The Gaunt is out of the bag – Leviathan is the jam-packed launch box for the upcoming edition of Warhammer 40,000. You’ve seen all the fancy models by now – fresh new Tyranids by the dozen, hunting down the very finest of the Adeptus Astartes – but what else do you get in this enormous boxed set?
Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan
You only get one book in Leviathan – but as the name suggests, it’s a monster of biblical proportions. This luxury 392-page hardback magnum opus has a black ribbon bookmark and a full-art cover with spot gloss effects – and it won’t be available anywhere else in this configuration.
The book is divided into several major sections: the Warhammer Hobby, Dark Imperium background, the Forces of the 41st Millennium, the Core Rules, Combat Patrol rules, and Crusade Rules for the Tyrannic War.
The Warhammer Hobby section comes first, explaining the fun of collecting, building, painting, and playing with your miniatures. Dark Imperium and The Forces of the 41st Millennium each offer a deep dive on the state of play in the galaxy, examining its history, its major players, and key locations.
The Core Rules, meanwhile, are a 60-page section which explain everything you need to know to throw down on the tabletop, with revised and simplified rules which make for fast-paced and thrilling battles in the grim darkness of the far future.
Cleverly, the Core Rules section has its own separate page numbers – this guarantees that no matter which edition of the rules you look at, whether they’re in this volume or other editions yet to be released, you’ll be able to cross-check rules on the same page number.
Combat Patrol is a new, simplified way to play Warhammer 40,000. It balances the Combat Patrol boxes available for each faction into their own game mode, granting certain units extra abilities and removing some from others.
It’s the fastest, simplest way to get your forces onto the tabletop – all you need are these rules, and one Combat Patrol per player. As it happens, a portion of the Tyranids and the Space Marines you’ll find in Leviathan can be used to form a full Combat Patrol for each faction!
Then there are the Crusade Rules. These will be released as a separate supplement book later this year, but for now this book is the place to find them. It’s a comprehensive guide to campaigning in the Fourth Tyrannic War – including the story of the conflict, rules for building and developing your own Crusade army, and a full swathe of narrative missions and upgrades specific to the Tyrannic War.
While it’s especially suited to playing through with your Space Marines and Tyranids, the Tyrannic War Crusade rules are entirely usable by every faction. There’s no better way to play Warhammer 40,000 than gaming through an exciting narrative campaign to decide the fate of a sector!
Chapter Approved: Leviathan Mission Deck
Then there are the mission cards. Building on the success of the Chapter Approved Grand Tournament Mission Packs and taking inspiration from the Tempest of War cards released last year, this deck represents the way to quickly and cleverly build exciting, unexpected, and well-balanced missions for your games.
We explained how the cards work yesterday – read more about them here.
There are 66 cards in the deck, breaking down as follows: five Deployment cards, nine Primary Mission cards, 12 Mission Rules cards, 16 Attacker Secondary Mission cards, 16 Defender Secondary Mission cards, four Attacker Gambit cards, and four Defender Gambit cards.
On top of that, you get six 40mm Objective Markers as sturdy card tokens, and a 10-page rules insert for using your deck. Add that to all those lovely models and you’re in for a shedload of fun!
Head back to the Warhammer Fest reveal hub to see what else is in store for Warhammer 40,000 – and a whole host of other games.
