So with all the rumours and podcasts talking about 9thedition I thought I would chuck in my two cents on some blue sky thinking. I’m a creative, arty farty type so I often find myself day dreaming about ideas and on my run to work today I started really thinking about how the game would change with round bases.
Straight up disclaimer: This is not a rumour thread and it is not a doom mongering post about how the sky is falling/obliterated/chaosified. This is a “What if?” post which will hopefully spark your imagination and get you hopeful for 9th edition.
The premise of this article is the assumption (my own assumption so don’t take this as gospel!) that 9th edition will be based upon the 40k ruleset , sharing common phases, principals and special rules. The reasons I think this is likely is from drawing parallels with Privateer Press’ Hordes/Warmachine rule sets. Both share common rules with tweaks and can feasible play against each other cross system. This has a number of benefits:
- Easier for players to jump between systems without worrying about reading an encyclopaedia of new rules. (sell more models)
- Easier for GW to update rules and more widely test them. (Less development cost/time)
- Less base stock/tooling (even plastic injection moulding tools need to be replaced with wear and tear, something people may not realise). (Less Stock/Tooling cost)
- The 40k system is in theory a much simpler game which has more focus on shooting and positioning of models.
I would assume that GW would find a way to make the ruleset work with square bases so as to not invalidate your collection (That is the optimist in me talking!). So for the 40k virgins out there I will summarise, very briefly, the differences and parallels. With a bit of imagination think how this would apply to fantasy:
- 40k has 4 phases: Movement (NOT charges), Psychic (Magic), Shooting (Shooting!) and Assault (Charges AND Combat).
- 40K works around the principal of Armour Penetration (AP) with all weapons having an AP value which negates armour of that value (eg AP3 negates 3+ armour but has no effect on 2+ armour). All weapons would need to be given these values and WYSIWYG becomes much more important.
- Units sizes are smaller and are more in line with 40K “squads”. This fits with the way GW sell boxes of fantasy models, eg boxes of 10-20 models which make up a squad but you need several to form hordes for example in 8th edition. In summary you will likely need less models to form an army.
- Unit types are different in some cases but can be roughly thought of as: Infantry=Infantry, Cav = Cav, Bikes = Monstrous Cav, Vehicles = Chariots, Monsters = Monsters etc etc...
- Everything is a skirmisher so the rule doesn’t exist! This may be different for 9th edition as they may encourage tighter knit but less manoeuvrable units.
- Shooting does not suffer modifiers for cover etc and you rolls straight against your BS (eg BS5 hits on 2s) and you are awarded a cover save for cover.
- Buildings/Terrain are more significant/widespread (more sales!).
- Games are more objective focused and less importance is placed on outright killing. Capturing objectives with scoring units (fortitude?!) and performing specific things in a turn (kill a monster) nets you objective points (TPs) and determines the winner.
Things might not be as bad as the internet thinks, I have played a few games of 40k and with some tweaks and creative rulings I think it could be a lot of fun. It would be starkly different but it could still represent large scale armies (round base movement trays ala LotR would be a requirement!) in a fun and cinematic way! So with this all in mind I’m going to try a game of fantasy with 40k core rules, fantasy stats and a whole lot of fudging!
