In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.
It’s back! The tenth edition of unquestionably the most played tabletop miniatures game in the world, Warhammer 40,000. Heralded by a very nice launch box called Leviathan that features 72 space marine and tyranid miniatures, this new version features some excellent changes to the venerable beast; welcome ones, from my point of view, as they streamline the game a little and mean I’ll get it to the tabletop more often.
The first main change is the excellent decision to move all weapon-related stats down to the weapon profile lines, a clever move that throws out a lot of unnecessary modifiers and fiddliness. The second is to make all the army lists available for download – at last! And the third is the new play format of ‘combat patrols’, where all the factions from the game have been provided with custom-made army lists so you can set up a game fast. This last idea is a game-changer for me. I’m not a fan of the tedious maths involved in totting up points to create armies, and this system allows me to grab some models and play almost immediately, so I love it.
Sadly, I think, Games Workshop didn’t grab the opportunity afforded by such an important release to change what has always been the bugbear for me about their main battle games – the interminable old ‘roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save’ system (and I’d like to see alternating activations too). But perhaps that’s just a step too far for the thousands of dedicated W40K fans out there, who grumble incessantly on forums every time anything about their favourite game changes. It will happen one day though, mark my words!
In any case, despite the constant rolling of handfuls of dice and picking out successes from the results, W40K is still a fun few hours of battle gaming, and it certainly looks absolutely spectacular on the tabletop. Check out my battle reports here and here, and download my summary and reference sheets for the core rules – which GW kindly made available for download as a 60 page document, and I’ve squeezed into 4 pages without leaving anything out!
Great job. Thanks!