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Hey guys,

Been out of the game for the last two editions but wife bought me Dark Imperium for Christmas. I hear rumours that there's a new edition likely to hit this year. I'm a marines player, and haven't yet picked up the marines codex and chapter supplement. My question is, if the rumours are true, how much use would I get out of these books before they're invalidated? Always used to be the case that the marines book was the first to be updated. Is this still likely? Don't want to fork out cash on something that won't last the year. (I know my new rulebook will be affected, but don't mind as much because it was a great value set, and I'm enjoying the included background.)

Second question: do I need any of these other supps like Vigilus, Chapter Approved etc? And if so, are they likely to be very quickly out of date?

Thanks in advance.

The minimum requirement would be the marine codex, and maybe CA 2019. Anything else is optional. No one knows when a new edition will come out. You have to decide for yourself if its worth the money, if 9th edition comes this year. You could skip CA2019 and use battlescribe as a list building tool. Once a new edition is out, every book you bought is useless.

 p5freak wrote:
The minimum requirement would be the marine codex, and maybe CA 2019. Anything else is optional. No one knows when a new edition will come out. You have to decide for yourself if its worth the money, if 9th edition comes this year. You could skip CA2019 and use battlescribe as a list building tool. Once a new edition is out, every book you bought is useless.

The talk is the new edition will actually just be a refinement of the rules and all codex will be compatible.

 p5freak wrote:
The minimum requirement would be the marine codex, and maybe CA 2019. Anything else is optional. No one knows when a new edition will come out. You have to decide for yourself if its worth the money, if 9th edition comes this year. You could skip CA2019 and use battlescribe as a list building tool. Once a new edition is out, every book you bought is useless.

Maybe. It will depend upon how they alter the edition.

Remember, GWs gone years & years in some cases without updating codices as editions have changed. Just ask the Dark Eldar & Ork players about that.
Or look at Age of Sigmar. The Seraphon (Lizardmen) are still using the first version of their book - while everyone else is now on book 2.0

Dudeface wrote:
Once a new edition is out, every book you bought is useless.

Source: Dude trust me.

At most GW will might release Warhammer 40k 8.1 Ed like they did with AoS. They'd just be consolidating FAQs and rules changes inti a new book. Everything will still work as it did.

When they alter 8th edition it isnt gonna be a new edition, then its 8.5, or whatever.

Realistically you need the Marine Codex and any Codex Suppliments you intend to use for the Strategems and the Doctrine rules. Everything else you actually need is in .pdfs or Battlescribe.

 p5freak wrote:
When they alter 8th edition it isnt gonna be a new edition, then its 8.5, or whatever.

All editions from third to seventh were just updates of the same core rules and old codices were not invalidated at the edition launches. Considering that GW recently did a big overhaul with the 8th edition, they're not gonna do it again anytime soon. It is practically guaranteed that 9th edition will be similar to 3-7 updates and existing codices will be usable.

That talk is pure speculation. No one knows, but my personal uninformed opinion is that it's incredibly unlikely that a 9th edition is released this year.

Yeah, as others have said army Codex is essential. I use Battlescribe too (I pay the paltry £2 annually to get all features) , which generally gets updated with everything.

ok, lemme describe the various books out there you may, or may not, need as a Marines player.


1st: the Space Marine Codex, this is your only ESSENTIAL book. obviously. you'll want it.
2nd: your chapter Supplement: this isn't essential but you'll proably want it as it really does add a new layer to Space Marines.
3rd: Faith and Fury: ok if your prefered Marines army is black templers, this is your supplement. if you don't play black templars it has some nice rules options but is far from essential. not super important and you can skip but it might be worth snagging. partiuclarly if you really like non captains as your HQs and want to run a chaplain, techmarine or something as your primary HQ choice.

Pancakey wrote:
Stay away from printed GW rules. They are literally not worth the paper they are printed on.

Speaking of worthless things...we have this reply right here.

To the OP, the minimum you need is a rulebook and the Space Marine Codex. Some SM Chapters have their own supplement to go along with the Codex that it would be advisable to buy too but that can wait until you've played a few games as it's not 100% essential. The latest Chapter Approved is always a good investment. CA 2019 (the latest one) also includes a separate book that has all the points for every army in it, which are updated each year.

If a new edition was to come out this year - and it's not a guarantee that it will - then it's about 99.99% likely that anything you buy for the current edition will be compatible with the new one. GW edition changes rarely completely overhaul the game and are often incremental refreshes that are fully compatible with previous Codices. 8th edition was the exception to that as it completely changed the game, which is why 9th edition is extremely unlikely to do the same.

Books are coming out at an accelerated pace because it's a good money source for GW. We are already on the second marine codex of this edition. Anyone expecting the books to just stop and that your 8th edition rulebook will last a long time is just not looking at the pattern of releases in the last few years. Don't expect the current books to last you more than a couple of years, if that.

 Egyptian Space Zombie wrote:
Books are coming out at an accelerated pace because it's a good money source for GW. We are already on the second marine codex of this edition. Anyone expecting the books to just stop and that your 8th edition rulebook will last a long time is just not looking at the pattern of releases in the last few years. Don't expect the current books to last you more than a couple of years, if that.

I expect Marines will be good for a bit (at least until they get another wave of minis)so their codex is proably the safest army book out there right now.. well besides sisters of battle who no doubt won't see another codex for 15 years