Warhammer 40K Is Stomping Into a New Edition With Simpler Rules

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In the grim dark future of Games Workshop's 41st millennium, there is only war, so it's a good job the 10th edition of its venerable tabletop miniatures game Warhammer 40,000 is starting a whole new war for its incoming 10th edition ruleset. Well, it's a fourth war in a long line of wars, but when you're called Warhammer, that's to be expected?

Revealed overnight at the massive wargaming convention Adepticon in Chicago last night, Games Workshop has a swath of updates coming for several of its key games—both the sci-fi 40K and its fantasy counterpart Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, the smaller-scale skirmish games in those universes Kill Team and Warhammer Underworlds, and the old-school 40K prequel game Horus Heresy—crowned by the highly anticipated reveal of Warhammer 40,000's 10th edition, releasing this summer.

Within the lore of 40K's universe, the 10th edition will begin in the wake of the current events of the rulebook series Arks of Omen, which has seen several Space Marine chapters, the Orks, the alien Tau Empire, and the forces of a mysterious new agent of the Chaos Demons, Vashtorr, slugging it out in the "Imperium Nihilus"—a section of humanity's vast interstellar empire that was cut off from the rest of it during the events that opened the game's current 9th edition. With that conflict about to climax in one of the newly revealed books at Adepticon, 10th Edition sees the galaxy turn its eyes eastward—especially the leader of the iconic Ultramarines Space Marine chapter, Roboute Gulliman, after the swarming masses of the alien Tyranids of the thought-defeated Hive Fleet Leviathan launch a surprise attack on the other side of the Imperium, revealing that the largest ever Tyranid force is actually surrounding the entire galaxy, starting off humanity's Fourth Tyrannic War.

Aside from kicking off with a focus on the forces of the Space Marines battling the Tyranids—complete with brand new model updates for classic units like Space Marine Terminators, and the Tyranids' primary infantry, the Termagants, both of which have not been updated in many years—40K's 10th edition is launching with a focus on condensing, but not lightening, the game's current rules, a process Games Workshop described as "simplified, but not simple." This condensing puts much more of the games' rules and abilities onto actual units in the game themselves, instead of taking up separate phases of a turn—the psychic ability phase where your magically enhanced characters cast spells has been removed, for example, with psychic powers now being treated the same as regular attacks resolved in combat phases—or being administered through 40K's 'stratagems' system, a raft of abilities and buffs for your army issued as command orders at the beginning of turns.

With many of those abilities now baked into newly condensed "datasheet" rules for each unit in an army, Games Workshop says the intent is for players to have easy access to all the rules they need to play their faction. That means they'll have less to learn about matchups against other factions, in as little as one or two sheets of rules, instead of hauling around multiple books worth of rules and mechanics with their armies. With new updates to the ways armies are constructed, the intent is to remove a lot of the external layers of depth in 40K, while maintaining and transitioning that depth the actual forces on your tabletop.

Access to those rules will also be easier than ever, thanks to an overhauled app—positively described as "it works!" during the reveal, acknowledging the infamously buggy current official app for the game—that will host the core rules for 10th Edition as well as the newly balanced datasheets for every faction in the game for free upon launch. Not only will this mean players can start playing with their current armies straight away without having to wait for their updated rulebooks, but Games Workshop intendeds to use this digital-first approach to rules to make it easier to issue updates and errata to the game based on feedback and playtesting. That easier accessibility for the game will also include a brand new format to play 40K, Combat Patrol. Based on the current starter box-sets Games Workshop sells for each faction, Combat Patrol will have slightly simpler rules than 10th Edition proper, with the intent that newcomers (or people who want to try out a new army before committing to a more sizeable force of miniatures) can pick up one of those boxes and have a force that is immediately ready to go to battle against similarly balanced forces from the other box sets.

The 10th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 is set to launch this summer. But the new edition of 40K wasn't the only thing Games Workshop revealed at Adepticon—click through to see new models for the game, the updated Seraphon army line in Age of Sigmar, new Kill Team and Underworld expansions, and more!

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The preview kicked off with a highly anticipated new model for the Primarch of the Dark Angel space marines, Lion El'Jonson. The miniature includes multiple alternate heads for the longstanding leader of the Dark Angels, now more accurately scaled with the current "Primaris" Space Marines introduced in 2017.

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Lion El'Jonson will also play a major role in the fifth and final book in the Arks of Omen series, climaxing the current Warhammer 40,000 narrative as he faces off against his fallen brother, the Chaos daemon prince Angron to decide the fate of the Imperium Nihilus. It is expected to release alongside El'Jonson's new miniature "sooner than you think," according to Games Workshop.

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For the 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop is finally updating the Space Marine Terminator models, a faithful upgrade of the current kit that first went on sale with the fourth edition of the game in 2004.

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Likewise, the trusty swarm troopers of the Tyranids, the Termagants, will get a long-awaited model kit upgrade, replacing the current set that has been in use since 1998.

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40K's small scale skirmish spinoff Kill Team will conclude its current season, Into the Dark—which has been transposing the squad vs. squad action into the tight hallways of abandoned Space Hulk warships—with one final expansion, Gallowfall. As the name implies, the narrative missions included focus on squads extracting from the titular Space Hulk Gallowdark, before it crash lands.

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The first squad in the Gallowfall box is based around the recently introduced Leagues of Votann, a re-imagining of 40K's classic space-dwarf faction, the Squats. Based around the Hearthkyn Warrior squad already available in 40K, the Salvagers include an upgrade sprue to give specialists unique gear, from souped-up knuckle dusters to a jump pack.

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Meanwhile, they'll face off against a surprising choice: the Chaos Beastmen, the bestial forces of evil that rarely receive new models, either in their 40K or Age of Sigmar form. The Fellgor Ravagers will include different Beastmen for all occasionals, from spellcasters to close quarter combat specialists.

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Games Workshop's Warhammer prequel/spinoff Horus Heresy—set during the titular heresy where the titular Horus rebelled against the God-Emperor of Man, splitting the Space Marine chapters into traitor and loyalist factions in a brutal civil war—launched a new 2nd edition last year, and is now getting its first Campaign Book. The narrative explores the titular siege of Horus' own homeworld, as a breakaway group of his chapter, the Thousand Suns, seek to liberate it.

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Over in the mortal realms of Age of Sigmar, Adepticon revealed the final host of new models developed for the relaunch of the Seraphon, the scaly paladins of Order formerly known in Warhammer Fantasy Battles as the Lizardmen. A selection of the new models, as well as an updated Battletome rulebook, will first release this summer as part of a special box set, before the remaining new models drop shortly after.

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One of the new units revealed was the Aggradon Lancers, a new heavy cavalry unit designed to shock enemy battle lines with the ferocity of the riders and the mounts alike.

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They'll be joined by a new mounted commander, the Scar-Veteran, who gets a suitably heroic model to make him stand out in the charge.

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The classic Lizardmen Kroxigor model has been in action since 2010, so they're now getting a much-needed beefy update with a new dual-unit kit. The standard Kroxigors now suitably tower over their fellow Seraphon.

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The same kit will also build Kroxigor Warspawned, an alternate unit that is even more brutal in combat, going into a bestial rage if their skink attendants are killed.

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Joining the Summer of Seraphon will be two updated rules for armies in the faction of Death: first up is the Ossiarch Bonereapers, who have yet to recieve new rules in the current third edition of the game, and heavily hampered competitively because of this. They'll also get one new unit, the Ossifector, a support wizard that buffs up your bulkiest units.

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Likewise the Soulblight Gravelords will receive a new rules update, with their last book coming out in the final days of the previous edition. Their new unit is a hero model, Ivya Volga, a lone-wolf monster hunter vampire that specializes in taking on massive beasts.

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Lastly for Age of Sigmar Games Workshop also teased a first look at infantry for the Cities of Sigmar faction. Currently an amalgam of free city-states that is essentially an excuse for players of Warhammer Fantasy Battles to keep using most of their old models in Age of Sigmar, the faction is getting a revamp with all new models that evolves that classic aesthetic—like these human conscripts. The Cities of Sigmar faction will relaunch this Autumn.

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Underworlds, Age of Sigmar's own spinoff skirmish game, will also kick off a new season of content with Wyldhollow, a magic-oriented wave of new warbands, cards, and locales to battle in.

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The starter kit for the new season will come with two magical warbands—the first up is a trio of Stormcast Eternals, specializing in magic casting rather than the usual martial talents of their brothers and sisters.

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The Stormcast will suitably face off against the forces of the Chaos God Tzeentch—in the form of a lone sorcerous summoner, and a legion of eldritch horrors they've stitched together out of creation magic to do their bidding.