40K’s new Leviathan set, 10th edition are great but lack a human touch

Many years into producing a franchise, it’s simple to lose perspective on who your followers are and what they worth. Look no additional than Dungeons & Dragons’ OGL fiasco in January, the place the seminal role-playing recreation managed to piss off nearly everybody — together with its most die-hard followers. Blizzard pulled off an analogous feat not too a few years in the past, asserting a cell installment within the iconic Diablo collection that landed with a seismic thud at its personal conference. As I sat within the viewers at this yr’s AdeptiCon, I questioned to myself: Is Video games Workshop strolling into the meat grinder right here with its announcement of the tenth version guidelines for Warhammer 40,000? Seems, my fears had been for naught.

The U.Okay.-based recreation developer and writer has completely knocked it out of the park, someway managing to fill its latest boxed set, Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan, with an unbelievable quantity of fan service. The miniatures inside reward longtime collectors with reimagined favorites, whereas additionally managing to discover new and very important artwork and design decisions in a number of of the sculpts. In the meantime, the brand new tenth version guidelines bundled inside that field are less complicated and simpler to make use of than ever earlier than. And that’s why the group at AdeptiCon cheered so loudly and so typically throughout an in any other case ponderous, 45-minute presentation: These are the adjustments they needed to see, and I think that Video games Workshop will likely be rewarded with one other sold-out set because of this.

Photograph: Charlie Corridor/Polygon

In fact, that’s what makes the corporate’s extra delicate advertising selections all of the extra curious. However we’ll get to that in due time. First, let’s discuss what’s inside this field.

Leviathan contains 72 miniatures, all of that are new to the franchise. There’s a mixture of each House Marines and Tyranids, 40K’s blue-armored poster boys and their most hated Alien-like enemies, respectively. These are push-fit miniatures, which means that they go collectively with none glue in any respect. Whereas they’re an actual ache for devoted hobbyists and painters, attempting to make their joins as seamless as doable earlier than airbrushing, they’re excellent for newbies. Gamers 12 and older may have completely no bother in any respect slapping these dangerous boys collectively in document time, even when they don’t actually know what they’re doing. And that’s effective — introductory units like this, whereas nonetheless enticing for veterans, are, because the time period suggests, geared towards newbies. Not solely does it embody a well-annotated (and listed!) 330-page rulebook; it should additionally embody downloadable profiles (assume character sheets, kind of like in D&D however for squads of troopers) for each unit.

The one oversight, it seems, is that Leviathan doesn’t include any cube. So make sure to choose up a boatload of d6s, or loot the opposite board video games within the closet when the time comes.

Apart from these cube, Leviathan will likely be instantly playable proper out of the field. It’s all because of the franchise’s all-new “flagship” format referred to as Fight Patrol. It’s a sooner type of play that makes use of smaller, preconstructed collections of miniatures which might be already on retailer cabinets all all over the world — just like Commander format in Magic: The Gathering. Video games Workshop has gone on the document to say that “every part that you must play Fight Patrol” with one other 22 factions will likely be free to obtain when tenth version launches. They backed that assertion up on June 2, by dropping the sport’s guidelines freed from cost on-line. So Leviathan house owners may have competitors to play in opposition to on day one.

Let me be clear about Fight Patrol: The launch of Leviathan isn’t simply the launch of two refreshed factions, House Marines and Tyranids. Video games Workshop is teasing the launch of 24 small, balanced forces, most of which can solely price just a little greater than $100 to construct. You’ll nonetheless want paint and the like, nevertheless it’s an enormous change for what has perennially been one of many greatest cash holes in all of tabletop gaming.

The significance of the launch of those free guidelines and Fight Patrol can’t be overstated. Historically, new editions have launched and followers of the 20-odd fundamental factions within the recreation have needed to wait round for brand new guidelines, within the type of Codexes, to drop over plenty of years in an effort to totally replace their armies. Solely after buying these Codexes, which might promote for as much as $55, may they then correctly replace these factions to the brand new version of the sport.

Whereas Fight Patrol isn’t the complete model of Warhammer 40K, the push to publish new, free guidelines for each single present Fight Patrol field at present on retailer cabinets successfully brings the value of entry into tenth version to the bottom level in current reminiscence. That publishing resolution is, in and of itself, as significant — perhaps much more significant — than a streamlined rule set. It makes the sport extra accessible to extra potential gamers.

Picture: Video games Workshop

The fashions that come inside Leviathan? To my eye, they’re simply OK. Sure, it’s good to have new plastic terminator House Marines for the primary time in additional than a decade, and so they’re scaled effectively to face alongside the brand new, taller Primaris House Marines. Sure, it’s good to see the Tyranid Screamer-Killer — an iconic design that dates again to the start of the franchise — up to date for contemporary audiences. However some fashions, just like the veteran House Marines with their flowing loincloths, and particularly the stumpy little long-range House Marine dreadnought, really feel a bit rote and uninspired, if effectively executed. The mainline Tyranid models specifically really feel like a collection of delicate refinements rather than notable evolutions. Which, once more, is ok. For longtime gamers, your mileage will range drastically with Leviathan, nevertheless it’s an absolute smorgasbord for brand new or returning gamers.

However all these successes include some essential caveats about how Video games Workshop continues to conduct pre-release protection. As an illustration, I’ve been sitting on a boxed copy of Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan for a few month now and I nonetheless don’t understand how a lot it should price. Identical with the hardcover rulebook. I, as a critic, have actually no solution to inform you whether or not or not it is a good worth on your greenback proper now. Nonetheless, in trade for entry, I’m successfully tied to a publication date and time — immediately, proper now — after I’m supposed to provide you my opinion on that field. And actually, it’s not one thing that I’m tremendous comfy with.

I’m additionally not tremendous comfy with just a few different issues. Video games Workshop has made some very unusual selections since January in the way it places its employees out into the world to interact with the corporate’s world fandom. Most notably, sources inform Polygon that Video games Workshop’s portray presenters on YouTube and on Video games Workshop’s personal streaming channel are not allowed to indicate their faces on digital camera. That depersonalization of the model extends editorially to the Video games Workshop Group web site as effectively, which not permits staff to indicate their final identify.

Because of this, you get weird articles like this interview with “Steve,” the man who’s designed not one, not two, however three of probably the most hanging new miniatures launched in current reminiscence. Actually, I’d prefer to know who this particular person is, and discover extra examples of their work out on the planet to bathe further reward on — however these new insurance policies make it so much more durable. This coverage shift might, at the very least partly, be the results of previous presenters spinning themselves off into profitable branded YouTube channels and even non-Video games Workshop interest product strains.

These decisions have clearly impacted the Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan core rulebook that’s shipped with this boxed set. The one attribution listed is for “THE WARHAMMER DESIGN STUDIO.” Gone is the one-page designer’s commentary, attributed to Robin Cruddace, that was current within the ninth version. In reality, the one two Video games Workshop staff named in any respect within the set are the painters of two totally detailed Fight Patrol forces. Polygon was given entry to studio supervisor Stu Black, nevertheless it was solely via a proper e mail interview dealt with by Video games Workshop’s neighborhood outreach crew. And whereas the neighborhood outreach crew has been extra agile and accommodating within the lead-up to tenth version than in years previous, the corporate’s methodologies nonetheless really feel a bit behind the instances.

So in the identical second that Warhammer 40,000 the tabletop recreation is extra accessible and reasonably priced for potential followers, and on the similar time that extra critics than ever are writing about Warhammer 40,000, each followers and critics are being held at arm’s size from the people making all of it occur backstage. It’s an odd state of affairs. I can see a future the place the 40K fandom is so alienated by these processes, the technique of manufacturing so obscured to the general public, and the true worth of these latest and most sought-after releases so rigorously hidden from critics like me that the pendulum of recognition begins to swing within the different course.

Or perhaps I’m flawed. By no means guess in opposition to a House Marine.

Nonetheless, as we sit via what guarantees to be a really prolonged and a really fractious writers’ strike in Hollywood and New York — but in addition in Chicago, and Georgia, and Vancouver and wherever else nice motion pictures and tv packages are being created — it’s essential to level out that Warhammer 40,000, the franchise, not the tabletop recreation, will quickly be coming to screens close to you with a cinematic universe crafted by none apart from Amazon, the most important retailer on the planet.

In a recreation about genetically modified authoritarians and their ravenous alien enemies, it’s cheap to not count on a lot humanity within the fiction of tenth version when it launches. However I may use a bit extra of it on the periphery. “Steve” did an awesome job, and so did quite a lot of people on Black’s crew, within the lead-up to bringing Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan to market. It’d be good to see all of them get higher illustration within the closing product and the entire public-facing content material produced by the corporate that they work for.

Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan is predicted to go up for pre-order on-line and at your pleasant native recreation retailer. It’s going to ultimately be launched as a bodily object, which can arrive on the planet the place it’s imagined to arrive in the end. It’s fairly good, particularly for those who’re new to the franchise.

Warhammer 40,000 Leviathan was reviewed utilizing a pre-release copy supplied by Video games Workshop. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You will discover further details about Polygon’s ethics coverage right here.