9th Edition 40k

I'm looking forward to the impending massive Necron release, yes. It's the first major Necron release since 5th Edition and the first real Xenos release for over a year since the Genestealer Cults stuff came out, not to mention the first starter set to feature a Xenos race since 5th Edition. While I don't expect the Xenos love to last (given the 40K team are obsessed with Imperium vs Chaos crap), I'm certainly looking forward to enjoying it while it lasts. Plus, new Codex cover art satisfies my perfectionist urge to avoid having multiple books with the same cover, and proves that they are going to put more effort into this edition than the previous one.

The game itself, not so much, given that it will include the really stupid rule of allowing tanks to shoot in combat. If an enemy unit is attacking a vehicle, it won't be standing in front of it and swiping at it, it will be swarming around it at all angles, often in places where the guns can't reach them, and even if the guns were able to target the unit, you risk harming your own tank due to the close proximity of the resulting explosions. Why do that when you can simply bash your way out and run the enemy over with your tank's treads? It would have made so much more sense if they had brought back Tank Shock from 5th and 6th Edition, and improved it so that a vehicle can move out of combat as the crew rev the engines into reverse, and every enemy model in its path has to take an Initiative test. If they pass they get to make a free move out of the tank's path as long as they remain in coherency with the rest of their unit. If they fail they are run over and are slain with no armour saves allowed, or if they are a monster they suffer a high-Strength hit and are forced to move out of the way (the latter are too big to completely run over). Something like that would make so much more sense thematically, and would avoid Tanks becoming OP because in order to escape combat, they would have to move and thus suffer a penalty to their shooting (if moving still affects Vehicles shooting in 8th, I don't know because I've never cared about 8th). That new rule as it is will make shooting armies pretty much unbeatable as even if you manage to get your monster or tank hunters within striking distance, if you fail to kill the tank it can just blow your tank-killing troops away next turn. You can bet that Robin 'Treadhead' Cruddace put that rule in to buff his Imperial Guard and Howling Griffons.

However, while it hasn't yet vowed to eliminate the biggest problems in 8th (Knights and Primarchs being usable in regular games as unkillable deathstars rather than being kept to Apocalypse), GW did say that they were planning on balancing the scales to make smaller games more playable, as well as introducing new stuff for narrative play, which will be good. 

Suffice to say, while I may still decide against playing it, I'm more interested in following this new edition's development than I was with 8th. I'm even considering getting the 9th Edition Necron codex when it does come out purely to read the new lore about the Silent King's return and the new units, and designing some unofficial rules to use them in my favourite editions (5th and 6th).

I am hesitant about the new edition, it seems entirely too soon.

Also I don't see the dislike of Knights in 8th personally, they are the weakest they have ever been. I am pretty sure a couple of Lemon Rus tanks could blow apart a Knight before it could kill both of the Rus tanks, with a similar cost to the two. The new rules seem to buff them, and hopefully it will be a nice addition.

I never played 40k before 7th (and not a huge amount of it) and that seemed bloated to me. I much preferred the simplification of rules for 8th, it always seemed that they learnt from AOS and did a halfway house between that and 7th. It felt a happy medium (at least to a newish player). I agree that 8th now seems bloated as well but the additional books and extra rules in them are pretty much stock in trade for GW now. I found it funny but a couple of friends who are predominantly 40k players, were saying they were fed up with 8th partly because of the rules simplification but most because every time they played there seemed to be new points values and FAQs that changed how rules were played. What I wouldn’t have given for that kind of rebalance in fantasy 😂. (In fairness one of them was a nids player and hated how bad melee armies generally were in this edition).
I likely will also hold off initially but will definitely be interested to see what happens with the edition.

I am looking forward to the models but not the game.

The new Necrons look great.

I think the new ruleset already looks crap and the books are only valid for such a short period.

I will roughly follow the new (poor) lore that comes with the new edition. The new Primaris marine stuff is atrocious but I'm cautiously optimistic for the updated Necron, Ork and Chaos lore.

At least one if the Primarchs (Fulgrim?) should get an amazing new model.

5th and 6th Edition 40K are great, they date from an age where 40K was a simple and unbloated game where smaller-scale fights were the norm. I still play those editions and they are in my opinion still the best.

The balance is already screwy (see points costing and primaris storm shields/ heavy weapons) but that Indomitus box is amazing model wise. That Scorpeck (sp?) Lord is crazy!

Also that Primaris executioner is imo a brilliant sculpt.

Post some pictures when you assemble/paint the stuff.

Been reading through the 9th rulebook and at first it seems to be a 8th Ed FAQ update but reading further it does sound a bit promising. They at least made terrain a bit more interesting and the new crusade system seems to be a collection of the chapter approved narrative stuff from 8th (which I liked).

Not too happy that GW are fine with their books being good for 6 months and I expect the same trend they were doing at the end of 8th of constantly trickling books into the meta. We'll see I guess. I knew that new codexes would be coming in about 3 months haha. Riiiight after they did psychic awakening to update all the factions and said the codexes and supplements would be good in 9th.