Five Things About 10th Ed 40K and Combat Patrols

Last night I had a chance to play my first game of all new 10th Edition 40K. And I have to say, despite all the worries voiced online, I had a really good time. And I did so playing a game of Combat Patrol no less...!

Let me backtrack a little... 

My involvement with 40K goes right back to the hype surrounding the launch of a Space Marine metal figure by Citadel Miniatures long before the first edition launched. And in the years that have followed, I've played, well, some of the editions. I remember being equal parts excited and dismayed with the arrival of Chapter Approved, the first step towards actual army lists for Rogue Trader.  Second Edition passed me by, coming out as it did during my second year at Uni. I was delighted to get the boxed set for 3rd Edition, which I played the heck out of. I remember the online document that came out around the time of 4th edition which outlined so few changes that I didn't bother with it. I returned to 40K years after my children were born, getting a cheap copy of 5th courtesy of eBay while everyone was moaning about 6th. 7th? Yeah, forget it. Two growing kids to provide for meant that boxed set of three rulebooks was never going to happen. And by then, it was becoming apparent that GW was pricing itself out of my price bracket. 

Fast forward a few years and Andrew convinced me to have a go at 8th. And I was hooked. So hooked that long dreamed of armies began to start to appear before me. As my financial situation improved, I was able to find models through eBay, and finally got mad with the partworks Conquest, Mortal Realms (because AoS followed in quick succession) and Imperium. Pretty soon I had more models than I ever thought I would have. And I was caught up with the arrival of the ninth edition of the rules. 

And then things went pear shaped. 

I don't think it will come as any kind of surprise to anyone who has read this blog that I am not a competitive player. I have the kind of water off a ducks back response to the meta that would make Teflon feel inadequate about. And whilst I really loved the 9th edition core rules, the bloat of pages upon pages of strategems, supplement books I could never afford, and balance sheets aplenty left a really sour taste in my mouth. 

I lost every game. Nothing really out of the ordinary there, you understand. But when the tactics of a game are all about the list building, and whoever wins the roll off to choose who goes first, my interest flies out of the window. If there's no way to avoid being tabled during your opponent's first turn, before you're able to try anything tactical, then there really is no point in playing the game. 

So we didn't, for about half of the three year lifespan of the edition. 

Enter 10th, and an opportunity to download everything you needed to play. The rules came out early, thanks to someone apparently putting a PDF of the Leviathan book online for all to see. (Well, except me, I was working when this happened, and by the time I had caught wind of it, the document had been taken down.) Now, whether they were putting everything out as a free download or not, I was always going to want to be able to give this new edition a go. So here's my thoughts, simple though they may be...

Fact One: Wombat Patrol Ain't Busted!

When I first heard that Open Play was going to become Combat Patrol, I was intrigued. I had though it would be some kind of 25 power level game. And then they said it would be all about pitting two Combat Patrol boxes (the successors of Start Collecting Boxes) against each other. Well, let me tell you. I spat out my tea at that point. I might not be the most genned up gamer of all things 40K, but even I knew there's a whole freakin' lot of disparity between the contents of those boxes. 

I love my Death Guard with a passion. But their Combat Patrol was pointless to me. I already have like 60 odd Poxwalkers. And they're, well, chaff. Put that against the Tau box? Yeah, right. What's that? Put it against the Tyranids? What?  The new one that's basically most of the contents of the Leviathan box? Yeah, right. Oh wait, you're serious?

Yeah. Let's be serious. The track record for this wasn't good. 9th edition solidified the understanding that whatever came out new, would win against anything. I know this proved to be true, as time and time again I got my Nurgley butt handed to me on a platter (I'm not even going to mention the one time my Cadians met the T'au when they were released...). So when Andrew said, let's give this a go, well, let's just say I was expecting to be tabled. Again. 

But I wasn't. 

The game seemed to be fairly matched. And continued to be so. Even in the third turn, there were swings both ways. We were shocked. In a good way. (Heck, even the Poxwalkers were passing every break test, and that's an 8+!)

Two forces, that looked like the result was a foregone conclusion, ended up being so balanced that even with the addition of objectives, the game concluded as a draw. 

Godsmacked doesn't even begin to describe it. 

Fact Two: You Can Bring Your Accents 

That's right. All this Simplified, Not Simple means that there is a whole lot less to worry about, and a whole lot more game to enjoy. Gone is the endless rifling through multiple sources to find the stratagems you were sure was in one book rather than the other. I'm not going to lie, there is still some scrolling up and down the document (this is 6 pages for Combat Patrol, dread to think how that would be for fielding say a Space Marine army in a 1K game). But the simple truth is you actually feel like you have a handle on your force. This lets you turn more of your attention to what's going on across that gaming surface, which means that you start enjoying the game, rather than thinking it's more about the number of books instead. And with all that time on your hands, you suddenly find yourself enjoying some banter. This banter can come from some very obvious places (welcome home Feel No Pain!) to some rather less so. For some inexplicable reason I managed to take myself on an accent tour of Newcastle through to the various parts of Yorkshire, settling in the Leeds area for quite a while. And Andrew? Well he joined me on a tour of the north east of England, before settling on the west Coast of Scotland and the variety of Glaswegian accents he could manage. Oh, and for the record, we coined a new name for some of the Tyranids: Barbie Gaunt!  (Although we refuse to paint them pink!)  In a nutshell: 10th gives you back time!

Fact Three: Want 40K to be better? Make it more Like AoS!

Yes, that's right. I love Age of Sigmar.  And one day, all 40K players will realise that by making 40K a lot more like AoS, the game can only get better.  Fortunately for those of us in the know, this change has already begun with 10th.  

Datacards are an incredibly welcome addtion to the game, and something I have always loved about AoS.  And if you've doubted about the benefits of this, well now you can check it the datacards for free.  And yes, they are the 40K equivalent of Warscrolls. (They've even moved the WS and BS stats to the weapons, you know, just like they have been doing for AoS since as long as I can remember!) Command points are limited a little more like AoS, and with the lack of sixty bazillion stratagems (okay, that's maybe a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean) you don't miss them. (Well, if you're a Death Guard player you'll maybe moan that some of the army wide rules are now reduced to only a one phase stratagem, but still.)  But the point remains. Because now the chance of being tabled just because of a build list looks like its gone. 

The turn sequence is much more streamlined and this means there's less time spent trying to figure out what part of the phase comes next. All in all, it's more intuitive, and reminds me of the good old days when the turn sequence was Move, Shoot, Combat. 

And if I can dare to touch on the points system?  Yeah, much more like Age of Sigmar.  This amount of points for this unit.  No fickering about with points for every single item.  Unit or character costs x.  End of.  It's like a more balanced Power Level.  Unless, of course, you're using Combat Wombat Patrol, in which case you don't worry about the points at all.  You just use the free downloaded sheets.  Which leads me to my next point...

Fact Four: You Need More than the Free Stuff to Play

So, I remember when 8th came with a free download of the core rules. This was the cause of much excitement, that was only tempered when I couldn't find out what 'Battleforged' meant. Sure, the title was there in the rules. But it wasn't explained. To get that explanation you needed to buy the main rulebook. So in order to play, free wasn't much use. 

Now come 9th the rules were rather comprehensively written. I liked them a lot (and I'm glad to say that there is still a lot of 9th in 10th). I wasn't relying on the free download, as I was able to get my hands on the core rulebook from the launch box. 

But here I am with 10th and the promise that all that was needed to play would be free: the core rules, the new datacards for all armies, and the Combat Patrol sheets. 

However, once again, that wasn't quite right. After all Gdubs want you to buy stuff, don't they?

So there I was the day before our game, starting to think I had gone mad. Sure, I had the core rules. Read them a few times (actually remembered some of it too, bonus!) I had the Combat Patrol PDF for my force. But what I couldn't find was any reference to a mission anywhere. The Core Rules has one, the originally named 'Only War' which could be used. Crusade rules are in the Leviathan book (or the new book that's due out), and the Matched Play scenarios are generated by the new Leviathan cards (or the Only War card deck if you have that from whatever precious edition, because, let's face it, the 9thbset was an exact reprint of the previous set.) 

But missions for Combat Patrol? Yeah, Gdubs talked about it, but there's only one place you're going to find them at the minute, and that's in the Leviathan Book. Helpfully, the Leviathan book lets you see photos of each of the Combat Patrols. Does it give you the rules for them? Does it heck! 

Conclusion: download everything Gdubs has put out for free, then get Leviathan. Or spend £75 on the separate rulebook and Crusade books. But you'll still need the downloads. (Will this change? Probably, but at the time of writing, this would be my best advice. 

Fact Five: Some Things Still Leave You Wondering...

Let's be clear here, there are hundreds upon hundreds of stat lines to sort for 40K. And much respect to the team behind it all for getting all the new stats out for everything in the game at once. Much kudos to them for doing so for free. This is the Index release that we didn't have to pay for, and Gdubs deserves much respect for doing this for us. It didn't happen for 9th, and many of us were left being beaten by the meta stick for months, nay years, waiting for our Codexes to come out. But I suspect some things are going to be picked up in the weeks that lie ahead. 

Take for example the Death Guard. Now, one of the big problems with the Death Guard since the came out (in my experience at least) was all the bloomin' Elites choices as they were. So many characters that could boost this or that, but not by all that much. And with only a limited number of slots available, knowing which to use, and why was a constant headscratching exercise for me. 

Well, that hasn't been made much better in Wombat Patrol. The Death Guard force includes a certain Folgoth Grelch, known to us all before as the Biologius Putrefier. As a leader, he can be attached to the Plague Marines. Doing so allows him to share his Ability 'Foul Infusion' with them. This gives the unit he is attached to [Lethal Hits]. This is an ability Plague Marines already have. Now, he does make the Critical go off on a 5+ rather than the standard 6+, but if it just said that, it would be simpler, right? It:s not a Biggie, but it did create some headscratching...!

Beyond these five observations, there's something really big happening. For the first time in far too long, I'm actually, genuinely, absolutely excited about all things 40K.  I've spent the last while enjoying the lore, reading some fluff and Black Library novels. And that's all. My model collection has grown, but the motivation to paint any of them has been non-existent for far too long. 

And now, everything is changing!

And in my book at least, that's a really good thing...!  Coz right about now, you're probably realising that the black and white photographs in this post are that way because it was impossible to get everything painted in time for our first game...

...I know, heresy, right?

...oh wait, that's another game entirely...!