Since influencers with early copies of the upcoming Warhammer 40k 11th edition Space Marine codex and Munitorum Field Manual began to disclose the points costs for units, the community has been abuzz with discussions of just how busted this new force is going to be. Games Workshop had already warned us of a big upgrade to the Marines’ stats, and now it seems they’re only paying a minor points premium for the privilege. The changes will also ripple through a huge chunk of other armies that field variants of Space Marines – in terms of how the game feels to play, this looks like the end of Warhammer 40k 11th edition as we know it. And it’s only been out for three months!
Every new Warhammer 40k Codex release, each balance dataslate, and each organised play pack represents a different meta for competitive Warhammer 40k players, but this is less subtle, and will reach into most forms of casual play – similar in scale, if not type, to the early errata to Warhammer 40k 10th edition needed to fix Titanic units and mortal wounds spam.
As well as the total overhaul to vanilla codex Space Marines, Games Workshop has confirmed that there will be digital updates to Dark Angels, Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Deathwatch, Black Templars, Grey Knights, Chaos Space Marines, Death Guard, Thousand Sons, Emperors Children, and World Eaters.
Depending on whether you count the five codex-compliant Space Marine chapters as separate armies, that’s between one third and one half of all the Warhammer 40k factions. Until the codex is in the wild it is an open question whether these updated armies will be balanced between one another and against the rest of the game.
There has been somewhat reassuring news that the most egregious outliers won’t be quite so cheap when the codex actually releases. Podcast La Voz de Horus reports it’s had an update from GW about the points for Lion El’Jonson, which were initially insanely low but are now merely very, very affordable.
But even if the balance is spot on, this still represents a step change in how the game feels to play. Many armies will become more survivable, faster, better able to focus force, and worse at blanketing the board with bodies. Even assuming GW achieves those goals elegantly and with good game balance, why is this happening three months into a new edition, and not at the start?
Players who joined the game during 10th edition and stuck around have just experienced their first edition change. They’ve had to rethink their armies and strategies, and potentially grab some new model kits to adapt to the new game feel. Now the meta is going to shift again. For new players who started with 11th edition, all the experienced players at their store are muttering about massive changes to a system they’re just beginning to get comfortable with.
I wonder if at one point the Warhammer 40k design team planned to launch 11th edition with these changes, maybe even with free Index rules for every army as we got with 8th and 10th edition. Smaller Space Marine armies feel part and parcel of the design sensibility that has limited conga-line units and made screening more challenging. The Psychic Levels rules and the ‘Hunter’ weapons profiles that are appearing in the new codexes look like universal features that fit in the core rules, and somehow didn’t make it into the book.
Whatever the reason, I hope GW is watching closely to see what impact this scale of change has so soon after the launch of an edition, and learns the right lessons. What do you think? Is your community feeling mutinous, or is everyone sanguine? You can find me in the Wargamer Discord community if you’d like to share your thoughts.
Source: Wargamer
