Games Workshop staff discuss what went into the new edition’s core rules – take look at what you’ll be playing with starting next week.
Tomorrow, Armageddon comes to Warhammer 40k. We’ve seen the miniatures, the datasheets, the campaign and mission decks, and of course, the core rules. The Games Workshop staff are here to discuss those rules today in a round table discussion about what went into crafting the newest iteration of the game.
Reimagined Detachments
The way detachments work in 11th edition is a major change. Detachments remain a thematic overlay on army building, but they’re no longer as limiting. The new system allows players more customization in their force construction as they can now mix and match detachments to some degree. Where in the past a single detachment choice provided overarching rules for your entire army, you can now have between one and three.
…there still are army-wide detachments if you liked that style, and you have an overarching theme that you want to play, but we also want to give you choices where, if you have certain favourite unit types or certain favourite play styles, you can pick a detachment that’s smaller, and it’ll give you key ways of playing those units.
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Essentially, you still have to make some hard choices as certain detachments exclude the use of others through keywords, but have more ability to make narratively flexible armies.
Clarified Language
It seems that clarifying and streamlining the written rules was a major imperative for this edition. There can be a disconnect between how a rule is written and the way it becomes commonly described. The developers took pains to reduce the gap between the rules and their practical application.
If I go, “Oh, it’s eight inches,” and then you roll and you go, “Oh, well you actually needed a nine because what I was saying is that the distance was eight,” you’re like, “Oh, well that’s annoying.”
So we want to clean that up wherever we can in the rules to make sure that you are playing the same game. When you go, “Thursday, 2,000 points, you want to play Warhammer?” you’re both coming with the same expectation.
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A Handful of Dice
Veteran 40k players often pick up habits that differ from the rules, particularly when it comes to the order of operations in dice rolling. The designers’ mandate to legitimize emergent play behaviors and codify them into the rules where possible is on display this edition.
So, one of the things that we observed a lot in the Attack sequence of the game when we were watching people play is that depending on players’ knowledge of the game, they would either just fast roll everything – which is actually not the way that the rules were built, it’s just a thing that we all do because it makes it faster to play – or know the moments you actually need to stop doing it and then slow down the rolls to then make sure that you get the most advantageous situation.
So we’ve actually made fast dice rolling core this edition … and there’s a fun kind of narrative consequence that comes from that system as well, which is the fact that characters with good defensive profiles live longer. And so you have these really cool moments in the middle part of the game, sometimes where a few characters are running around and getting into fights with each other because they survived the combats with ranged attacks during those turns.
Campaign in a Deck
I’ve said it before, but the Dominatus card deck system is maybe the part of this edition launch thatI’m most excited about. Simpler than the classic Crusade system but more satisfying than the simple 2-3 match campaigns we sometimes see as downloadably content or in White Dwarf, Dominatus looks amazing. It’s a system for playing linked games with meaningful gains but without a ton of pencil and paper book keeping.
what you can do is go like, “Oh, I have this really cool army. I’m going to show up with, you know, some of my buddies or I’m going to go to an event. They’re going to run a campaign to fight for the fate of Armageddon.” That’s what that box specifically does. And after each game, I’m going to either get battle honours or I’m going to get little points of experience that are, like, one-turn-use elements.
Watch the video for the full half hour round table discussion. Pre-orders for the Armageddon box set launch tomorrow and I can’t wait to get mine ordered and in the pipe!
What do you think the biggest shakeup to the game will be?
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Simon Berman has been a wargamer since 1993 and has worked in the tabletop games industry since 2008 as a staff writer for the first three editions of WARMACHINE and HORDES. These days he’s the General President of the Brush Wielders Union, a worldwide organization of miniatures painters of all skill levels, a freelance games writer who has contributed to a number of roleplaying games like Eclipse Phase, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, and The Hammer and the Stake. He runs his own small-press publishing company, Strix Publishing, and paints more miniatures than he can keep track of. Simon lives with his wife in Tacoma, Washington along with a number of cats and a pack of savage wiener dogs.
Source: Bell of Lost Souls
