BREAKING NEWS: New Warhammer 40K 9th Edition video released

Well not really breaking news, but I'm playing catch up and I like to think I add something beyond just click bait news.

Hello chaps and chapettes, we're back in the classroom to discuss a recent video release for the new edition.

You know how video games and movies release trailers to get you all hyped up. Well Games Workshop have released a trailer for 9th Edition to get you all hyped up.

And it works too.

Go watch it now on Warhammer Community, then come back here for the analysis. Or stay and watch the embedded version here!

We start with Guardsmen doing what they do best, holding the Emperor's damn line, and getting one shot killed by literally anything else in the 40K universe.

Now I'm sure you've noticed the "controversial" or "progressive" addition to this trailer. And I'm right with you on this one. I know exactly how you feel about the inclusion of the female Guardsman. And I for one won't stand for it. Everyone knows that female Astra Militarum look like this:

Or this:

And painted like this:

How to paint faces

And this violation of my personal canon will not be countenanced.

I kid of course, and I refuse to be drawn any further than a poor internet joke which is really just a thinly veiled promotion of previous blog posts. I do expect a minor bit of drama over the inclusion of the female guardsmen. I also expect to forget about it about an hour afterwards.

Also, all orks are female. By biological definition. But they identify as boys. There's fun to be had here, but let's wait until people know how to have fun again first.

Anyway.

Enter the real bit of news; Sisters of Battle are standing right there as the new poster girls of 40K.

This is excellent, at least for Sororitas players. Their inclusion in the marketing material here is an indication that they are much less likely to find their way to the drawer marked "To be done if we have time". It would b crazy to assume they'll ever take the top spot from the Space Marines, but they are probably going to have more development time given to them, and possibly find their update slot to be right behind the Astartes.

Of course it'd be nice if they had a start collecting kit, but we'll see what happens there.

A new Necron model, a three-legged energy sword wielder is there. It'll be interesting to see what happens with this. Necrons are sort of flush with model types, but more never hurts, and they are in dire need of something special to pull them from the meta-dumpster.

In the next few minutes we see her healing herself, which probably means she's from the Order of the Valorous Heart rather than other orders, and that she passed her 6-up Feel no Pain roll.

We also get our reveal of an INTERCESSOR WIELDING A CHAINSWORD AND BOLT PISTOL!!!

THIS IS NEWS!

Except that sergeants have been doing that since Blood Angels and Space Wolves got their upgrade kit three or four years ago.

This is an Assault Intercessor, which I believe to be destined to the shelf of many collections simply because the history of the Chaos Space Marines tells me this happens. And it'll be worse for these units. The maths of it never works out in favour of the melee versions, because of the extra bolter shot being pretty much the same as an extra close combat attack. The only difference is that the bolter shot doesn't need to be in combat to work.

I'll write more on this later, but we're unlikely to see them impact the game much, and I have to admit they're seriously missing the jump pack which would make them an interesting option.

The next guy though? He might well make non-Space Marine players spit.

Clearly a power sword and storm shield wielding model, amongst what looks like a unit of them. This is bad news... storm shield space marines are an utter pain to shift off the battlefield, and I wouldn't put it past Gee Dubs to give them master-crafted weapons to round out the scariness of them. I predict 3 attacks each and damage 2 weapons with -3 AP. On a 2 or three wound 3+ invulnerable save model.

There is  manly charge of Space Marines into a bundle of Necron Warriors and scarabs, and we see what happens when scarabs attack something. Basically a battle, culminating in a big gribbly Necron lord appearing. I don't know how useful big gribbly is going to be to Necrons, but I'd be lying if I said I understood their current needs. I can suggest that their stated theme of unkillable warriors paired with a Necron equivalent Smash Captain can only be bad news for their opponents... we'll see if he's got the manoeuvrability to make it happen.

We also very briefly see some chain sword wielding Sisters, but I think this is a more stylistic choice rather than an indicator of a new unit. Who knows though, Repentia have proved very popular and they might be wanting to repeat the success of the rule set (big two handed multi-damage eviscerators) on a model that isn't wearing rags.

Aaaand... that's it.

As trailers go it's definitely got the hype factor running. But unlike film and video game trailers there's not really a central narrative to unpick from all this. What we can summarise from this is that the new box set will feature Necrons as the opponent, meaning all those plans to make Chaos the Big Bad Guy in the last edition have somewhat fallen at the wayside.

Quite why this is? Well we can guess a little, but I think it mostly comes down to making the bad guys cleaner. I think I'll go into more detail on this too later, but it boils down to making the whole painting bit easier for new players and also making them a little less gross. Death Guard were certainly easy to paint, but that's only because they were rotten shambling heaps of yuk, and covering anything in Agrax Earthshade usually made them look authentic (my Gardeners of Nurgle being a very good bit of evidence for that...).

Chaos in general runs to the spiky and fiddly in terms of bits and gubbins to paint. Necrons on the other hand are nice and clean, with little in terms of little tokens to spend time painting. Much easier things to paint, and also packing roughly the same toughness of Death Guard on the table.

But later.

Feels good to talk about these things again. Tune in next time where we look at the new Assault Marine!

Until next time!

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