My Gaming Thoughts

Coming back into 40K the last sets of games I played were 4th edition which was quite a while ago. I did kind of dip my toes and start with 8th edition, but the pandemic hit I never actually got any games to the table. During the pandemic 9th edition came out and I managed to score myself a rule book. Now I'm going through this and taking a look at the new rules and trying to figure out what's different between these 9th edition rules and what I used to play and 4th Ed.

One thing I find interesting is how transports work in 9th edition back in 3rd and 4th edition transports were assigned to units and pretty much if that unit was destroyed the transport couldn't do anything else really except for go around causing trouble but it really couldn't transport anything else which I thought was kind of odd ruin it sounds like they've kind of gone and fixed that.

3rd and 4th edition did have psykers. But there was no specific psychic phase. Was kind of interesting in that now there's a whole phase for it . Still trying to get my mind wrapped around it and figure out all the who’s, what’s, and where’s associated with it.  

The shooting phase is something that looks pretty familiar I'm not seeing a huge number of differences from what I'm used to playing to this. One thing that is interesting is that you can split your fire between different units with the unit which I don't remember if you could do that in 3rd and 4th edition, but I don't think that you could.

The charge rules add some interesting bits that I really like and think we're needed the one that I'm quite interested in just a heroic intervention where basically a eligible character unit can go and jump into a combat intervene in the combat fees within 3 inches kind of a neat little trick. Another one I thought was kind of cool that I'm looking at here is the Overwatch is back there are only certain instances where you get to use it but it's cool to have it back again.

Command points and stratagems offer some interesting pieces to this puzzle. I am still trying to get a hang on how you can refresh or gain or get refunded command points. I suppose more I read the more I look at things I'll figure it out. There's some pretty cool things you can do with those command points you can do rerolls, over watch, counteroffensive, bravery, or breakout.

Looking at what would be tournament play or what would have been tournament play back in 3rd and 4th edition it looks like I'm kind of going to go with the battlefield size which would have been 4 by 6 table. The closest battlefield size they have minimum would be probably about Strikeforce size which is 44 inches by 60. Kind of working my way back from there the Strikeforce type of units or Strikeforce type of stuff would be probably doing maybe about a 2000 point with 12 command points but then you look at the battle duration it says for a Strikeforce size game you'd be looking at a 3 hour game which tournament wise is a pretty long tournament. Usually, tournament games back in the day were two hour rounds. And most of the time those rounds would only be about an hour and a half. Based on that I think probably what I should be focusing on is 2000-point armies when I'm putting them together.

Getting to the end of the rulebook there are a couple of interesting little tidbits. One of which is the appendix of rarely used rules which just some interesting things to look at and gives you an easy place to find everything. Additionally, there is a Glossary at the end and that references to certain page numbers in the rulebook. However, after that I was hoping that there would be an actual index. And there was not. It would have been fantastic read out a couple pages of artwork or fluff to put in a proper index but that's just me.