Viva la Evolution - More 6th Edition Musings

The more I read 6th edition the more I see it as evolution rather than revolution. By this I mean it follows the track of 6th to 7th Edition Fantasy, rather than 4th to 5th Edition 40k or 7th to 8th Edition Fantasy.

That's not a bad thing. However I think it is wrong to mark it - as some commentators have - as a revolutionary new ruleset.

Stripped back to its bones, 6th Edition addresses some of the perceived problems prevalent in 5th. e.g. the primacy of vehicles, wound allocation, cover saves etc. From what I can gather it does an okay job with this. It also expands what - come on admit it - was a pretty lacklustre set of missions. All this is massively positive.

Like 8th Fantasy before it, it draws on successes in other rulesets - pre-measuring, the introduction of some randomness to assaults (again, remember - measure then roll), the card system for psychic powers - all of which is incredibly positive. Just as 8th Fantasy shifted the balance to risk management, I'm hoping that 6th Ed does the same for 40k.

So I essentially see this as v5.5

Games Workshop being Games Workshop, they need to sell models. This isn't a criticism rather a commercial reality. To that end we have the introduction of Flyers,Allies and Fortifications. I'm not seeing how they ostensibly add anything to the core game however they all represent new sales. It's not compulsory to use these but they are part of the core set so should become the norm IMO. For most players this won't matter as I suspect they will enjoy the move to a game that is essentially Apoc-Lite.

At tournament level, the jury is out. As a TO I can tell you that people prefer to use the rules as per the rulebook. The rules around terrain placement including fortifications will add time to the tournament game if employed - perhaps 10-15 minutes - and TOs will need to take this into account. I still fervantly believe that the clamour will be for bigger games - probably 2000 points but one FOC for core army (in reality 1999 + 1 points).

Later this year I'll be running the 40k Masters. My current intention is full 6th Edition rules including Allies, Fortifications, Warlord Traits etc. however the points level will be 1500 points. The intention is that people will have to make hard choices if they want to shoehorn their toys in.