The first thing that occurs to me is that although 10th Edition does look like it will be significantly simplified from 9th, it'll probably still be pretty complex.
Currently in 9th, the main issue is that every faction has their own Stratagems, Secondaries, and special rules that you need to be aware of. Good players will let you know about them, including during the game. But it can still be frustrating if you're making a game plan and it turns out a unit has a rule that means you can't shoot or charge it.
Still, it should be noted that 10th Edition isn't really stripping down the rules much, if at all. Hell, it's arguable that there will be even more rules in 10th! What's changing is where those rules will be located and how you'll know about them during a game.
UNIVERSAL SPECIAL RULES
They're back baby! Though honestly, this concept never really went away. Not only did both 8th and 9th edition have their own little list of universal rules, but as 9th continued, GW took some of the different duplicate rules and codified how they worked. The big one was "Fight First, Fight Normal, Fight Last." But despite GW released these changes as Errata. This meant you still frequently ran into people who would argue, "No! That's not how my rule works!"
But now that's a thing of the past. Deep Strike, Feel No Pain, Fight First (but apparently not Fight Last) are all shared between armies. As an added bonus, weapons are no longer limited to one rule that they're forced to be defined by. Assault Pistol weapons are a thing, as are Twin-Linked Heavy weapons. And there's no longer a need for the "HunTR" rule. A weapon can finally just be a gun.
I also like that many of these rules are written in a "Rule X" format. This is going to make it much more easy to balance the various weapons. It also means that Dakka can go back to being an Ork unit special rule, as Rapid Fire X covers what it does.
Honestly, while I know that some people feel this makes armies less distinct, this just all feels like upside to me. Universal Special Rules didn't make armies feel less distinct in the past. And with the new Unit Special Rules . . .
UNIT SPECIAL RULES
In previous versions of 40K, many units had their own rules to help them stand apart from the rest. For example, my Gargoyles had a weapon called Blinding Venom that inflicted hit penalties on units. But in 9th, a lot of these rules got moved to Stratagems. This had the dual effects of making the unit less special and making those rules more obscure. Yeah, my Gargoyles could still inflict Blinding Venom, but that's only if I thought it was worth the CP. And considering how important some Stratagems were, that meant a lot of units never used their specific Stratagems. And when they did, it could often be a feels-bad for the opponent. How were they supposed to know my Gargoyles were going to take away their rerolls to hit!
Now special rules are back on the Datasheet. And with the new condensed unit cards, a player can just easily ask to see the card and know exactly what the unit will do. Rules are no longer hidden, and units feel special again!
But GW seems to have decided that now every unit will get a special rule. That also comes with two effects. The first is that there's going to be an explosion of new rules in the game. We're already seeing some of these rules being duplicated, so I'm guessing many of them will get shorthanded by the community again. "Oh my Genestealers? Yeah they have the Legionnaire ability." Perhaps some of them might just become Universal Special Rules, despite the desire to make them distinct.
The second possible effect is that many of the special rules might not end up feeling all that special. Insert the Incredibles quote here. I'm curious to see whether every unit actually will have a special rule. Maybe stuff like servitors and other lesser units that are often taken to use up those few remaining points and hold the back field won't get them. We'll have to wait and see.
One little thing that's bugging me is that a handful of rules appear to still be Stratagems. Not only does Smoke seem to still be a Stratagem you'll have to spend CP for, but now Grenades seem to be one too. I'm not sure why these aren't just Universals.
ARMY BUILDING
So I honestly liked the old Detachment system. I always felt it was a system with some good ideas that just needed a little tweaking. I like trying to plan my armies around it and the way it makes armies feel like true combined arms forces. But 40K is a complex game and not only do Detachments make the barrier to entry harder, they added another layer of complexity to balancing units. At the end of the day, the depth Detachments bring probably isn't worth the complexity.
And it's really hard to argue with how simple the new rules make things. Everything is now centered around the "Rule of Three". You can have three of any regular unit, six of any Battleline unit or Dedicated Transport, and one of any Epic Hero.
Where I know there's been far more friction is the new Detachment system. There's a feel that this system is going to steal the character from subfactions. Now we haven't actually seen that subfactions are going away. In fact, it looks like at the very least the major Codex divergent chapters will still be getting their own books. But we definitely haven't seen any subfaction keywords. In fact we've recently seen just the opposite. So I can understand why some people are worried.
But I honestly like the idea that you get to determine the flavor of your subfaction and use the new Detachment system to express it. This not only means it will be much easier to make your own custom faction, the way 9th started going towards the end, but that if there's an aspect of your favorite faction you want to express you can totally do it. Maybe you love the lore and feel of Raven Guard but you prefer Tactical Marines to Phobos. Now you can field a balanced and strategic force without having to worry about playing against your subfaction rules. At the very least, you never have to worry about playing with weaker rules because you painted your army up as Imperial Fists.
Enhancements are a slightly different story. This is a real slim down simplification of one of the more enjoyable aspects of army building. Even Age of Sigmar, where Enhancements originated, lets you do much more with this system. This might ultimately be good for balance, but I'll miss the extra customization on Warlords.
RIP PSYCHIC AND MORALE PHASES
When I first started playing back in 2nd Edition (yes I'm that old) every army was psychicly active. Even towards the end of the Edition, I'm pretty sure they had Sisters do their miracles and Necrons do their Arcana in the psychic phase. But don't quote me on that, especially the Necrons as they were a White Dwarf army at the time. But now, there are plenty of armies that don't really do anything in the Psychic Phase, and even some that just don't really make use of the phase all that often. And it's really not any fun to sit back and watch as your opponent does a bunch of stuff you don't really get to use or interact with.
Now you just get a bunch of special rules and a new weapon keyword that makes your Psychic abilities more reliable and fit better in the game. This honestly was a sacred cow that needed to die.
The only complaint I've heard here and agree with, is that this removes some of the flexibility from pychic heavy armies. The reveals we've gotten for the Terminator Librarian and the Weirdboy just show one pcychic attack and one ability. Even the Farseer only gets two abilities. This is another place where I feel like some customization will be missed.
But the rework of Morale is fantastic in my humble opinion. 40K has always had a problem when it comes to Morale. On the one hand, the lore depicts nearly every faction as being all but fearless. Even those factions that would have units that might break and run, the lore and stories aren't about those soldiers. They're about the soldiers that stand resolute and determined in the face of a galaxy full of horrors.
On the other hand . . . there's that galaxy full of horrors. The terrifying aspects of Chaos, the monstrous Tyranids, the dread forces of the Necrons, the grotesque displays of the Druhkari, and anything to do with the Night Lords, all of these are supposed to give even the strongest wills pause. And even in the lore, though the heroes never give up or flee, they do pause! The heroes falter, lose cohesion, and are sometimes just stunned. They always regroup, if only for a heroic last stand, but they're still affected by the galaxy's nightmares.
The new Battle-shock rule reflects that. You no longer have to worry about your units breaking or fleeing, but you do have to worry about them becoming unable to fill their strategic roles. The best part is the new rule doesn't have to represent fear or being pinned. Did you're Hive Tyrant just suffer the less than 10% chance to be Battle-shocked? It's not cowering or fearful, it's entered a rage and temporarily forgotten strategy. This is probably the best implementation of Morale we could hope for.
TOUGHER THAN EVER
9th Edition was incredibly killy. It didn't matter what you put on the board, if your opponent wanted it dead it was going to die. And since this is a game about holding objectives, this meant that you often had to resort to only the toughest, most elite units. A lot of weaker units, even fan favorites, often gathered dust because they just couldn't survive long enough to be useful.
GW apparently agrees with the fans that the games lethality needs toned down a notch. Two accomplish this, they've focused on two main things: AP and Toughness.
Nearly every weapon seems to have had it's AP lowered by at least one. We've only seen one AP -5 weapon, and that was a Volcano cannon. Hopefully weapons like this will be rare, and most of the time your armored units will at least get a t-shirt save.
I'm a little less enthusiastic about the Toughness change, but only slightly. Toughness definitely needed to go up I think, at least with the changes to the Strength system from 8th. Vehicle and monster Toughness now ranges from 9 for a Rhino to 14 for a Monolith. Again, it's possible Tougher stuff is out there, but that's all that's been revealed.
Other than having to refigure all the classic break points, my only complaint with this is the effect on small arms. In effect, if your opponent takes out your antitank weaponry, then your most efficient antitank suddenly becomes whatever your cheapest mass fire is. It seems weird that a guard infantry unit will be more effective against many tanks than a heavy weapons team with autocannons.
Transports are also going to be more useful too. Although I'm a little more worried about how this will affect Alpha Strikes, it'll be much easier to run your vehicles up the board to safely convey their charges. All and all, vehicles are probably genuinely back.
GW'S GAMBIT
The new missions are probably the aspect I'm most worried about. On the whole, I like the idea of creating unique missions each time you play. I even like the fact you get to choose from some set Secondary Objectives or test you luck and draw for them. But then there are Gambits . . .
The first thing to note about Gambits, which even GW confirmed, is that they won't win the game on their own. If you're getting curb stomped, that 35 points isn't helping you. That's not my concern.
The best 40K games are the close back and forth contests where a lot of clutch plays are being used to try and take and keep objectives. I think for most players, being down 5-10 points at the end of Turn 3 isn't going to tempt them into a Gambit. They'll probably see if they can make up the difference with some good plays and a little luck. In other words, they'll try to win by playing 40K.
But if my opponent has outplayed me, and my napkin math is showing that I'm still going to be 20-30 points behind at the end of the game, it's handshake time. Seriously, what's wrong with conceding? Games of 40K take a while to play. If your opponent was clearly the better player, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that and saying "GG." You can still set some kind of objective for yourself and keep playing if you want. How many times have we said things like, "If I can kill Guilliman that's a moral victory for me!"
But Gambits change that. And I wouldn't mind, but they describe them as a difficult objective to achieve. But that's not what they've shown. The revealed Gambit, Orbital Strike Coordinates, is not a challenge. It's a dice roll. All it takes to trigger the scoring condition is getting a unit safely in a table quarter. There are currently plenty of deployment maps where you have a nearby table quarter that isn't in your deployment zone. Get a unit over there, and then you can win the game if your roll a 12.
Except it's worse because you get bonuses to the roll for each unit you have in a corner of the board. That includes your own deployment zone! So the roll will almost always be an 11 or better! If the game has otherwise been close, your opponent has just had better objective scoring, it'll be easy to secure those two quarters. Then the game will just be down to a single dice roll.
WHAT'S TO COME
There's still a lot we don't know. The rumor is that we won't be starting with any Command Points now, but GW hasn't confirmed this. They have confirmed that you're still limited to gaining one extra CP in any given turn. So we'll probably have to be very careful with our Stratagems. With some of the Stratagems that have been previewed, it's clear they want them to be much more impactful when used too.
And with all these rules changes, the Command Phase is going to be pretty busy. A lot of questions with interactions are waiting for GW to unveil the full Command Phase and the order that things happen. Depending on how things are written, some Command Phase abilities are going to be absolutely huge.
There are still some questions on weapon selection too. Will we still not be able to fire our pistols if we want to use any other weapons? Do infantry and characters really get to use all their weapons still? If not, do vehicles have special rules that allow them to? At least we know how melee weapon selection works now.
There's a lot we won't know until we can get our hands on the rules.
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