Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

According to the latest spoilers, terminators are going to 3 wounds.
The Necron Triarch thing is going from 8 to 10.
Melta is getting its damage increased.
The new primaris veterans are 3 wounds.
The new attak bike has 8 wounds.

I'm starting to see a scheme in this. Looks like that GW is importing another block from AoS, which is the wound system.
In AoS, 2 wounds on infantry is almost baseline, elite units have 3+ wounds and only chaff infantry has 1 wound.
Would make sense as a move to lower the lethality across the board, and fix a bit of the issues that are created by the LoS rule not working for 9W- models.
At this point, I expect Dnaughts and Fexes to go from 8 to 10W, like the Necron walker did.

The advantage of this approach is to make high RoF weapons less effective against big targets, while keeping the efficency against chaff.
Where I'm worried, is that AoS can use this approach because the damage spills over, which doesn't happen in 40K.

Its not a bad thing IF they apply this quickly to all factions.

Having to wait a year a more for "everyone" to get their upgrade would be beyond stupid.

More and more looks like they should have done new Index books given the compelte disaster the revised points has been and IF loads of weapons and models are changing stats it only makes it worse.

And oldmarines will remain at 1W because they want to squat them.

Here's hoping they'll at least give the Grey Knights 2W, since there are apparently no plans to primarise them for now.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
And oldmarines will remain at 1W because they want to squat them.

Counterpoint, since they want CSM to remain CSM, seemingly at all costs (rip cultists) there's a chance that tacs now will pick up CSM buffs aswell, like f.e. when tacs would go to 2 wounds.

If this happens across the board wouldn't that mean that a lot more units won't benefit from the Obscuring terrain trait? Not that I'm complaining, I'd personally find it hilarious if Repulsor Executioners went up to 18W so my big toys can turn them into slag through windows.

if tacs go up to 2 wounds, the choice between them and intercessors will be a LOT less clear cut

BrianDavion wrote:
if tacs go up to 2 wounds, the choice between them and intercessors will be a LOT less clear cut

Unless intercessors go up to 3 wounds.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its not a bad thing IF they apply this quickly to all factions.

Having to wait a year a more for "everyone" to get their upgrade would be beyond stupid.

More and more looks like they should have done new Index books given the compelte disaster the revised points has been and IF loads of weapons and models are changing stats it only makes it worse.

Have to agree with you on this. It will be painful to wait a year or more until the xenos army one is playing is addressed.

Year? More like years. With all factions having already codex there's less of a rush like in 8th ed where it took 1.5 years to get all codexes out. Plus sisters later as a bonus.

tneva82 wrote:
Year? More like years. With all factions having already codex there's less of a rush like in 8th ed where it took 1.5 years to get all codexes out. Plus sisters later as a bonus.

GW gets a lot of money pushing out books so I wouldn't be that surprised if they kept the same release cadence as before.

They really love the eternal turnover of books. My storage space is currently filled with older codexes and tomes that have been replaced at some point.

If they do this right it will help a ton.

The damage output from 40k weapons is too severe for how it is now, but it’s how they’ve differentiated weapons it seems.

By upping wound count (carefully) they can drop the lethality a bit and help balance it all out.


It seems they ported AoS over to start 40k but didn’t take into account that shooting in 40k was far more deadly due to the sheer volume in comparison.
If they can raise the wounds without skewing it even worse it should go a long way to helping the game.

 Esmer wrote:
Here's hoping they'll at least give the Grey Knights 2W, since there are apparently no plans to primarise them for now.

There's rumors all Firstborn Space Marine models will start at 2W (no image to back this up though), while I think basic Primaris will stay at 2W as well.

These drastic changes is probably partly why BA, SW, DA, DW are being compiled into Codex SM, as they can be updated altogether.

If the +1W is added to all models with Terminator Armour, this will definitely help keep GK relatively on par with Chapters with Primaris access (read: every SM chapter except for GKs). Only a total of 3 GK HQs / Characters DON'T have Terminator Amour so we might see:

- Paladins = 4W
- Librarians, Apothecary, Chaplains, Ancients = 6W
- Brother Captains, Grand Masters = 7W
- Kaldor Draigo = 8W...!

Who needs Primaris when you have a SM chapter where everyone gets their own Terminator Armour upon graduation...?! lol

Does this mean Custodes will go up to 4W base?

 Eldarsif wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Year? More like years. With all factions having already codex there's less of a rush like in 8th ed where it took 1.5 years to get all codexes out. Plus sisters later as a bonus.

GW gets a lot of money pushing out books so I wouldn't be that surprised if they kept the same release cadence as before.

They really love the eternal turnover of books. My storage space is currently filled with older codexes and tomes that have been replaced at some point.

We'll see. I think they will want to release some models rather than just books so will slow down a bit to bring in models rather than just book-book-book like in 8th ed. After all models are their prime source of income and most of model sales come first 3 months. Without new models not much income.

And start is already slower than 8th ed.

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Does this mean Custodes will go up to 4W base?

They kind of have to. Otherwise they will loose a LOT- ruleswise they will be "just" primaris marines and the fluff will be kicked in the balls. Finest creation? Hand-crafted by the Emperor and now equal to primaris marines mass-crafted by Cawl?

 Thairne wrote:

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Does this mean Custodes will go up to 4W base?

They kind of have to. Otherwise they will loose a LOT- ruleswise they will be "just" primaris marines and the fluff will be kicked in the balls. Finest creation? Hand-crafted by the Emperor and now equal to primaris marines mass-crafted by Cawl?

Also not marines. GW's fanboys. If you aren't loyalist marine you are NPC faction.

I can totally see wounds going up across the board, considering the changes made to wound allocation rules in 9th (will keep wound bookkeeping to a minimum as one always has to target models which have lost wounds first).

Wouldn't be surprised to see ork boyz going up to 2W either. Tau, guard and eldar, maybe not so much..

 Thairne wrote:

Gir Spirit Bane wrote:
Does this mean Custodes will go up to 4W base?

They kind of have to. Otherwise they will loose a LOT- ruleswise they will be "just" primaris marines and the fluff will be kicked in the balls. Finest creation? Hand-crafted by the Emperor and now equal to primaris marines mass-crafted by Cawl?

Not necessarily, as they are actually quite competitive right now with their Psychic Awakening buffs. They currently still have the general edge with: WS/BS 2+, S5, T5, 2+/4++.

Most of 8Ed Terminators weren't at a competitive level unless they were special snowflake variants such as DG Terminators (T5, 5+++), or GK Paladins (3W, 3A, -1 to wound, 4++). Who really knows at this point, Custodes could get the +1W also though.

I could see a good argument for custodes going up a wound, point bump and some other changes.

The stormshield theoretical change makes sword and board guard an interesting proposition.

Spoletta wrote:
According to the latest spoilers, terminators are going to 3 wounds.
The Necron Triarch thing is going from 8 to 10.
Melta is getting its damage increased.
The new primaris veterans are 3 wounds.
The new attak bike has 8 wounds.

I'm starting to see a scheme in this. Looks like that GW is importing another block from AoS, which is the wound system.
In AoS, 2 wounds on infantry is almost baseline, elite units have 3+ wounds and only chaff infantry has 1 wound.
Would make sense as a move to lower the lethality across the board, and fix a bit of the issues that are created by the LoS rule not working for 9W- models.
At this point, I expect Dnaughts and Fexes to go from 8 to 10W, like the Necron walker did.

The advantage of this approach is to make high RoF weapons less effective against big targets, while keeping the efficency against chaff.
Where I'm worried, is that AoS can use this approach because the damage spills over, which doesn't happen in 40K.

Great, fantastic, now if only they could do this change all at once, for all factions, instead of making players YET AGAIN feel like space marines get to play an entirely different game than what they are playing.

But who am I kidding: three factions still have no CT's on their goddamn vehicles, non-marines still have no 'no soup' benefit, and even minor rewordings of gak like Relic strats and reroll auras has yet to be carried through to other factions. Word Bearers is STILL a fething chapter tactic, FOUR CSM RULES UPDATES LATER.

Marines will have better guns, and more wounds, and everyone else will just have to either suck it up or let marine players play another 6months of hot spicy marine vs marine action.

tneva82 wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Year? More like years. With all factions having already codex there's less of a rush like in 8th ed where it took 1.5 years to get all codexes out. Plus sisters later as a bonus.

GW gets a lot of money pushing out books so I wouldn't be that surprised if they kept the same release cadence as before.

They really love the eternal turnover of books. My storage space is currently filled with older codexes and tomes that have been replaced at some point.

We'll see. I think they will want to release some models rather than just books so will slow down a bit to bring in models rather than just book-book-book like in 8th ed. After all models are their prime source of income and most of model sales come first 3 months. Without new models not much income.

And start is already slower than 8th ed.

The slowness could be attributed to the world pandemic though.

Only time will tell.

Don't mind the principle - stuff having more wounds might actually be a good thing, although its somewhat undermined in turn by guns/weapons seemingly doing more damage.

Moving to a chaff/regular/heavy infantry setting over "infantry have 1 wound except for Primaris and multiple wound little-monsters" makes some sense. Vehicles/monsters getting more wounds would have also made more sense than "you get a 5++, you get a 6+++, you get a -1 to hit, you get a combination of all three on almost every new datasheet because otherwise everything just melts."

But this feels like a fairly major edition change - more so arguably that many of the changes advertised in 9th - that should have been in the index. Not "yeah, you get a tougher stat line and much better guns to compensate, while other factions linger in the old rules".

I guess wait and see. If terminators are buffed, but also say go up 50% points wise, its potentially not that much of a change gameplay wise.

As someone who really likes his guard infantry I'm really against this. It makes 40k even more of a heavy infantry game and means that there are even more cases where lasguns (and lots of other basic infantry weapons) might as well not exist.

 Dolnikan wrote:
As someone who really likes his guard infantry I'm really against this. It makes 40k even more of a heavy infantry game and means that there are even more cases where lasguns (and lots of other basic infantry weapons) might as well not exist.

Well GW already made it clear 9th ed isn't edition for light infantry.

If GW give me 2W CSM I'll be a happy camper

tneva82 wrote:

 Dolnikan wrote:
As someone who really likes his guard infantry I'm really against this. It makes 40k even more of a heavy infantry game and means that there are even more cases where lasguns (and lots of other basic infantry weapons) might as well not exist.

Well GW already made it clear 9th ed isn't edition for light infantry.

There's ways around that that don't require extra stats. Guard orders for example. You could easily make all guard fire 3x if stationary, increasing their output and thus balancing their damage against increased wounds.

There are things you can do beyond just the wounds to keep the light infantry aspect. It just depends on whether gw wants to do them...

 Hellebore wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Dolnikan wrote:
As someone who really likes his guard infantry I'm really against this. It makes 40k even more of a heavy infantry game and means that there are even more cases where lasguns (and lots of other basic infantry weapons) might as well not exist.

Well GW already made it clear 9th ed isn't edition for light infantry.

There's ways around that that don't require extra stats. Guard orders for example. You could easily make all guard fire 3x if stationary, increasing their output and thus balancing their damage against increased wounds.

There are things you can do beyond just the wounds to keep the light infantry aspect. It just depends on whether gw wants to do them...

Yes,but orders make things even more reliant on officers, and that already is a problem with the current rules where the officer/guardsman ratio is quite off.

But I guess that it's all part of the greater problem of moving the game more and more towards a superhero setting where even space marines have become chaff

I definitely sympathize re: officer/guardsman ratio, but I want to point out also that Guardsmen under FRFSRF shoot W2 Marines with the same efficiency as Guardsmen in 3rd/4th Ed shooting W1 Marines.

They also still get an armor save against bolters, so are also tougher against return fire than they used to be.

Point being that Guardsmen have really always been at the upper edge of the chaff infantry category; Orders are the Swiss army knife that gives them flexibility and allows them to function as credible combatants.

Personally I'd like to see both Platoon Commanders and Company Commanders issue 2 orders apiece, but give the CCs a wider radius, maybe 12" instead of 6"- that would let you take cheaper junior officers to stick with the squads, while the senior officers can provide targeted assistance from a greater distance. Right now there's not much reason to take PCs at all.

I had long suspected ever since Primaris were giving 2W that this would eventually become the case - chaff left at 1W, elites at 2W, durable elites at 3W, etc.

I personally hope it doesn't go this way, Toughness used to be the way to distinguish more durable units, but between there being little difference between T4 & T5 and the buckets of dice lobbed around for attacks (and proliferation of D2 weapons), I think GW shot themselves in the foot in this aspect.

Before too long, Primaris will go to 3W base, I suspect.