40K Today – The Initial Edition Mess

Well,

If you're reading the internet at all, it's a bit of a mess. People who have very little experience with the new game are doing one of two things: 1) swearing it's the worst ever and needs to be completely changed ... or 2) swearing they know it's perfectly fantastic and they'll stab anyone who suggests tweaking it.

It's probably somewhere in the middle, in reality. There are a lot of fixes to the base game. Then there's the psychic phase, which would probably be a net improvement except that denying the witch is sort of a figment (the odds are hilarious), and some of the powers are dumb (see video batreps summoning thousands of points into the game, fortunestars with re-rolled 2+'s still that you can only hit on a 6 with shooting or combat and can't template or blast, etc.). Then there's GW's utterly BS White Dwarf claim that the FOC would be left alone for those who still liked it, only to basically throw it out with a fake label by letting you take as many detachments you want as long as you fulfill the minimum.

Soo ... there's a lot of work to be done in terms of playtesting, getting a true feel for the new edition, seeing how broken the hyperbolically broke-accused things are or aren't, and letting the people who are kneejerking that it's all perfect realize their initial prophecies may be just as incorrect in their absolutism as those who are projecting the entire edition needs a rewrite 3 days in.

On the plus side, people like Reece and Kirby and myself and others are already reaching out to each other to try and be as on the same page as we can be. That won't be uniform - no event should feel fettered by the bounds of others who aren't fiscally responsible for the outcome - but it will be a good deal better and more collaborative than we've seen in the past, IMO. This is especially true in the case of me and Reece, as our formats are far and away the most mimic'ed in the US at the "full size event / GT" level (all manner of things are run at the local hobby shop level, though it also heavily includes BAO and NOVA formats). As in the past, we'll in part do our own thing (FW or not, for instance), but I do think we've grown closer over the years and will be more coordinated in how we look at the game. Time will tell.

I'll also be working heavily with the many TOs who run NOVA style events, and the global group of players who are participant in the mission catalog, to revise those and edit those and manage the format and all of that, so that the NOVA Open this year is as fair and fun as possible for 40K players.

We'll also adjust the Narrative Supplemental Codices to both add supplements for Astra Militarum and adjust the extant ones for the new edition.

Further, if we DO instigate any changes or tweaks to the game after very careful consideration (and I haven't decided any such thing at present), the Trios Team Event still exists for the more unfettered version of 40k, so the full gamut of event possibilities will lie available to the attending 40k player.

So there's a lot of discussion, playtesting, more discussion, fending off internet hyperbole (of which I've been plenty a contributor historically, to be fair), and more to go ... but we're off to the races ... the internet's losing its mind, and we could probably have said all of this to those who've been through it before just by saying one line:

"Games Workshop just released a new version of Warhammer 40,000"