‘Simplified, not simple’ isn’t an empty sentiment. It’s a deep design philosophy that touches all parts of the new edition of Warhammer 40,000 – including how to muster an army.
The Detachment system has been a mainstay of Warhammer 40,000 for decades, in one form or another. Battlefield Roles and the old Force Organisation chart were originally intended to help people structure their armies, but always came at the cost of arbitrary restrictions and exceptions. It served the game well, but Battlefield Roles are out – and major new flexibility is in.
For the new edition, the rules team have tried to incentivise the use of a wider range of units by ensuring that each one has a cool, unique ability to bring to the field. Troops are no longer a tax you must pay to unlock the units you actually want to take – but you’ll absolutely still be seeing plenty of classic front line squads showing up on the field.
Battle Size
There are now three main army sizes: Incursion (1,000 points), Strike Force (2,000 points), and Onslaught (3,000 points). 500-point games are still perfectly possible, of course, but the Warhammer 40,000 Core Rules are optimised for slightly larger forces than that.*
Power Levels are a thing of the past – points are now the order of the day.
Army Roster
Rosters can be anything you want them to be: you will be able to download blank, printable roster sheets from Warhammer Community, use the upcoming new Warhammer 40,000 app, or even write it all down on a piece of paper. Just make sure your opponent can see it before you start.
Select Faction
This step hasn’t changed – pick your favourite army and prepare for battle. This step also decides your Faction keyword.
Note that it’s quite rare to pick allies in most game modes – it’s assumed that your force will be drawn from a single faction.** However, if you want to play larger games representing the combined forces of, say, an Imperial Indomitus Crusade fleet, you absolutely can in a casual setting.
Select Detachment Rules
Here’s where the differences begin to show themselves. Instead of choosing a subfaction or constructing your own, you now choose a single set of Detachment rules for your whole army. These include special abilities, Enhancements, Stratagems, and unit restrictions.
For instance, you might be playing as the Gladius Task Force of the Adeptus Astartes. Your faction gives you the Oath of Moment army rule (more on this next week!) while your Detachment gives you access to six unique Stratagems – on top of the core group in the main rules – as well as four exclusive Enhancements for your Space Marine characters. It also bags you the Combat Doctrines ability, which allows you to pick from three powerful doctrines during your Command phase.
If you chose to fight with a different Detachment, you’d replace the Strategems, Enhancements and Combat Doctrines with those of the new Detachment.
Detachment choice will very rarely be tied to an army colour scheme. So while Ultramarines might be the theoretical and practical masters of the Gladius Task Force, other Chapters can use it too – and the same will be true of many other detachments as they are added into the game. This also means that you can try multiple Detachments with a single army. You are not going to be locked into a single Detachment just because you painted your army blue, or red, or yellow.
This is an incredibly flexible system that will allow for many weird and wonderful armies in future codexes…
Pick units
Using the Faction keyword you picked earlier, you now select the units you want to include in your army, with the following stipulations:
You must include at least one CHARACTER
You can only include one of each named EPIC HERO
You can only include up to three units of each datasheet
However, you can include up to six units of each datasheet with the BATTLELINE or DEDICATED TRANSPORT keywords
Each CHARACTER can only have one Enhancement, you can’t include more than three Enhancements in total, and these must all be different
And that’s it!
Select Warlord
You now choose one CHARACTER as your leader. They gain the WARLORD keyword, and you’re ready to select your missions.
There’s a real power in the simplicity of the new system. Now, no Detachment will ever need more than a couple of pages to cover all its unique rules and restrictions, meaning there will never again be any need to waste time flicking through codex pages to find the right rule.
From the very start of this new edition we’ll be releasing dozens of packs of affordable index cards, which will collect all your rules and datacards in one place for easy reference. These will also be available free online and in the new app.
* In fact smaller games can be catered for perfectly with the Combat Patrol format, which we’ll take a good look at later on.
** Though exemptions are in place for classic cross-faction combos like summoned Chaos Daemons, Freeblade Knights, or Brood Brothers.