Believe it or not, there was a time when one writer thought 8th edition 40k was going to be great and was writing all the reasons it was better than 7E. One year later, some of his thoughts have changed.
Jstove here, and after I got back from exfoliating my fingers with sharp rocks at the climbing gym this morning, which sucked, I found an email in my inbox from the Cat Man himself asking me to do the one year follow up on that article.
Naturally, I was totally enthusiastic, and by that I mean, “Oh boy, let’s see how full of crap I was!”
So here’s the Year in Fear, my dumb predictions about 8E and how they actually turned out.
Formations & Unit Tax
Formations were an awful addition to the game and it’s pretty great that they are gone. Some formations were auto-include, and some armies were just bad because they didn’t have decent formations or no formations at all.
I remember back in 7th edition when I had a nid army that used the artillery bug formation, which isn’t even that busted, but with a handful of flyrants and dakkafexes up front and an exocrine in the back just dropping bombs that couldn’t miss, I only lost one game (to a tau army on an open field) the whole edition. Formations got pretty nutty, I was glad to see them go, and I’m still glad they’re gone.
Unfortunately, the unit tax did not die with formations, it just stuck around in its new incarnation. While you’re free to use whatever detachment you want now if you don’t throw 3 troops into a battalion you’re going to be down a gang of command points.
Naturally, this favors armies that had cheap troops that they were going to use them anyway, like Chaos cultists, Orks, and buggy bugs. Like every other edition for the last five or ten years it seems, the middle of the road space marine suffers- He gets his codex first, it doesn’t age well, and his obligatory troops are expensive. Oh, the hardships the marine player must endure for his poster boy status. If only GW loved him as much as Black Library does.
Free Summoning
I said that the death of free summoning was going to be great, and that was a no-brainer, because it was and it is. Since you have to pay reinforcement points for extra dudes that you magic onto the table from spells and stratagems in the majority of cases, we’ve seen the death of the screwball free model abuse list, and good riddance.
Thank you, 8E. Granted, there are still rare cases where Chaos armies can get free zombies and cultists with Tide of Traitors and Thriller Stratagem, but these have been curbed.
Eternal Garbage
Eternal Warrior is dead and I was happy to see it go, and still am. There are items and models that have “diet eternal warrior” as a rule, they take only 1 damage or -1 damage from any weapon that hits them, but as a rule now, when you shoot stuff with big guns or punch it with big fists, it dies. That’s pretty much objectively good. Using a 2+/3++ Eternal Warrior tank to shield your whole army and get goofy with wound allocation was a garbage meta.
I didn’t have a problem with people playing an army in the most optimal way possible to be competitive, but I do have a problem with the optimum way to play being a dumb, stagnant, one trick pony that relies on abusing wound allocation and herohammer tanks to provide tons of artificial resilience to a list. That got old pretty fast. Good work, 8E!
List Stagnation
- Every imperial list had Coteaz.
- Every Chaos list had Fateweaver.
- 40k was the Baldy and Bigbird show.
There are still fat meta hosers and obvious winners in the 8E, but there’s always going to be a new kid on the block to beat. What’s been pretty great about 8E is that the efforts to fight list stagnation have been visible and apparent. It’s only been a year into the game and we’ve already fixed/killed smite spam, flyer spam, plagueburst spam, gotta go fast turn 1 drop and pop slingshots, flyrant spam, and free zombie/cultist reinforcement abuse.
Naturally, all of these spammy jerk lists were the symptoms of weak game design and issues that the boys in Nottingham should have thought of before they printed the codex, but the important thing is they plugged the hole and righted the ship, with a little help from their new corps of playtesters, the most handsome and knowledgeable of which are obviously the American ones.
Vehicle Rules Sucked
They did.
I was right.
I’m still right.
Toughness and wounds are better.
Being able to shoot any gun from any point on the model is pretty goofy, and I’d slap anyone that tried to fire a volcano cannon from a shadowsword’s front left track, but overall it’s been a long road from the objectively awful 3rd edition rules, to the band-aid hull point rules, to finally getting vehicles lumped into toughness and wounds.
Remember when monstrous creatures were just BETTER than vehicles, and now they actually stand a chance because vehicles are basically the same thing? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
8E Will Be Sigmarized
It definitely was, and I think it worked out pretty great. There are still some key differences, but it’s nice to see that GW got us all to play Age of Sigmar, one way or the other. I just wish they’d give up on shoving power points and go back to matched play points.
Good thing Battlescribe’s got our back.
Balance Between Shooting & Melee
Well, that big FAQ just crapped on alpha strike charges, so anything I said about balancing between stabby and shooty is still out in left field. I don’t think it’s going to be that bad. Especially since Kraken genestealers can still opportunistic advance into a turn 1 charge anyway.
We’ll just be generous and assume I was totally wrong about melee and shooting ever being on even footing. Also, if we’re honest with ourselves, shooting vs melee isn’t a conversation about rules, it’s a conversation about terrain.
Primaris Marines Will Make Baby Marines Obsolete
I was right and they didn’t.
Hellblasters aren’t good because they’re a Primaris unit, they’re good because it’s ten guys with plasma guns that hit on 3s. If you had that unit with cheaper 1 wound marines, you’d use it.
Primaris marines not only failed to replace one wound marines, they’re so bad that they need a whole new codex to fix them.
Thank god for Deathwatch.
8E Will Ruin Horus Heresy
It didn’t. 30k is fine. People who play 30k still play 30k and the events still draw players. Alan Bligh has been entombed in a Leviathan dreadnought. He’s over there sanding Felblade parts with his siege claw.
The funniest part about the 8E doom and gloom surrounding 30k was that a bunch of the trolls that didn’t want 8E in 30k tried it, flipped, and now want 8E 30k.
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