To no ones surprise,
Codex Space Marines will be hitting shelves in late July!
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| Codex Adeptus Astartes! |
At a glance, it looks like we're sticking with the hardback, no really embarrassing to have on a bookshelf look we were introducd to with the last edition of codexes. These are books for collectors, as opposed to the (far cheaper!) magazine style codexes we have when I first started.
In each codex we'll have what we've come to expect:
- Warlord traits
- Relics (read special items)
- Psychic powers
- Objectives
But the newcomer to 8th Edition is the unique Stragems for each army. What this effectively means is that all armies will have
another layer of complexity on top of 7th.
Which is really an excellent thing. The core game play has been streamlined, leading to some more interesting things we can do with layered rules on top. It becomes far easier to teach, as you can simply start with core rules, and then start adding on these layers as players get more experience.
Picking powers and traits is back, which means high level cheese mongering loved by the tourney crowd, or fluff tweaking as loved by the role playing crowd. Random rolling was only loved by that one guy with the gambling addiction and always smells of marmite and cigarettes. Glad to be rid of that.
The most welcome addition, and one I sincerely hope they carry through all the factions, are the unique sub-faction rules. This is where you find your Imperial Fists, Inyanden or even different Dark Eldar Kabals!
I wonder where the line between faction and sub-faction begins though, as the release schedule for the very near future is as follows:
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| Death Guard, Chaos Space Marines and... Grey Knights? |
Death Guard are coming in with their own codex, with what really should be a sub-faction within Codex Chaos Space Marines. As far as I know there are only a few unique units within the Death Guard: Plague Marines, the scary Bloat Drone, a bell banner bearer and Poxwalkers. And poxwalkers are just cultists with no ranged weapons.
There must be some units coming down the line later, and I can't help but think of the Thousand Sons who have a whole army list to themselves out of three units plus characters. But then why do those two factions get unique codexes, whereas Alpha Legion makes do with the vanilla Chaos Space Marine book.
Nit picking really, and this is simply the Chaotic argument of asking why do Dark Angels/Blood Angels/Space Puppies get their own codex. I get that in the fluff they are specifically non-codex... but certainly not to the extent of Black Templars. And describing your Chaos Warband as non-codex is the same as describing a boy band as having terrible music.
Grey Knights is somewhat of an odd choice, the faction being an anciliary one in the fluff. There are two ways this launch for them could go.
The first is the same units as in the Index with the current list of models. That could work, as Grey knights still look good when compared to the vanilla marines, and have a unique flavour beyond Marine with wolf pelt/hood and robe/blood drops.
The second is a revamping of the whole line, justified fluff-wise by them emerging from the shadows to lead the charge against Chaos corrupted worlds. It would make sense, and would certainly drag me back to playing 40K Paladins.
In other news, we're expecting 10 codex releases before the end of the year.
Begin rampant speculation of which ones:
- Space Marines (Confirmed)
- Death Guard (Confirmed)
- Grey Knights (Confirmed)
- Chaos Space Marines (Confirmed)
- Thousand Sons
- Ynnari Eldar
- Orks
- Tau
- Necrons
- Adeptus Mechanicum
There's an FAQ of sorts posted on
Warhamer Community, but it's more geared towards newer players rather than grizzled neck beard veterans such as people who read blogs. If you can scrape more information juice from that fruit, let me know.
Other than that, one day of term left. Until next time!
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