The long and short of it is that we’re going to see a lot of shifts in game play, and in unit performance, which is both good and bad. With the point values of everything being changed – and going up, from what GW has said – across the board, I suspect we will have a massive change in army composition. They say they’re going to make it so that you build the army you want, rather than the army that you need to run to be competitive. If that’s true, then bully on them, and I’m 100% on board. However, competitive players have a tendency to find unintended consequences within rules interactions, and will often create imbalances where the rules designers did not, or could not, foresee.

The second thing that I’m not excited about is that this once again revitalizes the old “codex creep” monster. They tell us that all our 8^th edition codices are still good, and we should hang onto them, because we’ll still be using them… until the new codices drop, which Games Workshop has confirmed will happen. For those that are unfamiliar, though I’m not sure how you could be, “codex creep” refers to a singularly (to my knowledge) GW phenomenon. In the GW hobby, at least in the main “army level” games like Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar (and prior to AoS, Warhammer Fantasy Battles), each army has its own book, that contains all the rules for running that army. You can’t play with your army without a copy of your army’s battletome or codex. This has led to great consternation among the gaming community over the years, as it’s a wholly unnecessary system that greatly unbalances the games. In years past, you had to buy the main rulebook and your army book, neither of which were particularly inexpensive, in order to use your models and play the game. These days, the core rules for AoS and 40k are free online, but if you want the advanced rules for things like special terrain and scenarios, you still have to pony up for the big book, which again, isn’t particularly cheap. The real killer, however, is that the codex model causes another problem in terms of game balance. When a book comes out, it’s full of fresh new rules and ideas and point values and all that sort of thing. The problem is that in the past, GW has never really bothered with playtesting their games terribly well, so each new book that came out made that army the new hotness, and it was inevitably more powerful than the armies whose books had come prior. Coupled with GW playing favorites with certain armies and woefully neglecting others, you had armies that would have two new codices per edition, while others might have to suffer through three whole editions of the game’s rules before getting a fresh update. They’ve gotten better about it, but it’s still a problem. In the old days, it was just kind of assumed that if you wanted to play a quality, big name wargame, that was the price you had to pay. However, these days, there are a number of games that present a fantastic rules set from a solid, reliable company that don’t rely on the army book model. In fact, to my knowledge, Games Workshop is the only company anymore that still does it. I could point to the different games and dissect their advantages over the GW model, but again, that’s not what this article is for.

Things had a nice hard reset at the beginning of 8^th edition. They invalidated all the old codices (leaving everyone with a bunch of books that were basically no good for anything but lore and art, which was annoying in its own right) and put everyone’s stuff into a series of Indices. You had a Space Marines Index, another for the other Imperium forces, one for the forces of Chaos, and two for the various xenos races. It was refreshing to have everyone starting from zero. Then the Space Marines codex came out, and the landscape changed, and, well… I just detailed above what happens with this game model. I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that we’re headed back to the old days of a new army book every 4-6 months that completely screws up the game balance and shifts the meta. I hope I’m wrong. GW seems much more committed these days to actually testing their rules and at least making an effort to keep things at least a little bit balanced. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think of any of the GW games as being balanced. I think they’re inherently imbalanced, in fact, due to a variety of factors, including the army book model and the company playing favorites with certain armies. That’s fine, I’ve come to accept that. I don’t consider Warhammer 40k to be a competitive game. I doubt I’ll ever go to a 40k tournament, because the game is always broken in some way or another and I have other games that are far better balanced if I want to play something competitive. 40k, and pretty much all other GW games for that matter, has always been what I would call a “beer & pretzels” game. It’s a casual game to gather around the table with your buddies, drink beer, tell jokes, and throw dice, and nobody really cares who wins or loses because the fun is in the act of gaming itself. There are a lot of people who disagree with me and take 40k very seriously. That’s fine, and if that’s how they have fun with the game, that’s great for them. I won’t go into the conflict that occurs when a beer & pretzels player goes up against a competitive tournament goer, that’s an article for another time. The point of this rambling, tangential paragraph is that I’m concerned that 40k may go back to the same model they have used in the past with codices that continually breaks an already broken game.

There are one of two things that are coming (or staying) that I’m skeptical of or downright displeased with. It’s been confirmed that weapons with a random number of shots are still going to be a thing. I have never particularly liked that mechanic, as it really weakened a lot of weapons that were supposed to be impressively powerful – in particular, I’m thinking of things like the Demolisher and Earthshaker cannons. Sure, it’s perhaps less of a pain than putting down a template, having to roll for scatter, and trying to accurately position it (don’t get me started on “barrage” type weapons like Imperial Guard mortars), not to mention not having to actually own those templates and scatter dice, but it’s a pretty big disappointment when your massive siege cannon only rolls one shot. It makes you feel like the investment of points in that unit just isn’t worth it. That may well change with the addition of the new “blast” and “hordes” mechanics, of course. It remains to be seen what they’ve cooked up there.

It’s also been confirmed that more models and/or units will slowly, over time, be added to the “Legends” section of the game. While I understood the purpose of that move, I was never really happy with it. It was a boon to new players, but it felt like it invalidated the investment of time, effort, and money that long-time players had put into their armies. In many cases, those models were lovingly converted and customized. They were one of a kind works of art, centerpieces of an army. Now, they’re simply trinkets to look at and occasionally be trotted out in a friendly game. I feel that it also discourages the creative modeling aspect for new players. It allows them, and even encourages them, to be lazy and simply buy the kit that GW sells, to make the same cookie-cutter model as everyone else. I came up in a time when orks didn’t have very many models, and any ork player worth his salt had kitbashed or scratch built half his army. Of course, all of that is still an option, but it encourages a sort of lazy modeling that just takes some of the heart out of the hobby in my eyes. Now, this is all old news and old complaints. The real issue for me is the dichotomy between classic Space Marines and Primaris. I know, I know, I’m beating a dead horse here. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to get over it just yet. I’ve heard all the arguments, and I’m just not quite ready to move on. I’m a Space Marine player, and about half of my collection are classic Marines. I know they’ve said that the classic Marines aren’t going anywhere, but we can all read the writing on the wall. There are no new classic Marine kits being released, and with every wave of Primaris releases, they fill another niche or two that only the old guard provided. Anyone with any sense can see that a lot of those “slowly, over time” models are going to be classic Marines. This is a long-running argument these days among Space Marine players, and it’s been gone over a million times, but this first post is all about things that I’m worried about or potentially unhappy with, so deal with it.

I’m sure other gripes will come up as we learn more about the game. Overall, though, except for the fear of a fresh round of codex creep and neglected armies, these are all minor concerns that I can pretty well live with and I have done so thus far. Overall, I’m very excited for 9^th Edition, and I’m looking forward to the new rules dropping – and, of course, an end to this wretched pandemic, so I can actually use them. If you made it this far through my griping, kudos to you for your patience! Stay tuned for my breakdown of what’s got me excited about 9^th edition and why, coming over the next week or so. Cheers!