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.

Pretty much asking the question in the thread title.

I love the 40K setting, but going by what I see online it sounds like codex creep is still happening (I heard about the Leagues of Votann week 1 nerfs), there may or may not be a 10th edition coming out soon, and in general it kind of sounds like a mess.

So is the game worth getting back into right now?

On Codex Creep - you'll be long dead before it stops.

On starting now vs later - You might as well start now. Because even if 10th ed is on the horizon it won't solve any of the problems, just reshuffle things & start the cycle all over. So get your books as cheap as possible, have whatever fun you can now, & adjust as needed if/when 10e arrives. And 10e WILL come. The only question is when.

edit: Oh, and model wise it won't be any cheaper to start later.

I myself am in the first half year of collecting them, so not much super big I can say. But I would say its good to start now, because if 10th edition rolls around you will still have models to use!

Arguably there's never been a better time to get into it. It's generally more popular than ever; the models are fantastic; the game is what it is and its been like it is for 30 odd years. The problems people talk of today are the same kind of problems that we were talking of 20 years ago.

IF you want to play get stuck in

If you want to dip your toe back into 40k without going full on, check out the new kill team (it got rebooted 15 months ago). "Into the Dark" is the latest 'everything in the box' release, and the scenery and models are great. You can also pick up a new team or two for a force you're tempted by in 40k to see how you get on with painting them. A dozen kill team operatives is a much smaller commitment than a full army, and games are significantly shorter; the rules are not based on 40k thankfully, and pretty tight overall.

You do get to play 'collect the book', just like 40k though!

Datasheets and rules for individual kill teams are mostly found in the warzone book they came out as; e.g. ork kommandos and krieg veterans are in the Octarius book. The white dwarf kill teams have been collated in the 2022 annual.

There's generic 'get you by' teams in the compendium for any that haven't had an individual release yet, though as a rule compendium teams are rather bland and weak, so you're better off getting the newer dedicated kill team for that faction (most have been done now)

It does depend on if there's a local scene near you of course; kill team is pretty popular, but 40k is still the big beast for getting a game in. 40k is definitely a hot mess that needs reining in, but whether 10th will do a soft reset on the codex balance problems or just make it worse, nobody knows. 9th hasn't gotten as bad as the end of 8th when you needed like 4 or 5 books to make a viable army list, but the amount of rules exceptions and special cases has gotten truly rediculous.

40K is super fun right now. Find some good people and have fun.

I'm assuming the question is whether 40k is worth getting into as a game, rather than for painting/modelling/collecting. But all that can add to your enjoyment.

I would suggest you find the people near you playing the game as the first step before buying anything, e.g. if you happen to live in a Nietzschean military (or sports?) school in Poland you might want to choose another hobby...

LoreSeeker wrote:
Pretty much asking the question in the thread title.

I love the 40K setting, but going by what I see online it sounds like codex creep is still happening (I heard about the Leagues of Votann week 1 nerfs), there may or may not be a 10th edition coming out soon, and in general it kind of sounds like a mess.

So is the game worth getting back into right now?

There are many ways to 'get into' 40k. The mass battle game and 'chasing the dragon' that the competitive meta churn is only one way, and imo is not 40k at its best, nor the 'proper' way to play.

Play kill team. Great wee skirmish.

Play necromunda. Either new or old. Fantastic skirmish.

I've only heard good things about adeptus titanicus.

Ultimately, Find a good group. Preferably like minded players. And 40k with them. At the end of the day, that's the best way to 40k.

It’s hard to recommend any game if you won’t enjoy who you play with.

Even the best games are not really worth it if the players are not worth playing with.

My own opinion is the game isn’t worth it, and it really needs community to have value.


Models can be played in other games, kill team exists as well!

LoreSeeker wrote:
Pretty much asking the question in the thread title.

I love the 40K setting, but going by what I see online it sounds like codex creep is still happening (I heard about the Leagues of Votann week 1 nerfs), there may or may not be a 10th edition coming out soon, and in general it kind of sounds like a mess.

So is the game worth getting back into right now?

Play an older edition. New stuff will always suck due to corporate edition cycle.

I don't want to start collecting two armies (budget can't handle it), so I'm trying to choose between Age of Sigmar and 40k.

The thing that strikes me is that I don't hear nearly as much bad stuff about the Age of Sigmar rules compared to 40k, which tells me that it's better designed rules-wise than 40k. Is my impression there right?

LoreSeeker wrote:
I don't want to start collecting two armies (budget can't handle it), so I'm trying to choose between Age of Sigmar and 40k.

The thing that strikes me is that I don't hear nearly as much bad stuff about the Age of Sigmar rules compared to 40k, which tells me that it's better designed rules-wise than 40k. Is my impression there right?

If your open, maybe see what’s being play local. See if something else looks interesting, maybe you will find something new!

Mordheim is picking up a bit, and that’s still great. Huge community support as well


And a war band only needs like 10 minis starting off.

LoreSeeker wrote:
I don't want to start collecting two armies (budget can't handle it), so I'm trying to choose between Age of Sigmar and 40k.

Why not choose both? If you make a deamon army the models are usable for both systems.

You can always collect the models and books you like and leave the game. I only read the novels now and it gets me my 40k without the disappointment of playing the game.

You could try a different game, if that's an option for you. If you have issues with poor rules writing, I doubt either AoS or 40k would do much for you, for any edition of either. Their skirmish games, however, do seem to have better rules. I'd probably start with Warcry or Necromunda, but Kill Team isn't horrible. My favorite skirmish game is Infinity, but it's not a GW product.

ccs wrote:

LoreSeeker wrote:
I don't want to start collecting two armies (budget can't handle it), so I'm trying to choose between Age of Sigmar and 40k.

Why not choose both? If you make a deamon army the models are usable for both systems.

This kind of works and kind of doesn't work.

In the past between 40K and Old World the pure demon armies used exactly the same models with the barrier being the bases - 40K wanted rounds and Old World wanted squares. For infantry you could just use round slots on a movement tray; heroes and monsters were a bit trickier.

Today what's happened is that 40K has a single pure demon army made up of all 4 gods in one force. You can theme it to one god or a pair of gods if you wish, but in general its designed to operate with multiple.
Meanwhile in Age of Sigmar what's happened is that the demon armies have fragmented into one per god. In addition alongside pure demons, these armies have extensive human worshippers too. As a result an AoS army could have a range of models that just don't appear in 40K at all. Plus you'd be forced into a single god which in 40K could be a little min-max skewed (eg Khorne in 40K is the only "god" with a non-magical ranged weapon - the skull cannon

Seems a lot like custodes and w40k and HH. Technicaly the same models and same units, but unless someone magnetizes everything it is really hard to have a good army for both systems. And that is before adding any FW models.

It is a complicated question and a lot depends on how you want to consume the hobby. If you are split between many things, then it doesn't matter that much what you pick, bar picking some really horrible army like Imperial Fists. But even then, who knows maybe GW fixs them. If you are more in to the painting and converting of things, then the state of games doesn't matter much. Pick what you want. You do seem to be worried about the Votan thing, so I expect you to care about the game at least to a certain degree. This means that to start now, at the end of an edition. You either have to pick an army which is good and the chance of nerfs is low. Preferably a good thing would be to do it after the next points update, then you will know how the things are going to shape and if maybe bad armies became okey to play, and vice versa. It is worth to remember or know that w40k works on a seson system, and those are rather long. An army can drasticly change depending on core rule changes GW could make. Necron and SoB are an example of such armies right now.

Ah and when in doubt, but wanting a good faction for future to play, pick eldar. There has not been an edition where they have not been very good for a lenghty time of an edition.

The hiccup with Eldar is that the units which are considered competetively good can vary wildly from edition to edition.

True. But the pool is smaller, and it is better to have to rebuy an army 2-3 times to get all eldar models, then do the same with other armies and not have a good army 2/3 of the time. And sometimes one can get lucky with something like harlequins or eldar soups. In the end no matter what w40k costs a lot of money, if someone wants to have fun from playing it. And there is no better army to play then eldar through out w40k history.

Maybe, as others said, demons come close to it, because of being a multi system army. And I know that at times they were very good. But I have not enough knowladge about them to claim, if they are as good as eldar to play over the history of GW games.

Is 40k worth getting into? Not really. It's a very bad game with nonexistent balance and mechanics that are a textbook on poor game design. Unless you're already falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy and have a lot invested in it you should probably stay away. If you really want to play in the 40k universe Kill Team is a far better game in every way.

Is 40k worth getting into right now? I suppose so. If your choice is right now vs. later then you might as well do it now, there's no sign that GW is ever going to fix the core issues with 40k so waiting a while doesn't help you at all.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:
Is 40k worth getting into? Not really. It's a very bad game with nonexistent balance and mechanics that are a textbook on poor game design. Unless you're already falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy and have a lot invested in it you should probably stay away. If you really want to play in the 40k universe Kill Team is a far better game in every way.

Is 40k worth getting into right now? I suppose so. If your choice is right now vs. later then you might as well do it now, there's no sign that GW is ever going to fix the core issues with 40k so waiting a while doesn't help you at all.

This was basically the impression I was getting from online talk about the game - that it still has major issues even after all these years, it's never going to get better, etc.

You can build your own Kill Teams in KT, right? You don't need to use the pre-assembled box sets?

You can kind of build Kill Teams, but the customization is certainly less than it was.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
You can kind of build Kill Teams, but the customization is certainly less than it was.

I can already see on the Kill Team website that, for example, there are only 10 models in the Space Marine line that can be used in KT. Do you mean in terms of weapon options?

You can certainly customize weapons, though how you perceive the fact that a laspistol and a plasma pistol are both free is up to you.

It's mostly which models you can use that bothers me. You either use a box kill team, or have heavy restrictions on which boxes you can use, and then you're locked to specific amounts of models from a box.

As an example, if I remember correctly, if you want to play Guardsmen, you can play Veteran Guardsmen (10 total), two sets of 7 Guardsmen (14 total), one set of 7 Guardsmen and 5 Scions (12 total), or two sets of scions (10 total). No Ogryn, Ratlings, Crusaders, anything like that.

How much that has changed, or exact details, can be better explained by someone who played past the beginning. I dropped out of the hype week one.

So it's not just "this many points for this many models" type list building? Sounds unnecessarily restrictive.

LoreSeeker wrote:
I don't want to start collecting two armies (budget can't handle it), so I'm trying to choose between Age of Sigmar and 40k.

The thing that strikes me is that I don't hear nearly as much bad stuff about the Age of Sigmar rules compared to 40k, which tells me that it's better designed rules-wise than 40k. Is my impression there right?

It's more of a community issue, AoS has it's fair share of issues but the death of WHFB removed the players that had forgotten how bad the game was back in their day.

40k has never been more balanced, and while there are balance issues constantly arising *looks at Flamers* the constant rules changes that 'happen weekly' and are 'months too late' actually acheive a version of what they set out to acheive.

I took a break from the hobby mid-way through 2019 so part of 8th and all of 9th.

Considering coming back to the hobby but honestly thinking of waiting another 6 months for a potential new edition because the more I read about 9th, the more it seems like it's 7th again with the colossal rules bloat

I’ve been in the hobby for eight years and imo yes, it is a very fun game. People on here love to whine about balance, but truthfully as a solely casual player who just likes rolling dice with fun people, I’ve still had fun regardless of when my armies have been at the top or on the bottom of the totem pole. The game is fun so long as you go in with that intention. Yeah some stuff could be balanced better, but it’s not the doom and gloom unplayable mess that people say it is (and keep in mind people have been saying that since I started)

I am looking to have fun, maybe play the occasional tournament. But as a competitive person, getting constantly steamrolled by an army because the designers couldn't be bothered to balance it isn't fun, regardless of whether I enjoy playing with whoever is fielding that army.

Well, here's GWs compeditive data since the last update. Something they have only started to properly gather in the last 12-24 months.



We all know what is going on in Tzeentch/Daemons results and going off what happened last time GW talked about a problem like this, I expect a 80-100% increase in Flamers' point costs in January next year; as a bare minimum. Wouldn't even be surprised if the took a bigger kick.