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So I haven't played a game since about 2015. Last thing I remember was the release of the new Tau codex, ghostkeels and stormsurge.

I am looking to start fresh and I am thinking a chaos space marine army based around daemon engines but I have no idea where the hobby is at.

So what's new with the hobby?

There's a new supplement out for CSM that covers traitor legions, gives them all special rules, formations, artifacts, etc.

Worth a look if you want to play CSM. Some of the stuff in there is downright nasty. You'd still need the CSM codex, though.

The hobby, as in P&M, is better than ever, depending on who you ask. All agree it's still good. As for the game, still as broken as before. Personally I'm fine with it, but most of the internet community doesn't like it at all.

Nothing serious has changed since 2015. There are cool new factions, and some story line progression but you should still be able to do your normal Tau thing without noticing any difference vs 95% of the players.

Okay so not much has changed then lol how are the power rankings?
Are they bringing primarchs into 40K?

 IXLoiero95XI wrote:
Okay so not much has changed then lol how are the power rankings?
Are they bringing primarchs into 40K?

Yep, the Primarchs are returning. So far we have Magnus the Red (who is a beast), and Guilliman should be out soon.

In terms of power rankings, there are probably a bunch of threads debating that from within the past week, but everyone typically cries cheese whenever they hear Eldar and Space Marines, with Tau, Daemons, and Necrons close behind. Some of the winning tournament lists lately have been artillery spam Renegades & Heretics, however.

So what your just take Magnus as your HQ choice or something? Thats nuts!

Lord of war choice or part of a formation; thankfully that's a little more restrictive than just a HQ choice. Kind of sad that HQ doesn't really feel like the leader most of the time now though.

Yeah HQ just ain't what it used to be. Interesting if they are going to actually advance the story. wonder what will happen to the emperor

It is in the same hole it has been in for a long time, GW has just dug it deeper.

The rules are a complete dumpster fire.

The only thing it had going for it left was the fluff, and now they're fething with that by bringing a loyalist Primarch back.

Ruin wrote:
The rules are a complete dumpster fire.

The only thing it had going for it left was the fluff, and now they're fething with that by bringing a loyalist Primarch back.

7th is the tightest ruleset they've written so far, and 8th is likely to incorporate the recent FAQ's, which will tighten it up more.

I'm expecting some rebalancing, but the rule system itself is fine, it's the codex/faction balance that is an issue.

Moving the timeline forward is fine, I'm actually quite excited to see some Primarchs return, and I fully expect that they will NOT AoS 40K, since even GW aren't dumb enough to kill the golden goose.

Basically it´s like this:
You have a skirmish wargame in which the common soldier (e.g. guardsman, tactical space marine) is supposed to be relevant. But aircraft, mini-titans and other offenders bomb on a regularly basis the living daylights out of this poor schmuck. What happens? The game degenerates into an Adepticus Titanicus style of game with 40K models. The game designers need to make the common grunt look good again and restrict the big baddies to apocalypse type games. Guess what? This will never happen because corporate greed wants to see the big guys all over the place.

ITC partially addresses this issue as does maelstrom in general. You want grunts capping objectives so your powerful units can keep shooting/punching.

My GF made me come back to the game these past 2 months, prior to that I've played 2 games of this edition when it came out so YMMV:

Hobby is fine,
I guess that some combo of Eldar, Crons and /or Tau are probably still broken. Psychic powers are quite LOLWUT and clunky to keep track of.

There's more hobbying and fluff to be had. Fun games are still fun. Tanks are pretty resilient now. (lucky pens are a thing of the past)

Flying monstrous creature (like hive tyrant with wings) are a bit difficult to operate and flyers are still 'odd' but not unworkable.

There's fun to be had rolling dice and killing space marines still

@Martel732
I still feel fighter jets and mini-titans are out of place in 40K. You can have vindicators, LRBTs, etc. blasting stuff to kingdom come.
For the former the battlefield is just too tiny. They would just zoom across it in one turn. Their contribution to the battle could just be represented by a large blast template like it was done in the past with orbital bombardment. The actual model of fighter jet is on the other hand a wonderful objective marker.


Well, the imperial knights and their ilk had a game of their own. It was called Imperial Knights: Renegades. I played Battletech in the past and enjoyed it very much. Gigantic robots have a huge appeal with wargamers. But GW being GW just made a half-assed attempt with Imperial Knights: Renegades. That game was just a selling vehicle for the imperial knights.

Some aspects of the rules really suck. The included damage zones of the imperial knights were just done for the front of the model and not for the side/rear. An utter idiot must have designed this. This also came with a stupid explanation: "Imperial Knights are chivalrous and never attack the back of an opponent." As if a traitor from the eye of terror would care about this. In the White Dwarf, rules for the Tau Stormsurge and Eldar Wrathknight were published. I guess these two would also give a damn about this code of honour. It could have opened up tactical gameplay in which you would try to outmaneuver your opponent. Alas, it was not to be. You have to conceive those missing damage zones by yourself.

It would have also been nice to have big gribblies to shoot at as in the movie Pacific Rim. The tyranid faction could have sponsored such a monster with ease. Again, lazy game design was prevalent here. Even super heavy tanks could have been fielded in this type of environment.

I can think of several other things that should have been in the rules department but I will just give it a rest. GW nowadays claims to be a model company and not a games company. That is sad but ultimately true. I have the firm belief that a GW of old (say 80´s or early 90´s) would have done a tremendously better job at this game.

The main problem with 40k is the model scale is wildly inappropriate for the game elements. At 28mm even just one squad vs another squad is a bit laughable for a standard table, start throwing in tank companies and supersonic attack fighters and things get super stupid really fast. The rules are not bad, the fulff is fun but the scale is absurd. At 6mm epic was the right scale for what 40k has become.