"40k 8th Edition Confirmed Changes/New stuff from April 24" Topic

Games Workshop just ran a live Q&A on their Warhammer TV Facebook page.

Below is a summary of stuff for 40k 8th edition.

- Top goals in development: 1. game that worked for all ways to play (Open Play, Matched Play, Narrative/Scenario Play) 2. More balanced 3. More accessible
- Core rules are free. free PDF digital + printed store copies (also free)
- Two points system: 'Power level' narrative play each unit has a general power level value. Allows roughly equal forces for narrative, scenario based, not much granularity. Then a full granular common points system for matched play.
- No more armour on vehicles. Vehicles have a damage table as they take damage (wounds) stats decrease, every vehicle has its own damage table. Movement could decrease, weapons get damaged, as vehicles take damage.
- Specfically mentioned everyone can hurt everyone else owing to S and T in ref to vehicles.
- 14 force org charts in core rules, if you meet you generate command points. Command points are one use only. They allow you to re-roll dice, interrupt chargers going first mentioned. Hints these force orgs totally replace formations.
- Limited to 1 cmd point per phase. Certain force orgs give you more or less points. Gives example of big brigade detachment which gives you 9 cmd points.
- Codexes not going away, there will be books with their own army command points.
- Templates going away confirmed!
- Every army gets rules day one. 5 books, rules for all armies split across these. (low price point mentioned, a lot less than a codex)
- Expansions will still be part of the game planet strike etc will be re-written
- 'Every unit playtested a lot' after 'will riptides be nerfed' quetion. Mention of massive community playtesting in USA.
- Adepticon and Nova teams have been playtesting every single unit and core rules. Quote: "Most playtested game by a mile"
- Annual rules updates like AoS generals handbook taking community feedback
- No specific tournament rules but guidelines in matched play
- Background focused more Imperium vs Chaos, acknowledges chaos has slipped and want to bring that back to the main focus of the game
- Won't confirm a release date 'this year', and 'soon'
- All factions still in, new website missing ones is just a narrative thing. No factions are being removed.
- There will be new factions (hinted at on launch)
- Big monsters will also loose stats like vehicles as they take damage
- Stats no longer capped at 10!
- Multiple damage e.g. wounds is in on weapons
- Matched play 1000pts to anything
- Allies still in works different though. Keywords system very specific on factions gives an example a marine with spec rules prob wont pass onto allies. Taken from Age of Sigmar.
- Mentions close combat is viable.
- Background will advance but not radically change. Some on launch which will 'blow people away'
- Everyday from now on till launch will be a warhammer community article on new 40k – kinda hints its coming out sooner rather than later
- If you've bought a book within 8 weeks of launch, you can email customer services and get a voucher for value of the book bought

Here is another link with information:

link

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

Templates going away confirmed!

I hope that's a good thing.

Do 40k'ers not like templates?

Are those people in the comments section real? The worst thing about the "GW hobby" is them.

Utterly toxic.

I like templates. I'm hoping that tossing out templates means they have an intelligent solution to fill that void, and it's not a silly decision.

IMNSHO, many of the changes of 3rd seemed arbitrary, and their solutions stupid. I assume the ditching of templates has a lot to do with folks gaming the system.

I want intuitive, not gimmicky.

They used a random number of hit allocation in 3rd edition or 3.5 when Cityfight came out instead of templates. We will often still use that because templates can cause disagreements. So large blast and flame were d6 hits, small blast was d3 hits. It was so much easier.

I thought 3rd was a big improvement over 2nd, which having gone back and played a year and a half ago was clunky. 3rd was much more steamlined. It sounds like this is going to be a streamlining over 7th edition which has also become clunky, much like AoS was a big improvement over 8th edition WHFB.

3rd felt too much like Epic with 40K minis. Grenades are a freaking modifier! 1st edition Epic actually had more granularity. I've never played a huge one-on-one 40K game. The really big ones had two or more per side. So I was never interested in streamlined, fast-play games. That's what 6mm is for.

They drop the bigger-bigger-bigger crap, and quit pandering to powergaming s, they have my attention.

I felt like 3rd edition allowed you to play battles that were somewhat decent sized, with a reason to put tactical squads on the table and have a balanced force.

2nd edition was powergaming to the max. Plop a jump pack, daemon weapon and powerfield on your chaos champion and go and slaughter the enemy force. An army consisted of terminators, land raiders and devastator squads because most other things were useless. Space Wolves ruled the battlefield because they were just like other marines only 1 better at everything.

A 2000 pt army could consist of a dozen models or less.

8th edition should be playable with as many miniatures per side as previous editions except RT and 2nd. Otherwise, GW would be undermining its main moneymaker, selling lots and lots of minis.

It needs to work at all levels. If players want to play huge battles, they should be able to. I'm sick of them flogging that. This is expensive, and if you're starting out, or can't afford tons of minis, or, God forbid, don't have time to PAINT tons of minis, you should have the option of a scalable game.

A 2000 pt army could consist of a dozen models or less.

Yes, and a vortex grenade and a few lascannons would fix that right up.

No they wouldn't, because you have to get the vortex grenade to the enemy and you have to hit them with the lascannon. And they would have to fail their 2+ save against it.

We had access to vortex grenades when we played, they worked sometimes but more often the guy with the vortex grenade got killed before he could use it, or he missed.

Tactical squads never appeared on the table in 2nd edition because they were worthless. No one ever put troops in a transport because they were death traps.

The close combat mechanism was broken beyond all hope of repair and you could spent 30 minutes resolving one close combat phase with three fights between 18 models.

2nd edition was a mess. We had a lot of fun with some games of 2nd edition but it was a powergamers cornucopia.

3rd edition got rid of all of that. Tactical squads became your break and butter. They were actually kind of hard to kill. Terminators were not the be-all and end-all of space marine strategy. Putting characters on bikes wasn't a death sentence.

3rd did scale. You could have a pretty decent game with 30 models a side or 100 models a side or more.

2nd edition was unplayable with more than 40 figures a side, mostly because of the close combat system. It was just like TSATF, a neat game, but it worked a lot better for Necromunda than it did for 40K.

We really like playing Necromunda and still do from time to time. It works well for 10 models a side or thereabouts. But it wasn't a company level game where you are fielding 50-100 models a side, it just doesn't work for that.

I've got really fond memories of 2nd edition, but it was hilariously all over the place balance and playability wise. I got worked by my friend's terminators, until I bought Warp Spiders and then basically we had to agree to never use either unit or it got crazy.

The overwatch fire also made for a very static game at times, and yea turns were quite long with more than 20 or so models a side.

Reading these rules changes actually makes me really excited – it feels like some stuff from Rogue Trader/2nd edition but with modern playtesting and rule streamlining.

I do not champion the excellence of the RT or 2nd edition 40K rules. I'm simply stating that the radical changes to the core concepts beginning in 3rd were not themselves improvements. Removing the Movement stat didn't fix or simplify anything, it just made troops more generic. I especially despised the stupid armor save system, which needed NO fix. How odd that it's coming back in 8th.

I never liked 2nd's melee rules. I complained a lot at the time that Necromunda missed an opportunity to fix them, rather than just cutting and pasting them. They were still an improvement over 1st. I remember an engagement between my Emperor's Children captain and a zoat hero that joined in the second or third turn and went on til the end of the game, at LEAST four more turns, with both still slugging it out.

Maybe we just didn't have enough munckins to work the system. We all just wanted to have fun in a cool universe. Our chief ork player LOVED the "dangerous to everyone" orky events, and always cheered whenever his own stuff backfired spectacularly. If someone had cool models painted up that everyone agreed simply weren't worth fielding, we found a way to make them work. We upped space marines to T:4 ages before GW did.

Shuriken catapults were murderous in 1st, deadly in 2nd, but at least some asshole didn't nerf them to uselessness.

And I've had plenty of 2nd Ed. games with eight players multiple waves advancement that worked fine.

Templates going away confirmed!

I hope that's a good thing.

Yes it will be since many WAAC'ers counted on them to dished out major pain due to them never needing to roll a dice to hit.

Do 40k'ers not like templates?

Only the WAAC'ers who fielded many weapons that put out those pie plate templates on your troops in good cover only to be blown to bits since they no longer had cover.

Sucked when they went first and kill a sizeable bit of your army.

I'm hoping that tossing out templates means they have an intelligent solution to fill that void

Yes like you roll to hit with a Missile Launcher and you hit that Land Raider with a Krak Missile.

In the current rules you would need to roll a "6" just to see if you do some minor damage.

With this new system that Krak Missile will cause a certain amount of wounds sure one will not be enough to kill that Land Raider but it will be damaged.

And they would have to fail their 2+ save against it.

Remember weapons had save modifiers back than so yes Terminators died and they died very quickly when shot by lots of models.

We must have played different Editions back in the early to mid 1990's. Since I fielded large armies of over 100 models all the time and did quite well.

Though grenades could be a pain since there were usually around a dozen or so of them on the table.

Did love the old Rad Grenade and the Plasma Grenade when you rolled that "6" and than got to watch it expand and clear out one side of the table.

Shuriken catapults were murderous in 1st, deadly in 2nd, but at least some asshole didn't nerf them to uselessness.

Yup, there is a reason why GW nerf'd them to hell back in the late 1990's.

They were to good at killing Space Marines.

"Remember weapons had save modifiers back than so yes Terminators died and they died very quickly when shot by lots of models."

Power Fields didn't. Shoot away.

Did love the old Rad Grenade and the Plasma Grenade when you rolled that "6" and than got to watch it expand and clear out one side of the table.

I'd forgotten that was how those worked!

Yup, there is a reason why GW nerf'd them to hell back in the late 1990's.

As I said, they weren't as bad in 2nd. And the solution was to jack up the cost, or limit their availability. What they came up with was an unpleasant solution, akin to swapping out Oscars after the announcement.

Yes, termies without field saves WERE way too easy to kill. But I really think that if marines are supposed to be such badasses, they should have two wounds.

Power Fields didn't. Shoot away.

They still failed on a "1" so take it I would shoot at you because you will roll those "1's".

Or I will just kill everything else and then shoot you.

The game was far more fun back 20+ years ago.