Discover the 10 biggest rule changes in Warhammer 40k 11th edition as we break down the updates, strategy shifts, and meta impacts you need to know now.
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The Long War: Episode 513
Article Table of Contents:
Show Summary:
This week, the crew covers the new 11th edition news along with other hobby news. Here are the key takeaways, section by section:
- (00:00-10:05) The crew opens with the usual Long War banter, covering sentient toilets, Dungeon Crawler Carl, travel misery, audiobooks, Gundam graphic novels, and Mike’s recent firearms competition run, including a third-place finish in his division at the Colorado State Championship.
- (10:06-12:05) The first Warhammer news item is the new 40k 11th edition Armageddon starter set pricing: $295 USD, $360 CAD, and $545 AUD, with pre-orders expected June 6 and release on June 20. They guys note it looks like one of the biggest-value starter boxes GW has pushed.
- (12:06-22:31) Bandai’s new Gundam Assemble IP policy gets a long discussion. Sure, cracking down on scans, recasts, and straight-up theft, but they worry the wording could hammer small creators making tokens, widgets, proxies, or hobby accessories, especially if enforcement relies on Etsy-style keyword takedowns.
- (23:36-31:55) They react to the new Warhammer 40k 11th edition hype trailer, praising the animation, Emperor visuals, Tyranid biomass shots, trench warfare scenes, and grimdark tone. The only real gripe is that the narration may overdo the classic “grim darkness of the far future” intro instead of letting the visuals breathe.
- (32:13-36:52) The core rules discussion starts with one of the biggest changes: charges and engagement range. Charges are now more open-ended, closer to “charge the world and see what you reach,” while engagement range expands to two inches, which will seriously affect move blocking, staging, pile-ins, consolidations, and how Fly units maneuver.
- (35:21-37:14) Fly, monsters, and vehicles get new movement wrinkles. Flying over terrain or models now requires declaring a special movement mode and losing two inches of movement, while monsters and vehicles can move over smaller models, creating some spicy new positioning math on the tabletop.
- (37:14-41:36) Several core mechanics get cleaned up or complicated, depending on your tolerance for rules goblin nonsense. Stratagem stacking is capped at one per unit per phase, coherency now keeps every model within nine inches of every other model in the unit, and damage allocation has a new save-bundling system that the hosts think may create weird edge cases, especially around attached characters.
- (41:36-45:00) Aircraft now function more like air strikes than board pieces. They start in reserves, enter with an ingress move, do their thing, and then return to strategic reserves at the end of the opponent’s turn. The hosts like the concept but wonder how hover-style flyers and transport aircraft will be handled.
- (45:00-50:26) Overwatch, transports, and Battleshock all change in meaningful ways. Overwatch now uses “snapshooting” and can’t reroll hits, destroyed transports now resolve passenger placement before explosion damage, and Battleshock sticks around until the unit passes a test, making morale effects and action denial much more relevant.
- (51:21-57:42) Leader rules may be one of the sneakiest big shifts. Characters attached during army muster remain part of that unit for rules purposes, even if the bodyguard dies, which helps characters keep their buffs but may create wild interactions with Necron resurrection and similar mechanics. Support characters also must join units, and detachments now appear to use a point-style system that could let players mix rules packages between games.
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