Speaking of enhancements, the standout is probably Alien Regality , which increases the range of your auras and Meticulous Planner abilities by 3”. It may not be flashy, but that extra range is very useful for getting your abilities around those pesky walls and corners. Then again, if you’re looking for flashy, look no further than Instinctive Counterstrike , which allows a unit within 9” of your Warlord to heroically intervene up to 6”. This is, unfortunately, very situational given that you have to be able to see your target unit to intervene on them, but could be very nasty when that situation shows up. Warhammer 40K is a sprawling setting with decades of lore spread across video games, source books and tabletop games, novels, animated series, and short stories. The big-picture lore, which has often been stagnant, paints the picture of a galaxy where nothing will ever get better. Humanity rules the stars under the enormously corrupt and decayed administration of the Imperium of Man, toiling under the eye of the decayed corpse Emperor who sits upon the Golden Throne. The Imperium will fail, either from civil war or one of the many hungry alien threats who wait at the door.

With the ruthless advance of Haarken Worldclaimer’s armada through the Nachmund Gauntlet – one of the very few safe passages through the Cicatrix Maledictum – the forces of Chaos are nearing their goal. Only a few faltering obstacles stand between Abaddon the Despoiler and supremacy over the entire Imperium Nihilus. For plenty of Factions, that will be the end of the process – but some armies also have the option of taking one Allied Detachment. Arks provides a specific, restricted list of Patrol, Super Heavy Auxiliary and Auxiliary Support options that you can take one of alongside your main force, depending on which faction your Arks detachment is from. Most of these cover the “encouraged” soup options that have arisen in books through 9th – Imperium and Chaos can take a Freeblade or Dreadblade, Asuryani or Drukhari can take Travelling Players, that sort of thing. There are a few surprising “missing” options – no way for Tyranids to take Genestealer Cults, and no Daemonic Allies for Chaos Knights, and at the other end two more surprising inclusions. Vashtorr is an independent daemonic entity, the demigod of inventors, engineers, scientists, and artisans. He is the extremity of innovation, of imagination and creation unbound by ethics or morals. Vashtorr gains power whenever a mortal mind is driven by curiosity to understand and exploit the forces of nature. He embodies the drive to achieve technological perfection, and the motivations between his own sphere of influence and the Machine Cult of the Adeptus Mechanicus are disturbingly aligned. Although similar to Be’lakor in that both are demigods, Vashtorr is not a Daemon Prince and is not beholden to any of the four Dark Gods. In contrast to other beings of the Warp, Vashtorr is unflinchingly direct in his communications and pacts. He says what he wants and the terms by which his power is shared are direct and to the point. He is the essence of an engineer. The second part of the book covers Boarding Action battles, a variant of Warhammer 40,000 played with 500-point forces in the cramped confines of a space hulk. These games take place on a Boarding Actions Terrain Set, which is essentially two sets of Kill Team: Into the Dark Terrain laid next to each other. In practice, these function as a stripped-down version of the 40k ruleset, with very strict limitations on what types of units players can bring and a very limited set of upgrades and Stratagems to work with. Terrain Not to mention the modular additions to the Gallowdark terrain that’ll arrive in upcoming Kill Team sets .There is one final note before leaving this section – there are a few places where (we assume) some Faction-specific FAQs are coming down the line to handle interactions that no longer work. The WarCom article about this mentioned that Drukhari and Dark Angels would be getting some rules to handle their unique detachment options (which aren’t in the book), and some Supreme Commanders who have a fixed subfaction like Abaddon, Szarekh, and Shadowsun need an exemption to the boilerplate “you cannot include units from more than one in the same detachment” rule that turns up in every codex, which Supreme Commander doesn’t intrinsically provide. We’ve assumed (in our faction analyses) that something like this is going to get added, as it would seem strange to cut off access to some of these units in a lot of lists. Each book in the series will introduce new developments for both the story and tabletop experience, adding new missions, expanded rules, and extra options for your Boarding Actions games. If you’re wondering how Boarding Actions will play out in practice, you’ll just have to stay tuned for more Warhammer Day reveals. I can even see it being used in small ‘side missions’ in ongoing campaigns. All of the missions have an Underdog Bonus which can just as easily be given to the side with the lower Crusade Point total if you can’t be bothered to work out your points total. I would also suggest using the Combat Squads rule when you need to split up your 10 man squads even if your unit is missing that particular ability.

All seems like reasonable stuff, but not revolutionary – the big changes this season are going to come from the army construction, Secondary and Balance updates. Balance Dataslate & Field Manual The book does not contain any explicit Crusade content, but does have a paragraph stating that the rules and missions can be used with Crusade forces (and their Battle Honours, Battle Scars, and upgrades) so long as everyone understands that not all Agendas will actually work with the game setting. The book encourages players to discuss things ahead of time and mutually agree on how to handle things. Given that the Crusade system uses Power Level and Boarding Acton battles use points and a lot of restrictions it’s likely that players will be negotiating quite a bit. The ongoing narrative of Warhammer 40,000, with galaxy-shaking implications for the Imperium as the Lion and his sons battle to foil Vashtorr's designs Within the Warp, Vashtorr is the master of the soul forges, a metaphysical foundry in which daemonic entities are enmeshed with technological abominations to create entities such as Soul Grinders, Calamity Engines, or Infernal Bombards. Daemons willingly submit to this transformation in pursuit of swift power, agreeing in binding contract to pay the price of a given number of souls reaped and offered to the forges. He maintains his neutrality by being a useful entity to all of the Ruinous Powers. When manifested in reality he is a frightening threat that can summon forth hosts of infernal legions bound to him and alter the mechanisms of reality itself. The answer to the proliferation of tanks on the battlefields of the Horus Heresy is clear – more tanks, but fitted with neutron lasers capable of obliterating enemy armour in a single shot. First up is the Cerberus Heavy Tank Destroyer, an adaptation of the Spartan chassis with a triple-barrelled neutron laser battery that can take a hefty dose of punishment while spitting out radioactive death. Sicaran Venator Tank HunterAfter waiting 10,000 years for the Lion to return, make something of the occasion by buying The Lion & Retinue, Supreme Grand Master Azrael, and Arks of Omen: The Lion together – and scoring an exclusive artist-signed print of the Knight of the Nihilus. Only 300 copies are available, so act fast.** Commander Dante Most of this is really cool, and we’re pretty enthusiastic to see what people do with it (especially the new ease of taking Lords of War). The only thing we don’t love are some of the “missing” soup options, and the Votann option feeling unlikely to have healthy impacts – because it comes at a price, you’re basically only going to do it if the raw maths on the Votann tools results in them being boring but effective killing machines. Otherwise, Wings is chomping at the bit to see what happens in Competitive Innovations when these new rules are unleashed, and in combination with the Balance Dataslate and point changes, there should be some huge shakeups.

On the whole, these are solid. There’s a lot of options here and some really cool narrative concepts for play here, such as the furnace and the explosive decompression of Hull Breach. So, how does it work? When building an Arks of Omen army, you must start with an Arks of Omen detachment as the core of your army. This is a bit like a Battalion, except you can choose which Battlefield Role your mandatory slots come from, as shown below: The Arks of Omen have sown terror and death from one side of the galaxy to the other. Despite the efforts of those who opposed them, their masters have gathered enough arcane artefacts for Vashtorr the Arkifane to fashion his monstrous Key. The hour draws nigh when the daemon and the Despoiler will between them awaken this engine of terrible power. Still, on average dice Big Azreal will canonically die but also weaken the hell out of Vashtorr, which is fine because he also costs like half the points and is not technically a God, so you have to grade him on a little bit of a curve. Either way you go, you’re likely to end up with between 5 and 8 Cabal Points per turn, which doesn’t give you a ton to work with – Malevolent Charge costing 5 means that it’ll often drain all of your charge, but the upsight is you’ll want to use Warp Sight more often. If you’re going triple Rubrics you probably don’t need Master of the Malefic Conduit; if you’re going Scarabs + Rubrics, you will want to have it so you can get off a second ritual per turn. Either way, Thousand Sons are pretty nasty in Boarding Actions, in part because you can take a buttload of warpflamers and just bathe the hallways in coruscating flames. Adeptus CustodesA lot. This is going to be one of the biggest shake-ups we’ve seen all Edition, with major changes to army design, significant shifts in how strong various factions are, and (hopefully) fewer serious outlier units dominating the meta (though a risk that some Marine builds might take that crown). Our rough feeling at a glance is that things break down as follows – this isn’t necessarily where armies end up in a tier list, but in terms of impact from these changes this is where we’re at: Rad Leak takes the players into proximity of a leaking reactor. The board is divided into four sectors, labelled A through D, representing different levels of distance away from the reaction (sector A is particularly bad). During the course of the mission the radiation levels increase, ranging from “none” to “extreme” depending on how bad things are. The effect of radiation is to reduce Leadership, Move, and Toughness characteristics depending on the level. Players can score up to 15 points per turn for securing one, two, or more objectives. At the end of the game players score 15 points if they control both markers labelled Critical and 10 points for killing the enemy Warlord.