Warhammer 40K 11th Edition First Looks: Flavor vs Function

It's been three years of Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition, and now, the curtain is soon to fall. In about 80 days, going off of previous releases, we'll see the beginning of 11th Edition, and players have already seen a number of the new rules Games Workshop is introducing for its debut. This is by no means an exhaustive list of changes, as there's plenty more to see once further previews roll out, but the cycles of the game seem to continue as they have in previous years. 11th Edition seems far more akin to 7th, or 9th, with odd Editions building on the scaffolding of more radical changes which arrive in even editions, like 8th or 10th. To that end, Games Workshop is attempting to tackle one of 10th's only real issues: A lack of flavorful flair. Let's talk about that.

To some extent, Warhammer's flavor has always been a case of 'you get out what you put in', as never in the game's history has, for example, a unit of 10 Primaris-scale models been able to physically fit in a transport. Concessions are always made for the sake of balance, and pace of play, and 10th took a hatchet to the presiding ethos of customization and flavor in an attempt to create the most balanced Edition the game's ever seen. The good news is...it worked, actually; 10th Edition has been perhaps the best time in the game's history to jump into its competitive scene, and games are done in 3 hours or less 99% of the time. In my opinion, it's fast, easy to teach, but with sufficient depth in both listbuilding & play to tickle the brains of enfranchised players like myself. On the whole, 10th represents a huge change in terms of 40k as a game people can enter, rather than needing hours upon hours of explanation before a game begins. More than any Edition previously, it’s tilted towards accessibility, and I for one feel that’s a huge boon to the game’s longevity & cultural relevance. This take is not...universally-held, however.

Since I've been a kid, having started playing Warhammer the weekend plastic Gargoyles released (in 2010, yeesh), the theatre of the mind has been a touchpoint for the game's flavor. When I hear the Primary Mission is to terraform objectives, I don't imagine little plastic men standing on arbitrarily-important circles, I see lithe homunculi of enmeshed metal and flesh, toiling with pickaxes in the rockcrete, their guns held at rest. Some would say this is a cop-out, but I would say it's a mind filling in the blanks, because I'd rather play a balanced game than one tied to some nebulous idea of 'flavor'. Doing away with things like pointed wargear was a step forward in not dissuading new players from building the weapons they thought were coolest out of a box.

Via Games Workshop

In short, I am fundamentally opposed to the idea that Warhammer lacks sufficient flavor, but I understand from where that arrives. I would love to see more granularity in terms of weapon keywords, like bringing back the old Rending of resolving Wounds of 6 with an extra AP, or what have you; 10th is a super open canvas for mechanically-interesting abilities, and the main issue is not that the current ones lack flavor, but perhaps that nearly all existing models have but a single special ability per datasheet. Given the fact this isn't an Index Edition, that potential problem won't be dealt with until we see what the new Codices look like, but regardless I'm very bullish about 11th so far.

On the topic of controversial changes, though, those 'arbitrarily-important circles' are being changed to actual terrain footprints, intended to have terrain rules attached. In 10th, that would be big, but not a massive shake-up; at the start of 10th, Objectives were physical 40mm bases you couldn't stand on, which was almost immediately rolled back given it blocked out most Vehicles from navigating the map. This implies the new Objective rules are going to be substantially different from what we have now, but also, arrive alongside the new terrain rules—something we have heard much about.

Via Reddit

As someone who's quite the fan of fragile, trade-reliant melee pieces like Fulgurites & Repentia, I'm biased in saying the new terrain rules we've seen are quite promising. Not only does every unit that hasn't yet shot (and is in terrain) get a 15" Lone Operative, cover now provides the attacking unit's with a -1 to hit, rather than changing a save characteristic. This makes it wildly more easy to hide small melee units in cover, and allow them to almost always have an impact on the battle—the turn they reveal themselves from the battlefield ruins, they'll chunk something way more expensive than they cost. The thing is though, as far as we're aware this also includes the objectives, meaning small units that haven't shot, hidden on a point, make for a tough thing to shift. If this ends up being the case, we'll be seeing some very high Primary scores, not entirely a bad thing, but especially tough for armies without tons of so-called 'objective monkeys'.

I wanted to focus on both 11th's promise of a unified system for both flavor and function—e.g. narrative & matched play—as well as what's been shown of its terrain rules because I worry slightly that there's a pitfall that Games Workshop might stumble into. While yes, 10th lacked a ton of flavor-rich rules, opting instead to prove you could make a well-balanced Edition of 40k, we must be careful not to see the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. For anyone who's played things like Crusade or asymmetric missions, they can be infuriating from a player perspective. After all, perhaps the most maligned portion of Matched Play in 10th came about as a result of catch-up mechanics. These flavor-first choices made by the designers often overcorrect, and while I'm wildly excited for 11th, a seed of worry yet grows.

Via Goonhammer

Where do you draw the line between flavor and functionality? As you might surmise, I tend to fall on the side of a gamier game, with it up to the players to create their own sense of story. That being said, there’s a number of voices in the community who yearn for the days of pointed wargear, armor facing, and more. There’s a time and place for those rules, sure, but that’s in the more niche specialist games like Horus Heresy; I’ve played long enough to say, even with my nostalgia-goggles, that we’re better off with a more teachable game, than one which appeals more to the enfranchised. 

How do you feel about what we know, in terms of 11th Edition? How do you want flavor to be handled going forward? What aspects of the game that have been tuned down, would you want to see come back? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!