Have you spent the last 18 months, significant portions of it, spending your free time painting plastic soldiers because you didn’t have anything else to do? Do you have a new army ready for outing? Or, maybe you just started into the miniatures hobby? Maybe you have a friend, roommate, or significant other that was inspired and joined up.
In any case…. How do you get (back) in to playing Warhammer?
The world is in a weird spot right now - that really doesn’t need to be said, but I’ll put it out there anyway to set the stage. Most of us spent a good portion of 2020 unable to engage in the social portions of our hobby. In the meantime, a whole new edition of the game has been released, and if you are of the competitive bent, whole meta’s have come and gone. In some places around the world there are still restrictions on public gatherings, so meeting up with your mates to figure out how the game is played may not be feasible; or, you are emerging from your quarantine like a beautiful butterfly that has no idea how to use its wings.
If you have never tried to re-learn how to play this game, it’s very different from learning it in the first place. I have had to do it twice - I learned to play 40k in 2002, and then stopped playing in 2005 when my job got too crazy to commit the time (That was 3rd and 4th edition for you non-oldhammers out there.) I picked it back in 2008, just after 5th edition came out, and played hard until having to pull back again in 2012, right after 6th edition came out; 230 days a year at sea on a submarine and 80 hours a week in port count as ‘competing priorities.’
The transition from 3rd to 5th was not that big - the basics underlying mechanics of the game were very similar. Line of SIght rules were simplified and clarified, some changes to how vehicles suffered damage were made to ensure that the Blood Angel Rhino Rush was toned down, and the informal ‘3.5’ assault phase rules from Chapter Approved were formalized. What became ‘advance’ showed up, and new missions that were actually somewhat balanced (but still not that great) were shipped in the main rulebook. It took a few games to understand the mechanics of the new changes, and couple more to start to understand the implications of the new missions and how that made me change my force structures. Still, nothing super consequential (other than that ethe 5th edition Dark Angels codex sucked so bad that I used the regular Space Marine book the whole edition.)
When I started playing again in November of 2017, 8th edition had just dropped, and the new Dark Angels book was just coming out. Having recently detached from a sea-going military vessel and with oodles of time on my hand, it was time to dig deep through the closets of doom and get back in the swing. Unlike 5th edition, however, 8th edition was nothing like its predecessors. Some of the fundamental underpinnings of the game had changed - the AP system, the hit and wound charts, the phase structure, the force organization structures, and the entire concept of how a vehicle interacted with the game. Layer in the concept of Stratagems, and the game shifted in some pretty fundamental ways. It took a long time to get comfortable with all the moving pieces, resource management, and subtle complexity of 8th edition, even though the rules were ten percent the size of previous editions.
While this aside through the detritus of editions past has been diverting, its not quite the point. My advice to you, if you would have it, is to approach this return to the game as if it's a new experience entirely.
Throw out everything you know about 8th edition. The underpinnings of the game are similar, but the change in missions, the concept of actions, and the formalized adoption of asymmetric secondaries is dramatic enough to warrant a completely new approach. As a whole, the game design has been adjusted to not reward the hyper-killiness that marked late 8th edition, and all your firepower is now just a tool to shift the enemy off his or her objectives.
As to objectives, approach the game from an objective-oriented design space. If you start with your 8th edition army list and play a 9th edition mission, you are trying to build a house with a blowtorch - it'll look flashy and make you feel cool, but ultimately, it's the wrong tool for the job. The place to start learning 9th edition is with a copy of the GT 2021 book (or your preferred mission pack). Grab a sheet of paper, or your nearest Excel spreadsheet, and make a matrix of the missions you plan on playing (Strike Force, for the 2000 point tournament standard) and the secondary objectives. Pour a glass of Scotch and sit back to take a read through the missions. Check off what secondaries you think your army and preferred playstyle can achieve in each mission. Once you have thoroughly considered what will be required of you to win games, now go back to your codex and find what tools will fit those holes. Iterate and tweak.
When you finally can get out to play, contact your local TO or game store to organize a ‘Welcome back to 40K’ Day! We ran one of these out here in Honolulu a couple of months ago and it was a great success. Our FLGS (Other Realms Hawaii) provided space, terrain, and logistic support to give over thirty new and returning 40k gamers a place to ply their craft - in some cases, for the first time. Three, two-hour rounds were scheduled with missions tailored to 500 point forces - remember, give everyone extra time to ask questions! In many cases, it was experienced players trying the new edition IRL for the first time, there were a number of players who had never played at all, but were eager to learn. To support these players, we provided a number of store and player owned lists, as well as coaches on hand to help them experience the game for the first time. All told, we ran four tables with direct, continuous coaching, and twelve more for players who didn’t need a coach, but would occasionally call for a rule explanation.
This approach to community engagement was enthusiastically received. Over half of the new players left the store with large purchases of 40k product and membership in our local 40K Facebook group; the more experienced players met other like-minded gamers. For Honolulu, 32 players is a big turnout. We rarely get twelve at an RTT and usually only crack GT status when people fly in from the mainland United States. This showed me that we have depth in our field - there are players out there, we just have to encourage them. Do your part to be a good ambassador of the hobby and make it accessible to your community!
Much aloha,
Heath
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