9th Edition: Round Base Gameplay Speculation

So with all the rumours and podcasts talking about 9^th edition I thought I would chuck in my two cents on some blue sky thinking. I’m a creative, arty farty type so I often find myself day dreaming about ideas and on my run to work today I started really thinking about how the game would change with round bases.

Straight up disclaimer: This is not a rumour thread and it is not a doom mongering post about how the sky is falling/obliterated/chaosified. This is a “What if?” post which will hopefully spark your imagination and get you hopeful for 9^th edition.

The premise of this article is the assumption (my own assumption so don’t take this as gospel!) that 9^th edition will be based upon the 40k ruleset , sharing common phases, principals and special rules. The reasons I think this is likely is from drawing parallels with Privateer Press’ Hordes/Warmachine rule sets. Both share common rules with tweaks and can feasible play against each other cross system. This has a number of benefits:

•          Easier for players to jump between systems without worrying about reading an encyclopaedia of new rules. (sell more models)
•          Easier for GW to update rules and more widely test them. (Less development cost/time)
•          Less base stock/tooling (even plastic injection moulding tools need to be replaced with wear and tear, something people may not realise). (Less Stock/Tooling cost)
•          The 40k system is in theory a much simpler game which has more focus on shooting and positioning of models.

I would assume that GW would find a way to make the ruleset work with square bases so as to not invalidate your collection (That is the optimist in me talking!). So for the 40k virgins out there I will summarise, very briefly, the differences and parallels. With a bit of imagination think how this would apply to fantasy:

•         40k has 4 phases: Movement (NOT charges), Psychic (Magic), Shooting (Shooting!) and Assault (Charges AND Combat).
•          40K works around the principal of Armour Penetration (AP) with all weapons having an AP value which negates armour of that value (eg AP3 negates 3+ armour but has no effect on 2+ armour). All weapons would need to be given these values and WYSIWYG becomes much more important.
•          Units sizes are smaller and are more in line with 40K “squads”. This fits with the way GW sell boxes of fantasy models, eg boxes of 10-20 models which make up a squad but you need several to form hordes for example in 8^th edition. In summary you will likely need less models to form an army.
•         Unit types are different in some cases but can be roughly thought of as: Infantry=Infantry, Cav = Cav, Bikes = Monstrous Cav, Vehicles = Chariots, Monsters = Monsters etc etc...
•         Everything is a skirmisher so the rule doesn’t exist! This may be different for 9^th edition as they may encourage tighter knit but less manoeuvrable units.
•         Shooting does not suffer modifiers for cover etc and you rolls straight against your BS (eg BS5 hits on 2s) and you are awarded a cover save for cover.
•         Buildings/Terrain are more significant/widespread (more sales!).
•         Games are more objective focused and less importance is placed on outright killing. Capturing objectives with scoring units (fortitude?!) and performing specific things in a turn (kill a monster) nets you objective points (TPs) and determines the winner.

Things might not be as bad as the internet thinks, I have played a few games of 40k and with some tweaks and creative rulings I think it could be a lot of fun. It would be starkly different but it could still represent large scale armies (round base movement trays ala LotR would be a requirement!) in a fun and cinematic way! So with this all in mind I’m going to try a game of fantasy with 40k core rules, fantasy stats and a whole lot of fudging!