Warhammer 40k - New Dawn Fades

"New Dawn Fades" was one of my favourite songs by one of the few good things to come out of Manchester, Joy Division. In 1981their lead singer Ian Curtis topped himself leaving behind two albums and a string of truly memorable songs. From the ashes of Joy Division rose the more commercial New Order who while occasionally hitting high points never received the critical acclaim of Joy Division.

This all a long-winded way to introduce a metaphor for the Warhammer 40k game.

Now I loved 3rd and 4th Edition 40k. For me it was a golden age where the rule set was strong and most of the design out of the Studio was driven by the fluff rather than commercial decisions. I loved the Index Astartes rules, the Eldar Craftworlds and the Ork Klans. You had variety of armies  - note I say armies as they had rigid rules around what could and could not be included. This golden period ended for me with the Gav Thorpe Chaos codex, the late 4 ed Ork codex and the coming of 5th Ed in 2008.

I didn't buy the Kool-aid of a new cinematic dawn where armies became liquorice all sorts. And so I walked away and played Fantasy. A lot of people loved 5th but here in NZ you saw as many people fall away from the game as you saw join it. Maybe it was just people got old and had different priorities but there was a seachange in participants. Over the course of the edition I kept and eye on things and we saw the introduction of further vanilla books eg Eldar and the expansion of flyers and a general increase in vehicle size e.g. Dread knights. This was coupled by the game expansion Apocalypse and the rise of the internet which gave rise to instant net-lists eg nob biker, leaf blower, Draigo-wing, Venom spam etc.

Still to me it was still an interesting looking game. It was the New Order to my Joy Division but I understood the attraction.

Then in 2012 6th Ed arrived. Now your army choice was less important because you could have Allies to paper over your weaknesses - unless you were Nids. And the fluff behind the game didn't seem to matter. Lists began to look less like an army and more like a series of unit choices. Backing this up was the introduction of fortifications and a further expansion of flyers.

And recently we have three new additions to the mix. Escalation letting your Apoc toys in - yay D-cannons, Strongholds and the Data Slate. The upshot of the last of these is that a lot of the constraints of the Force Organisation Chart have gone by the wayside. You like Riptides, hell go for your life! Like the Wraithknight model, sure your Space Marines can have one. Want some Warlord traits from this list and others from another book...well you get the picture.

The really interesting thing with this was that 40k players were all drinking the Kool-Aid until suddenly they weren't. It's hard to pick the exact date but sometime in Q4 2013 something changed. The internet suddenly blossomed with threads, blogs, casts on how the game is broken. Schisms developed where some groups wanted to ban things, others wanted to change the rules while still others wanted to sit in a circle singing Kumbaya and embracing the wonder and freedom that was 6th.

And in the last week we've had rumours emerge that the much forecast Fantasy 9th Ed has been pushed back to 2015 to allow a new version of 40k to be released in 2014. What isn't known is whether this is to overhaul the edifice or to bring all the disparate parts into one new core rule book. I hope it's true as Fantasy is currently in a good place and I'd be more than happy for GW to release the last five books before a new edition. I know it's a forlorn hope but if it keeps Allies out of the game a bit longer all good by me.

So 40k seems to currently be on the edge of a cliff. I'm glad my investment is in the aesthetics of 30k and the Heresy rather than the game system itself.

As I said New Dawn Fades.