We need to talk about Warhammer 40,000

It’s been a long time since I wrote anything for this blog. Hell, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything at ALL. So consider this an exercise, a chance to stretch my literary muscles, though not in prose, a chance to get some words down and some thoughts. Even should no body bother to read it, it's decent practice, right?

Firstly before we get into this examination of the game in its current state, let me apologise briefly for the title. I DETEST phrases like ‘we need to talk about’ or ‘This has happened and we are here for it’ reeking as they do of millennial righteousness, but genuinely i feel this is the right title for the article, 40K needs to be talked about, and I’ve decided to say my piece. 

A little background. I first got into 40k 27 years ago in 2nd Edition. Since then i have played every edition apart from 5th. I’ve seen the major transitions in the rule set and seen the game evolve and change over the years. I have to say, although the core ruleset is strong at the moment, the game is in its worst state in years, perhaps a decade. 

My first ever codex... aah those were the days

I reiterate, the core ruleset is FINE. I would make a few tweaks (I am a longtime advocate of alternate activations) here and there, but otherwise I think the base of the game is in a good state. I like the way it is scored (though i think secondaries should be randomised and secret). I think morale should play a bigger part in the game, there needs to be some kind of penalty to falling out of combat for sure and i think there are too many strategems but otherwise i think its pretty good for the kind of game GW is aiming for. The main problems come with the way they have proceeded since then. We are talking of course about the Codexes and Codex Creep. About bloating and basing an entire sales model around Meta Chasers and endless supplements or Wargaming DLC as i like to call it. 

I think it was 8th edition that heralded the shit of GWs attention to the hardcore competitive scene. I can’t be one hundred percent sure as i’m not part of that playerbase myself being much more inclined to a nice narrative casual game, but certainly the arrival of the Primaris seemed to coincide with an emphasis on acknowledging and indeed, embracing the meta. Since then it has been rinse and repeat, release codex, sell overpowered models, nerf said models (I still chuckle at the memory of all the Feirros plus 3 x Replusor Executioners castles that were unceremoniously nullified shortly after they became such a staple sight in every game.) This is a sales tactic that has endured since and only grown more egregious over the years with successive Warhammer Community articles extolling the potency of whatever the new hotness is, hyping up the meta chasers into a wallet emptying frenzy. 

If you ever did this you are a total prick and I hate you. 

And something else that has become a repetitive release rhetoric is editions. How many times now are we to hear, This is the last edition, the best edition, the definitive edition? The core rules are ever more streamlined as they try to make 40k a fast flowing competitive game rather than the narrative battle game of yore, yet the army rules are growing more and more impenetrable and convoluted not to mention horrendously worded in an attempt to completely mitigate rules lawyering. 

Youtube stalwart Winters refused to even review the Genestealer Cult codex so frustrated was he with the rules. (vid below) That’s not a great advertisement for the health of the game considering that he BUILT his channel on codex reviews (though I greatly enjoy his battle reports). Nowadays every unit has multiple special rules, many of which are variations of rules from other Codices. The great thing about universal special rules was, they were UNIVERSAL, now not only do you have to know all the special rules for your own army, you need to have an INTIMATE understanding of all the special rules (and strategems) of your foes (Sun Tzu’s Art of War would suggest this is a good idea anyway) you can't just get away with a surface knowledge. Everything just seems to require so much damn effort now. Maybe I'm just getting old. 

I’m not alone though, I was talking with a fellow veteran hobbyist a while back and we were discussing how we tend to lean towards skirmish games these days. Games like Killteam, Warcry or Underworlds are so much easier to arrange, get to the table and play (though they have their own DLC sure enough). 40k with its plethora of different rules (i still don’t know all the different terrain rules), updates, FAQs, errata, points revisions and auxiliary supplements, (which can splinter the rules for a given army over up to half a dozen books) not to mention the crusade books and mission supplements mean that 40k is FAR from a bring and battle game these days. Indeed it’s practically a military operation just to arrange and conduct a game. There will be those who say, ‘well just play open play then’ but i don't want to play ‘do anything you want-hammer’ i want to play WARHAMMER, a nice friendly fun game of Warhammer 40,000 without it being a massive pain in the arse. (The recent Tempest card pack helps with this but is little more than a patch)

Could be worse, I could be a Chaos Space Marine player. 

Which brings us to the next point, aside from codexes being needlessly complicated, codex creep makes everything insanely unbalanced to the point where early codicies like Necrons honestly don't even feel like they are from this edition. Current books have loads of damage reduction rules and things that ignore invuln saves, in fact they are practically obligatory in modern army books, something else that is getting REALLY old. On top of that you have so many stratagems that are meant to add tactics to the game but really don't do anything of the sort, being that the vast majority of them are copies of other faction Stratagems. Some are completely ubiquitous (i don't think I EVER saw an Astartes based game where Transhuman Physiology wasn’t used) and it’s all just designed for unit eradication, maximum carnage on both sides, mutually assured destruction. Space Marines got two wounds and even though they could have made it happen with one sentence in an FAQ, GW deigned not to grant the Traitors the same luxury.  Even now in the wake of Adepticon, they are marvelling over the fact that Legionaries WILL get 2 wounds. Who cares? You could have done that MONTHS ago. It makes little difference as most weapons are damage 2 or 3 now anyway right?

REJOICE peons as GW sees fit to FINALLY address your faction. 

And thus shifts the meta once more. 

So where are we now? Do we wait till tenth edition for GW to yet again fix the game, with promises that THIS time it is definitive, THIS time they have learned their lessons and delivered an edition that will not be a bloated broken ruin in the space of 18 months? Presumably they are already playtesting 10th. Might I suggest that they actually listen to the playtesters? Same goes with Codexes. Here's a thought, if the gaming community is breaking your book within two weeks of it coming out, leading to you having to make changes to fix it two weeks later, then you DIDN'T playtest it properly. It’s ok, it’s only £30 £32.50 for a codex that is practically out of date as soon as it's released. They should make the rules section out of that paper they use in sticker albums, then you can stick the inevitable patches and balance errata straight into the book. Don’t even get me started on Seasons.

Warahmmer Seasons: Because the one thing you definitely need is more books to bring to the table. 

This shit never happened in 2nd edition you know, that was REALLY stable. But then this isn't the same game. You know how many entries were in the second edition Tyranid codex? A dozen. It’s three times that many now. Second edition was far from perfect but it was a very characterful game, where truly crazy stuff would happen, a far cry from the delete-fest that we have now. I find myself watching second edition battle reports most often these days and find them incredibly enjoyable, the people playing them seem to have more fun too. Codex creep wasn’t a massive issue, there was only one supplement needed to play the full game, Dark Millenium (there were cool campaign boxes with cardboard scenery but they were JUST campaigns, no hidden special rules for armies to make them viable).  A simpler time, maybe a better time? Or is it just rose tinted nostalgia? 

Anyway, that’s about it from me for now. Next article (whenever it might be, i’m going to take a look at pricing. Hopefully it will be less of a rant than this, in any event it should be more balanced than 40k is at the moment. 

-AL