I am not sure, but a part of my is hoping that 6th edition is one broken ass edition. It could weed out the Wargamers I tend to dislike and keep the true believers in. Better yet, maybe 40k will lose all the dregs that don’t even actually like the game in the first place, but for some sycophantic reasons they keep on plugging away. The way it could work is  remarkably straightforward and has some historical precedence.

Take for instance Fantasy 8th edition. 8th essentially blew up the game, in what Games Workshop imagined was the only way to save it. Seeing trends of their own making (poor playtesting) where certain types of armies dominated the older edition. Armies that were not terribly conducive to selling large portions of their model lines.

So 8th changed everything now they could sell large unit blocks and less units became pariahs. Still it didn’t help that all players saw was Magic was more “broken” than ever, with entire armies being decimated by a single spell. Players at the time couldn’t see that the only salvation was those large blocks now made effective by the new rules and more resistant to the most virulent of spells.

What made matters worse and (why this is crucial to 40k) is that some older books had really broken combos  or some older books just became unplayable all together in 8th edition. The same can be said about the end of 4th and Nob Bikers, which ran rampant in the old rules, but quickly were brought back in line with 5th edition.

So where is this whole article going?

Psychic powers that will be chosen at not only from a pool of powers, but also at the start of a game, could have game breaking potential.

Especially when you consider the older codexes. Just like in 8th Fantasy, we could see some armies downright unplayable or wholly game breaking. The one thing that mitigated this problem in fantasy (every army had psychic powers) will not be the case in 40k. Since a good quarter of the armies in 40k have no psychic powers you can imagine the potential for problems. At least in Fantasy the one army without powers has a robust defense against them– can you say the same for 40k?

What happens to Dark Eldar, Tau, and Necrons, when they are up against armies that can pick and choose powers designed to destroy them? What combos will be discovered for Dark Angels or Black Templars that could dominate the board? What happens to Eldar when they don’t have the powers that make them playable at the moment?

Games Workshop answer is a 6+ psychic save?

Is that going to be enough?

I doubt it.

To bring this back around, the only silver lining is that 8th edition Fantasy is much better today because of three things…

  1. New Books replaced old ones bringing them in balance with the current edition.
  2. Players adjusted their armies to the new meta and realizing it wasn’t all rubbish.
  3. Amazing new models that you actually want to play.

Still tell those three things to all the like Wood Elves or Bret players that haven’t seen any love in a frightfully long time. So be warned we could be in for extremely bumpy ride, just remember stay calm fixes will happen, but for some those fixes won’t come soon enough.

Hmm…

Come to think of it I could have wrote this same article right before any addition…