10th ed Adepticon Preview

What I remember from the preview last night.
At least some of it is summarized over on WC.

All units have been repointed and restat'd. We will be back to indexes, like the beginning of 8th.

However, all core rules, army rules, datasheets, and point values will be free online on Day 1. The idea is to get everyone playing ASAP. There will be physical copies available to buy, but they will not be needed.

They want everyone's army rules to fit on one sheet. Each army will get 6 army strategems (there will still be a list of universal stratagems). They mentioned that a lot of the existing stratagems got rolled into the datasheets as unit abilities.

Codexes will be released later. However, subfaction rules, rather than just adding more rules, will have you switch out your rules sheet for a different rules sheet, with a different set of 6 stratagems, to maintain the same amount of army rules to keep track of, regardless of what army or subfaction you are playing. This seems very similar to how the Disciples of the Red Angel are treated in the World Eaters codex.

The rumor that Toughness stat was going away is untrue. Strength, however, is no longer part of the base statline. It's in the weapon stats. They mentioned that they increase toughness on things that are supposed to be 'tough' (certain vehicles, etc), because they wanted there to be fewer weapons that are good against all unit types.

Morale checks happen in the command phase. Failing morale doesn't result in fleeing off the board though - it reduces unit effectiveness in some way. Most likely linked to the new stat 'OC' (objective control).

Psychic Phase is gone. We are back to the 3rd - 5th edition style psychic powers, where powers occur in a relevant phase (EX: Smite is a shooting attack, etc).

Armybuilding is simplified. No force org chart. You pick a warlord. Then you can take up to 3 of any unit, except for 'battleline' units, of which you can take up to 6 each. Stay within point limits. I don't know how allies will be incorporated into this, if at all.

Forgeworld datasheets will be updated.

Though 9th codices will be invalidated, The Boarding Actions rules in Ark of Omens are meant to be fully compatible with the new edition, and intended to be played through 10th edition.

I think it all sounds really promising.

I'm one of those who thought the game has been getting far too complicated, and the prospect of units cards and army rules being reduced to two pages really, really appeals to me.

Of courses it messes with my tournament in August, but might also make that a fun, balanced event!

I'm looking forward to it!

This feels like they took a lot of inspiration from One Page Rules, similar army structuring, free downloadable army data sheets ... all in all I'm liking where this is going ... makes me wonder if we are going to lose PfP or how that'll work now ...

Hopefully they don't decide that 'blade artist' is our army rule now, and that PfP goes away. I did notice that the Nid army rule is Synapse. I don't know offhand where that one sits in the list of their army rules (monofaction or other).

I do like that the datasheets themselves get more in the way of special abilities. I looked at a lot of strats from 8th and 9th ed and thought that they should have been unit abilities in the first place.

If we are *really* lucky, they'll fix the whole 'auras and abilities don't exist while you are in a transport' thing.

I suspect World Eaters players will be rather annoyed at the moment...

What a fantastic idea to have all identical rules have identical names. Almost like some sort of universal rule. I'm surprised nobody's thought of that before!

And taking all the strats that used to be unit abilities and making them unit abilities again is very original.

It's 3e again isn't it?

krayd wrote:

I did notice that the Nid army rule is Synapse.

I find it interesting that it's listed as a FACTION, whilst Faction Keywords are separate. I'm curious as to what the distinction will be there. (I wonder is there are different sets, so there will be rules for Synapse faction (not keyword), and possibly different sets of special rules for different Factions (not keywords)?)
That might get confusing without clarification.

Count Adhemar wrote:

It's 3e again isn't it?

Thank god. That's all I ever wanted.

Squidmaster wrote:

krayd wrote:

I did notice that the Nid army rule is Synapse.

I find it interesting that it's listed as a FACTION, whilst Faction Keywords are separate. I'm curious as to what the distinction will be there. (I wonder is there are different sets, so there will be rules for Synapse faction (not keyword), and possibly different sets of special rules for different Factions (not keywords)?)
That might get confusing without clarification.

Since it's in the section of the datasheet labelled 'Abilities', I'm assuming that FACTION in that part is just indicating the faction ability.

I'm mainly worried about two things offhand:

1) how they decide to handle coven/kabal/cult distinctions. I wouldn't mind a simplification that allows you to take armies similar to 3rd-7th ed (granted, you can do that now, as long as you don't mind some units getting obsessions while others dont, or if you don't mind taking RSR), but the faction abilities need to actually be useful to each group.

2) whether or not they decide to completely nix allies, and how they are going to work with force org charts being gone. I'll be annoyed if I can only play harlies as a standalone army

Huh. I just noticed something.



There's no <HIVE FLEET> faction keyword.......

Squidmaster wrote:

There's no <HIVE FLEET> faction keyword.......

Yeah. I suspect that they/re not going to do <SUBFACTION> keywords like 8th/9th. I doubt that there will be subfactions at all in the initial indices. However, it also appears that when subfactions get introduced, presumably in the codices, you're just going to swap out your army rules sheet for a different one, with different faction abilities/limitations, different 6 stratagems, different relics and warlord traits. It will probably look a lot like the 'Disciples of the Red Angel' rules from the World Eaters codex.

All of this sounds well and good for most standard armies, but I don't know how it is going to work for us, specifically, since we have been treated as 3 sub-sub-factions that are supposed to be integrated into one army.

I think they are gonna do away with the 3 sub-armies that has become of our beloved true-kin and going back to all of it being Faction keyword <Druhkari>, so the data sheet for wyches would be somwthing like
Faction keyword: Druhkari
Keywords: Infantry, Cult, Gladiatorial Arena, Wych
Keywords: Infantry, kabal, Realspace raider, Kabalite Warrior
Keywords: Infantry, Coven, Flesh golem, Wrack

Or somethin of the like for our basic troops

Archon_91 wrote:

I think they are gonna do away with the 3 sub-armies that has become of our beloved true-kin and going back to all of it being Faction keyword <Druhkari>, so the data sheet for wyches would be somwthing like
Faction keyword: Druhkari
Keywords: Infantry, Cult, Gladiatorial Arena, Wych
Keywords: Infantry, kabal, Realspace raider, Kabalite Warrior
Keywords: Infantry, Coven, Flesh golem, Wrack

Or somethin of the like for our basic troops

Given that FACTION is also listed under the Abilities (Synapse for Termagants) I wonder if this will be where the divide it. Abilities: Faction: Kabal, for example.

WC put up an article on army building for 10th ed:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/03/30/how-army-building-works-in-the-new-edition-of-warhammer-40000/

I'm liking the army building rules, and hopefully this means they will be doing away with our 3 sub-armies and making the true kin a whole faction again, but we will have to wait and see if they preview a Druhkari datasheet or take a look when our index rules are out

krayd wrote:

Squidmaster wrote:

There's no <HIVE FLEET> faction keyword.......

Yeah. I suspect that they/re not going to do <SUBFACTION> keywords like 8th/9th. I doubt that there will be subfactions at all in the initial indices. However, it also appears that when subfactions get introduced, presumably in the codices, you're just going to swap out your army rules sheet for a different one, with different faction abilities/limitations, different 6 stratagems, different relics and warlord traits. It will probably look a lot like the 'Disciples of the Red Angel' rules from the World Eaters codex.

All of this sounds well and good for most standard armies, but I don't know how it is going to work for us, specifically, since we have been treated as 3 sub-sub-factions that are supposed to be integrated into one army.

Honestly, I'm hoping that particular idea is binned in 10th.

All it does is make an already anaemic army feel even smaller and more constrained.

I would much prefer an edition where Dark Eldar feel like a cohesive army, rather than 4 mini-armies ham-fistedly smashed together.

Looks like Characters are gonna be able to joining units again based on a hint in today's rules sneak peak

And now the kill team upgrade sprew for Kabalite warriors that turns them into a CC unit makes sense ... Add an Archon, notoriously a CC character in a shooty environment, to a unit of kabalites that you can now make CC specialists...

Character rules:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/11/leaders-now-join-squads-to-personally-deliver-powerful-boons-in-the-new-warhammer-40000/

There seem to be three different versions:
- Some characters can join units.
- Some characters can't join units but also can't be shot from more than 12" away.
- Still other characters can't be shot from more than 12" away but only if they're near to specific units.

Normally, only one character can join a unit but some lieutenant characters can join units already joined by other characters.

Oh and when a character joins a unit, it can never leave or join any other unit. So if an Archon's Incubi guards all die, he can't join a different squad (even another Incubi squad) for protection and instead can do nothing but wait to die and hope to leave a beautiful corpse.

I hope this means they are going to bring back or give us "Archsyberite", "Hekatrix Bloodbride" and "Demi-Haemunculus" as Lieutenant units ... and we at least know we aren't going to lose any if the court of the archon, beasts, or Mandrakess as units to use, thanks to their inclusion in the "made to order" post, but in a more likely reality our current HQ units will all have the "lone operative" no auras and we lose the ability to take anything that was finecast

Those character rules seem...interesting. I'm glad that characters will be able to join units again - characters at the moment feel artificially detached from the units they're supposed to be leading. I'm also hopeful that characters will dole out a buff to their attached unit directly, meaning no more shenanigans with auras and transports.

On the other hand, this system seems way too restrictive. The intention is probably to prevent death stars but there's way better ways to go about it in my opinion.

I am cautiously optimistic for the new detachment system. Not that it's some groundbreaking piece of innovative game design or anything - it's fine, nothing less or more - but because it's incompatible with the weird three army list building shtick GW is insisting DE play around.

My guess is that we'll have a "Raiding Party" detachment for starters, and then a Coven, Kabal, and Cult detachment for the codex, with the latter three granting Core/Battleline/whatever to their particular flavor of unit. Which is fine by me if that's the case.

TheBaconPope wrote:

Those character rules seem...interesting. I'm glad that characters will be able to join units again - characters at the moment feel artificially detached from the units they're supposed to be leading. I'm also hopeful that characters will dole out a buff to their attached unit directly, meaning no more shenanigans with auras and transports.

I like everything about this *except* for the implication that once you attach a character to a unit (during deployment), once that unit is dead, the character has no further protection, is targeted like any other unit, and doesn't have the ability to attach any other units. This could be mitigated by giving characters who lose their units 'lone operative' status, or give them the ability to lead other units, but I'm not really expecting either of those things.

krayd wrote:

TheBaconPope wrote:

Those character rules seem...interesting. I'm glad that characters will be able to join units again - characters at the moment feel artificially detached from the units they're supposed to be leading. I'm also hopeful that characters will dole out a buff to their attached unit directly, meaning no more shenanigans with auras and transports.

I like everything about this *except* for the implication that once you attach a character to a unit (during deployment), once that unit is dead, the character has no further protection, is targeted like any other unit, and doesn't have the ability to attach any other units. This could be mitigated by giving characters who lose their units 'lone operative' status, or give them the ability to lead other units, but I'm not really expecting either of those things.

Yeah that bit is a pretty crap. Making HQs behave like Squad Sergeants in that regard is a bad move.

How does everyone feel about each character having a whitelist of the units they're allowed to attach to? It's probably necessary for balance (and maybe to avoid weird rules interactions like mixing toughness values), but I feel it'll have a negative impact on list diversity.

TheBaconPope wrote:

How does everyone feel about each character having a whitelist of the units they're allowed to attach to? It's probably necessary for balance (and maybe to avoid weird rules interactions like mixing toughness values), but I feel it'll have a negative impact on list diversity.

I would prefer that the list be broad. In 5th, I would routinely have my archon leading units of wyches or wracks. For us, at least, I hope that there is a good amount of latitude. I can see why marines might be more limited, being far more regimented.

On that note, it might really suck for craftworlders if warlocks can only attach to guardian units. I have a feeling that their powers might be represented in the form of squad buffs.

krayd wrote:

TheBaconPope wrote:

How does everyone feel about each character having a whitelist of the units they're allowed to attach to? It's probably necessary for balance (and maybe to avoid weird rules interactions like mixing toughness values), but I feel it'll have a negative impact on list diversity.

I would prefer that the list be broad. In 5th, I would routinely have my archon leading units of wyches or wracks. For us, at least, I hope that there is a good amount of latitude. I can see why marines might be more limited, being far more regimented.

On that note, it might really suck for craftworlders  if warlocks can only attach to guardian units. I have a feeling that their powers might be represented in the form of squad buffs.

Well either we are going to have to get "Skyboard" and "Reaver Jetbike" as an upgrade to our characters ... or our HQs are going to be limited to

Archon: Kabalite Warrios
Succubus: Wyches
Haemonculus: Wracks, Grotesque (<---the only one that would make sense)

Archon_91 wrote:

Well either we are going to have to get "Skyboard" and "Reaver Jetbike" as an upgrade to our characters ... or our HQs are going to be limited to

Archon: Kabalite Warrios
Succubus: Wyches
Haemonculus: Wracks, Grotesque (<---the only one that would make sense)

For archons, you're forgetting Incubi and the Court of the Archon.

Regardless, I hope it's just non-jump infantry for all three, or at least, I think that it should be that way for the Archon. The Archon is generally footing the bill for the realspace raid, so he fights alongside whoever he wants. (In fact, there is a very specific example of an archon in lore hiring the Cult of Strife just to fight alongside them and get a close-up view of Lelith in action... which led to her backstabbing him, because it was all part of Vect's plan.. but that's neither here nor there...)