9th Edition 40k Shooting Rules You Need to Know

By Wesley Floyd | July 16th, 2020 | Categories: 40k News & Articles, 9th Edition 40k, Games Workshop, Tabletop Gaming News & Rumors

9th Edition 40k is coming and it’s time for us to take a look at some of the major changes to the rules, this time with the shooting phase.

Going off of the free rules download by Warhammer Community there have been minor tweaks in areas that have a major impact in-game. Check out some of the changed highlights on the shooting Phase before your next game.

Oh and remember it looks like you may not need the new 40k Core rulebook if you plan on buying Chapter Approved 2020 because that book has all the rules you’ll need in it!

Shooting in 9th Edition 40k: Rules You Need to Know

Shooting in 9th still follows the normal sequence of 8th. Select a unit to shoot with. select weapons and their profiles, declare targets, resolve the attacks.

In contrast to 8th, there have been some slight rewording changes that free up the player when it comes to shooting. If you remember back in the old days, the way shooting was worded at the beginning of 8th, you had to shoot all of the weapons (even single shot ones). Now, players are freed up slightly with some rewording that says

“If a model has more than one ranged weapon, it can shoot all of them at the same target, or it can split the weapons between different units. Similarly, if the unit has more than one model, they can shoot at the same or different targets”.

You’ll still have to declare your shot profile and resolve all of your shots at one unit before moving onto the other unit you targeted, however.

Look Out Sir! Protection on Characters (But Not Like You Think)

For targeting characters, things have also changed. Now, you check for two conditions to be met on whether a character is targetable. If they are 9 or fewer wounds as well as being within 3″ of a unit with 3+ models or a Monster or Vehicle and not the closest model, you can’t shoot at them.

Too often, players had games where a Smash Captain would be dropping in as an outlier on a battlefield. But, because an Infiltrator squad was 3″ closer (but still nowhere near the Smash Captain) the Captain was safe. To reign things back a bit, characters basically have to actually be “lost in the crowd” in order to not be targetted. It’s more conditional but perhaps more fair.

Win The Catachan Colonel: Enter Now

Blast Weapons & Big Guns Never Tire

Blast weapons are getting some major changes with the randomness taken out of their profile when shooting at “hordes”. If you shoot at something with 6-10 models, whatever you roll, the minimum shots you’ll get is 3. If it’s 11+ models, you’ll get max shots on your profile. So what are some Blast weapons? We’ve got them listed here:

There are a lot of weapons on this list so whatever faction you play, be sure to dig into this sheet for yourself.

Pulling out some of the more interesting weapons that are “Blast” keyworded Mortars are about to be hot in the meta. You would normally think that Blast weapons are mainly low-shot anti-armor rounds. However, Mortars are cheap and spammable.

It looks like Imperial Guard Weapons Teams are about to get max shots in just about every game. They could very well be the Imperium’s go-to Screen clearer getting 18 shots per team if you shoot at the right targets.

For tanks and monsters, they will be able to shoot their guns. Yes, the days of slinging a Grot into the hull of a Leman Russ, disabling it are over. However, there is a cost of shooting. While you still get all of your shots, you have to shoot at the unit you’re engaged with as well as suffering a -1 to hit modifier.

If you like to live life on the edge, you can declare some weapons to shoot at a unit that it’s not engaged with. However, you can’t have any models within 1″ of you when the time comes to actually shoot them. That means that if you’ve got one Grot on you, sure…throw a Heavy Bolter at it and keep going. But if it’s a blob of Hormagaunts, you’re better off dedicating all of your firepower.

Whew! that’s been a lot on shooting and again, we strongly recommend you check out the new rules PDF download yourself. There are a bunch of great nuggets there to file away in the back of your mind.

As we wait for 9th Edition to finally hit the shelves, what are your thoughts on the reworked Shooting Phase? Do you like the way GW handled character targeting?