Stale like day old pizza, or fresh from the Warhammer oven? Now that all of 40k’s factions essentially have a codex, what does this mean for the meta?
8th edition had a rocky start between the overcosted Primaris models and an incredibly stale Castellan meta. However, now, we find ourselves in a very good spot. Once all of the armies settle into their books a bit more, what could happen to the meta? Will it grow stale, or stay fresh like a piping hot 40k pizza?
White Dwarf Supplements Will Continue
We’ve already seen the Crimson Fists and Imperial Assassins get support in White Dwarf. Plus, GW has already said that they’d be showing an equal amount of love to both AoS and 40k. We feel like they don’t expect to stop putting rules inside of these magazines any time soon. While they may not have enough rules to fit into a codex, it’s still enough to shake up the meta. For example, every Imperial list now is beginning to use the Assassin Stratagem that lets them cherry pick whichever Assassin they want assuming they have the reinforcement points.
Plus Ynnari are getting their rules next month, which will leave only the Inquisition without any update rules in 40k since 8th launched.
Campaign Books are Becoming More Popular
Vigilus Ablaze is the second book in the Vigilus campaign. This book is responsible for giving Chaos the overhaul it needed. However, out of two books now, there are still Necrons and Tau that are untouched. We feel like GW may have something in the works for them especially. Looking at what comes inside of these books is definitely enough to shake up the meta. For example, some of the most popular detachments we see on the competitive tables are the Dread Waaagh! and Deliverance Broodsurge detachments for Orks and GSC out of the first book. Each faction covered in the Vigilus book has a couple of pages that give us new Stratagems, relics, and Warlord traits. If GW can manage to pump two to three out every year, that’ll be plenty of new rules to keep the competitive fire burning.
We know there are more “warzone” books on the way from GW’s Post Preview Q&A at Adepticon as well. So if Vigilus was any example of how we’ll get new rules, we can only imagine what is in store from these new expansion books.
The ITC Can Always Take Matters Into Their Own Hands
The ITC is an extremely popular framework for 40k that we see dominate competitive play. The ITC is responsible for creating missions including primary and secondary objectives to score points in the game. If you’ve never played a game with the ITC rules set before, basically, you want a list that can score objectives. You don’t always want to just bring the things that are only really good at killing. You’ll find yourself at a huge points deficit when the game ends. So, if the ITC began to see things get a bit staler, we could always see new objectives hit the packets that move players in a certain direction.
The most recent update that came to the ITC was the addition of a few secondary objectives.
Gang Busters, Engineers, Pick your Poison, and King of the Hill are some very niche objectives that a player may need to tailor their list to score them. For example, King of the Hill says:
King of the Hill: At the end of the Battle Round the player who chose this secondary scores 1 point if they have two non-character, multimodel, units wholly within 6 inches of the center of the table.
For a list to be able to pull this off, they need AT LEAST to chunky units to be sitting at the center of the table. The best things for that would be two Bullgyryn squads or maybe some Grotesques. You definitely wouldn’t want to sacrifice your Genestealers to the center of the table for a few turns.
Codex V2 Across All Factions
Lastly, we could always see GW sweep back through the factions and re-update their codex. The sky is the limit for exactly how many changes they could make. If things got bad, GW could always swoop in and reverse the points cost on all the units that people are constantly taking with the points of models that are gathering dust at home.
What do you think about the meta currently? Where do you think the meta will be going in a year? What’s one unit you’d like to see become competitive again? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group.
About the Author: Wesley Floyd
Wesley Floyd
Job Title: Staff Writer
Joined: 2018
Socials: @RealmbrushPainting
About Wesley Floyd: Wes has been in the Warhammer hobby since 2015 and joined the Spikey Bits writing team in 2018. He is known for his satirist takes on trending topics and imaginative yet amazingly affordable hobby solutions to painting Warhammer miniatures.
Imperial fanboy, tabletop fanatic, and the self-proclaimed King of Sprues. He knows for a fact that Mephiston red is the best-tasting paint and is the commission painting equivalent of a Wendy’s 4 for $4. If you like what he writes and want to contact him or have your tabletop minatures painted (to a mostly okayish standard), message him on Instagram.
