Before everyone takes out their pitchforks. Hear me out.

I've been playing Warhammer 40k since around the 2022. I started collecting since 2019 and I have gotten into the game around the tail end of 9th edition. While I had my gripes about the 9th and 10th's rules I've eventually got accustomed to all the keywords and shortening of the rules. Fast forwards to the soon to be launch of this upcoming edition and I'm not really all that excited. I have Orks and Necrons, my Orks I've been playing for the most. I know we're getting a lot of neat models but I'm thinking that for now I'm going to just binge play if a friend in my LGS asks or perhaps around August once the 11th edition had two months to settle in.

Not sure if I'm getting old, if I just want to try Bloodbowl or Necromunda, that or I'm just wanting to really be patient until around Autumn. I just don't get the hype around the 11th atm. I would like for things to be fixed, but with the whole theme around Armageddon I'm sort of in a 'been there done that' mood. (I've been into the lore since around 2012, so Armageddon was important in 2014-2015.)

I don't know, perhaps I just need to take a break from 40k until around Halloween? It could be I just have moved onto Bloodbowl. I am still going to gradually collect and hobby paint. I prefer the casual hobby side of Warhammer over the big tournament stuff anyways.

Yeah same. I've struggled to play much over the last few years, probably only played half a dozen games of 10th ed at most. Not sure 11th is going to change that for me.

It happens. I bounce around games all the time and highly recommend it. If you're not into the mastery of competitive play you'll probably get more enjoyment out of the novelty of variety. Play something else, come back and try 11th when its a bit more mature and see what you think.

That's generally what I do. I've got fingers in many pies I just kinda bounce around whatever's warm and I feel like playing.

I played 40k in 9th edition because I enjoyed it. Then 10th came out and I didn't, so I stopped.
I can't see myself enjoying 11th at the start, so I'll sit it out maybe until my Tau's codex is out (rumoured to be an early one) and judge the vibe based on what people say, maybe I'll dip my foot in later.

Honestly it kinda suits me if 11th is bad too, as that would be one less army to need to paint!

Blood Bowl is a phenomenal game, and you can always go back to 40k after things have simmered down in the new edition. The game is in a great state in its 2025 edition after essentially getting minor rules tweaks for two editions now.

It's been awhile since a starter set box has has had historical lore significance (Macragge was the setting in 4th ed) so GW is probably trying to generate some nostalgia hype.

This edition isn't as "hot" for me as whilst I think the Ork models look great so far; I'm not an Ork player; nor a Marine one. So the big box and launch models aren't interesting to me.

The last two had Necrons, Sisters of Battle and Tyranids so a LOT of hype for me (even if I only bought stuff for two of them). So this time around feels a little calmer.


That said its natural to have ups and downs in a hobby and its good to take a break at times and just get a bit of a fresh engagement in something else.

Eh, no matter how old you actually are, the more edition changes you see the less exciting they become.

It sounds like you've also discovered that there's more games to be played than just 40k.
Now just wait until your horizons broaden beyond the GW sphere.... choices abound! Whatever your interests? You'll never run out of interesting things to build/paint/play!
(The $/space/time to play them all though is another matter)

ccs wrote:
Eh, no matter how old you actually are, the more edition changes you see the less exciting they become.

Certainly from a rules perspective; esp once the 3 year cycle set in. Mostly because the rules don't refine but just change up and some bits that you hate stay and some that you like go. I think also last edition did away with a LOT of core things like points and upgrade parts and we've also seen heavy simplification of things like close combat weapons. So I think a lot of old hands have had an edition take some big steps in a direction no one really wanted; but which is likely going to get reinforced this time around.

I've definitely enjoyed 10th enough to be more than a little concerned about the lastest round of change for changes sake.

 Overread wrote:

ccs wrote:
Eh, no matter how old you actually are, the more edition changes you see the less exciting they become.

Certainly from a rules perspective; esp once the 3 year cycle set in. Mostly because the rules don't refine but just change up and some bits that you hate stay and some that you like go. I think also last edition did away with a LOT of core things like points and upgrade parts and we've also seen heavy simplification of things like close combat weapons. So I think a lot of old hands have had an edition take some big steps in a direction no one really wanted; but which is likely going to get reinforced this time around.

Well, next month I'll have seen 9 edition changes of 40k (i missed 7e, didnt even realize it'd happened until 8th came along!).
Add to that 6 edition changes of WHFB (counting Old World.
Several changes of Blood Bowl, a few iterations of Epic (including Imperialis), + 3 versions of Flames of War, 2 for Bolt Action, etc etc etc.
We won't even count various RPGs I've played multiple editions of....
There's not much excitement anymore concerning edition changes for me.

40k wise?
●I was excited to see what changes 2e was bringing. I started RT very late & found it a very clumsy, messy affair. Fun, but.... To be polite, improvements could be made. 2e was bound to be (and was) an improvement.
●Likewise I was excited to see what 3e was bringing.
●4th-6th? Declining excitement. Just tweaks. Theyd fix a few things, they'd (intentionally) break a few things, & they'd just change a few things. Then the next edition would flip the fix/break items + change.
Meanwhile they were doing the exact same on the FB side.
Fix/break/tweak, Break/fix/tweak, rinse & repeat....

8th reset things a bit & the fix/break/tweak/flip pattern marches on into 9th, 10th, & 11th!

As for 10th dropping individual option/upgrade (wargear) costs? I dont care. The older I get the lazier I get.
Adding up tiny #s (see any debate concerning plasma pistol costs) doesn't add anything to my gaming experience. Hasn't for a long time.

I have been playing WH40k for 30 years since 2nd edition. I come and go all the time, and have been down to selling all but one army and only playing like once or twice a year (like for 7th which was the WORST). But then something will come out and I go full swing again, so what you are saying it totally reasonable. If they had released Steel Legion models I would be all about this drop, but otherwise I agree and I am not to worried about getting all the 11th stuff right as it comes out. I will probably wait until they drop one of my factions like Tson, CSM, or Eldar to jump back in full swing again. In the meanwhile I just started playing MTG again (haven't played in like 20 years) as my friend introduced me to commander. It is a nice break from WH40k because I can build a deck for like $100, and don't need to assemble and paint etc. I also would love to play Necromunda but don't know have a group here who plays.

40k has died a death at my club. The younger people coming in play 40k... online. Which is nuts, the game sucks, we only play it because of the sunk cost of models... But anyway, since the high point of 8th it has slowly faded out, to the extend I think of the weekly games night we haven't had 40k played for at least two months.

Will this change it? Terrain isn't a factor, we have enough for 8 narrative tables. The players though seem to have disengaged.

We're gonna try it on TableTop Sim because we don't want to buy back into 40k.

 Gert wrote:
We're gonna try it on TableTop Sim because we don't want to buy back into 40k.

This is what is happening by and large sadly.

Basic pattern recognition means that 11th is unlikely to turn out to be some sort of new golden age for 40k.

Hype doesn't really serve us as players and hobbyists, it's better not to be hyped. Relatively dispassionate interest in what they do is better for you because you'll spend less money and experience less disappointment.

While I'm absolutely going to play 11th, I'm not hyped about it either.

None of the things they have shown are particularly exciting or interesting. Almost all of the detachments are extremely bland, and I think the system is a mess already.

The changes to the game rules are necessary and good tweaks, but 11th doesn't seem to be more different from 10th than 10th is from boarding action.

It's like when the janitor fixed a door that didn't close properly. You acknowledge it, but you aren't going to celebrate.

Yeah. I don't mean to be a downer but I'm at this odd intersection that makes it hard to be excited about 11th.

10th has been *fine* and relatively well-balanced, but it has definitely been missing a lot of the magic and appeal that made me enjoy past editions. (Customization, the rules feel less flavorful now, etc.)

Odd-numbered editions have been the power-creep-it-all-to-hell-and-try-out-some-poorly-balanced-new-stuff editions for a while now. 9th gave us a bunch of extra AP, an extra layer of bonuses for unsouped armies, etc. 7th gave us formations and (iirc) normalized super heavies in normal games. So I'm half-expecting 11th to do something similar and end up messing up the relatively okay balance that 10th has going for it. And given that balance is one of the main/only selling points about 10th, that could be a big problem.

And what we've seen of 11th so far just hasn't been hugely exciting so far. The detachments seem kind of blandly similar to what we've been getting. With stuff like the chaos coven or whatever they called it being notably less flavorful than the librarius detachment, so no hope of them doing a better job in that regard.

The tweaks to the charge/fight phase are kind of an, "Okay, whatever, sure," set of changes.

The detection distance thing *could* be cool, but it's really going to come down to how it's implemented, and especially how it's implemented for sneaky factions that should theoretically be the ones getting the most out of it. It could either be a cool improvement, or it could be a huge nuisance. We just don't know yet.

So on the whole, I'm:
* Open to 11th being decent.
* Mildly concerned it's going to be annoyingly unbalanced like 7th and 9th.
* Kind of bummed because I'm pretty sure they aren't going to bring back the customization and charm that has been missing.

All I care about is as little invalidation of people's model collections as possible. As for how that will pan out, we'll know after release

Have GW even said what they are trying to achieve in 11th?

8th was a hard reset of 7th.
9th was bringing ITC rules (to some degree) into the main game to make it more of "a game".
10th was "simplified not simple" - essentially 9.5 written up in a different language to reduce lethality and bloat.
11th... What? "Players were bored of standing in circles, so now they'll stand in terrain instead".

There's not a lot of get hyped about.
I'm normally a new edition/new army kind of guy and I'm struggling to think of much that's exciting. The game will be different. But if you didn't like a faction in 10th, why would you pick it up in 11th? I should probably wait on the codex to what changes.

GW never really "said" those things about previous editions; that's more what the community interprets after the edition is out. So we have to wait until we see all of 11th to work out what its trying to do

Nothing wrong with that. These days I get hyped only for the occasional standout miniature release, but I have zero interest in whatever rules GW put out. Rediscovering 4th edition has got me playing again after a ten year hiatus. Nuhammer is made for a different audience and it's fine not to be part of it.

I wish I could be excited about a new edition. :(
When I picked up 4th after only playing 2nd (I hadn't even realized I missed 3rd) and seeing how much customization was lost, how simplified everything had become, it just really bummed me out.

Every few editions after I would try to start learning the rules to get back in, but there was so many new things being added and how lists were made, I was just lost. (formations, detachments, renaming units and armies, restrictions, all the new units, command points, etc.)

I was finally starting to get a grasp of everything in 10th (even with all the primaris stuff) to the point where I at least had an idea of what stuff was so I could start really learning the rules and the legends crap started. Heck I have minis I picked up that I never got to use but are now legends (the stormfang gunship, Grimnar and his sled, Lukas...) and will eventually vanish. It's already happened to me once with the Leman Russ that used to be in the SW codex.

I'm not even interested in the new minis in the box as I never jumped on the primaris bandwagon and don't plan on ever getting any.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
So on the whole, I'm:
* Open to 11th being decent.
* Mildly concerned it's going to be annoyingly unbalanced like 7th and 9th.
* Kind of bummed because I'm pretty sure they aren't going to bring back the customization and charm that has been missing.

Yeah, gonna echo this.

The terrain rules have not inspired me much, just a continuation of meh tables to look at.
I think I was too hopeful to really get a much better upgrade.

I dislike edition changes. My leaving a game I liked has always been caused by an edition change that (in my perspective) made things worse, often because I had hoped for things to go in one direction, but the newer edition firmly stepped in the opposite one.

As I am invested in a game, it always makes me sad, disappointed and resentful. I usually keep my models for some time, fingers crossed for a reverse in course but it never happens. If anything, it usually just gets worse with subsequent editions so eventually I just give up and sell everything.

7th to 8th WFB
6th to 7th WH40K
mk3 to mk4 Warmachine

Tyel wrote:
11th... What? "Players were bored of standing in circles, so now they'll stand in terrain instead".

In fairness, that will at least make what we see on the table make a little more sense - for example, Eldar Guardians taking cover rather than scratching their butts in a random bit of empty ground.

 Overread wrote:
GW never really "said" those things about previous editions; that's more what the community interprets after the edition is out. So we have to wait until we see all of 11th to work out what its trying to do

I think they did.
I mean this was GW for 10th: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/JNWrc0GG/what-does-simplified-not-simple-mean-for-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/

https://spruesandbrews.com/2020/05/26/warhammer-40000-9th-edition-faq-write-up/
In fact based on finding this write up for 9th, it was probably on Twitch.

We had Stu Black telling us what they were changing and why they were doing it. Not only on GW's channels but he gave interviews to half a dozen various fan channels too.

Don't think we've had that this time round. Or if we have I've missed it.

To put all of that in a more positive note: Maybe there just wasn't that much to change about 10th if you didn't want to touch the basis.
Overall my impression was this edition went quite without noise. Few outrages about unbalanced codizes, stratagems got reigned in through a detachment system that, to my own surprise, GW kept in a pretty restrained state during the whole edition.
It's my impression that the change to Devastating wounds half a year or so in was basically the biggest and most important change all edition. Many factions could use the same main detachment from their Index era with a codex Patch up until the end. That's not a bad state to be in, which on the other hand means that a new edition after only three years is quite unnecessary in the first place... Similar to HH3.0 there might be changes (like killing crusade) that were uncalled for.
So yeah, standing in circles, making legends even more official and bringing back at least some equipment points costs is touching the main problems 10th had. It could happen that, like 9th compared to 8th, there are more problems introduced than solved...

Jaredthefox92 wrote:
Before everyone takes out their pitchforks. Hear me out.
I would like for things to be fixed...

I thought that about 8th Edition, but was disappointed.
I never got back into GW games and still have more games than time for them.

 Dysartes wrote:

Tyel wrote:
11th... What? "Players were bored of standing in circles, so now they'll stand in terrain instead".

In fairness, that will at least make what we see on the table make a little more sense - for example, Eldar Guardians taking cover rather than scratching their butts in a random bit of empty ground.

... with the irony of them now being easier to shoot than when they were standing on the empty ground.

 Dysartes wrote:

Tyel wrote:
11th... What? "Players were bored of standing in circles, so now they'll stand in terrain instead".

In fairness, that will at least make what we see on the table make a little more sense - for example, Eldar Guardians taking cover rather than scratching their butts in a random bit of empty ground.

If only we could choose to put the objective markers inside buildings if we wanted too...

Tyel wrote:
Have GW even said what they are trying to achieve in 11th?

I may be reading tea leaves, but didn't they say the goal was to put the narrative back into the focus of the game?

They are making game-play rules changes that are also narrative in nature:

Objectives as terrain pieces, not random circles is narrative-centered.

Layered Detachments allow for more army customization is narrative-centered.

Detection Range is narrative-centered.

Victory Conditions based on opposing armys narrative focuses is narrative-centered.

 alextroy wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Have GW even said what they are trying to achieve in 11th?

I may be reading tea leaves, but didn't they say the goal was to put the narrative back into the focus of the game?

They are making game-play rules changes that are also narrative in nature:

Objectives as terrain pieces, not random circles is narrative-centered.

Layered Detachments allow for more army customization is narrative-centered.

Detection Range is narrative-centered.

Victory Conditions based on opposing armys narrative focuses is narrative-centered.

Then again, last time they explicitly tried to make the game 'Forge The Narrative™', it led to gibberish like Creed and the Grey Knights defending the psychic wasp monsters of Fifteen from the Chaos stronghold thirty feet away...*


*actual plot of the inaugural 6th edition White Dwarf battle report

"Forging the Narrative" became such a meme that every time I go back and peek in my old 6e apocalypse book, seeing those little 100% unironic tidbits scattered through the book is like taking psychic damage.

At least now rather than telling you to "Forge the Narrative" they are making the rules fit the narrative.

 Dysartes wrote:

Tyel wrote:
11th... What? "Players were bored of standing in circles, so now they'll stand in terrain instead".

In fairness, that will at least make what we see on the table make a little more sense - for example, Eldar Guardians taking cover rather than scratching their butts in a random bit of empty ground.

Honestly, I think this is a nice little change in terms of theme/narrative. In past editions, my group would tend to stick objective markers near/on cool pieces of terrain and toss out a short sentence about why that piece of terrain was important. Bell tower? Sounding the alarm for reinforcements. Big chonky building? Has some of the last functioning cogitators in this part of the city. Bridge? Bridge.

Reframing things from "this empty patch of ground is important" to "this ruin is important" instantly makes it a bit easier for me to throw a story onto a game. Even if there technically wasn't anything stopping you from putting terrain near your objectives in 10th.


My inner optimist is hoping that modest changes like this and whatever the narrative missions end up looking like will help make the game feel more thematic again. Not that we have a ton of evidence one way or the other yet.

Jaredthefox92 wrote:
Before everyone takes out their pitchforks. Hear me out.

I've been playing Warhammer 40k since around the 2022. I started collecting since 2019 and I have gotten into the game around the tail end of 9th edition. While I had my gripes about the 9th and 10th's rules I've eventually got accustomed to all the keywords and shortening of the rules. Fast forwards to the soon to be launch of this upcoming edition and I'm not really all that excited. I have Orks and Necrons, my Orks I've been playing for the most. I know we're getting a lot of neat models but I'm thinking that for now I'm going to just binge play if a friend in my LGS asks or perhaps around August once the 11th edition had two months to settle in.

Not sure if I'm gettingd, if I just want to try Bloodbowl or Necromunda, that or I'm just wanting to really be patient until around Autumn. I just don't get the hype around the 11th atm. I would like for things to be fixed, but with the whole theme around Armageddon I'm sort of in a 'been there done that' mood. (I've been into the lore since around 2012, so Armageddon was important in 2014-2015.)

I don't know, perhaps I just need to take a break from 40k until around Halloween? It could be I just have moved onto Bloodbowl. I am still going to gradually collect and hobby paint. I prefer the casual hobby side of Warhammer over the big tournament stuff anyways.

I'm the last person to recommend 40k, but it sounds like you may just need a little break. Spend a little time in BB or Necro and come back to 11th if/when you get the itch. Gaming interests ebb and flow and it's never a good idea to force yourself to play something you're not feeling. As an example, I'm a Grimdark Future fanatic, but I take breaks for other games often. Sometimes for months at a time as with the Necro 95 campaign we're starting in June.

So take a break, dip into a small game for a while and see if thepassion returns.

 alextroy wrote:
At least now rather than telling you to "Forge the Narrative" they are making the rules fit the narrative.

Kind of. I think they are focusing on rules which feel extremely abstract and gamey and try to make them feel more natural. Which is a fair thing to do, and was requested by many. Whether they get it right is a completely different topic, but so far it looks promising.

However, I feel like people are just pulling the video guy's words out of context and adding their own interpretation.

11th will absolutely not feel like Rogue Trader again. It will not suddenly turn the foundation laid by 9th and 10th into a highly narrative game.
It will remain a game with a lot of non-obvious skills you need to master to win games regularly, just like 10th. Stratagems are still around, target priority is still a difficult skill to master and to know when to "go" and when to keep hiding will still decide games.
Someone who didn't like 10th will very likely not like 11th. However, someone who did enjoy 10th to some degree will likely enjoy 11th more due to those changes.

My opinion, anyways.


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 Wyldhunt wrote:
Honestly, I think this is a nice little change in terms of theme/narrative. In past editions, my group would tend to stick objective markers near/on cool pieces of terrain and toss out a short sentence about why that piece of terrain was important. Bell tower? Sounding the alarm for reinforcements. Big chonky building? Has some of the last functioning cogitators in this part of the city. Bridge? Bridge.

Very good point, this will make narrative games feel so much nicer. I didn't even think of making bridge objectives, and we have some awesome bridge terrain.

 alextroy wrote:
Detachments allow for more army customization is narrative-centered.

My issue with this (and I've not got into 9th/10th for many other reasons) is that while the idea of detachments giving Your Guys flavour is great, in reality it always just feels like asinine stuff like "These guardsmen are the toughest mofos around who practice at the target range for 12 hours a day! Reroll 1s to Hit and Wound with lasrifles" which just feels like piddly nonsense. Yes the "orders system" is also nonsense when viewed at the wider fluff (why do they get to yell at each other to shoot harder and SMs don't?) but at least it's a broad rule that gives the whole faction flavour. "You're extra good with jump packs so gain +D3 to your charge range when jump pack troops charge" just feels like playing around at the edges and results in a million tiny facets players have to face and figure out. At least in Ye Olde Days when it was more likely to be white dwarf supplumentary material it seemed to be more simple yet interesting sort of stuff like "all your cool death world guardsmen are WS4 now" or "line your dudes up into a firing line and gain an extra shot each" that tweaked the base army composition or profiles.

 RustyNumber wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Detachments allow for more army customization is narrative-centered.

My issue with this (and I've not got into 9th/10th for many other reasons) is that while the idea of detachments giving Your Guys flavour is great, in reality it always just feels like asinine stuff like "These guardsmen are the toughest mofos around who practice at the target range for 12 hours a day! Reroll 1s to Hit and Wound with lasrifles" which just feels like piddly nonsense. Yes the "orders system" is also nonsense when viewed at the wider fluff (why do they get to yell at each other to shoot harder and SMs don't?) but at least it's a broad rule that gives the whole faction flavour. "You're extra good with jump packs so gain +D3 to your charge range when jump pack troops charge" just feels like playing around at the edges and results in a million tiny facets players have to face and figure out. At least in Ye Olde Days when it was more likely to be white dwarf supplumentary material it seemed to be more simple yet interesting sort of stuff like "all your cool death world guardsmen are WS4 now" or "line your dudes up into a firing line and gain an extra shot each" that tweaked the base army composition or profiles.

This sentiment is partly why I've been wanting to scrap stratagems and instead dedicate the page space to expanded detachment rules. Instead of 6 special moves that are locked behind both your CP resource and the once-per-phase limitation, give us more interesting detachment rules that define the behavior of the entire army and leave you room to do something mildly complicated. Let the speedy detachments get something like the old jink/flat-out/turbo-boost rules. Let the regimented rank and file army have some interesting rewards for arranging their guys just so. Maybe let the all-vehicles-all-the-time detachment have something reminiscent of the AV system or defensive weapons or whatever.

Let your choice of detachment really tell a story and change the way your army behaves instead of generally just being some kind of abstract gamey bonuses and a cool move that one unit gets to use once per turn.

My problem with a lot of things like Stratagems is that they are a pain to learn and fit into the gameflow.

In the past things like Detachment Rules/subfaction rules were easy because they were typically +1 to something which you could just write in on your army list (and which in theory should be auto-added into stats on an army builder app....). So they fit into the natural flow of the game very easily.

Stratagems exist as a list on their own and as GW expands the list you have multiple lists in different publications. Suddenly each action that happens requires you to remember a dozen abilities on this multi-publication list. This is all through the game in every phase of the game for both players.

It's a pain and the result is often that you memorise the use of a handful and just repeat those same ones over and over.

It's "messy" and would be easier done by just giving units Overwatch (for example) on their unit card. Constant quick reminder that you've got it to the player and doesn't actually change the game at all.

Less page flipping; faster play; easier to learn etc...

I always found my own strategems easy enough to learn. Even back in 9th where there were a million for your codex, I just wrote up a quick reference sheet just of the strategems that were relevant to my units which cut out like 2/3rds of them and it all fit on a single A4 page.
From there it didn't take long to remember the most used ones and retain awareness of the more niche ones.

The bigger problem with strategems is knowing what your *opponent* can do.
Every game now just kinda feels like I'm playing always expecting the most wild and unpredictable gak. Suddenly a unit moves twice as far as you expect and all of your counter-positioning is moot. Suddenly a unit doubles their damage output and your casualty allowance flies out the window etc etc.

Only when you play against the same armies on a regular basis to you start to get a feel for what a unit can do, but there's so many now I rarely play the same army more than once an edition lol.

I really miss back before strategems when you could just know what a unit could do. The move stat was how far it could move, the gun was what it could shoot, etc.

For me, it's not really about memorizing the strats; it's about how they're locked behind that CP and once-per-phase wall. Strats are the majority of the rules used to convey the story/flavor of your detachment. But instead of seeing that flavor across multiple units throughout the game round, you only get to see one or two cool tricks on one or two units across a game round.

The example I always go to is modern to-hit penalty strats (Lightning Fast Reactions on eldar for intsance) vs 7th edition's Jink or prior editions' Flat-Out saves. They're all mechanics meant to represent a pilot taking evasive action, but Jink and Flat Out saves were both more satisfying to me. Jink and Flat Out both made you weigh the cost of extra protection vs giving up some of your shooting. You could do those actions with every skimmer in your army; not just one per turn. Flat-Out had you moving the vehicle farther, so you could visibly see this connection with the idea that your vehicle was moving fast and thus harder to hit.

And then you have something like LFR that only one skimmer is allowed to do each turn, and then only if you have the command points to spare. And then you don't have lingering changes to the game state (having moved the model, being unable to shoot, etc.) to connect you to the idea that your skimmer just did an evasive maneuver.

So with all that in mind, I like the idea of reallocating some of the game's "complexity budget" to mechanics that are "more present" the way jink and flat out were, and stratagems seem like a natural choice of things to sacrifice. (Noting that many factions will probably have at least one detachment whose expanded rules end up looking vaguely like Guard Orders or eldar Battle Focus.)

I think there's also something to be said for the here-and-gone nature of stratagems making it harder for your opponent to feel like they're engaging with some strats. Not necessarily because your opponent needs to "memorize" your strats per se, but because the way a given strat may or may not come up a couple of times in a game and players probably aren't pausing to discuss what the fluff of that strat is meant to represent.

My eyes glaze over when my Blood Angels opponent tells me their melee unit gets lethal hits and rerolls and blah blah blah because the commander said to stab better or whatever. Whereas the various incarnations of the Red Thirst in past editions were kind of omnipresent and conveyed the idea that these marines were frothing berserkers.

Spending CP to move a crisis suit squad after shooting is somewhat better, but it's a thing available to one(?) detachment. Whereas it used to simply be known that moving after shooting was a thing battle suits could and would do and that this helped define the playstyle of the tau.

Off the topic of strats and gameplay and more on the "another edition" side.

Even when I first started playing, I always had that goal/wish/dream to put together the entire chapter of my chosen army (SW). Ever since the Primaris stuff, I've thought about it as an entire first-born chapter.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of adding to my collection and getting closer to that dream.
I had a lot of fun fielding my troops, win or lose.

I was coming to terms with the rules changes that genericized the game because I could still collect and use my collection. I was getting a bit of a grasp of some of the changes, new terms, new units, etc. but then they started legending things.

Just saw a rumor that rino and variants are likely next. So what does GW plan for the future of legends once all the old units are no longer in the rules? Are the new legends getting balanced with the old legends stuff before they are published? I'm at least hoping there can be pure legends lists for all factions people could still play with new editions into the future. I don't know. Still so much uncertainty and I'm definitely not starting over with my collection.

Legends is essentially just a promise from GW that you are allowed to put any model you bought from them on the table..
Them finally adding legends to the app also means that promise will stick around for at least another edition.

It also means that they won't make any effort to make legends units good enough to compete.

As for the rhino, I wouldn't be too worried. There is a real sized one outside of warhammer world to remind them that it's important, and they have pulled over other iconic units to the primaris side as well - terminators, drop pods, land raiders are all goiing to stick around.

 Jidmah wrote:
Legends is essentially just a promise from GW that you are allowed to put any model you bought from them on the table..
Them finally adding legends to the app also means that promise will stick around for at least another edition.

It also means that they won't make any effort to make legends units good enough to compete.

I assure you that (overall) you are wrong about that.

Would you mind adding any content to your post?

The main reason Legends exists is so the competitive meta doesn't involve models that GW doesn't sell and new players cannot buy. GW has models they don't want to keep in production and SKUs it needs to clear from distribution to replace with new products. That's really all there is to it.

I think the disagreement is with "It also means that they won't make any effort to make legends units good enough to compete."

I mean this is probably true to some degree. They have no reason to buff underperforming datasheets. But equally no real reason to nerf overperforming datasheets.

Its an ecosystem that neither GW or the competitive scene really care about.

Can't say I've ever really tried to calculate the average power of a legends datasheet. Arguably it gets harder because being good in 40k is increasingly about functionality, rather than this or that unit being 10% stabbier/shootier/tougher than the other for the points.

 Jidmah wrote:
Would you mind adding any content to your post?

I think the context was clear that I think you don't know what your talking about concerning Legends units & wether or not they're effective/competitive.
Are there some duds? Of course there are. But that's also true just cracking open any given Codex.

Here's an example of an effective Legends unit:
https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_06-05_wh40k_faction_pack_space_marines-x64jvocbpe-got9m0shcn.pdf (FERREN AREIOS)
Shooting wise, with his heavy bolt pistol he isn't anything special by himself. But he's costed the same as any other SM Captain, has 3 useful "choose 1" options, carries an improved thunder hammer,
can be attached to a fair # of units, and since he lacks the UM Keyword he can be used by any SM player no matter what chapter they run.
He also doesn't trigger those who go on about "Legends are BrOKen!" It's a SM Captain with a thunder hammer....

For any Legends unit you can present as non-competitive? I bet I can give you 3+ that are.

Here's two more to go with Ferren.
Orks: Grot Tanks.
Imperial Agents: Daemonhost(s)

ccs wrote:

Imperial Agents: Daemonhost(s)

You made me curious so I looked up Daemonhosts, and wow.

I can't say whether they are good or bad gameplay-wise, but this funnily enough has to be one of the greatest disparities between lore power and tabletop power in a game that already famously doesn't care much for such things.

That's actually hilarious.

That's my biggest worry. It will never be the same as the edition I grew up with, but I can learn to deal with the new rules. But to have to either counts-as with my whole collection or spend a ton of money and replace them on top of dumbed down rules from what I played?

I want to believe that GW will do something cool with legends.

*edit to add*
It doesn't make sense that units are moved to legends because the sculpt isn't sold anymore. I think it's the other way around. They stop making sculpts because the unit is moved to legends. Otherwise they would just change the model and update the kit, like dreadnaughts, rhinos and land raiders from 1st to 2nd. Why not update the current units with the Primaris look instead of creating all new units, then legending the old, eventually to be forgotten?

If this happened back from 2nd to 3rd, maybe not as big a deal, but nullifying most everyone's entire collection after 10 editions and 40 some-odd years?

kaotkbliss wrote:

*edit to add*
It doesn't make sense that units are moved to legends because the sculpt isn't sold anymore. I think it's the other way around. They stop making sculpts because the unit is moved to legends. Otherwise they would just change the model and update the kit, like dreadnaughts, rhinos and land raiders from 1st to 2nd. Why not update the current units with the Primaris look instead of creating all new units, then legending the old, eventually to be forgotten?

If this happened back from 2nd to 3rd, maybe not as big a deal, but nullifying most everyone's entire collection after 10 editions and 40 some-odd years?

Well, first of all, I doubt most players collections are 40 years old at this point. Mine is over a decade and I'm relatively old these days by community standards.. Also, yes, it makes far more sense to stop supporting 40 year old purchases than 5 year old purchases.

Second, those are odd examples as most of these are not actually in Legends, but they did actually update all of these sculpts and called them the Redemptor, Impulsor and Repulsor. Of those 3, one was a proper success and hasn't really been challenged, but the other two seem to be at best side grade enough that GW seems interested in keeping them around.

Third. Manufacturing, stock, sales and distribution drive way more decisions than rules. I assure you that no one thought it was just too hard to make rules for a Bike with Sidecar and decided that it was time to stop producing the model.

So using your example, why not just make a new, updated attack bike model and say "ok, there's the new attack bike"? They still sell new models, stop spending money on creating the old ones, and players don't get upset.

Eventually a lot of the ancient players (myself included) replaced old rhinos, land raiders and dreadnaughts with the new models.

This legends move is nothing more than invalidating old players models and trying to get them to re-buy everything.

Ok, sales were down at whatever point and they needed a way to boost them. Sure, the easiest way is to invalidate everyone's collection and make them re-buy, and I know I'm in the minority because I've been out of the game for a long time and so my whole collection is old models. So now I have around 200 models I want to use but can't, or at least won't be able to for much longer.

I did not mean to turn this into a legends debate. I was more trying for a "Why I'm scared for the new edition" thing.

kaotkbliss wrote:
So using your example, why not just make a new, updated attack bike model and say "ok, there's the new attack bike"? They still sell new models, stop spending money on creating the old ones, and players don't get upset.

They probably will someday, but that requires design time, production, marketing the works and it competes with whatever else they're doing. You can't release everything all at once, which is why its taken a little under a decade to resculpt the line. At the moment though, those models aren't in production and aren't available for sale.

kaotkbliss wrote:

This legends move is nothing more than invalidating old players models and trying to get them to re-buy everything.

To an extent, but the key is these models do still have rules and GW has always maintained that they are legal. It's a system that GW has supported for years since its introduction and continues to expand support of with each major update. It's players who continue to insist otherwise. It's players who self censor themselves to the point of not playing things because maybe they will only have Legends rules in 5 years. GW isn't stopping you from playing with your stuff and not taking advantage of the support provided out of fear that it might not last is exactly why these kinds of things don't last.

To some extent that is true, but we should definitely not absolve GW of all responsibility there. They are pushing matched play a lot and giving it way, way more attention and post-launch updates than they do anything else.

They could do a lot more encourage accepting Legends than they are. But they won't, because Legends almost by definition are not tournament legal, and 40k is increasingly streamlined for an environment where every game could mechanically be a tournament game. It's like the game's turning into an esport. You see players who will never -actually- attend a tournament in their life still obsess over the latest winrates and tierlists from their favourite content creator channel.

Just as an example, GW could try to actually balance them. As is, GW just releases legends and then leaves them behind, which isn't great if you want to use them since GW is notoriously dubious at first-try balancing (and will seemingly always be). Could you imagine if they had released 40k 10th edition and then just not done any post-launch balancing? This edition would be just as infamous as 7th if they did that.

They are doing more though. Adding them to the app is huge and easily my biggest hurdle to using them in 10th.

As for balance; they seem fine? Ultimately if they're not in the tournament meta they're not going to get the kind of volume of results to show any real concerns with power level. Most models do not get updates. Mostly just things that stand too tall getting hammered down outside of the full edition revamps.

Ultimately, my POV comes from having gone down the hardcore, tournament only super competitive path and realizing how many of its problems were of my own making. What a lot of people see as a push into tournament play is honestly just making a better game. Where we lose out on a lot of the fun is when we choose to ignore everything else. When we stop designing good looking terrain or playing the scenarios included in the narrative packs. It is a choice to go to our casual game nights not willing to take even 200 points of fun models lest we risk losing a game that has absolutely nothing on the line. The good news is, game balance these days has generally improved to where those 200 points probably won't be the deciding factor and I'm pretty happy encouraging people to just play with their toys.

Personally my issue with a lot of Legends units isn't that they're bad for the points, it's that the rules seem really half-assed.

My Avenger, which has always had modeled pylons for outboard stores, can't take any missiles or bombs anymore.

My Cyclops demolition vehicle, a remote-controlled bomb intended to blow up entire sections of trenches, which needs to trundle into the enemy lines without getting shot... does an average of 2 mortal wounds if it manages to go off.

My Stone-Crusher Carnifex just straight up doesn't have rules anymore, Legends or otherwise. I can just run it as a normal Carnifex, but there's no good representation for the bio-flail.

There's a lot of stuff like this with the Legends rules and it's way more frustrating than if they were just weak for the points.

To a great extent this is true in the main rules too, sadly. Look at the fun rules Orks used to have with the 5e Trukk and Shokk Attack Gun, for example.

I want that game back.

I've bought every edition of 40K.

2nd was glorious.
3rd edition was tournament ready.
4th I don't remember at this point.
5th vehicles
6th Flyers
7th let me spawn infinite chaos and Necrons
8th FORMATIONS
9th I bought it and never played it
10th I bought it and never played it
11th Oh look cool Ork Models

Wasn't formations a 7th edition thing?

Still fearful of the future (I know GW said "hey, these are legal", but how long till new editions don't fit old legend stats/rules that aren't being updated?)

But hopefully we will see something like Old World for legends sometime in the future.

I probably wouldn't be so fearful if I hadn't missed so many editions trying to catch up on rules and what new units are out, what they are, figuring out what new name goes with what old army, etc.

Not sure if it's old age or society or what but time seems to be just flying by and it seems like there's a new edition every year or 2 (I know it's less frequent than that)

Then again, it also feels like I've been in my new house fixing it up for 2-3 years.... it's been 5!

 catbarf wrote:
Personally my issue with a lot of Legends units isn't that they're bad for the points, it's that the rules seem really half-assed.

My Avenger, which has always had modeled pylons for outboard stores, can't take any missiles or bombs anymore.

My Cyclops demolition vehicle, a remote-controlled bomb intended to blow up entire sections of trenches, which needs to trundle into the enemy lines without getting shot... does an average of 2 mortal wounds if it manages to go off.

My Stone-Crusher Carnifex just straight up doesn't have rules anymore, Legends or otherwise. I can just run it as a normal Carnifex, but there's no good representation for the bio-flail.

There's a lot of stuff like this with the Legends rules and it's way more frustrating than if they were just weak for the points.

Uh. The Cyclops is not Legends, and the last time I used it, it was amazing.

The Cyclops I ran last year at a Megabattle Tank Shocked a Baneblade then disappeared into a puff of smoke dealing 1 mortal wound and killing the big tank.

 LunarSol wrote:
Well, first of all, I doubt most players collections are 40 years old at this point. Mine is over a decade and I'm relatively old these days by community standards.. Also, yes, it makes far more sense to stop supporting 40 year old purchases than 5 year old purchases.

And you would be right about that. It's fairly safe to assume that players who started in 7th edition or earlier are outnumbered by at least 10:1 by players who started later. The hobby has grown more than tenfold every since GW embraced the internet rather than being hostile to it.

edit: in an world of everyone lying about numbers, I should tell where I get my numbers from:
During 7th edition there was an estimate done here on dakka on how many people actively play 40k based on GW's annual sales of 40k product. The most optimistic numbers were around active 320.000 players, assuming that everyone who spends a certain amount on 40k also plays the game.
In 2022 goonhammer estimated a playerbase of 2.4 million players, with roughly 0.6% of those playing competitively, which matches GW's annual report from that year, estimating 2.2 million.
Financial experts estimated a growth of roughly 66%-100% over the next two years at that time, and as we all know from the news, GW exceeded that prediction by far.
So it's fairly safe to assume that there are now more than 3 million player actively participating in the game.
Most optimistic sources claim up to 5 million, but those are based off the number of tracked games through various apps, which I feel like is not a very reliable metric.

 LunarSol wrote:


..., but the key is these models do still have rules and GW has always maintained that they are legal. It's a system that GW has supported for years since its introduction and continues to expand support of with each major update. It's players who continue to insist otherwise. It's players who self censor themselves to the point of not playing things because maybe they will only have Legends rules in 5 years. GW isn't stopping you from playing with your stuff and not taking advantage of the support provided out of fear that it might not last is exactly why these kinds of things don't last.

This, this, and 10 times this.

Players are more papist than the pope.

 catbarf wrote:
Personally my issue with a lot of Legends units isn't that they're bad for the points, it's that the rules seem really half-assed.

This is really the rub. And they can be so half-arsed as to be dysfunctional. When GW updated the Tau codex for 9th they changed how markerlights worked, but they didn't update the Legends to reflect that. That meant any Tau Legends unit with markerlights basically ceased to function.
Yes technically they still had rules and technically they were legal for casual play (including casual matched play) but functionally they weren't.

Yes, players have an aversion to Legends, but that aversion stems from a very real place.

The Big Mek on warbike also doesn't have the Big Mek keyword so it's worthless in a dreadmob

 Jidmah wrote:
During 7th edition there was an estimate done here on dakka on how many people actively play 40k based on GW's annual sales of 40k product. The most optimistic numbers were around active 320.000 players, assuming that everyone who spends a certain amount on 40k also plays the game.
In 2022 goonhammer estimated a playerbase of 2.4 million players, with roughly 0.6% of those playing competitively, which matches GW's annual report from that year, estimating 2.2 million.
Financial experts estimated a growth of roughly 66%-100% over the next two years at that time, and as we all know from the news, GW exceeded that prediction by far.
So it's fairly safe to assume that there are now more than 3 million player actively participating in the game.
Most optimistic sources claim up to 5 million, but those are based off the number of tracked games through various apps, which I feel like is not a very reliable metric.

I agree with you in principle - but those numbers raise certain questions.

I mean the not-licensed revenue at GW in 2016 was £116 million. The not-licensed revenue at GW in 2025 was £565 million.
Allowing for say 55% RPI uplift, £116m in 2016 turns into £180m in 2025. So GW's revenue has 3.1 times as much revenue in 2025 than 2016 after allowing for inflation.
For those numbers to work, we have to believe the "average" 320k GW customers spent £360~ in 2015-2016, so effectively £560~ in 2025 prices.
At 2.2 million in 2025 (I know you say 2022 but just going with it), that would suggest GW customers now only spends a bit under half that at £255~. Falling to £190~ at 3 million and just £115~ at 5 million.

Okay that's total GW sales - but if anything I'd have thought 40k was more important to GW in 2016 than it is in 2025. So proportionally it should work out.

You can argue that GW was being kept alive in 2016 by a smaller devoted set of whales - and now they have a far broader, but on average lower-purchasing customer base.
But I don't know if that rings true. It feels like an implausible fall off. I mean I think there's a lot of people in the hobby today who never buy anything - but I think that was also the case back in 2016.
There have been numerous statements by ex-GW staff that the average person gets into the hobby, spends a lot in a relatively short time building together their first army over 12-24 months, and then typically either quits, or gets into more esoteric stuff. And logically this makes sense. (Its also the main driver for a 3 year edition churn.)

So in some respects its probably better to calculate out the average cost of a 2k points army (or 1850 etc back in 7th) and then divide GW's revenue by that for a rough estimate of new players. (Clearly this wouldn't be accurate, as veterans continue to buy some stuff, but as something of a measure.) Allowing for 55% inflation, I think this would remain relatively consistent. Which would suggest about 3, maybe 4 times as many people were joining the hobby in 2025 as in 2016. Unless sales in 2025 were disproportionately driven by new players, while 2016 was disproportionately old vets (which, to be fair being there, I can somewhat believe. The apparent lack of new players almost certainly being the main driver for the 8th edition reset.)

I think its fair to say that away from the forums, the average 40k player is not some haggard veteran who has been playing since 2nd, 3rd or 5th. There's now been 9 years of people joining the game in far larger numbers than was the case before. I guess if you tried to calculate that out, and assumed an equal level of decay for each generation, you could work out roughly what percentage of the currently active playerbase you might expect to have started in any given edition.

Be aware that the 2022 numbers are not calculated based on revenue.
Goonhammer used some complex estimation formula based on a survey while taking into account general social media activity, event number and attendance and some other datapoints. GW flat out stated that number in their report, though I can't remember if they explained how they got there.

However, when two sources come to a similar solution with completely different approaches, it gives me confidence that the numbers are about right.

As for the change in buying behavior, I see quite a few reasons in my own playing groups.

3D printing and readily available third party product is a good reason to spend hobby money elsewhere, multiple of our big spenders entered the 3D printing hobby and now own multiple fully printed armies. Tools, brushes, glue and paints have heavily fallen out of favor with hobbyist, non-GW bought terrain has become more common than GW terrain any time you don't play a their stores. In addition, less people buy official books today than they did in the past.
Lastly, there are less veterans leaving the hobby. People who have reached the plateau with their collection usually don't buy stuff outside of new releases. When you just don't care for limited box deals anymore because you already have most of the stuff inside, you save a lot of money

Besides that, I don't feel qualified to argue with your numbers in detail, but thanks for sharing.

That's definitely a very valid point. 10 years ago you almost never saw anything on the table that wasn't GW product.
I remember bluestuff casting was like the secret underground thing to get two plasmaguns out of your Tactical squad kit lol.

Nowadays it's more like 50/50 GW product
It's common to see entire armies where GW hasn't gotten a penny.

I suspect this is why GW has seemingly abandoned resin and is now releasing almost no new resin kits. On social media at this point I see more recasts of resin kits than actual originals, including people boasting about how they get boxfuls of them for a pittance.

I think it's a crying shame, I have almost every resin consul and a bunch of other resin besides, I love the detail advantages. The Iron Hands Praetor I recently used for a conversion is insanity, he'd need to be on a Baneblade-sized sprue if in plastic due to how many parts he'd need to be in. In resin his legs were one single big piece, imagine that!

Not that I -resent- the people recasting, exactly? Resin models are extremely expensive, and if that's what they have to go for, then so be it.

But if GW had been 100% in on plastic I definitely don't think we'd have gotten a model for basically every single Consul already, let alone ones this characterful. I love their proportions and styling much more than the prints I've tried.

I think the reason GW is abandoning resin is that

1) Finecast was a failure

2) Traditional resin scales poorly compared to plastics and even for specialist games the market GW has now; coupled with its production costs - is enough that its viable for them to make more in plastic.

Why struggle keeping resin products in production and stock when you can run up a plastic kit and supply the demand FAR more quickly.

 Overread wrote:
I think the reason GW is abandoning resin is that

1) Finecast was a failure

2) Traditional resin scales poorly compared to plastics and even for specialist games the market GW has now; coupled with its production costs - is enough that its viable for them to make more in plastic.

Why struggle keeping resin products in production and stock when you can run up a plastic kit and supply the demand FAR more quickly.

The plastic trend is across the larger wargaming companies. Privateer/Steamforged, Warlord, GW, etc. Everyone who can afford to is moving away from materials that are increasing in cost, potentially harmful and/or labor-intensive to produce. For companies that are hoping to mass produce, there's just no reason to do metal or resin anymore and if an item is not feasible in HIPS, then increasing 3d Printing or Siocast or some other process is still preferable to metal or cast resin.

Resin is going to compete increasingly poorly with 3D printing with dedicated hobbiests and is kind of terrible for those less dedicated. It's messy, not particularly safe and fairly fragile. Some companies like Creature Caster have some really fantastic new resins they're using, but the old stuff GW invested in probably just needs to go.

Ashiraya wrote:Wasn't formations a 7th edition thing?

Yes. 8th's "thing" was mostly just being the first major overhaul we'd had in a while. I also kind of think of it as the "detachment edition" because you were rewarded for taking more detachments rather than less (the loyal 32, etc.). 9th was 8th with a better version of detachments, but then they cranked the power levels up to 11 and left you with this absurdly lethal edition. Also, those power levels got cranked up as part of your codex release. So for a good chunk of the edition, a lot of armies were just "missing" their equivalent of Doctrines, etc. I think this was also the edition where chaos marines just had half as many wounds as loyalists until like the last year?

kirotheavenger wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Personally my issue with a lot of Legends units isn't that they're bad for the points, it's that the rules seem really half-assed.

This is really the rub. And they can be so half-arsed as to be dysfunctional. When GW updated the Tau codex for 9th they changed how markerlights worked, but they didn't update the Legends to reflect that. That meant any Tau Legends unit with markerlights basically ceased to function.
Yes technically they still had rules and technically they were legal for casual play (including casual matched play) but functionally they weren't.

Yes, players have an aversion to Legends, but that aversion stems from a very real place.

Yeah. My group is pretty okay with legends. We'll usually ask eachother for permission to use them as a courtesy, but I've never seen someone decline to play against a legends unit unless it was also like, a titan or something. My frustration wiht legends is that if they end up with unsatisfying rules when they get sent there, you know they won't receive any updates to those rules any time soon. So my assault marines are just kind of a worse alternative to vanguard vets and assault intercessors right now, and access to guns doesn't really make up for it. Karandras is a cute beatstick option to have, but he takes Scout away from his scorpion friends if you want to use him.

This was a big part of the sting of losing beasts and grotesques and the court from the drukhari codex. Sure, it was annoying that GW couldn't be bothered to support some of our coolest units because they had too many primaris lieutenants to crank out or whatever, but the rules they landed on for those units were just kind of lazy and uninspired. The legends version of the beastpack is the least flexible in terms of unit composition it has ever been. Grotesques are stuck being unleadable by haemonculi and with kind of meh stats and uninspired weapon options. The court just isn't my preferred version fo the court, but is similar to the beastpack in its lack of flexibility.

Shadow Spectres are actually pretty useful (if super expensive), but they're shadows (hyuck hyuck) of their former selves. It used to be that they had a mechanic where you could combine the entire squad's shooting into a single super laser attack and give the exarch weapons that interacted with that mechanic or else swap his gun out for a haywire weapon to stunlock vehicles. Now the squad is just an anti-heavy infantry gun with an alternate anti-horde gun profile and move-shoot-move. And I love me some move-shoot-move, but man do I miss how flavorful some things were back in the day.

Eilif wrote:

 Overread wrote:
I think the reason GW is abandoning resin is that

1) Finecast was a failure

2) Traditional resin scales poorly compared to plastics and even for specialist games the market GW has now; coupled with its production costs - is enough that its viable for them to make more in plastic.

Why struggle keeping resin products in production and stock when you can run up a plastic kit and supply the demand FAR more quickly.

The plastic trend is across the larger wargaming companies. Privateer/Steamforged, Warlord, GW, etc. Everyone who can afford to is moving away from materials that are increasing in cost, potentially harmful and/or labor-intensive to produce. For companies that are hoping to mass produce, there's just no reason to do metal or resin anymore and if an item is not feasible in HIPS, then increasing 3d Printing or Siocast or some other process is still preferable to metal or cast resin.

Honestly I see the other firms moving away as less of a "resin is too expensive" and more of a case of "plastic is now affordable/we can partner with a reliable producer". Things that were just not on the table 10 years or more ago unless you had very deep pockets or only wanted to work with overseas PVC and all its challenges

LunarSol wrote:Resin is going to compete increasingly poorly with 3D printing with dedicated hobbiests and is kind of terrible for those less dedicated. It's messy, not particularly safe and fairly fragile. Some companies like Creature Caster have some really fantastic new resins they're using, but the old stuff GW invested in probably just needs to go.

Cast resin still beats 3D printed right now. It scales up better somewhat and it also has no layerline issues or support marks. Both of which you can minimise, but still mean that it often takes longer to clean up a 3D print than a cast print. At least when the castings are done to a good standard.

 Overread wrote:

LunarSol wrote:Resin is going to compete increasingly poorly with 3D printing with dedicated hobbiests and is kind of terrible for those less dedicated. It's messy, not particularly safe and fairly fragile. Some companies like Creature Caster have some really fantastic new resins they're using, but the old stuff GW invested in probably just needs to go.

Cast resin still beats 3D printed right now. It scales up better somewhat and it also has no layerline issues or support marks. Both of which you can minimise, but still mean that it often takes longer to clean up a 3D print than a cast print. At least when the castings are done to a good standard.

Absolutely agree but the gap is close enough that I find the people willing to invest the money and effort into resin overlap a lot with the audience for 3D printing who are getting very used to the idea of this stuff being nearly free. It's not that the current state doesn't have advantages; just that its the material I feel the industry is rapidly moving away from. It's just not something I see fitting into GW's business model.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
9th was 8th with a better version of detachments, but then they cranked the power levels up to 11 and left you with this absurdly lethal edition. Also, those power levels got cranked up as part of your codex release. So for a good chunk of the edition, a lot of armies were just "missing" their equivalent of Doctrines, etc. I think this was also the edition where chaos marines just had half as many wounds as loyalists until like the last year?

In addition, 9th was more or less the rules bloat edition. A unit could be affected by a faction, subfaction, doctrines, auras, stratagems, psychic powers, making the actual status of a unit on the battlefield look nothing like the datasheet. Soup and 30-50 stratagems per army didn't help either.

I liked that edition a lot, but with hindsight, I'm glad it's over.

Wasn't 9th or 8th the one where army paint schemes almost became a mandatory rule that your army choice had to match your paintscheme?

Mostly because of soup-armies so players were encourages to build multi-army forces putting all the close combat into the army with the best close combat bonuses; the ranged into the best ranged etc.... So that one army of "Ultramarines Blue" could be 3 or so different marine chapters.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
9th was 8th with a better version of detachments, but then they cranked the power levels up to 11 and left you with this absurdly lethal edition. Also, those power levels got cranked up as part of your codex release. So for a good chunk of the edition, a lot of armies were just "missing" their equivalent of Doctrines, etc. I think this was also the edition where chaos marines just had half as many wounds as loyalists until like the last year?

In addition, 9th was more or less the rules bloat edition. A unit could be affected by a faction, subfaction, doctrines, auras, stratagems, psychic powers, making the actual status of a unit on the battlefield look nothing like the datasheet. Soup and 30-50 stratagems per army didn't help either.

I liked that edition a lot, but with hindsight, I'm glad it's over.

9th had serious issues, but I still preferred it to 10th. I'd rather eat a meal of some madman serving me french fries, chocolate cake and whipped cream together (too much a good thing) than eat a meal made from woodboard and polystyrene (too little).

Jidmah wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
9th was 8th with a better version of detachments, but then they cranked the power levels up to 11 and left you with this absurdly lethal edition. Also, those power levels got cranked up as part of your codex release. So for a good chunk of the edition, a lot of armies were just "missing" their equivalent of Doctrines, etc. I think this was also the edition where chaos marines just had half as many wounds as loyalists until like the last year?

In addition, 9th was more or less the rules bloat edition. A unit could be affected by a faction, subfaction, doctrines, auras, stratagems, psychic powers, making the actual status of a unit on the battlefield look nothing like the datasheet. Soup and 30-50 stratagems per army didn't help either.

I liked that edition a lot, but with hindsight, I'm glad it's over.

Same. I miss the last dredges of customization that still existed in 9th, but I nearly put the edition down by the end because the amount of bookkeeping involved and stuff to keep track of mentally made the game too stressful to be enjoyable.

Overread wrote:Wasn't 9th or 8th the one where army paint schemes almost became a mandatory rule that your army choice had to match your paintscheme?

Mostly because of soup-armies so players were encourages to build multi-army forces putting all the close combat into the army with the best close combat bonuses; the ranged into the best ranged etc.... So that one army of "Ultramarines Blue" could be 3 or so different marine chapters.

I think that was mostly a 9th thing. 9th for sure had subfaction bonuses tied to detachments (ex: Salamanders detachments get bonus X, Ultramarines detachments get bonus Y, etc.). I don't recall whether 8th had that on the detachment-by-detachment level or if you just chose one set of benefits and applied them army-wide. If 8th had that, it was probably both editions.

8th is the edition that rewarded you for fielding soup because you got bonus CP for taking more detachments. So it was generally optimal to splash in something like the loyal 32 to get a lump sum of bonus CP for dirt cheap along with some cheap scoring/screening units. 9th inverted this by both charging CP for detachments (rather than granting them) and rewarding you for *not* souping by giving your army a doctrine-level layer of rules.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I think that was mostly a 9th thing. 9th for sure had subfaction bonuses tied to detachments (ex: Salamanders detachments get bonus X, Ultramarines detachments get bonus Y, etc.). I don't recall whether 8th had that on the detachment-by-detachment level or if you just chose one set of benefits and applied them army-wide. If 8th had that, it was probably both editions.

8th is the edition that rewarded you for fielding soup because you got bonus CP for taking more detachments. So it was generally optimal to splash in something like the loyal 32 to get a lump sum of bonus CP for dirt cheap along with some cheap scoring/screening units. 9th inverted this by both charging CP for detachments (rather than granting them) and rewarding you for *not* souping by giving your army a doctrine-level layer of rules.

8th edition had subfactions - and the view that Ultramarines should look like Ultramarines.
Outside of Warhammer World though I'm not sure it was ever that strictly enforced. (This being the internet though I'm sure some posters were drawn and quartered if their Ultramarines 3rd company had the wrong trim colour or whatever).

9th largely got rid of soup since it cost your army rule which was too good to lose.
We did however continue to have inter-factional subfaction soup (i.e. these units are stabby, they are in a detachment with the stabby subfaction, these units are shooty, they are in a detachment with the shooty subfaction) for quite a while. I want to say until Arks of Omen brought most things under a single detachment, and so this sort of thing was no longer possible.

Yeah I'm fairly sure most places didn't enforce the paint rule - esp since a lot of the time it was only focused on marines; or highlighted that most people have no clue about paint schemes for factions outside of the handful of marines that get a lot of poster time (and even then at a super basic level of "ultramarines = blue")

8th was the only time the paint thing was a real problem because it was absolutely worthwhile to take a small Blood Angels detachment for their Smash Captain in any other Marine list and you kind of needed to differentiate which marines were in which detachment.

Most other editions prior to 10th had it as more of a community problem. GW said this chapter got these rules and players would feel compelled to paint them that way or declare themselves a successor if they knew what they were doing. Where it was mostly a problem was when players would paint themselves as a specific chapter but then it got bad rules and it was really hard to declare yourself a chapter of something else.

8th was the Soup edition. 9th was an edition of bloat and powercreep. How much the latter was a result of covid is hard to say, but each codex felt like it was trying to one up the last. 8th I always consider janky but a huge step in the right direction, but I don't have a lot of good to say about 9th other than they seemed to get a good handle on what works and what doesn't during it.

 LunarSol wrote:
How much the latter was a result of covid is hard to say, but each codex felt like it was trying to one up the last.

It's because of GW's workflow. They have two separate teams, one rules design team, and one post-launch balance team. The teams essentially do not communicate, which is why 10th edition books still to this day release with stratagems that have been reworked in dataslates a year+ ago (like Armour of Contempt-style strats).

In 9e, it looked the way it did because they'd release a strong codex and start writing future codexes balanced against it. The strong codex gets nerfed, but its nerfed state isn't what the ones being written get balanced against. Hence you get a domino effect of strong codexes popping up and getting hammered down.

Later in the edition this started calming down a lot as codexes began releasing that had been written for a game state in which things had already been largely toned down. A good example of this is the two Knight codexes, which never strayed far from a 50% winrate after release (in fact, just on a mathematical level, they were probably the most externally balanced books GW has ever released).

To my mind 8th can be split up into 3 periods.

1. Indexmania and early codexes. Massive break from 7th, arguably quite balanced if you just took a White-Dwarf style army list from you index. Increasing broken as people realised not all datasheets are created equal and very little stopped you just souping in the best stuff from across three factions. Rules were also open to abuse with two that come to mind being turn 1 deepstrike with ranged units and unit spam. At a competitive level not deleting 40% of your opponent on your first turn suggested quite a toned down list.
2. Slightly more balanced, but dominated by Knights. Spam is taken off the menu with the rule of three. Deep Strike is mostly prevented until at least turn 2 (exception for things like drop pods I think). Soup however continues, and reaches its apogee where almost every Imperium/Chaos list was running multiple things - and typically one big stompy Knight. Eldar/Dark Eldar are also very potent. This is where we get the Knight+Loyal 32+BA Captains lists. It was a weirdly balanced time, but only if you embraced this meta.
2a. GW finally nerf knights in Chapter 2019 Approved. There's about 6-8 weeks where the game is really quite well balanced. Unfortunately at this point the Fire Nation
3. Released Space Marines 2.0.
3a. And then released the Space Marine supplements.
3b. And then released the Space Marine Psyhic Awakening supplement. Space Marines would be comically broken and massively overplayed (it felt like 50% of the playerbase were playing Marines).

9th would initially continue as All Marines all the time. This would however be broken in March 2021 with the release of the Dark Eldar codex. This was the first indication that 9th was going to be the edition where there were no brakes, GW had taken leave of their senses and everything would just die. Massed technomancer Wracks would melt entire armies in a couple of turns.

GW would promo Orks by some special pre-codex box, but after some Buggy Spam lists tabled people in turn 1 of some tournament finals they'd be quickly condemned to the outer dark. Ad Mech would suffer the same fate.

2022 would bring the Tyranid and Eldar Codex, which were set at some previously unknown power level, and left them playing chess while everyone else was scarcely playing at all. Nerfs would admittedly quickly follow but the game would be devolving towards checkers. You didn't so much attack units as just take the peices off the board.

This would reach the logical absurdity in late 2022 with GW previewing the Votann codex to howls of outrage, and after it was pre-emptively banned in the German tournament scene, GW nerfed a book that hadn't even been released to the general public. Would it have been a level of broken yet unseen in the world of GW? Doubtful - see all the previous books this edition. But it was perhaps time for players to take something of a stand.

And tbh - it kind of worked. GW would then go on to release what were clearly proto-10th rules (one detachment, no real unit type requirements, we saw more and more units with no points for options and clearly defined unit sizes etc), and I think late 9th was arguably a very well balanced and fun edition as a result. The thing is if almost everything kills everything, you can (within reason) play almost anything. Vehicles had issues of initiative, but any infantry can waddle through LoS-blocking L-shaped ruins and then attack.

I find it harder to create a timeline for 10th. Without getting into the minutae of "this detachment had a moment until GW nerfed the standard list by 200 points so it fell out of favour for something else."

Everyone seems to forget the greatest Imperial Army unit of past editions. The Loyal 32.

32 Generic Guardsmen that travel with your Grey Knights, Imperial Knights, Black Templar, etc., to every single battle across the universe.

I kinda miss them.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Everyone seems to forget the greatest Imperial Army unit of past editions. The Loyal 32.

32 Generic Guardsmen that travel with your Grey Knights, Imperial Knights, Black Templar, etc., to every single battle across the universe.

I kinda miss them.

Definitely haven't forgotten. I've still got mine, though they might fall to Chaos to support my Knights if that becomes a thing.

I won't defend them as good game design, but I did like how the game felt when every Imperium army had some normal humans to give context to how over the top the rest of it was.


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Tyel wrote:

I find it harder to create a timeline for 10th. Without getting into the minutae of "this detachment had a moment until GW nerfed the standard list by 200 points so it fell out of favour for something else."

There's basically the pre and post Towering/Eldar/Dev Wounds era. After that it's a lot of flavor of the week stuff but even at its worse, never as bad as prior editions.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Everyone seems to forget the greatest Imperial Army unit of past editions. The Loyal 32.

32 Generic Guardsmen that travel with your Grey Knights, Imperial Knights, Black Templar, etc., to every single battle across the universe.

I kinda miss them.

Definitely haven't forgotten. I've still got mine, though they might fall to Chaos to support my Knights if that becomes a thing.

I won't defend them as good game design, but I did like how the game felt when every Imperium army had some normal humans to give context to how over the top the rest of it was.

Yeah. I think a lot of people were surprised by how good it felt to have some normal humans around to compare your super soldiers against. When it's just marines on the table, it's easy to forget how much more durable and reliable they are compared to guardsmen. I kind of wish GW had given us better support for the idea of a small group of powerful marine supplementing an otherwise unaugmented human faction.

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Tyel wrote:

I find it harder to create a timeline for 10th. Without getting into the minutae of "this detachment had a moment until GW nerfed the standard list by 200 points so it fell out of favour for something else."

There's basically the pre and post Towering/Eldar/Dev Wounds era. After that it's a lot of flavor of the week stuff but even at its worse, never as bad as prior editions.

Never as bad in terms of balance. Never as good in terms of flavor. Which is weird because between setting aside page space for both army-wide rule sand detachment rules, you'd think they'd have plenty of opportunities to make armies feel flavorful. 10th is probably both the best balanced and least flavorful edition I've played since I got into the game in 5th.

I think a lot of the balance can be attributed to GW just being much faster to balance than they used to be too, rather than it being an intrinsic merit to the mechanics of the edition itself. Ie, it's a managerial improvement, more than anything else.

Setting aside release day 10th (which was one of the most imbalanced game states 40k has ever seen, rivaling the worst excesses of 7th edition - index Aeldari laughed at peasants who needed to concern themselves with such things as "line of light" or "rolling to wound"), imagine if More Dakka had been allowed to sit unnerfed for months instead of being rapidly hammered down. In the short time it existed it swamped the podiums of every tournament it was allowed in.

Conversely, imagine how 5th edition would have been if its balance errors had been swiftly rectified instead of GW essentially going "wait until your next codex".

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Yeah. I think a lot of people were surprised by how good it felt to have some normal humans around to compare your super soldiers against. When it's just marines on the table, it's easy to forget how much more durable and reliable they are compared to guardsmen. I kind of wish GW had given us better support for the idea of a small group of powerful marine supplementing an otherwise unaugmented human faction.

I've always hated Scouts and wished that the role was replaced with 10 man Guardsman units instead.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

Never as bad in terms of balance. Never as good in terms of flavor. Which is weird because between setting aside page space for both army-wide rule sand detachment rules, you'd think they'd have plenty of opportunities to make armies feel flavorful. 10th is probably both the best balanced and least flavorful edition I've played since I got into the game in 5th.

I'm not sure I agree. I think 10th has some major flavor fails, but I think a lot of what was cut was stuff that was only theoretically on the table in prior editions. In terms of actual, on the table games, I've seen more cool stuff than ever before. Part of it for me is just Deathwatch Kill Teams actually working like they're supposed to instead of being obnoxious min/max flavor fails, but I've been pretty happy with other armies too. I guess I'd say that I've felt more flavor on the table, even if there's a notably loss of flavor outside of the game being played.

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm not sure I agree. I think 10th has some major flavor fails, but I think a lot of what was cut was stuff that was only theoretically on the table in prior editions. In terms of actual, on the table games, I've seen more cool stuff than ever before. Part of it for me is just Deathwatch Kill Teams actually working like they're supposed to instead of being obnoxious min/max flavor fails, but I've been pretty happy with other armies too. I guess I'd say that I've felt more flavor on the table, even if there's a notably loss of flavor outside of the game being played.

I can give you my perspective as a Chaos Knights player from 9e.

10e butchered my army. Favours of the Dark Gods, which allowed me to make each Knight really feel like its own distinct character, gone with no replacement. Traits and relics gone, replaced by enhancements that do not even remotely manage to fill their shoes. Worse external balance, and heavily watered down mechanics that don't really work. GW jumped through some big hoops to make the morale-focused faction function in 9e, but it achieved the goal of doing so. In 10e it's like they've not even tried.

Yeah there are some units and armies that lost a lot in the transition.

Tyranid Warriors are some of my all-time favorite models, and I despise how their signature flexibility and variation got boiled down to a ranged variant with exactly one obvious optimal build and a melee variant that abstracts all their various melee weapons into a single profile.

I'm glad that the number of layers of stacking rules has been heavily pruned, but the depth within those layers has been inconsistently cut back. I will freely admit that how significant this feels likely has as much to do with investment in prior editions as it does with the end result on the table.

 catbarf wrote:
Yeah there are some units and armies that lost a lot in the transition.

Tyranid Warriors are some of my all-time favorite models, and I despise how their signature flexibility and variation got boiled down to a ranged variant with exactly one obvious optimal build and a melee variant that abstracts all their various melee weapons into a single profile.

Yeah agreed - I get that the army is different to what it was 20years ago and that there's a lot more model variety going on; but at the same time boiling warriors down to 1 close combat profile feels like (as with a LOT of GW fixes/solutions/ideas) insane overkill and such a huge shame for a kit that they've been expanding on close combat weapon variety over the last few years anyway.

I did wonder if GW was going to spring a surprise of new warrior kits with perhaps a new closecombat and ranged versions as separate models with their own profile, look and weapon gear options; but they've not even given us a new kit with just wings in the box to go with the new launch edition leader

There's definitely elements that did not work as intended at all and required such a major redesign that I imagine they mostly just patched them out and went back to the drawing board for 11th. Battleshock is probably the king of that hill, though Mortal/Dev Wounds are definitely on that list.

FWIW, I really liked the "kill cultists" detachment and wish it worked better. I think Chaos Knights are one of the best examples of a codex that got its flavor diluted too much making more detatchment than there is unit variety to support. You've got one with cool enhancements and one with cool strategems and each of them are very bland in the other aspects.

I think 10ths biggest weakness is that the launch detachments were great proof of concepts, while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

 LunarSol wrote:
while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

I think this is pretty obvious with how some recent detachments are just completely the same as previous detachments on a thematic level, just with buffs that the previous detachment should have had.

Like Nightmare Hunt is just a fixed Dread Talons. Dread Talons is obsolete and abandoned. Which is cool and all that they fixed it, but that's not really a new detachment then is it?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
while the codexes often feel like they had a quota to meet and not enough vision to justify a whole detachment.

I think this is pretty obvious with how some recent detachments are just completely the same as previous detachments on a thematic level, just with buffs that the previous detachment should have had.

Like Nightmare Hunt is just a fixed Dread Talons. Dread Talons is obsolete and abandoned. Which is cool and all that they fixed it, but that's not really a new detachment then is it?

Yeah, and doing it that way is just terrible design. It is very confusing and creates newbie traps.

Warptide wrote:

It's been awhile since a starter set box has has had historical lore significance (Macragge was the setting in 4th ed) so GW is probably trying to generate some nostalgia hype.

The retro looking Blood Angles in most of the promo images really spiked my nostalgia glands. The flames and checks... yeah they look great. I was hoping for a 2nd ed box set re-release and this is probably the closest we'll get so this old fart will most likely pick up a box for a hefty painting project.