As part of a slew of reveals at todays AdeptiCon event, a huge bombshell was dropped on the tabletop community when the tenth edition of Warhammer 40,000 was revealed.
The shocking part? They announced that the essential rules required to play the game would be entirely free.
I have played many permutations of Warhammer over several decades, and seeing a change like this genuinely energises me. Despite it’s popularity, Warhammer 40k has remained a reasonably difficult sell to your average hobby gamer. Sure, once you got those claws sunk in you’d likely end up with a fan for life – but the initial investment into the setting came with the cost of learning a system that had some wild low points.
I personally jumped on board right when the third edition came to be released, rendering my existing knowledge pretty moot – and the books I had just purchased weeks earlier worthless. The idea of being able to introduce someone to the game, and wave a warm sheet of free rules under their nose is positively electrifying. Not to mention that existing players can easily access alternative rulesets for armies they have always been interested in, but perhaps were not keen on investing cash for fear that they would not like the playstyle.
This also comes with a pretty radical streamlining of the game, with promises that the rules for an army will “fit on a single sheet of paper”, while actual units on the tabletop will similarly have all their relevant details located on a single sheet also. It means that the burden of knowledge that often creates a wall for new players will be a great deal easier to scale, if only because you can say to a mate “What do these dudes do?” and they can hand you a sheet with all the details. Very reminiscent of the changes that came when the fantasy franchise of Warhammer shifted to its Age of Sigmar ruleset.
It’s a brave new world of Warhammer 40k, and after being apathetic for so long I am absolutely on board to see where this hype train leads.
Is it time to blow the dust off your little army men? Let us know in the comments or on our social media.
Known throughout the interwebs simply as M0D3Rn, Ash is bad at video games. An old guard gamer who suffers from being generally opinionated, it comes as no surprise that he is both brutally loyal and yet, fiercely whimsical about all things electronic. On occasion will make a youtube video that actually gets views. Follow him on YouTube @Bad at Video Games
