Its been a wild week from GW. Let’s take a quick look back at everything we officially know about 9th Edition Warhammer 40k now!
Games Workshop has gone through different outlets like Warhammer Community and Twitch to reveal tidbits about what’s on the way to 40k. While rumors are still popping up, here is everything that’s been confirmed from the source of what’s on the way. This is information you can trust.
Three Weeks of New 9th Edition 40k Rules In One Post!
Everything We OFFICIALLY Know About 9th Edition 40k
We’ll be pulling out the main talking points. But like anything you want to know the full scoop on, be sure to check out the FAQ below for yourself!
Every Army & Every Game Has Changed
No matter which faction you play, you haven’t been untouched. While bigger factions like Space Marines will probably have way more changes than the Ynnari overall, each game should feel different.
This is probably because things like terrain work, the amount of CP we get (which is supposed to be more), etc.
Core Rules Are Free For Anyone
GW looks like they’re turning over a new leaf in this edition releasing the rules for free. If we had to take a guess, this will come as an online PDF download. The appeal for the full rulebook outside the core rules would obviously be new missions and lore.
We’ve Finally Got a Timeline on the New FW Indexes
We saw that the Forge World Indexes are getting reprinted with updated rules. We just didn’t know when they’d actually drop. However, now we know that 9th Edition has to release before these books hit the shelves.
Your Codexes & Psychic Awakening Books Aren’t Obsolete
If you’ve got a codex and a Psychic Awakening book in your army, don’t worry. You’ll still be able to use all the content from them according to GW.
Guaranteed Changes Coming
While we will be starting out with compatible books, at some point a new Codex is going to drop. Along with that, we should be seeing points shifted more. But speaking of points, it’ll be toward a broader spectrum of different game sizes.
Everyone knows the standard game size for 40k is 2,000 points, but now the game is balance across more sizes. Want to play a quick hour game? Go for it. New balance brings new options, you no longer have to dedicate huge amounts of time to play, you can squeeze in quick games when you want to!
There’s going to be a new game size lingo going on in 9th Edition with Strike Force being the classic 2k points. If you look at the different points brackets for your games, you’ll be given a maximum number of Detachments you can take. Essentially, nothing has changed for 2,000 pt games so don’t worry.
Giving us a better picture of how long new games will take, we can see that a 2k game will require about three hours. Don’t get all caught up in points going up across the board! Your tournament-standard games are still going to take a hot minute to unfold.
While we’re on the topic of game size, Stu Black on Twitch mentioned that his 2,000 pt Space Marine army essentially lost out on a single Squad. That should give you a rough idea on how the points will be going up. It’s nothing astronomical.
Table Size Will Scale Depending on the Game
Of course, these are only the minimum size requirements for your battlefields, so whether you’re using a 6′x4′ table with a Realm of Battle board, linking two, four or six 22″x30″ Killzone boards together according to the battle size you’re playing, or just using a dining room table, you’re good to go. In fact, most dining room tables should be able to accommodate a Strike Force game!
One hugely important note to make is that it’s now confirmed that table sizes will be scaled for points. You might have noticed that the Strike Force (2,000 pt) game calls for a 3.6667 X 5 ft table which is technically smaller than a 4 X 6 table. Don’t worry, as this is the MINIMUM battlefield size. You can still totally use a 4 X 6.
GW All But Confirms a Box Set
With an answer like that, they’ve all but confirmed a new Box Set dropping with 9th Edition. Could it be the new Primaris and Necrons we saw during the previews?
9th Edition Still Going To Have Regular Marines
GW isn’t killing off the old Marines in the new Edition. They’ve said they’ll be ready for play as soon as the new rules hit. With that said, there’s no mention of any new single-wound Marines coming so take that for what it’s worth. Plus, you can still technically play the units that got sent to Warhammer Legends (AKA they’re final resting place).
9th Could Be Closer Than We Thought
GW also said that the release is just a few weeks off. Keyword being “weeks”. If you’re pumped but need to give your wallet a rest, be sure you’re prepared for this Edition to hit sooner than you might’ve first expected.
9th Edition 40k FAQ: GW Reveals What’s Changing & More
In case you want to read the entirety of the FAQs, you can take a look at them all laid out for you.
GW Reveals Rules Key & New Phase of the Game
We’ve been given a taste of how each phase of the game will be broken down. From what we can tell, there should be about a page or two of info on each phase. Unfortunately, the picture is too blurry to read any specific changes to the Movement and Psychic phase. However, things looks streamlined and easy to read with red bullet points for sequencing and more
They also broke down what a basic Battle Round will look like and we can actually read this one! Check out the first phase in the list…
The Command phase is a quick new addition to the turn sequence. In this phase, Battle-forged armies will acquire new Command points and spend the ones they have on certain Stratagems.
If you play Age of Sigmar, you’re probably thinking that the Command Phase is just the 40k version of a Hero Phase. With a description like “Both players muster strategic resources and use tactical abilities,” this sounds exactly like the start of an AoS Hero Phase where you net CP at the start of your turn and pop certain command abilities on your characters.
All of the other steps in the turn look to be unchanged. But if you notice the table on the right, it mentions “out of turn abilities” like moving, casting a psychic power, shooting, charge or fight. That’s a mechanic that had almost no presence in 8th Edition so it’ll be interesting to see just how often this “out of sequence thing” will come up.
Smiting something in the charge phase, for example, sounds like a really nasty way for a Psyker to Overwatch! Or perhaps now shooting rules will apply to any shooting type attack made out of phase like Overwatch, or even smite in the Psychic phase.
Crusade System Coming With New relics & Lasting Damage Effects
From humble beginnings, your army will grow in size and strength as you spend resources you’ve earned on adding reinforcements while your units unlock new skills from their hard-won experience in battle.
Over the course of a campaign, your Crusade force will forge its own narrative, winning glory and earning enmities with each fresh victory and defeat. Heroes will rise from among your ranks, earning great renown or the honour of bearing mighty relics
One of the relics, which as far as we know are strictly limited to Crusade play (sorry Matched Play guys), is a Xenotech Digital laser pistol. All you have to do is hit and you’ve just scored yourself D3 mortal wounds on the target. That’s bananas.
As the game progresses, your units might come out unscathed or pretty beat up. If you play campaign games like Necromunda, this shouldn’t be anything new to you. As you finish your games you’ll have to roll on a table and, looking at the one result, we have Walking Wounded. You’ll subtract one from pretty much anything to do with movement in your games as long as this applies to your squad.
Build Up Your Campaign Force
To take part in a Crusade campaign, you first need to create an Order of Battle – a list of units drawn from one of seven factions (Imperium, Chaos, Aeldari, Tyranids, Orks, Necrons, T’au Empire) with a maximum Power Rating of 50.* This is your Crusade force’s initial Supply Limit, from which you can choose an army list to field in each battle. Your Supply Limit can grow in size as you gain resources over the course of the campaign, enabling you to gradually recruit new units to strengthen the existing pool at your disposal.
As you gain more resources, you can spend them on different things. One of those things is opening up your supply lines even more and giving you more spending power for units to add in your army.
You’ll Keep Track Of Unit Status on Cards
So how do you track progress?
Each unit has its own Crusade card to keep track of its progress, experience, upgrades and bonuses, as well as any Battle Scars they’ve picked up along the way. As the campaign continues, your Characters and units will become increasingly defined by the battles they’ve fought in and the narrative you’ve created for them, making it an entirely different gaming experience. As if that wasn’t already awesome enough, each new codex released in the future will include a wealth of additional, thematic options for that army specifically for Crusade campaigns for even more narrative-driven punch.
40k 9th Edition Matched Play & Points Changes
As we’ve talked about before, your Command Points don’t depend on detachments anymore. Instead, both players will be given the same CP regardless of faction. For 2,000 points which is easily the most popular game size for Matched Play, we’ll all be getting 12 CP. Custodes players can breathe easy as they don’t have to ration 5CP in their games anymore!
GW Has Their Own Secondary Objectives
Yet even though the missions each share a primary objective, the secondary objectives are asymmetrical, and are actually chosen by the players themselves. The primary represents the shared story on the battlefield, while the secondaries represent your army’s theme and help balance tough matchups.
If you’re familiar with the ITC format in 40k, you should be no stranger to Secondary Objectives. Well, it looks like GW caught on and came up with their own Secondaries that players will choose between.
While the ITC missions give you a max of 4 points per Secondary, the way this is worded, it seems like you can get a max of 15 points for each Secondary. That’s astronomically higher than what we’re used to seeing scored.
There are a number of categories of secondary objectives you may choose from pre-game, but you can’t select more than one from any given category. Take a look at some examples from the standard categories available to all players (don’t worry, we’ll see faction-specific ones in the future).
A new Psychic Power is on the way called Mental Interrogation with a WC4. Keep your eyes peeled for more on this as we get closer to 9th’s release.
It looks like each objective is worth more than one Victory Points as we were talking about earlier. But what’s really cool about all of these Secondaries that were teased, we know that faction-specific Secondaries are also on the way. It’ll be interesting to see if the ITC will adopt these Secondaries or if these two Secondary lists will be kept apart from each other.
New Mechanics Hinted At For In-Game Depth
The new edition also adds actions to Warhammer 40,000. Traditionally, your models could either stand near objectives or shoot/punch. No longer! Now you can perform rituals, plant homing beacons, raise banners on key objectives and more. This creates dynamic moments where you may need to decide between firing at the enemy or bravely accomplishing a mission.
We don’t know a lot on what this will look like. However, if we had to take a guess, this will be some kind of trade-off system. For example, if you raise a banner on a key objective, you probably won’t be able to shoot. However, you’ll score more points. That’s just our shot in the dark.
Points Values Going Up
We’ve also gotten a points teaser and it looks like Intercessors and Cultists are both going up two points per model. In the grand scheme of things, Cultist spam lists are about to get a lot more expensive in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, lists that rely on Intercessors might also have to drop a unit to make up for the points increase. Both units are going up three and two points per model respectively.
Finally, as part of developing the new edition, points values were reviewed and have been adjusted UP across every faction. This may sound odd at first, but it yields several benefits. Firstly, games will play faster with, generally speaking, smaller armies on either side. This also makes starting a fresh army for the new edition a more accessible, quicker experience. It also means there’s room for more granularity when establishing how powerful one unit or ability is compared to another, and a global points reset ensures everyone starts in the same place on Day 1, with no established meta or ‘best army’.
New 9th Edition 40k Command Points & Detachments Rules
We’ve seen this chart before, but GW also added in the Power Level rating-equivalent for points cost. We know that a 2k game sits somewhere around 200PL and will always net both players 12CP for example.
Detachments Now Cost CPs But There’s More Depth Than You Think
So, if you don’t earn Command points by taking additional Detachments, do they still interact with each other in any way? The answer is yes, but how they do so has been turned on its head. Instead of earning you Command points, each Detachment you take will instead COST you Command points. However, it’s worth noting that the Command points spent on a ‘core’ Detachment (Patrol, Battalion or Brigade) are refunded if it also includes your Warlord, so your first Detachment is usually free. An army drawn exclusively from the same Faction and comprising a single Detachment is the most strategically flexible on account of their experience fighting alongside one another, and therefore offers the most Command points.
There are a few things to note about all of this… First, all Detachments are going to cost CP. However, if your Warlord is in one of the core Detachments:
- Patrol
- Battalion
- Brigade
Then your CPs are refunded. That means that 99.99% of the time, your first Detachment is always free. On top of that Dedicated Transports are back. Now, Transports will be unlocked for Infantry units in the Battalion. That means that if you want to spam those Repulsors you’ll have to take an Infantry unit for each.
You can still play your Soup lists if you want as well. However, each Detachment is going to cost CPs.
Another note to make from the Warhammer Twitch stream was that Stu said doubling up on Detachments was also going to cost double the CP. “If you want to take two Patrol Detachments, then there’s a cost associated with bringing that second one.”
It’ll be interesting to see why someone would want to bring two Battalions seeing that the bonus being Dedicated Transport isn’t exactly something you need a duplicate of.
Command Phase Details Spotted & CP Regeneration
Looking at the new Command Phase (which takes place before the Movement Phase), you’ll be netting 1Cp before anything begins. This is exactly the way the Hero Phase works in Age of Sigmar. Also, in case you were wondering, the GW team on the Twitch stream also mentioned that units and relics that give you CP for taking them (i.e Guilliman/ BA’s Veritas Vitae) are unchanged and will work exactly how it’s described.
More “Core” Stratagems Added
Cut Them Down is a deterrent to keep shooty lists from always falling back. You roll a D6 for each one of YOUR models and for each 6, you get to deal a mortal wound.
Stu on the Twitch Stream said, “don’t run away from big blobs like Boyz”.
That’s all we know on how Detachments and CPs will interact with one another. It’s interesting to see how Detachments no longer net CP but actually take away from your pool.
All About Missions
Missions will come with different Primary and Secondary objectives with a key note being that they are capped at 15 points. This is to prevent one alpha-strike army from securing the early game and ultimately controlling the board all the way through the end.
If you look at this mission-specific Secondary, you can have units in your army start an action at the end of the movement phase. Once it rolls back around to your Command Phase, you’ll score a certain number of points.
Keeping the same deployment as we’ve seen before, they’ve laid out guides on where to place objectives. This looks A LOT like ITC content that’s currently super popular.
To further reinforce the distinction between each size of game, there are also different mission sets designed for each to replicate the kind of military operations that would likely be performed by forces of that size, ranging from covert raids to massed assaults. In matched play alone, there are 18 Eternal War missions to choose from (or randomly generate). Here’s a sneak preview of a Combat Patrol mission pack and one of the missions in full…
So not only will missions vary depending on point size, but we’re getting 18 total missions to choose from. It’s neat that GW took into consideration the size of the force being played and how it would make sense for them to operate in the fluff. For example, you’d see a 500 pt force maybe clearing buildings in a sector for the larger force. Meanwhile, the larger force would be tasked with taking key vantage points, etc.
Taking on a vibe of the same way objectives work in AoS, Incisive Attack is going to be themed around clearing sectors and moving on. Once you hold an objective, you don’t have to keep bodies on the point to keep holding it. That’s a huge help to elite armies like Custodes, Knights, and even some Space Marine lists. From a fluff standpoint, it also makes sense. What’s the point of sitting on a point if you know it’s already been cleared and you’re looking for something in particular?
Definitely neat to see 40k evolve and take on some elements of Age of Sigmar, which is an outstanding game.
40k Army Builder App Goes Live Same Day As Pre-Orders
On top of all this foundational 9th Edition news, GW mentioned that the app will be going live the same day as pre-orders.
On the same day that the Warhammer 40,000 pre-orders go live, a new app will be launched alongside it, providing several cool features to help you, including a full matched play army builder. The new app will do a number of things to assist players with their games, but one of the most useful will be the ability to build army lists using the updated points values and Detachments.
Before we even get a rulebook in our hands. it looks like we’ll be able to start plugging units into the app and seeing their updated points cost!
At the end of the day, 9th Edition is looking to be even more expansive than 8th. With a new phase of the game looking like a grimdark Hero Phase from AoS and Crusade being an awesome in-depth campaign system, we’ve got high hopes on everything. The fact that points going up might be concerning to some of you. However, it means that games should play faster and points can be adjusted more fairly when things need to get tweaked.
With all of this on the table, what do you think 9th Edition Warhammer 40k is going to be like? Do you think it’ll just be a “perfected” form of 8th Edition?
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.
