> Note that it’s quite rare to pick allies in most game modes – it’s assumed that your force will be drawn from a single faction. \* \*
> \* \* Though exemptions are in place for classic cross-faction combos like summoned Chaos Daemons, Freeblade Knights, or Brood Brothers.
I'm happy to read that they aren't pulling the rug out from under players after introducing allied detachments in AoO.
CSM variants will probably get a marines + daemons set for each god + word bearers (generic for CSM).
I’m honestly more excited for them to hopefully get mono-god daemons right this time after we lost a ton of flexibility going from Neph to Arks.
> I’m honestly more excited for them to hopefully get mono-god daemons right this time after we lost a ton of flexibility going from Neph to Arks.
Considering they are cutting down on complexity, stratagems, army abilities and the like - which, as you give up on roster flexibility, is the only way to make monogod stronger than mixed - I wouldn't expect monogod to come out the stronger one in this transition.
Which in my opinion is the better side to err on, as GW has never quite managed to balance monogod vs mixed, and if one is to be better I'd rather it be the second so you can if nothing else at least use more than a quarter of your codex.
But we'll see.
Am I missing something or why is everyone talking about less roster flexibility? Everything about the way they’re talking about this seems to indicate more, not less, options in terms of what can be included in a given list.
Exactly. But going monogod, _that_ is what gives up roster flexibility. It always has. And GW has never managed to balance that. If we get more flexibility in general, then that favours undivided who can pick from the whole menu.
Nor do I expect they ever will. Themed armies are cool, but it's like trying to balance an all-Phobos Marine army versus one using the whole codex. They tried that too, more than once, and never got close.
They could have a Khorne Daemon only detachment that gives huge boosts to melee and murdering once there, a Nurgle Daemon only detachment with cool rules for durability and contagion, and so on.
I wouldn't bet money on this happening, but if they were going to make mono-god daemons as viable as mixed daemons then detachments would be the likely place to do it.
They tried that before with loci in 8th and it was an unbalanced mess. I don't have high hopes this time either, and the _last_ thing I want is a 'You like daemons? Hope you like mono Nurgle or you won't be winning anything' sort of situation.
I honestly don't get why we can't have things like CSM + DG/TS/WE. The rules already punish you enough for doing so (No Wantons nor Legion Traits) and it's a fluffy choice
Except for GSC and tyranids. I started a GSC army specifically to have allies for my Nids. They have taken that away with AoO, and it seems it will stay gone.
Technically, they already pulled the rug from under you then? But no, that's unfortunate, of course. Happy the same doesn't happen for more people :)
Curious what happens with Eldar soup, too.
Don't they leave the GSC until the planet is overrun - letting them cult members help overrun the planetary defenders (i.e. fighting alongside them), only to betray them after the battle is won?
Only in a few specific cases. Most of the time they show up, re assimilate the primarch/purestrains into the brood and then just treat the cultist like any other being on the planet.
Ynarri may just be a detachment that allows you to bring all 3 kinds of elves in it. So, not technically "allies" the way that they're using it, which they seem to be using to talk about units that don't fit in your chosen detachment (CSM detachment, daemons allied).
I am mildly optimistic but I'm having flashbacks of early 3rd and 4th editions where your subfraction was meaningless beyond colors, and (I am a CSM player so I'll use that as an example) your Night Lords played identical to Alpha Legion who played identically to Iron Warriors. It literally was a color scheme and nothing else.
I’m torn on this. It definitely loses a lot of flavour, particularly at tournaments where everyone’s going to be playing whatever’s best, but at least it’ll let people paint their space marines how they want to play them without worrying about the rules consequences of that
Yea... I agree. I'm for simplification in some aspects, but Silver Templars, Emperor's Spears, and Castellans of the Rift were unique and felt unique. Sure, you can play "that Chapter" with a different paint scheme, but that does strip away some of the uniqueness of a particular Chapter. All of those Index Astartes rules and building around their identity might go out the window - which is a net negative at this point I feel like.
It'll be a shame if paint schemes no longer matter, and you simply build a list according to whatever you wish.
This sounds good on paper, but there's a lot to be said about how "sameness" ends up becoming stale quickly.
3rd Edition had a Space Marines Codex in addition to the Core Rulebook, and then differentiated things further from there. Just look at the special rules for Dark Angels.
I was excited for the changes, but now I'm a little nervous at the prospect of losing unique Chapters for "ease of play"
If my little toys are painted like Dark Angels, they should function differently than Imperial Fists or White Scars - because they ARE different.
Custom paint schemes are great for running alternative rules, sure, but sticking to a Chapter because you like that Chapter's identity should still be a thing.
But whatever, I guess. I've been playing since the mid-90s, so obviously not gonna stop, lol
> It'll be a shame if paint schemes no longer matter, and you simply build a list according to whatever you wish.
Paint schemes no longer mattering sounds amazing tbh.
It sounds like they are changing sub-factions to be mechanical rather than thematic, so you'd have the tricky detachment (NL, AL), the Shooty detachment (Iron Warrios) the Elite detachment. So yes many sub-factions will likely become essentially cosmetic.
The advantage is it allows for greater tactical depth in the variety and types of armies. Currently many sub-factions are practically slight variations of each other. The downside is that highly similar sub-factions will likely loose separate rules, barring perhaps named characters.
On the flip side they may increase the total number of Factions, much as the big CSM chapters each getting their own factions, as a way to preserve more unique variety.
To add to this there's a lot of sub factions that were never made with the idea of having one theme.
Take blood axes for instance. They are supposed to be orks who act like an organised military. They have large armoured assaults, mechanised troops, use infiltrators, implement air assaults etc etc. But their rules essentially tied them into being sneaky.
Detachments seem to be a good way of getting a more balanced rule set for themed lists without being forced into specific sub factions.
I should be able to have a an armoured goff devision, a blood axe mechanised infantry regiment, a death skulls dread Mob without completely ignoring my sub faction trait
Yes.
There will no longer a double standard for space marine players with subfactions.
Nobody cares when a necron player paints their models like the box art and chooses whatever subfaction they want.
But the second someone chooses to play iron hands and has a blue army they are meta chasers and not WYSIWYG compliant.
Im a huge fan of space marine subfactions being on the same level as everyone elses subfactions.
I mean, competetively that's true today as well. For the majority of factions, they only ever run 1 specific subfaction, as it's mechanically the strongest, regardless of color scheme.
> 3rd and 4th editions where your subfraction was meaningless beyond colors,
I liked that. Made the game that much more manageable. There was like a sentence at most of subfaction rules, mostly an exception tot he force org chart rules like "you can take X as troops" or something
I like it because it is exponentially easier to balance fewer armies and smaller rule sets.
The current meta still feels like it has too many "blowout" match ups even when the WR is 50/50
There were definitely differences. I'm looking at my Dark Angels Codex from 3rd now and going... there were differences. Beyond the named characters as well.
Strange comment to make, in my opinion.
With a few exceptions, but yeah. to this day the 3.5 codex is the best they've ever done IMHO. Really shows what happens when the writer actually plays the army and is passionate about the faction.
And now currently all those other legions suck, so it's a moot point. I'd rather be able to play my army with decent rules and not have some mouth breather protest because it's not the correct colour.
Look. No more Power Level. They actually did it. This could have been a page with one sentence saying they got rid of Power Level and I would be happy. No idea why but this was my single biggest pet peeve and fully dropping has built up some real trust from me.
Speculating: Your 3 dark elf subfactions will all likely have 3 different detachments with their own unique strats. Basically each subfaction will be its own army of renown. Like World Eaters vs Disciples of Red Angel subfaction. Each Space Marine Chapter subfaction will be its own ‘army of renown-style’ Detachment.
Am I correct?
I suspect that Dark Eldar will have four detachments, and that each gives some bonus to different units, but that you can essentially take any unit in any detachment. So you can have Wracks in your Wych detachment, but they will get more of a bonus if you had chosen the Coven detachment.
I suspect that, as well. Same for marines. I’m all in favor of simplifying list building and gotcha wombo-combos that just make the dice roll better, and all in favor of forcing players to make strategic decisions in-game with their command points and movement, not before the game list building. I can understand that many others like tinkering with lists though.
Most of the individual sub-armies don't really have enough different units to fill out an army. There's like 5 different coven units if you discount transports.
Chances are they'll destroy much of the DE flavor and just smush all the DE subfactions into a single detachment army thing.
no subfactions but "detachment rules", sounds an awful lot like army of renown. not that its a bad thing since they will all have in theory unique play styles. but thats where you'll get more rules. i'm guessing their 2 page per faction really means 2 pages per detachment.
warlord traits = Enhancements
troops = Battleline keyword
Boarding Actions has enhancements too and they're a mashup of current relics and warlord traits, so it's almost certainly exactly this. Guessing it's deliberate to stop wombo-combos, and I can see why. Makes a lot of sense, but it might upset people who really liked running janky off-meta stuff.
Tbh that's more whoever wrote that book just having a bit too much fun with big numbers. Like even if it's a million points t8/4++/5+++ with the ability to regen a bunch of wounds and a gun that makes knights blush just is rough.
The last two issues of White Dwarf have had Army of Renown rules for Bronzewrought and Strike Force Rhalion (Iron Warriors and Blood Angels specific options with mustering limitations). Each has a few Enhancements and 6 strategems. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't mostly what we'll get in 10E.
They are for Boarding Patrols only. I was really surprised to find the first one in last month's issue but as an IW player I was over the moon. They look to be related to the ongoing narrative in WD that is kind of an Arks of Omen side story. That said, I think them along with Cult of the Arkifane & Cogs of Vashtorr rules are a good approximation of what we're likely to see (for whatever my opinion is worth).
I think so too - and the one in, one out system makes it really easy for them to add more stuff like this to white dwarf too. Might end up as a problem if they do, but that's never stopped them before!
Will take a huge amount of overhead off of GW as well and potentially slow down the amount of FAQs erratas, and updates to the rules.
A lot less they have to playtest and potentially be broken by the community within a week.
Which will further simplify the game and remove a lot of the baggage and clutter you have now. Not having to go to Wahapedia and Battlescribe to figure out what the hell your army can actually do.
i get this, but they have said several times "simplified, not simple".
And this change is very clearly "simplified to be simple". Theres really no argument against this just being trimming all the interactions down to a simple boring choice.
While on the outset I kind of agree. Making things too homogeneous take a lot of flavor out of 40k.
That said there are a lot of details we do not know. There maybe certain character/unit interactions and abilities that may wildly change how certain factions play.
For instance sure all space marines might have access to the "jump-pack" detachment, but not all space marines will have access to death company or Sanguinary Guard. And those units could fundamentally change the effectiveness of that detachment. Seems like there will be a 'dreadnought' detachment (iron hands), I would imagine there is a 'terminators' detachment (Dark Angels) with specific inner circle buffs for deathwing coded units, etc.
While much simpler than the current implementation it does add a lot of ease of use to the game and can potentially balance it. The two biggest issues with the game. Just look at something like Kill Team. On the outset it is very rigid in a lot of the army selection, and how 'customizable' the units are. But that doesn't mean there is a lack of depth to the game.
This is the vibe I’m getting overall. A big question we don’t have answered is what will happen to subfactions? Will my white scars mean nothing anymore? Will I get access to a special rite of war? Hard to say currently
> Will my white scars mean nothing anymore?
In the grand scheme of 40k subfactions with expansive/detailed rules (outside of the codex deviant marine chapters) are a bit of a blip.
Ppl played all sorts of chapters for years where often times the only special thing they got was a named character who may or may not have impacted army construction.
This probably my favorite change with 10th right now to be honest. I enjoy the idea of each subfaction having rules, but it was way too much bloat.
It also had the effect where units were just so unbalanced between subfactions. A unit could be OK or even sub-par in any other subfaction, but just roll face in when a specific one.
Staring at you Bloody Rose.
The article implies that there will be detachments similar to the various subfactions of old, but anyone can use them, regardless of army paint scheme. I get this implication from the example they used, the "Gladius" one, implying it's originally ultramarines, but anyone can use it.
It's not impossible, but I don't see it being likely, maybe space marine codex might alter that. They seem to want a more flexible build your army systems. So rather than rules existing because of your chapter, you build your chapter with the rules that exist.
So as an example, if we want to play white scars, knowing their lore, there might be a detachment geared towards bikers and fastness.
But let's say, for narrative reasons, white scars had to defend a position, so now they are rocking a defense style detachment with say, their 5th company.
Just guesswork on my behalf though.
Yep. People often forget, in part because of subfaction bonuses, that most factions can and do field well rounded forces and just have a predisposition towards a style of fighting. Blood Angel's still have a devastator company, and arguably their most iconic unit of all time is the big standard space hulk terminator.
Being able to represent all aspects of a chapter without gaining 0 benefit from faction rules will be pretty freeing IMO.
Yeah, the current rules tend towards flanderization where RG are all in on stealth, White Scars are actually a infantry ping pong faction, IH are oops all tanks, BA don't have anything without a jump pack etc. The actual lore is much more relaxed and you could realistically see Dante leading an armored company of tanks or something similar.
Especially considering the marine factions that have unique units. Deathwatch and Grey Knights will almost certainly be separate from standard marines, but what about Space Wolves or Blood Angels?
They’ll probably be segregated by Keyword. So Sanguinary Guard will only be accessible to BLOOD ANGELS SPACE MARINES, which are just normal space marines but have access to BLOOD ANGELS SPACE MARINES keyworded units. That’s the simplest way I can see them doing it
Blood angels and space wolves both have unique units too, like wulfen and sanguinary guard tho right? I would expect some sort of blood angels detachment to make use of those personally.
That’s what I mean, sorry. We can assume that deathwatch and grey knights will be different factions, but both SW and BA are under the space marine umbrella, and we don’t know what that means for detachments/unit access
If white scars become their own faction, they will differ. If not, there will be no difference.
My assumption is there will be no separate chapter factions at launch but they will add them over time. We'll just have to wait & see.
I thought it was already clear that "2 Pages of Rules" was 2 Pages of rules for YOUR ARMY not the faction/sub-faction as a whole. basically ion any given game you'll be able to reference everything you need on two sheets of paper (One for you and one for your opponent, both double sided.)
There are a lot of things that have been very, very clearly stated regarding 10th, and people are still getting it wrong all up and down the internet. They have reiterated so many times that the army you are playing will only ever have 2 pages of rules. This article is clear that your faction provides you an ability, your detachment provides you the bulk of your rules, there are core strats, etc. for everyone, and that's that.
Pick a different a detachment, and you get different strats, enhancements, and detachment abilities to work with.
Just remember that when Age of Sigmar premiered it was also “there’s only going to be two pages of rules and that’s it now and forever”, forever being six months or so that time.
I’m… not conviced this design principle will withstand the test of time
Didn't Age of Sigmar not even have points when it debuted? Not exactly an apt comparison.
Unless you mean 3rd edition, which I don't remember them making that claim ever.
Indeed, there weren’t points even. And no, I don’t think 10th compares (PR and rules wise) to arguably the worst launch GW ever had. _Still_, the simpler not simple mantra, the two page limit, and the erasing of subfactions are things that I wouldn’t bet will be kept once 10th gets rolling.
The current army construction (faction+subfaction+detachment(+sometimes army of renown)) is a mess (especially considering the restrictions that apply (or don't) to the different layers). Replacing everything with "just" army of renown seems like a good trade to me.
Enhancements might regroup various upgrades, between traits, relics, chapter command, cryptek arkanas, etc. Lumping all of those together also seems like a good idea to me.
> Enhancements might regroup various upgrades, between traits, relics, chapter command, cryptek arkanas, etc. Lumping all of those together also seems like a good idea to me.
that sounds boring for people who liked to play herohammer type lists. Having to skip a WLT/relic if you want to give chapter master rerolls is kind of lame.
Yes, but it will prevent stupid combos.
Personally I prefer to be given a choice of 4 meaningful options, rather than a dozen ones, 3 of which are useful, and will end up being picked everytime. But I'll wait to see what the 4 upgrades will be.
But thats lame af since the article states you can only give a character a single enhancement. So no lore WLT + relic on the same character? A shame, since making creative character combos was half the fun
I was fun on some armies, and absolutely terrible on others (look at Necrons, they basically get a single WL trait and 2 relics, and no combo outside of Novokh).
But more importantly, it made balance harder. How are you supposed to balance a SM captain datasheet if there's a combo of upgrades that make it a mini-dreadnought with wings?
This. While finding broken interactions is fun, it's not good gameplay. Lol if I take these combined upgrades my death jester goes from an okay sniper to PICK UP YOUR MODEL JERK.
Funny to find the combo, but incredibly difficult to balance fun upgrades if they can be combined with N other upgrades.
Yeah, given that they haven’t shown themselves able to do the balancing necessary—which is not a trivial task in a sprawling game like 40k—moving away from being able to assemble combo pieces on a single guy seems good.
In AoS Enhancements are anything you select from.
Warlord traits
Relics
Psychic powers
Etc.
There are a few army specific enhancements that some factions have access to but that about covers it. You get to select one of each type of enhancement you have access to, and if you build your army on specific ways you can gain access to an additional one or two. But generally your warlord gets a warlord trait, one hero gets a relic, and every psycher gets a spell.
Because you can only select three enhancements though, I am sure the exact definition of “enhancement” will be different and the system probably won’t include psychic powers as enhancements in 40K.
Honestly, good. As grumpy as I am about a lot of these changes, hard-codifying what a "named character" is is a good thing.
It'll also allow for a narratively-valid reason to limit specific kinds of non-named characters (i.e., chapter masters)
It'll be the same as the Red Angels detachment in World Eater's Codex. It'll specify that you can only field certain units, or it'll specify that you can't include specific units. Otherwise you can take any.
I believe the idea is there is no restriction on what datasheets you can select based on the detachment. For example you could have 3 people all take the mentioned Gladius Task Force detachment and these would all be valid lists:
* Person 1 brings an almost pure vehicle list with lots of tanks and dreadnoughts.
* Person 2 brings a more balanced list of infantry and vehicles.
* Person 3 brings only phobos armour units.
The only difference is Person 1 might not have any battleline units in their list so they will just have to follow the rule of 3 more than the other players who might have some battleline choices.
Even if they created say a "First Company" detachment that focuses on terminators and also makes terminators battleline, nothing would stop you from using that detachment even if you don't bring any terminators.
Even if we ignore non-compliant Chapters, there's presumably some rule - likely tied to the faction keyword, but not explicit in the article - that prevents you from fielding Shrike and Calgar in your Gladius detachment.
OK, so basically your WL traits, relics, and stratagems (possibly secondaries) will all be locked to detachment type. Feels like AoR/formations going forward.
Might make it pretty easy to balance actually.
I take a Dread host detachment for example, and I'm limited to a single allarus cap with admonortis and All seeing anihilator, plus 6 stratagems that involve deep strike, killing stuff, and basic custodes defense.
With less potential for wombs combos of relics and stratagems, you could potentially make some stuff stronger than it used to be since it won't be paired up with unforseen things.
It's honestly not a huge change, but it helps tighten the cracks.
No Allies
No Subfactions
Only 6 or so strats for your army in addition to the game wide core strats
Only one epic hero (named character?)
Characters only get one enhancement buff (relic, warlord trait, whatever)
This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity.
I wonder how many CP you will get per turn and how many common strats there really are. As someone increasingly playing Sigmar now, their command abilities really are a much better system than the strat bloat that 40k has
>Only one epic hero (named character?)
Not quite, it's one of each, which is the same as it is currently (although without the slot limit I guess you could field all, what, 8? Ultramarines named characters in one list, for example, if you really wanted)
> You can only include one of each named EPIC HERO
It might not be like that. They display Guilliman as an example of an Epic Hero. Maybe Epic Hero is just the substitute for the Lord of War role that will no longer exist. So it might function as it does in 9th with the Supreme Command Detachment that limits you to one Lord of War.
At least I hope… I just got all the new BT characters with the hopes of using them together.
I think it's any named character, since Supreme Commander is pretty functionally defunct since chapter keywords no longer exist. That being said, you'll still be able to use those BT characters in the same army, because this says 1 of *each* Epic Hero, which is basically saying you can't take 2 High Marshall helbrechts.
Allies aren't wholly dead. Daemons, Knights and Brood Brothers are all mentioned. I could see Harlequins sticking around as a separate force and as allies.
The no subfactions part I am not very psyched about. I'd much rather have a detachment tailored to chapters/legion/septs/etc than playing generic ones
No allies is probably just the usual cycle we have seen before. Allow allies, people buy some allies, ban allies , people might upgrade their handfull of knights/votann/daemons etc to a full army rinse and repeat
It looks like there will be faction rules that are independent of the detachment rules as well, like Oath of Moment from the new article, or Synapse from the Termagant datacard. So there will still be at least two layers of stuff to remember and interact for each army.
They talk about most detachments not linked to a colorscheme aka a subfaction. So I guess it comes down to what they mean by most. I would suspect that the chapters that traditionally get books on their own will get something but I'd say it's less likely for the ones that only had one supplement in 8th
The detachments are not going to be 'blood angles Detachment 1'. They are going to be 'space marine Detachment focused on getting into melee and jump pack units'.
Which is why they pointed out that the Detachment they showed off is most like how ultramarines play.
I would expect that at a later point, Blood Angels would then get something like a Death Company detatchemnt and maybe some others in their codex/supplement.
Very much this. I could even, honestly, see the current books that have their own codexes \*still\* get their own codexes that have those specialist detachments in them. So you'll still have a Blood Angels codex that includes BA themed detachments, all your special datasheets plus the SM datasheets that are available in those special detachments. If you want to use regular SM detachments, you still can (and will need that codex) but the BA codex will be fully playable on its own if you're using those detachments.
That is my prediction.
Could be! With all the one in, one out statements I'm guessing we're going to see them go a bit wild with some of them, and start to see a lot of niche detatchemnts in campaign books, since they don't need to worry so much about rules stacking. Each is a self-contained ruleset.
I just hope they spread it out and we don't get a space marine book followed by a dozen special space marine detatchemnts while the poor Orks and Guard are still using their index. Though, at least in theory we might see the codex creep mitigated by the lack of stacking rules.
I think back to way back in the day when a Captain on a Bike made Bikers troops.
It worked for anyone, but White Scars leveraged it to be thematic.
I see this new system going down that same path
Hopefully. Really enjoyed how word bearers were flavorful while competitive and had hoped they would continue that for other legions. Mind you not broken just being able to put up a fight while staying close to the lore I picked them for has been really fun
Can you explain how it would be different to play "word bearers" vs playing a theoretical "disciples of the gods" detachment which end up being a csm detachment choice that gets a FnP vs mortals and some demon-flavored enhancements?
Yeah, exactly this. They seem to be separating some fluff from the rules but leaving room for you to put your own fluff back in.
Your Word Bearers are your Word Bearers no matter what detachment you take. You take the detachment that fits your fluff/narrative and as the story you are telling changes you can change detachments.
The fluff is less baked in but this gives more room for your stories.
You'll probably be able to play more unique versions of each army when that army's codex comes out. Indexhammer is going to be very much simplified I think
I think it's more about deviation of terms to avoid the painting problem.
Like they said, Ultramarines may be the primary users of the Gladius Task Force and so default to that, but there's nothing to say that other chapters can't use it as well. SO I don't have to repaint my Raptors just b/c I want to play a game where I'm not phobos-heavy and such.
Really, this already exists w/ current subfactions. Plenty of folks are like "Ok, my Necrons are from the Nutekh Dynasty... they use Nihilikh rules".
You essentially will have that though. There will be several detachment options which will be your “subfaction.” The only thing that changes is the paint job.
Practically speaking this means you could use space wolves and Ultramarines with the exact same set of abilities. Or, as is more likely to happen, you could see two different space wolf armies playing with completely different rules based on whether they are playing with dreads or Thunderwolves.
Essentially every army in the game just opened up to a much broader variety of playstyles and the meta is going to be a lot more fluid I think.
This move is also a lot easier to balance from a design perspective. Points changes are still an option, but they can also tinker with individual detachment abilities rather than messing with a whole army.
> This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity.
good, it wasn't all good complexity and GW themselves lost the power curve plot over a year ago.
>This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity.
ill trade complexity for depth, as complex as 9th was it was also as deep as a teaspoon (that said we wont get depth, GW has made each edition since 4th progressively shallower)
This is good, actually. The game should have the same number of factions, but each faction should be way more streamlined.
No allies gets rid of the problem that some groups—elves, IOM—are superfactions while others—Orks, Necrons—are single codex factions without the ability to mix and match.
Not being able to load relic/WLT/strat on a single dude will make the game easier to balance, as there are fewer (and less complex) interactions to police.
> As someone increasingly playing Sigmar now, their command abilities really are a much better system than the strat bloat that 40k has
I hope they bring something like "All-out Attack" and "All-Out Defense" over from AoS as universal Stratagems. And then have faction Stratagems be more utility-based rather than something that makes your units more killy/tanky.
EDIT: Thinking about it, I would also be fine with 10th having *no* Stratagems that boosts the output of units. A unit's power should come from its datasheet - not from how many bonuses can be stacked on it.
>This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity.
I am one of those people.
I still wonder how many additional detachments we will get in a codex. Will it just be one or two (and with that a really slim codex…) or like 50 pages of them. Also will we be seeing them in white dwarf…
Probably 2-3 generic ones released with the Indexes, and then a bundle of subfaction-specific ones with the codexes. Obviously Marines will have one for each chapter, so easily a dozen or more for them as a whole
My question is whether they’ll go whole hog with the marines specifically, and give each non-codex chapter (DA, BA, SW, BT, etc.) multiple unique detachments just for them to pick from. But then we’ll once again be back at rules bloat city
Um, daemons summoned? Hopefully, that’s just a flavorful way of saying you can build a list with some percentage of daemons, and not literal summoning rules like in previous editions that sucked
Personally as a Night Lords player I'm really glad my army isn't going to be trash anymore because I decided to paint it blue instead of pink. Tying rules to subfactions was always stupid.
Don't you want your Night Lords to play like Night Lords tho?
Like the number one thing I'm worried about is that each codex is gonna have only 2-3 detatchments (like World Eaters) and the less popular subfactions just wont have rules that reflect their lore. The WE codex has like 3-4 pages talking about all the different warbands and how they fight, but no rules support to actually reflect that.
What if Codex: CSM comes out and there is no 'terror troops' style detatchment? You're basically gonna end up just playing Black Legion with a Nightlords paint scheme.
The problem is how do you define how 'Night Lords' should play? Raptor spam? What if I wanted to run an Atramentar-themed Terminator army? Or a Heavy Support Havoc/Tank company? You can't really do that with the 9th ruleset.
As long as there's enough detachments to cover every theme I think it'll be a way better system.
> The problem is how you define how 'Night Lords' should play? Raptor spam?
Subfaction flavor goes beyond unit choice. Night Lords should focus on morale debuffs better than other armies. Salamanders should have more powerful flame and melta weapons. White Scars should be faster. Alpha Legion should be more 'sneaky' or 'tricky'.
Loosing that flavor, which is just straight up lore based and is a lot of the reason people choose their favorite chapter/legion/whatever, is a huge loss in my book.
> As long as there's enough detachments to cover every theme I think it'll be a way better system
**If** everything is represented I agree, but I've seen nothing that makes me think that'll be the case. It would've been super easy for them to stick 'don't worry, every subfaction from your 9th codex will have a detachment' into one of these articles but they haven't said anything like that yet.
Personally I'm fine with losing flavour if it means I don't need to shelf my army for a whole edition or get pigeon-holed into having to run units that synergise with whatever rules GW decided my color scheme is stuck with. I don't really care if my army rules are called Raptorial Host instead of Terror Troops.
To be fair....when has the flavour ever mattered outside of very niche cases? What good does nightlords influencing morale do as their faction trait when if it's not completely broken, its then garbage?
Much better for them to put it as a named heros buff he gives the army and then it can be tweaked however needed that way.
Easy example: Sisters of Battle. Yeah sacred rose has a cute lore theme, but doesnt matter just play bloody rose.
Same thing with nightlords and CoB.
Get these subfaction rules out of here and make it universal except named hero shenanigans for the fluffy rules.
I think we may not even see detachments named for a 9th sub- faction. The article mentions the gladius task force, that any marine army can use. So there may not be a salamander or night lords or leviathan, mephrit, bloody rose..... detachment.
In the IG codex, when you pick regimental doctrines, the names are generic, but the flavor text explicitly says what sub-faction they are meant to represent. I suspect it will be the same in 10th.
The answer is GW is going to do the same thing that they did with Guard, releasing specific subfaction rules geared towards a named subfaction, but without forcing you to use it.
So for Night Lords there might be a "Terror Assault" subfaction. This subfaction grants a -2Ld aura, and has a bunch of strats around forcing battleshock and granting bonuses to hit/wound when attacking battleshocked units. But if you want to play a more terminator oriented list like the Atramentar you could run "Lord's Chosen" where terminators get a bunch of buffs. While in that scenario losing the leadership mechanics thanks to choosing a terminator list hurts, it is way better for balance and ease of play.
People were already running their Night Lords as Black Legion or their Imperial Fists as Ultramarines, this isn't going to change as much as people think.
100%, though I will correct your terminology slightly. There will probably be one or more detachments where you can pick from that give you \*abilities\* (not subfaction, in the new parlance). Those traits may be associated with a given group from your faction (e.g. a chapter might be famous for certain traits) but they don't have a monopoly on them.
The way I see the article, based on the Gladius Task Force description, it'll be something like this:
Chaos Space Marines as a Faction get **Death To the False Emperor** as a Faction-level ability.
The Raiding Warband Detachment gets you six unique Stratagems and four exlusive Enhancements, and in addition bags you the **Terror Troops** ability which lets you pick from one of three effects to apply in the Morale phase.
Of course, there could also still be some that give you more flexiblity still like "you can one from the **X**, **Y**, or **Z** abilities for this Detachment", but we'll see.
As a Salamanders player, not super excited to play Green Ultramarines but we'll see how the detachments look. May shelf them this edition and play Grey Knights instead.
"\[...\]. ***Instead of choosing a subfaction*** \[...\]***, you now choose a single set of Detachment rules for your whole army. These include special abilities, Enhancements, Stratagems, and unit restrictions.***"
This article is giving some strongs "[Cogs of Vashtorr](https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GxkHULB4dteaJ6sb.pdf)" vibes if you ask me:
All your *Detachment* rules holding on a two-pages spread? Check.
No sub-Faction? Check.
*Restrictions*(*&Benefits*) ? Check.
*Special Ability* ? Check.
4 *Enhancements* ? Check (well, it was 3 Relics, but it's pretty much the same).
6 *Stratagems* ? Check.
So they are moving all factions into a Guard style subfaction system, where you don't select a specific regiment like Cadian or Catachan but rather a set of rules which you think fit your specific regiment the best.
Honestly, it is fine. Most people didn't really use a specific subfaction's stuff unless it was OP, and a lot of people were running their homebrew chapters as whatever chapter had the best rules anyways. And by unlocking rules from the paint scheme GW is cutting off the most annoying kind of opponent at the pass from the "oh you can't play with Leviathan rules, that is a Behemoth color scheme!"
I would still expect factions like Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves to be getting their own army rules, probably replacing the Space Marine general rules and then having unique lists for their specific play styles (so Deathwing, Ravenwing, and Greenwing for DA, while Blood Angels might get a Day of Revelation style army, a traditional marine style army, and a Death Company style army).
What I find interesting is how they are switching to a setup a lot like Boarding Actions. No relics+WLTs, just enhancements. While this does reduce complexity/individuality a bit, it is a huge bonus for balancing. GW doesn't need to worry about how the various relic and WLT combos can make a character OP, and can instead focus on balancing them against each other (which is a lot easier than doing the math on a hundred combinations).
Epic Heroes seems superfluous for named characters, so it is probably also being used for Autarchs, Chapter Masters, Chaos Lords, etc. They show off a Primaris Captain as the "at least one character" example, so we might see the "1 captain per detachment" rules go away while an upgrade to Chapter Master or Lord of the Warband (example for chaos) would change their type to Epic Hero.
This isn't going to be like Guard's approach at all. Guard's approach was to have no default rules and instead give you a list of rules that you can pick 2 from to make your army rules, but otherwise all other rules are the same.
This is World Eater's approach instead. There you have one overarching army rule and then you have 2 specific ways of playing that only share the army rule and the unit datasheets. Other than that the strats for each detachment are bespoke rather than shared across the army. There's restrictions on units based on which detachment you choose. And they have different warlord traits.
This isn't anywhere near as freeform as Guard is.
> Epic Heroes seems superfluous for named characters
I'm very confused why they chose to highlight this rule. "You can only have 1 Guilliman in your army" Oh, really?
I'm about 90% sure that Epic Hero is just formalizing the "you can only have one of each named character" rule and putting it into the core rules. So instead of needing to say "you can only have 1 Logan Grimnar", they can just slap Epic Hero on his datasheet.
Anyone know how this effects named characters? For example:
If I take Bjorn, and theres no Space Wolf special rule, can I basically take him in a Gladius detachment with an "Ultramarine" army and Guilliman?
>I could see some detachments "unlocking" named characters
"If your army contains units from more than four different factions, you must use Trazyn The Infinite as your Warlord."
You might be able to do that when 10th releases, but we can expect the spate of codexes released later will add some of the usual sub-faction restrictions again.
For example, the Gladius detachment may state that you can’t include units with the keyword unless all units have the same keyword (so Bjorn can rumble with other wolves, but not with the smurfs). And then Space Wolves specific detachment will be limited to units only.
On the contrary, I think that the primarchs (unlike other SM named characters) will be generic (the same way Leontus can join any regiment, and Morven Vahl any covent).
Gotta sell a lot of them after all.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd rather they go the way of making all named characters into unique but non-named characters, of which the named dude is a good example. I know that's hard to do w/ primarchs, but I just hate the situation where like The Silent King shows up to every freaking skirmish across untold millions of planets.
At this point I think Space wolves as well as DA, BA and DW will all be spun away from the space marine codex again and have their own wholly separate codexs.
Can't see Thousand sons, World eaters or Death guard being rejoined with CSM and Space Wolves have as many unique units as Thousand Sons.
I bet it will be like AOS. You can take Lion in your "Gladius Strike Force (implied to be Ultramarines themed)" but he probably has special rules if you take him as part of the Dark Angels-like detachment.
Sort of like I can take Bastian Carthalos in any AoS Stormhost, but he gets special rules if he's with the Hammers of Sigmar.
It will probably depend on what faction keywords are available.
It might be that Space Wolf, and Space Marine, Ultramarine, will be different faction keywords. So there will still be chapter locking for chapter specific units.
But nobody will know at the moment.
Named Characters might have keywords associated with their factions and detachments might say that you can not include units with more than one of that type of keyword in it. But that's just speculation.
Named characters might be locked to each other. So you cannot have Epic Hero keyword characters that don't share the same keyword that is only on their datasheet. Or they do like the Guard codex and let you do that anyways (which is going to be silly, it works for Guard since they fight mixed anyways, but if we see Tigurius and Dante running around as a party things are going to get stupid real fast).
> .. your Detachment gives you access to **six unique Stratagems** – on top of the core group in the main rules – as well as **four exclusive Enhancements** for your Space Marine characters. [your Detachment] also bags you the Combat Doctrines ability, which allows you to pick from three powerful doctrines during your Command phase.
I don't know how I feel about this. I thought the whole point was to *reduce* bloat? There's no way we don't end up with at least 5 Space Marine Detachments. Wouldn't be surprised if they end up with 6-8.
Conservatively, that gives us 30+ Stratagems and 20+ 'Enhancements'. I'm worried we'll just be back to having mostly irrelevant Stratagems and relics/WLTs and then a handful of good ones. But this time, they will be spread out between Detachments. So everyone will play the Detachment that happened to get 3 of the good Stratagems and 2 of the good Enhancements.
Alternatively, GW will attempt to make *all* of the 30+ Stratagems and 20+ Enhancements relevant. Which basically guarantees that they are going to miss high and some of the Detachments are going to be completely broken .
It also sounds like they've mostly focused on reducing complexity for the person controlling an army. "**You** don't have flip through several pages of rules. All **your** rules are now on 2 pages" But I've always found the bigger problem being how much mental load the complexity puts on the opponent. Currently, you probably only need to be aware of at most 5-10 Stratagems for each faction. It sounds like this number will increase by a lot in 10th. Because Not-White Scars will have access to a completely different set than not-Deathwing.
I think I would have preferred maybe a 50/50 split between faction and ~~sub-faction~~ Detachment Stratagems. And maybe 5 faction Enhancements plus 1-2 ~~sub-faction~~ Detachment Enhancements.
BUT it's still very early, and we've seen very few actual details. Maybe it'll be fine?
I'm also very curious to know how Detachments are going to work for the other factions in the game. It seems like a lot of power and flavour is moving from faction to Detachment/sub-faction. That seems simply enough for Space Marines, or Eldar e.g.. How is this going to look like for factions with less fleshed-out sub-factions - and smaller model ranges?
What kind of Detachments will Thousand Sons, Harlequins, Votann, and Custodes get?
Here's the thing though - rather than looking at "faction win rates", GW may just look at "Detachment win rates". Hey, First Company has an 80% win rate and Gladius has a 30% win rate. Let's introduce some buffs/nerfs.
Because each detachment is drawing from a *unique* set of of enhancements, strats, rules, etc, we may have to deal with less of the "Accidental buff/accidental nerf" problem that we get all the time right now.
They could have done that in 9th too. They didn't. They never even tried to address internal subfaction balance. Had nothing to do with accidental buffs or nerfs.
Did they not address internal subfaction balance when they targeted things like Leviathan, Light/Dark Saedeth, Creations of Bile, and Farsight Enclaves? The balance dataslate has a bunch of subfaction changes.
No, they addressed *external* balance by occasionally targeting subfaction rules where they saw those rules as the problem. But it wasn't done to bring subfactions in line with each other. That is why they didn't buff bad subfactions so as to make them chosen more often. None of their Metawatch data or interviews ever mentioned trying to bring subfactions in line with each other.
> 6-8 marine detachments
Hahaha mate, this is GW here. There might be 1-3 generic detachments included in the indices, and then you better believe each chapter is going to get their own unique detachment with their codex release. Otherwise there’d be no hype for codex releases at all.
If “Gladius” is just the UM one, then that leaves eight other First Founding chapters, and then for sure BT and maybe Crimson Fists (?) as the only other substantial 2nd founding chapters. So at least 10, maybe more than a dozen.
Well, the opponent only needs to know the roughly 6 core common strats + your 6 detachment specific strats, so about 12 total rather than the 35 that dark angels have access to right now. That’s what GW keeps saying. Everything is on the 2 page document for the detachment, and since EVERYONE has the same common core rules strats (deep strike, feel no pain, etc) then I only need to learn your six detachment strats that are new to me. Not the 20 specific dark angel strats like in 9th.
Two things:
1. They say "unique " and "exclusive", but that could very easily be marketing speak for "this combination is unique / exclusive". So Detachment A gets strats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6, Detachment B gets strats 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, etc.
2. It sounds like the goal is that you can turn up at the table with a single (double sided) sheet of paper with all your strats and abilities on it, and give that to your opponent to review. That way they don't need to remember what every strat in the game is - it's on the page in front of them.
Combining those two together, you might get to the table and find yourself matched up against a detachment you've never played before - *but* you recognize 2 of the 6 strats from other detachments you've played, and get a chance to review the other 4 (and therefore can know what questions to ask / what circumstances it might be relevant).
So there is significantly less chance of any "gotcha" moments - you'll know if the opponent can fall back and charge, or teleport across the table, or fight on death or whatever, because you can read it on the page.
This reminds me of the Drukhari system and god do i hate it.
Nothing annoys me more than having to also take X if i want to take Y
And i hope the detachment buffs are small, i don't want more units to end up like 8th edition CSM codex Noise Marines where they are absolute trash unless you run Emperor's Children which gave them massive buffs and made them one of the best units in the codex.
> Note that it’s quite rare to pick allies in most game modes – it’s assumed that your force will be drawn from a single faction. \* \* > \* \* Though exemptions are in place for classic cross-faction combos like summoned Chaos Daemons, Freeblade Knights, or Brood Brothers. I'm happy to read that they aren't pulling the rug out from under players after introducing allied detachments in AoO.
CSM variants will probably get a marines + daemons set for each god + word bearers (generic for CSM). I’m honestly more excited for them to hopefully get mono-god daemons right this time after we lost a ton of flexibility going from Neph to Arks.
At the very least, the deamons will probably have interesting datasheets. It's hard to imagine them getting more boring than they are now.
> I’m honestly more excited for them to hopefully get mono-god daemons right this time after we lost a ton of flexibility going from Neph to Arks. Considering they are cutting down on complexity, stratagems, army abilities and the like - which, as you give up on roster flexibility, is the only way to make monogod stronger than mixed - I wouldn't expect monogod to come out the stronger one in this transition. Which in my opinion is the better side to err on, as GW has never quite managed to balance monogod vs mixed, and if one is to be better I'd rather it be the second so you can if nothing else at least use more than a quarter of your codex. But we'll see.
Am I missing something or why is everyone talking about less roster flexibility? Everything about the way they’re talking about this seems to indicate more, not less, options in terms of what can be included in a given list.
Sure , so the point is why mechanically be mono god
Exactly. But going monogod, _that_ is what gives up roster flexibility. It always has. And GW has never managed to balance that. If we get more flexibility in general, then that favours undivided who can pick from the whole menu. Nor do I expect they ever will. Themed armies are cool, but it's like trying to balance an all-Phobos Marine army versus one using the whole codex. They tried that too, more than once, and never got close.
They could have a Khorne Daemon only detachment that gives huge boosts to melee and murdering once there, a Nurgle Daemon only detachment with cool rules for durability and contagion, and so on. I wouldn't bet money on this happening, but if they were going to make mono-god daemons as viable as mixed daemons then detachments would be the likely place to do it.
They tried that before with loci in 8th and it was an unbalanced mess. I don't have high hopes this time either, and the _last_ thing I want is a 'You like daemons? Hope you like mono Nurgle or you won't be winning anything' sort of situation.
I am very much hoping that they add some new blood tithe points for the world eaters that incorporates at least a few demon units.
I honestly don't get why we can't have things like CSM + DG/TS/WE. The rules already punish you enough for doing so (No Wantons nor Legion Traits) and it's a fluffy choice
Except for GSC and tyranids. I started a GSC army specifically to have allies for my Nids. They have taken that away with AoO, and it seems it will stay gone.
Technically, they already pulled the rug from under you then? But no, that's unfortunate, of course. Happy the same doesn't happen for more people :) Curious what happens with Eldar soup, too.
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Don't they leave the GSC until the planet is overrun - letting them cult members help overrun the planetary defenders (i.e. fighting alongside them), only to betray them after the battle is won?
Only in a few specific cases. Most of the time they show up, re assimilate the primarch/purestrains into the brood and then just treat the cultist like any other being on the planet.
I love it how there is no mention of Ynnari. "Are we forgetting a faction? Nah, can't be anything important"
Ynarri may just be a detachment that allows you to bring all 3 kinds of elves in it. So, not technically "allies" the way that they're using it, which they seem to be using to talk about units that don't fit in your chosen detachment (CSM detachment, daemons allied).
I am mildly optimistic but I'm having flashbacks of early 3rd and 4th editions where your subfraction was meaningless beyond colors, and (I am a CSM player so I'll use that as an example) your Night Lords played identical to Alpha Legion who played identically to Iron Warriors. It literally was a color scheme and nothing else.
I’m torn on this. It definitely loses a lot of flavour, particularly at tournaments where everyone’s going to be playing whatever’s best, but at least it’ll let people paint their space marines how they want to play them without worrying about the rules consequences of that
Everyone already does play whatever is best, how would this make it any different?
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Yea... I agree. I'm for simplification in some aspects, but Silver Templars, Emperor's Spears, and Castellans of the Rift were unique and felt unique. Sure, you can play "that Chapter" with a different paint scheme, but that does strip away some of the uniqueness of a particular Chapter. All of those Index Astartes rules and building around their identity might go out the window - which is a net negative at this point I feel like. It'll be a shame if paint schemes no longer matter, and you simply build a list according to whatever you wish. This sounds good on paper, but there's a lot to be said about how "sameness" ends up becoming stale quickly. 3rd Edition had a Space Marines Codex in addition to the Core Rulebook, and then differentiated things further from there. Just look at the special rules for Dark Angels. I was excited for the changes, but now I'm a little nervous at the prospect of losing unique Chapters for "ease of play" If my little toys are painted like Dark Angels, they should function differently than Imperial Fists or White Scars - because they ARE different. Custom paint schemes are great for running alternative rules, sure, but sticking to a Chapter because you like that Chapter's identity should still be a thing. But whatever, I guess. I've been playing since the mid-90s, so obviously not gonna stop, lol
> It'll be a shame if paint schemes no longer matter, and you simply build a list according to whatever you wish. Paint schemes no longer mattering sounds amazing tbh.
"Simplified, not simple" uops :D
I mean, 3rd edition wasn't "simple". It was fun. Now if it'd work today who knows...
Well I thought 3rd was pretty simple/vanilla from the one game I've played. Fun as it was.
It sounds like they are changing sub-factions to be mechanical rather than thematic, so you'd have the tricky detachment (NL, AL), the Shooty detachment (Iron Warrios) the Elite detachment. So yes many sub-factions will likely become essentially cosmetic. The advantage is it allows for greater tactical depth in the variety and types of armies. Currently many sub-factions are practically slight variations of each other. The downside is that highly similar sub-factions will likely loose separate rules, barring perhaps named characters. On the flip side they may increase the total number of Factions, much as the big CSM chapters each getting their own factions, as a way to preserve more unique variety.
To add to this there's a lot of sub factions that were never made with the idea of having one theme. Take blood axes for instance. They are supposed to be orks who act like an organised military. They have large armoured assaults, mechanised troops, use infiltrators, implement air assaults etc etc. But their rules essentially tied them into being sneaky. Detachments seem to be a good way of getting a more balanced rule set for themed lists without being forced into specific sub factions. I should be able to have a an armoured goff devision, a blood axe mechanised infantry regiment, a death skulls dread Mob without completely ignoring my sub faction trait
Yes. There will no longer a double standard for space marine players with subfactions. Nobody cares when a necron player paints their models like the box art and chooses whatever subfaction they want. But the second someone chooses to play iron hands and has a blue army they are meta chasers and not WYSIWYG compliant. Im a huge fan of space marine subfactions being on the same level as everyone elses subfactions.
I mean, competetively that's true today as well. For the majority of factions, they only ever run 1 specific subfaction, as it's mechanically the strongest, regardless of color scheme.
> 3rd and 4th editions where your subfraction was meaningless beyond colors, I liked that. Made the game that much more manageable. There was like a sentence at most of subfaction rules, mostly an exception tot he force org chart rules like "you can take X as troops" or something I like it because it is exponentially easier to balance fewer armies and smaller rule sets. The current meta still feels like it has too many "blowout" match ups even when the WR is 50/50
There were differences between subfactions in 3rd and 4th. Mind you, the differences weren’t massive. But there were definitely differences.
There were definitely differences. I'm looking at my Dark Angels Codex from 3rd now and going... there were differences. Beyond the named characters as well. Strange comment to make, in my opinion.
Yeah but then we got 3.5 and it was just the right amount of flavour without being overwhelming.
With a few exceptions, but yeah. to this day the 3.5 codex is the best they've ever done IMHO. Really shows what happens when the writer actually plays the army and is passionate about the faction.
And now currently all those other legions suck, so it's a moot point. I'd rather be able to play my army with decent rules and not have some mouth breather protest because it's not the correct colour.
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/03/30/how-army-building-works-in-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/
Look. No more Power Level. They actually did it. This could have been a page with one sentence saying they got rid of Power Level and I would be happy. No idea why but this was my single biggest pet peeve and fully dropping has built up some real trust from me.
No more power level. Now all upgrades are free and all units have points values that end in 5 or 0.
Power level was terrible. Glad to see it gone.
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Curious how this is gonna work for drukhari with our 3 technical sub factions and how the ally thing is gonna work with Ynnari
I expext that the detachment bonuses for DE might be three-part to account for each subfaction.
Speculating: Your 3 dark elf subfactions will all likely have 3 different detachments with their own unique strats. Basically each subfaction will be its own army of renown. Like World Eaters vs Disciples of Red Angel subfaction. Each Space Marine Chapter subfaction will be its own ‘army of renown-style’ Detachment. Am I correct?
I think they will also get an over arching detachment that requires certain units from each group
I suspect that Dark Eldar will have four detachments, and that each gives some bonus to different units, but that you can essentially take any unit in any detachment. So you can have Wracks in your Wych detachment, but they will get more of a bonus if you had chosen the Coven detachment.
I suspect that, as well. Same for marines. I’m all in favor of simplifying list building and gotcha wombo-combos that just make the dice roll better, and all in favor of forcing players to make strategic decisions in-game with their command points and movement, not before the game list building. I can understand that many others like tinkering with lists though.
Most of the individual sub-armies don't really have enough different units to fill out an army. There's like 5 different coven units if you discount transports. Chances are they'll destroy much of the DE flavor and just smush all the DE subfactions into a single detachment army thing.
no subfactions but "detachment rules", sounds an awful lot like army of renown. not that its a bad thing since they will all have in theory unique play styles. but thats where you'll get more rules. i'm guessing their 2 page per faction really means 2 pages per detachment. warlord traits = Enhancements troops = Battleline keyword
Enhancements exist in AOS, they’re traits, relics, and some other things unique to that game. I’m sure 40K will have their own versions as well
Boarding Actions has enhancements too and they're a mashup of current relics and warlord traits, so it's almost certainly exactly this. Guessing it's deliberate to stop wombo-combos, and I can see why. Makes a lot of sense, but it might upset people who really liked running janky off-meta stuff.
Having had half my army annihilated in 2 turns by a super charged Hive Tyrant yesterday, I am not at all sad about this.
Tbh that's more whoever wrote that book just having a bit too much fun with big numbers. Like even if it's a million points t8/4++/5+++ with the ability to regen a bunch of wounds and a gun that makes knights blush just is rough.
Yeah, it was pretty nutty. Definitely made my Technomancer develop an inferiority complex.
The last two issues of White Dwarf have had Army of Renown rules for Bronzewrought and Strike Force Rhalion (Iron Warriors and Blood Angels specific options with mustering limitations). Each has a few Enhancements and 6 strategems. I'd be very surprised if this wasn't mostly what we'll get in 10E.
Really? I didn't hear anything about those, are they not matched play-compliant?
They are for Boarding Patrols only. I was really surprised to find the first one in last month's issue but as an IW player I was over the moon. They look to be related to the ongoing narrative in WD that is kind of an Arks of Omen side story. That said, I think them along with Cult of the Arkifane & Cogs of Vashtorr rules are a good approximation of what we're likely to see (for whatever my opinion is worth).
I think so too - and the one in, one out system makes it really easy for them to add more stuff like this to white dwarf too. Might end up as a problem if they do, but that's never stopped them before!
> but it might upset people who really liked running janky off-meta stuff. Yup. I'm one of those people. I'm grumpy about it.
Im still salty that i cant meme with veteran catachans equipped with chainswords, las pistols and loaded into chimeras anymore.
Will take a huge amount of overhead off of GW as well and potentially slow down the amount of FAQs erratas, and updates to the rules. A lot less they have to playtest and potentially be broken by the community within a week. Which will further simplify the game and remove a lot of the baggage and clutter you have now. Not having to go to Wahapedia and Battlescribe to figure out what the hell your army can actually do.
i get this, but they have said several times "simplified, not simple". And this change is very clearly "simplified to be simple". Theres really no argument against this just being trimming all the interactions down to a simple boring choice.
While on the outset I kind of agree. Making things too homogeneous take a lot of flavor out of 40k. That said there are a lot of details we do not know. There maybe certain character/unit interactions and abilities that may wildly change how certain factions play. For instance sure all space marines might have access to the "jump-pack" detachment, but not all space marines will have access to death company or Sanguinary Guard. And those units could fundamentally change the effectiveness of that detachment. Seems like there will be a 'dreadnought' detachment (iron hands), I would imagine there is a 'terminators' detachment (Dark Angels) with specific inner circle buffs for deathwing coded units, etc. While much simpler than the current implementation it does add a lot of ease of use to the game and can potentially balance it. The two biggest issues with the game. Just look at something like Kill Team. On the outset it is very rigid in a lot of the army selection, and how 'customizable' the units are. But that doesn't mean there is a lack of depth to the game.
TBH it's probably because I play admech where you have to wombocombo for viability but I'm gonna miss that
No more Storied Sword + Prince of Light + A Foot in the Future + Player of the Light Troupe Master-srtle setups, I take it.
Enhancements will be as it is in Boarding Actions I presume - a catch all term for relics/Warlord trait like abilities.
Sounds more like Horus heresy type rites of war
This is the vibe I’m getting overall. A big question we don’t have answered is what will happen to subfactions? Will my white scars mean nothing anymore? Will I get access to a special rite of war? Hard to say currently
> Will my white scars mean nothing anymore? In the grand scheme of 40k subfactions with expansive/detailed rules (outside of the codex deviant marine chapters) are a bit of a blip. Ppl played all sorts of chapters for years where often times the only special thing they got was a named character who may or may not have impacted army construction.
This probably my favorite change with 10th right now to be honest. I enjoy the idea of each subfaction having rules, but it was way too much bloat. It also had the effect where units were just so unbalanced between subfactions. A unit could be OK or even sub-par in any other subfaction, but just roll face in when a specific one. Staring at you Bloody Rose.
It was the same with strats. Dominions with storm bolters were very powerful but only if you used the blessed bolts strat.
The article implies that there will be detachments similar to the various subfactions of old, but anyone can use them, regardless of army paint scheme. I get this implication from the example they used, the "Gladius" one, implying it's originally ultramarines, but anyone can use it. It's not impossible, but I don't see it being likely, maybe space marine codex might alter that. They seem to want a more flexible build your army systems. So rather than rules existing because of your chapter, you build your chapter with the rules that exist. So as an example, if we want to play white scars, knowing their lore, there might be a detachment geared towards bikers and fastness. But let's say, for narrative reasons, white scars had to defend a position, so now they are rocking a defense style detachment with say, their 5th company. Just guesswork on my behalf though.
Yep. People often forget, in part because of subfaction bonuses, that most factions can and do field well rounded forces and just have a predisposition towards a style of fighting. Blood Angel's still have a devastator company, and arguably their most iconic unit of all time is the big standard space hulk terminator. Being able to represent all aspects of a chapter without gaining 0 benefit from faction rules will be pretty freeing IMO.
Yeah, the current rules tend towards flanderization where RG are all in on stealth, White Scars are actually a infantry ping pong faction, IH are oops all tanks, BA don't have anything without a jump pack etc. The actual lore is much more relaxed and you could realistically see Dante leading an armored company of tanks or something similar.
Especially considering the marine factions that have unique units. Deathwatch and Grey Knights will almost certainly be separate from standard marines, but what about Space Wolves or Blood Angels?
They’ll probably be segregated by Keyword. So Sanguinary Guard will only be accessible to BLOOD ANGELS SPACE MARINES, which are just normal space marines but have access to BLOOD ANGELS SPACE MARINES keyworded units. That’s the simplest way I can see them doing it
Blood angels and space wolves both have unique units too, like wulfen and sanguinary guard tho right? I would expect some sort of blood angels detachment to make use of those personally.
That’s what I mean, sorry. We can assume that deathwatch and grey knights will be different factions, but both SW and BA are under the space marine umbrella, and we don’t know what that means for detachments/unit access
If white scars become their own faction, they will differ. If not, there will be no difference. My assumption is there will be no separate chapter factions at launch but they will add them over time. We'll just have to wait & see.
I thought it was already clear that "2 Pages of Rules" was 2 Pages of rules for YOUR ARMY not the faction/sub-faction as a whole. basically ion any given game you'll be able to reference everything you need on two sheets of paper (One for you and one for your opponent, both double sided.)
There are a lot of things that have been very, very clearly stated regarding 10th, and people are still getting it wrong all up and down the internet. They have reiterated so many times that the army you are playing will only ever have 2 pages of rules. This article is clear that your faction provides you an ability, your detachment provides you the bulk of your rules, there are core strats, etc. for everyone, and that's that. Pick a different a detachment, and you get different strats, enhancements, and detachment abilities to work with.
Just remember that when Age of Sigmar premiered it was also “there’s only going to be two pages of rules and that’s it now and forever”, forever being six months or so that time. I’m… not conviced this design principle will withstand the test of time
Didn't Age of Sigmar not even have points when it debuted? Not exactly an apt comparison. Unless you mean 3rd edition, which I don't remember them making that claim ever.
Indeed, there weren’t points even. And no, I don’t think 10th compares (PR and rules wise) to arguably the worst launch GW ever had. _Still_, the simpler not simple mantra, the two page limit, and the erasing of subfactions are things that I wouldn’t bet will be kept once 10th gets rolling.
Yeah that's always the problem for me. The core rules of the game are fine, launch of the edition is fine, and then codexes kind of ruin everything.
>Honestly, I absolutely hate this idea. Kills the uniqueness of the individual chapters.
The current army construction (faction+subfaction+detachment(+sometimes army of renown)) is a mess (especially considering the restrictions that apply (or don't) to the different layers). Replacing everything with "just" army of renown seems like a good trade to me. Enhancements might regroup various upgrades, between traits, relics, chapter command, cryptek arkanas, etc. Lumping all of those together also seems like a good idea to me.
> Enhancements might regroup various upgrades, between traits, relics, chapter command, cryptek arkanas, etc. Lumping all of those together also seems like a good idea to me. that sounds boring for people who liked to play herohammer type lists. Having to skip a WLT/relic if you want to give chapter master rerolls is kind of lame.
Yes, but it will prevent stupid combos. Personally I prefer to be given a choice of 4 meaningful options, rather than a dozen ones, 3 of which are useful, and will end up being picked everytime. But I'll wait to see what the 4 upgrades will be.
Enhancements could also be similar to relics.
I could see enhancements covering relics, warlord traits, etc. basically every gets 3 CP pre-game to spend on their army.
But thats lame af since the article states you can only give a character a single enhancement. So no lore WLT + relic on the same character? A shame, since making creative character combos was half the fun
I was fun on some armies, and absolutely terrible on others (look at Necrons, they basically get a single WL trait and 2 relics, and no combo outside of Novokh). But more importantly, it made balance harder. How are you supposed to balance a SM captain datasheet if there's a combo of upgrades that make it a mini-dreadnought with wings?
This. While finding broken interactions is fun, it's not good gameplay. Lol if I take these combined upgrades my death jester goes from an okay sniper to PICK UP YOUR MODEL JERK. Funny to find the combo, but incredibly difficult to balance fun upgrades if they can be combined with N other upgrades.
And half of where the brokenness came from, stacking abilities. Limiting potential combos as default seems like a reasonable step to take.
Yeah, given that they haven’t shown themselves able to do the balancing necessary—which is not a trivial task in a sprawling game like 40k—moving away from being able to assemble combo pieces on a single guy seems good.
I’m AOS characters can have a trait and a relic. They may mean only 1 of each enhancement per character. We will see.
In AoS Enhancements are anything you select from. Warlord traits Relics Psychic powers Etc. There are a few army specific enhancements that some factions have access to but that about covers it. You get to select one of each type of enhancement you have access to, and if you build your army on specific ways you can gain access to an additional one or two. But generally your warlord gets a warlord trait, one hero gets a relic, and every psycher gets a spell. Because you can only select three enhancements though, I am sure the exact definition of “enhancement” will be different and the system probably won’t include psychic powers as enhancements in 40K.
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i'd guess "epic hero" is just Named Character.
Yeah, it mentions in one of the stipulations for pick your units: >You can only include one of each named EPIC HERO
It probably also applies to one use not exactly named characters like Chapter Master, Avatar of Kaine, Solitaire.
Honestly, good. As grumpy as I am about a lot of these changes, hard-codifying what a "named character" is is a good thing. It'll also allow for a narratively-valid reason to limit specific kinds of non-named characters (i.e., chapter masters)
It could be the "supreme commander" replacement, so you cant take two Primarches, but you can still take Calgar and Tigurius together.
Of note, not explained in this article: how you determine which datasheets you're allowed to select from.
It'll be the same as the Red Angels detachment in World Eater's Codex. It'll specify that you can only field certain units, or it'll specify that you can't include specific units. Otherwise you can take any.
I believe the idea is there is no restriction on what datasheets you can select based on the detachment. For example you could have 3 people all take the mentioned Gladius Task Force detachment and these would all be valid lists: * Person 1 brings an almost pure vehicle list with lots of tanks and dreadnoughts. * Person 2 brings a more balanced list of infantry and vehicles. * Person 3 brings only phobos armour units. The only difference is Person 1 might not have any battleline units in their list so they will just have to follow the rule of 3 more than the other players who might have some battleline choices. Even if they created say a "First Company" detachment that focuses on terminators and also makes terminators battleline, nothing would stop you from using that detachment even if you don't bring any terminators.
Even if we ignore non-compliant Chapters, there's presumably some rule - likely tied to the faction keyword, but not explicit in the article - that prevents you from fielding Shrike and Calgar in your Gladius detachment.
OK, so basically your WL traits, relics, and stratagems (possibly secondaries) will all be locked to detachment type. Feels like AoR/formations going forward. Might make it pretty easy to balance actually. I take a Dread host detachment for example, and I'm limited to a single allarus cap with admonortis and All seeing anihilator, plus 6 stratagems that involve deep strike, killing stuff, and basic custodes defense. With less potential for wombs combos of relics and stratagems, you could potentially make some stuff stronger than it used to be since it won't be paired up with unforseen things. It's honestly not a huge change, but it helps tighten the cracks.
No Allies No Subfactions Only 6 or so strats for your army in addition to the game wide core strats Only one epic hero (named character?) Characters only get one enhancement buff (relic, warlord trait, whatever) This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity. I wonder how many CP you will get per turn and how many common strats there really are. As someone increasingly playing Sigmar now, their command abilities really are a much better system than the strat bloat that 40k has
>Only one epic hero (named character?) Not quite, it's one of each, which is the same as it is currently (although without the slot limit I guess you could field all, what, 8? Ultramarines named characters in one list, for example, if you really wanted) > You can only include one of each named EPIC HERO
What an embarrassing battle to lose that would be. All your names characters dead. Entire command structure gutted.
It might not be like that. They display Guilliman as an example of an Epic Hero. Maybe Epic Hero is just the substitute for the Lord of War role that will no longer exist. So it might function as it does in 9th with the Supreme Command Detachment that limits you to one Lord of War. At least I hope… I just got all the new BT characters with the hopes of using them together.
I think it's any named character, since Supreme Commander is pretty functionally defunct since chapter keywords no longer exist. That being said, you'll still be able to use those BT characters in the same army, because this says 1 of *each* Epic Hero, which is basically saying you can't take 2 High Marshall helbrechts.
The epic hero bit is just making the "one of each named character" a base rule rather than a datasheet thing
its a lot more fun to say "epic hero" than "single".
Also it makes sense as like a slam dunk of a keyword rule like FLY
Allies aren't wholly dead. Daemons, Knights and Brood Brothers are all mentioned. I could see Harlequins sticking around as a separate force and as allies.
The no subfactions part I am not very psyched about. I'd much rather have a detachment tailored to chapters/legion/septs/etc than playing generic ones No allies is probably just the usual cycle we have seen before. Allow allies, people buy some allies, ban allies , people might upgrade their handfull of knights/votann/daemons etc to a full army rinse and repeat
The 'subfaction' rules are just going to be attached to Detachment rules. Only one layer of rules. Versus the 2-3 layers we have now.
It looks like there will be faction rules that are independent of the detachment rules as well, like Oath of Moment from the new article, or Synapse from the Termagant datacard. So there will still be at least two layers of stuff to remember and interact for each army.
They talk about most detachments not linked to a colorscheme aka a subfaction. So I guess it comes down to what they mean by most. I would suspect that the chapters that traditionally get books on their own will get something but I'd say it's less likely for the ones that only had one supplement in 8th
The detachments are not going to be 'blood angles Detachment 1'. They are going to be 'space marine Detachment focused on getting into melee and jump pack units'. Which is why they pointed out that the Detachment they showed off is most like how ultramarines play.
I would expect that at a later point, Blood Angels would then get something like a Death Company detatchemnt and maybe some others in their codex/supplement.
Very much this. I could even, honestly, see the current books that have their own codexes \*still\* get their own codexes that have those specialist detachments in them. So you'll still have a Blood Angels codex that includes BA themed detachments, all your special datasheets plus the SM datasheets that are available in those special detachments. If you want to use regular SM detachments, you still can (and will need that codex) but the BA codex will be fully playable on its own if you're using those detachments. That is my prediction.
Could be! With all the one in, one out statements I'm guessing we're going to see them go a bit wild with some of them, and start to see a lot of niche detatchemnts in campaign books, since they don't need to worry so much about rules stacking. Each is a self-contained ruleset. I just hope they spread it out and we don't get a space marine book followed by a dozen special space marine detatchemnts while the poor Orks and Guard are still using their index. Though, at least in theory we might see the codex creep mitigated by the lack of stacking rules.
I think back to way back in the day when a Captain on a Bike made Bikers troops. It worked for anyone, but White Scars leveraged it to be thematic. I see this new system going down that same path
I'm guessing that's where codexes come in, giving your subfaction detatchemnts and rules.
Hopefully. Really enjoyed how word bearers were flavorful while competitive and had hoped they would continue that for other legions. Mind you not broken just being able to put up a fight while staying close to the lore I picked them for has been really fun
Can you explain how it would be different to play "word bearers" vs playing a theoretical "disciples of the gods" detachment which end up being a csm detachment choice that gets a FnP vs mortals and some demon-flavored enhancements?
Yeah, exactly this. They seem to be separating some fluff from the rules but leaving room for you to put your own fluff back in. Your Word Bearers are your Word Bearers no matter what detachment you take. You take the detachment that fits your fluff/narrative and as the story you are telling changes you can change detachments. The fluff is less baked in but this gives more room for your stories.
You'll probably be able to play more unique versions of each army when that army's codex comes out. Indexhammer is going to be very much simplified I think
Ya they way I'm reading this is there is going to be a ton of subfactions.
I think it's more about deviation of terms to avoid the painting problem. Like they said, Ultramarines may be the primary users of the Gladius Task Force and so default to that, but there's nothing to say that other chapters can't use it as well. SO I don't have to repaint my Raptors just b/c I want to play a game where I'm not phobos-heavy and such. Really, this already exists w/ current subfactions. Plenty of folks are like "Ok, my Necrons are from the Nutekh Dynasty... they use Nihilikh rules".
You essentially will have that though. There will be several detachment options which will be your “subfaction.” The only thing that changes is the paint job. Practically speaking this means you could use space wolves and Ultramarines with the exact same set of abilities. Or, as is more likely to happen, you could see two different space wolf armies playing with completely different rules based on whether they are playing with dreads or Thunderwolves. Essentially every army in the game just opened up to a much broader variety of playstyles and the meta is going to be a lot more fluid I think. This move is also a lot easier to balance from a design perspective. Points changes are still an option, but they can also tinker with individual detachment abilities rather than messing with a whole army.
> This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity. good, it wasn't all good complexity and GW themselves lost the power curve plot over a year ago.
>This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity. ill trade complexity for depth, as complex as 9th was it was also as deep as a teaspoon (that said we wont get depth, GW has made each edition since 4th progressively shallower)
This is good, actually. The game should have the same number of factions, but each faction should be way more streamlined. No allies gets rid of the problem that some groups—elves, IOM—are superfactions while others—Orks, Necrons—are single codex factions without the ability to mix and match. Not being able to load relic/WLT/strat on a single dude will make the game easier to balance, as there are fewer (and less complex) interactions to police.
> As someone increasingly playing Sigmar now, their command abilities really are a much better system than the strat bloat that 40k has I hope they bring something like "All-out Attack" and "All-Out Defense" over from AoS as universal Stratagems. And then have faction Stratagems be more utility-based rather than something that makes your units more killy/tanky. EDIT: Thinking about it, I would also be fine with 10th having *no* Stratagems that boosts the output of units. A unit's power should come from its datasheet - not from how many bonuses can be stacked on it.
>This is going to be a very interesting adjustment period that some people are going to really hate after years of 9e complexity. I am one of those people.
I still wonder how many additional detachments we will get in a codex. Will it just be one or two (and with that a really slim codex…) or like 50 pages of them. Also will we be seeing them in white dwarf…
Probably 2-3 generic ones released with the Indexes, and then a bundle of subfaction-specific ones with the codexes. Obviously Marines will have one for each chapter, so easily a dozen or more for them as a whole My question is whether they’ll go whole hog with the marines specifically, and give each non-codex chapter (DA, BA, SW, BT, etc.) multiple unique detachments just for them to pick from. But then we’ll once again be back at rules bloat city
I get the impression there will be lots of them. We will see how that goes.
I'm sure they will be scattered to the nine hells and monetized harder than a FIFA game.
Um, daemons summoned? Hopefully, that’s just a flavorful way of saying you can build a list with some percentage of daemons, and not literal summoning rules like in previous editions that sucked
GW loses their minds and Chaos armies can just summon infinite daemons again.
I am so ready for the clown car builds with 4000 points on the board by the end of the game to return.
I hope so, am doing up WE and hope to add Daemon allies.
Personally as a Night Lords player I'm really glad my army isn't going to be trash anymore because I decided to paint it blue instead of pink. Tying rules to subfactions was always stupid.
Don't you want your Night Lords to play like Night Lords tho? Like the number one thing I'm worried about is that each codex is gonna have only 2-3 detatchments (like World Eaters) and the less popular subfactions just wont have rules that reflect their lore. The WE codex has like 3-4 pages talking about all the different warbands and how they fight, but no rules support to actually reflect that. What if Codex: CSM comes out and there is no 'terror troops' style detatchment? You're basically gonna end up just playing Black Legion with a Nightlords paint scheme.
The problem is how do you define how 'Night Lords' should play? Raptor spam? What if I wanted to run an Atramentar-themed Terminator army? Or a Heavy Support Havoc/Tank company? You can't really do that with the 9th ruleset. As long as there's enough detachments to cover every theme I think it'll be a way better system.
> The problem is how you define how 'Night Lords' should play? Raptor spam? Subfaction flavor goes beyond unit choice. Night Lords should focus on morale debuffs better than other armies. Salamanders should have more powerful flame and melta weapons. White Scars should be faster. Alpha Legion should be more 'sneaky' or 'tricky'. Loosing that flavor, which is just straight up lore based and is a lot of the reason people choose their favorite chapter/legion/whatever, is a huge loss in my book. > As long as there's enough detachments to cover every theme I think it'll be a way better system **If** everything is represented I agree, but I've seen nothing that makes me think that'll be the case. It would've been super easy for them to stick 'don't worry, every subfaction from your 9th codex will have a detachment' into one of these articles but they haven't said anything like that yet.
Personally I'm fine with losing flavour if it means I don't need to shelf my army for a whole edition or get pigeon-holed into having to run units that synergise with whatever rules GW decided my color scheme is stuck with. I don't really care if my army rules are called Raptorial Host instead of Terror Troops.
Agreed.
To be fair....when has the flavour ever mattered outside of very niche cases? What good does nightlords influencing morale do as their faction trait when if it's not completely broken, its then garbage? Much better for them to put it as a named heros buff he gives the army and then it can be tweaked however needed that way. Easy example: Sisters of Battle. Yeah sacred rose has a cute lore theme, but doesnt matter just play bloody rose. Same thing with nightlords and CoB. Get these subfaction rules out of here and make it universal except named hero shenanigans for the fluffy rules.
> when has the flavour ever mattered outside of very niche cases To you I guess never? To me literally every game I play.
I think we may not even see detachments named for a 9th sub- faction. The article mentions the gladius task force, that any marine army can use. So there may not be a salamander or night lords or leviathan, mephrit, bloody rose..... detachment.
They won't be named that but god I hope theres detachments that keep the core identities of those subfactions.
In the IG codex, when you pick regimental doctrines, the names are generic, but the flavor text explicitly says what sub-faction they are meant to represent. I suspect it will be the same in 10th.
Irony: I already play Black Legion with a Night Lords paint scheme!
The answer is GW is going to do the same thing that they did with Guard, releasing specific subfaction rules geared towards a named subfaction, but without forcing you to use it. So for Night Lords there might be a "Terror Assault" subfaction. This subfaction grants a -2Ld aura, and has a bunch of strats around forcing battleshock and granting bonuses to hit/wound when attacking battleshocked units. But if you want to play a more terminator oriented list like the Atramentar you could run "Lord's Chosen" where terminators get a bunch of buffs. While in that scenario losing the leadership mechanics thanks to choosing a terminator list hurts, it is way better for balance and ease of play. People were already running their Night Lords as Black Legion or their Imperial Fists as Ultramarines, this isn't going to change as much as people think.
100%, though I will correct your terminology slightly. There will probably be one or more detachments where you can pick from that give you \*abilities\* (not subfaction, in the new parlance). Those traits may be associated with a given group from your faction (e.g. a chapter might be famous for certain traits) but they don't have a monopoly on them. The way I see the article, based on the Gladius Task Force description, it'll be something like this: Chaos Space Marines as a Faction get **Death To the False Emperor** as a Faction-level ability. The Raiding Warband Detachment gets you six unique Stratagems and four exlusive Enhancements, and in addition bags you the **Terror Troops** ability which lets you pick from one of three effects to apply in the Morale phase. Of course, there could also still be some that give you more flexiblity still like "you can one from the **X**, **Y**, or **Z** abilities for this Detachment", but we'll see.
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Any chaos army can be an alpha legion army ;)
As a Salamanders player, not super excited to play Green Ultramarines but we'll see how the detachments look. May shelf them this edition and play Grey Knights instead.
"\[...\]. ***Instead of choosing a subfaction*** \[...\]***, you now choose a single set of Detachment rules for your whole army. These include special abilities, Enhancements, Stratagems, and unit restrictions.***" This article is giving some strongs "[Cogs of Vashtorr](https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/GxkHULB4dteaJ6sb.pdf)" vibes if you ask me: All your *Detachment* rules holding on a two-pages spread? Check. No sub-Faction? Check. *Restrictions*(*&Benefits*) ? Check. *Special Ability* ? Check. 4 *Enhancements* ? Check (well, it was 3 Relics, but it's pretty much the same). 6 *Stratagems* ? Check.
So they are moving all factions into a Guard style subfaction system, where you don't select a specific regiment like Cadian or Catachan but rather a set of rules which you think fit your specific regiment the best. Honestly, it is fine. Most people didn't really use a specific subfaction's stuff unless it was OP, and a lot of people were running their homebrew chapters as whatever chapter had the best rules anyways. And by unlocking rules from the paint scheme GW is cutting off the most annoying kind of opponent at the pass from the "oh you can't play with Leviathan rules, that is a Behemoth color scheme!" I would still expect factions like Blood Angels, Dark Angels, and Space Wolves to be getting their own army rules, probably replacing the Space Marine general rules and then having unique lists for their specific play styles (so Deathwing, Ravenwing, and Greenwing for DA, while Blood Angels might get a Day of Revelation style army, a traditional marine style army, and a Death Company style army). What I find interesting is how they are switching to a setup a lot like Boarding Actions. No relics+WLTs, just enhancements. While this does reduce complexity/individuality a bit, it is a huge bonus for balancing. GW doesn't need to worry about how the various relic and WLT combos can make a character OP, and can instead focus on balancing them against each other (which is a lot easier than doing the math on a hundred combinations). Epic Heroes seems superfluous for named characters, so it is probably also being used for Autarchs, Chapter Masters, Chaos Lords, etc. They show off a Primaris Captain as the "at least one character" example, so we might see the "1 captain per detachment" rules go away while an upgrade to Chapter Master or Lord of the Warband (example for chaos) would change their type to Epic Hero.
This isn't going to be like Guard's approach at all. Guard's approach was to have no default rules and instead give you a list of rules that you can pick 2 from to make your army rules, but otherwise all other rules are the same. This is World Eater's approach instead. There you have one overarching army rule and then you have 2 specific ways of playing that only share the army rule and the unit datasheets. Other than that the strats for each detachment are bespoke rather than shared across the army. There's restrictions on units based on which detachment you choose. And they have different warlord traits. This isn't anywhere near as freeform as Guard is.
> Epic Heroes seems superfluous for named characters I'm very confused why they chose to highlight this rule. "You can only have 1 Guilliman in your army" Oh, really?
It’s a universal special rule, that’s why they’re highlighting it
I'm about 90% sure that Epic Hero is just formalizing the "you can only have one of each named character" rule and putting it into the core rules. So instead of needing to say "you can only have 1 Logan Grimnar", they can just slap Epic Hero on his datasheet.
Just wanted to say I'm super excited about all this. They are taking radical decisions that fit their game design intentions and I love that.
Anyone know how this effects named characters? For example: If I take Bjorn, and theres no Space Wolf special rule, can I basically take him in a Gladius detachment with an "Ultramarine" army and Guilliman?
Until we get more details we really don't know. I could see some detachments "unlocking" named characters
>I could see some detachments "unlocking" named characters "If your army contains units from more than four different factions, you must use Trazyn The Infinite as your Warlord."
You might be able to do that when 10th releases, but we can expect the spate of codexes released later will add some of the usual sub-faction restrictions again. For example, the Gladius detachment may state that you can’t include units with the keyword unless all units have the same keyword (so Bjorn can rumble with other wolves, but not with the smurfs). And then Space Wolves specific detachment will be limited to units only.
I thikn that makes the most sense, esp. with codexes coming. I can't imagine them allowing units like Lion or Guilliman giving generic auras.
On the contrary, I think that the primarchs (unlike other SM named characters) will be generic (the same way Leontus can join any regiment, and Morven Vahl any covent). Gotta sell a lot of them after all.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'd rather they go the way of making all named characters into unique but non-named characters, of which the named dude is a good example. I know that's hard to do w/ primarchs, but I just hate the situation where like The Silent King shows up to every freaking skirmish across untold millions of planets.
Obviously we don't, this is all that is revealed. As of this though, doesn't sound like "chapters" are game mechanics anymore, so quite possibly.
At this point I think Space wolves as well as DA, BA and DW will all be spun away from the space marine codex again and have their own wholly separate codexs. Can't see Thousand sons, World eaters or Death guard being rejoined with CSM and Space Wolves have as many unique units as Thousand Sons.
Shoot I didn't even think of it like that. I bet Deathwatch may be similar too with how "weird" their army compositions get.
I bet it will be like AOS. You can take Lion in your "Gladius Strike Force (implied to be Ultramarines themed)" but he probably has special rules if you take him as part of the Dark Angels-like detachment. Sort of like I can take Bastian Carthalos in any AoS Stormhost, but he gets special rules if he's with the Hammers of Sigmar.
It will probably depend on what faction keywords are available. It might be that Space Wolf, and Space Marine, Ultramarine, will be different faction keywords. So there will still be chapter locking for chapter specific units. But nobody will know at the moment.
Named Characters might have keywords associated with their factions and detachments might say that you can not include units with more than one of that type of keyword in it. But that's just speculation.
Named characters might be locked to each other. So you cannot have Epic Hero keyword characters that don't share the same keyword that is only on their datasheet. Or they do like the Guard codex and let you do that anyways (which is going to be silly, it works for Guard since they fight mixed anyways, but if we see Tigurius and Dante running around as a party things are going to get stupid real fast).
Wonder how they'll handle unique heroes. How can I field Kor'Sarro Khan for example? Since he's tied to White Scars.
Probably something like "you can only include a WHITE SCARS EPIC CHARACTER in your army if all EPIC CHARACTERS in it are WHITE SCARS" or something.
I'd imagine all units in a detachment have to share the same keyword
> .. your Detachment gives you access to **six unique Stratagems** – on top of the core group in the main rules – as well as **four exclusive Enhancements** for your Space Marine characters. [your Detachment] also bags you the Combat Doctrines ability, which allows you to pick from three powerful doctrines during your Command phase. I don't know how I feel about this. I thought the whole point was to *reduce* bloat? There's no way we don't end up with at least 5 Space Marine Detachments. Wouldn't be surprised if they end up with 6-8. Conservatively, that gives us 30+ Stratagems and 20+ 'Enhancements'. I'm worried we'll just be back to having mostly irrelevant Stratagems and relics/WLTs and then a handful of good ones. But this time, they will be spread out between Detachments. So everyone will play the Detachment that happened to get 3 of the good Stratagems and 2 of the good Enhancements. Alternatively, GW will attempt to make *all* of the 30+ Stratagems and 20+ Enhancements relevant. Which basically guarantees that they are going to miss high and some of the Detachments are going to be completely broken . It also sounds like they've mostly focused on reducing complexity for the person controlling an army. "**You** don't have flip through several pages of rules. All **your** rules are now on 2 pages" But I've always found the bigger problem being how much mental load the complexity puts on the opponent. Currently, you probably only need to be aware of at most 5-10 Stratagems for each faction. It sounds like this number will increase by a lot in 10th. Because Not-White Scars will have access to a completely different set than not-Deathwing. I think I would have preferred maybe a 50/50 split between faction and ~~sub-faction~~ Detachment Stratagems. And maybe 5 faction Enhancements plus 1-2 ~~sub-faction~~ Detachment Enhancements. BUT it's still very early, and we've seen very few actual details. Maybe it'll be fine? I'm also very curious to know how Detachments are going to work for the other factions in the game. It seems like a lot of power and flavour is moving from faction to Detachment/sub-faction. That seems simply enough for Space Marines, or Eldar e.g.. How is this going to look like for factions with less fleshed-out sub-factions - and smaller model ranges? What kind of Detachments will Thousand Sons, Harlequins, Votann, and Custodes get?
Here's the thing though - rather than looking at "faction win rates", GW may just look at "Detachment win rates". Hey, First Company has an 80% win rate and Gladius has a 30% win rate. Let's introduce some buffs/nerfs. Because each detachment is drawing from a *unique* set of of enhancements, strats, rules, etc, we may have to deal with less of the "Accidental buff/accidental nerf" problem that we get all the time right now.
They could have done that in 9th too. They didn't. They never even tried to address internal subfaction balance. Had nothing to do with accidental buffs or nerfs.
Did they not address internal subfaction balance when they targeted things like Leviathan, Light/Dark Saedeth, Creations of Bile, and Farsight Enclaves? The balance dataslate has a bunch of subfaction changes.
No, they addressed *external* balance by occasionally targeting subfaction rules where they saw those rules as the problem. But it wasn't done to bring subfactions in line with each other. That is why they didn't buff bad subfactions so as to make them chosen more often. None of their Metawatch data or interviews ever mentioned trying to bring subfactions in line with each other.
> 6-8 marine detachments Hahaha mate, this is GW here. There might be 1-3 generic detachments included in the indices, and then you better believe each chapter is going to get their own unique detachment with their codex release. Otherwise there’d be no hype for codex releases at all. If “Gladius” is just the UM one, then that leaves eight other First Founding chapters, and then for sure BT and maybe Crimson Fists (?) as the only other substantial 2nd founding chapters. So at least 10, maybe more than a dozen.
Well, the opponent only needs to know the roughly 6 core common strats + your 6 detachment specific strats, so about 12 total rather than the 35 that dark angels have access to right now. That’s what GW keeps saying. Everything is on the 2 page document for the detachment, and since EVERYONE has the same common core rules strats (deep strike, feel no pain, etc) then I only need to learn your six detachment strats that are new to me. Not the 20 specific dark angel strats like in 9th.
Two things: 1. They say "unique " and "exclusive", but that could very easily be marketing speak for "this combination is unique / exclusive". So Detachment A gets strats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6, Detachment B gets strats 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, etc. 2. It sounds like the goal is that you can turn up at the table with a single (double sided) sheet of paper with all your strats and abilities on it, and give that to your opponent to review. That way they don't need to remember what every strat in the game is - it's on the page in front of them. Combining those two together, you might get to the table and find yourself matched up against a detachment you've never played before - *but* you recognize 2 of the 6 strats from other detachments you've played, and get a chance to review the other 4 (and therefore can know what questions to ask / what circumstances it might be relevant). So there is significantly less chance of any "gotcha" moments - you'll know if the opponent can fall back and charge, or teleport across the table, or fight on death or whatever, because you can read it on the page.
This reminds me of the Drukhari system and god do i hate it. Nothing annoys me more than having to also take X if i want to take Y And i hope the detachment buffs are small, i don't want more units to end up like 8th edition CSM codex Noise Marines where they are absolute trash unless you run Emperor's Children which gave them massive buffs and made them one of the best units in the codex.