Welcome to Week 4 of our weekly review of everything we know about 10th Edition. Once again, we’re mostly on Faction Reveals, one bit of interesting news, and a couple of rules shown off.

If you’d like to read our reports on the previous 3 weeks, you can find them here:

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Rules Updates

A couple of new things got shown off. The first of these is a proper illustration of the Deep Strike rule.

There’s not much to say here except that they can just appear on turn 1, and there seemingly seems to be no rider on them being destroyed if they don’t show up.

Precision has been given slightly more explanation, with it being able to target characters inside of squads. I was going to say that this might cause slightly more wound tracking, but it really, really won’t, and it’s a pretty interesting way to model snipers and…whatever melee snipers are (assassins?).

Stealth, Pistol and Grenade are still AWOL, I feel bad for them.

10th Edition Stream Games

Swiftblade: So in a surprise announcement that GW decided they would just sneak into an article about upcoming events, apparently there will be not just one but TWO full tenth edition stream games at the Kansas City Open. The first will be on Thursday, June 1st, and the other will be on Friday June 2nd. These will be both full 2000 point games, and the article tells us that the stream commentators will go over new datasheets as they appear during the game. One of these is going to include Goonhammer’s own Robert “TheChirurgeon” Jones so be sure to swing by on Thursday night to watch him square off against Goatboy’s Daemons.

It’s very exciting news, as this will be not only a preview of a few more datasheets before 10th drops but also our best look at how the edition will actually play. There’s still quite a bit about tenth edition we don’t know, so fingers crossed these stream games will be a great place to learn them.

If you don’t have the time or patience to watch these games, we will be here next week to talk about those games and anything we were able to glean from them.

Faction Overviews

Chaos Knights

Swiftblade: Chaos Knights kick us off this week, in case you’re like me and want the thrills of giant robot battle but want to be, ya know, cool. While they technically had their debut in eighth edition, ninth was where the book stepped into its own identity by focusing on leadership debuffs for your opponent and having a great primary scoring game, with its very own corrupted Knight variants. This tenth edition preview looks like a good continuation of these ideas.

Firstly, we see the new version of Harbingers of Dread. I’ll admit that I’m more than a little sad to see the flow chart abilities of the ninth edition dread table go, but if you weren’t familiar with the Chaos Knight book that flow chart was really confusing. So I get it. Now, Dread is much simplified, while still focusing on strong leadership shenanigans.

Making Battle-shock tests a bit harder is good, and the turn three onwards ability makes your knights deadlier and more survivable. These are nifty on their own, but get really interesting when combined with the Tratoris Lance detachment rule, Forged in Terror, which causes enemy units to take a Battle-shock test if they are within 12” of a Chaos Knight and below starting strength, period. This pushes Harbingers of Dread from a neat trick to oppressive when it comes to trying to score against Chaos Knight armies who have made it to the center of the board. And if oops all War Dogs is still a viable build, it’s pretty straightforward to give your opponent little room to hide from all these Battle-shock tests. It’s a special rule that won’t kill as good as some of the others we’ve seen, but this is a rule that will win games.

Now onto the datasheets. Sadly, we get no looks at any War Dogs, but we get an exciting look at two big knight chassis. First, we get a look at the Knight Despoiler, who picks up a very welcome new rule called Seething Hatred which gives him a single hit and wound reroll. Importantly, it looks like Knight Despoilers can still take two of the same ranged weapon, and Knight players of all stripes should be excited at what those knight weapons can do.

The melee weapons are just about the same, but every single big ranged weapon picks up a cool upgrade here. The Thermal Cannon has an eye-watering Melta 6 to really mess up whatever it shoots at, and the Gatling Cannon has an extra 6 shots baked in. Big Knights have had a problem where they aren’t quite deadly enough sometimes to make them an attractive option over their smaller counterparts, and I like seeing that the new rules for these guys looks to fix that.

Next we get to look at the Chaos Knight exclusive guy, the Knight Abominant. It keeps it’s abilities as a psychic knight, but rather than boosting its survivability with psychic powers, now it has a power to force a battleshock test at the start of your shooting phase, or to make every enemy unit within 9” to take d3 mortals at the end of the movement phase on a 3+. The mortal wound bomb ability is the winner for me, since a little chip damage goes a long way with the Forged in Terror rule. Also, the abominant’s metal tentacle picks up sustained hits on its attacks, neat.

We get two weapon previews here, but one is for the Warpstrike claw that we can already see on the Despoiler’s datasheet. The Desecrator Laser Destructor gets a big boost with an extra attack, but goes down to 3+d6 damage instead of d3+6. The fact that the damage is much more variable here stings, but with the extra attack it’s at least a much more reliable gun than it was before at 2 attacks.

The stratagem we get to see finally gives the War Dogs some love. Dread Hounds is a killer stratagem when you need to focus fire something straight to tiny plastic hell.

This stratagem already exists in a similar form in ninth edition, and it’s one of the best stratagems the codex has to offer. Right now, it only works for shooting, so getting it in combat too is nifty. The very exciting thing for me is that if you target a battle shocked unit with this, it gets critical hits on a 5+. With ready access to forcing a whole bunch of battleshock, I’m thinking this strat is gonna get used a whole bunch.

Overall, Chaos Knights have a great preview here that nails the Chaos Knight flavor of “gigantic, scary robots”. Rules are best when they are like these: cool, good, and very fluffy.

Adeptus Custodes

Swiftblade: I have to admit, I’ve got a soft spot for the Golden Boys. I tend to gravitate to combat armies, and when it comes to imperial armies only Blood Angels do a better job in punching land.

Martial Ka’tah’s (better known as marital karates) make a comeback, and honestly I think the rules for the Ka’tahs are great but I’m not excited to see this army rule back. Ka’tahs are very good and give the Adeptus Custodes additional flexibility on the tabletop, but the rule itself isn’t very fluffy for Custodes. I’d have preferred if they went with an army rule that focused on the fact that each Custodian is basically all doing over the top heroics on the battlefield (which I kinda get later), and how unshakeable the resolve of every Custodian is.

This is entirely my little lore heart throwing a fit though, the Ka’tahs we see here are great.

Each of these is going to be very useful when used correctly, especially Rendax into Knight or vehicle/monster heavy armies. Aegis of the Emperor returns as the Custodes detachment rule, and it hands out a 4+ Feel no Pain against mortal wounds. This is usually at least handy in most games, and just brutal in games with heavy reliance on mortal wounds for damage output.

We get a look at Trajann Valoris, who is toned down from his 9th Edition incarnation. He’s gone from “Unbelievably good, absolutely too good, oh God!” to merely “Wow this guy seems great!”

All of those abilities from Moment Shackle are game changers, though I think the ability to give your whole unit fight first is a clear best choice here in most games. 2++ for a turn seems just broken good at first pass, but in practice it’s likely an “oh, shit!” button to press in case something has gone horribly wrong in most cases. Of course, getting 12 attacks out of that impressive Watchers Axe combat profile is also pretty good.

A few other points on the datasheet, it’s interesting to see that Trajann has a 5+ leadership value. Custodes are the highest average leadership army of ninth, so seeing Trajann cap out at 5+ means that the days of entirely ignoring morale are over for the Custodes. A good change for the health of the game, I’m happy to see that there really aren’t any armies that wholesale ignore morale (yet).

Allarus Terminators get previewed, as well as a neat tidbit about Custodes datasheets all having a once per game ability much like most heroes do, to represent the feeling that each Custodes is a hero in their own right. I’m real excited about this for Custodes, it might be what honestly finally sells me on playing them. I can’t wait to find out what all these abilities are, and how they make this army not just feel like “Space Marines, but bigger and tougher” and give them a more distinctly Custodes feeling.

Right, the Allarus. Here’s the Datasheet, it’s pretty good.

From the datasheet, I notice that Vexilla is a piece of Wargear for the squad now, so I wonder if the Vexillus Praetors are just going to be wrapped up into the squads now, or if they will still be their own unit while having Vexillas also available in squads.

Slayers of Tyrants will make this unit nasty against targets that Custodes traditionally struggle against, and From Golden Light is just great. Flat out great. Makes this unit surprisingly mobile and a threat literally anywhere on the table. The Castellan Axe did lose out a point of AP and seems pretty pillowfisted at ap-1, but STR 9 D3 still hits like a truck. I don’t know if it makes the axe better than the Guardian Spear, but I think anyone who tells you it’s bad because it’s only AP -1 is crazy.

Not to get left out, we get some nice looks at Sisters of Silence in this preview as well. Prosecutors (boltgun sisters) still have a profile very similar to sister of battle, but they rock a 3+ Feel no Pain against Psychic powers and Devastating Wounds as well as Precision against Psykers. Vigilator Greatblades will just blend psykers now, so if you can get this fragile unit into a psyker it’s gonna have a really bad time.

Lastly, the previewed stratagem is Vigil Unending, which allows you to bring back a dead custodian from a squad during the command phase (though each unit can only be selected once per game). Considering how tough the profiles of what’s been previewed here has been, this will be backbreaking when used in a clutch moment. Plus, Custodes can enjoy some resurrected model movement shenanigans that Necrons and Chaos Marines have been enjoying as of late to sneak bodies onto objectives or make charges later in the phase much easier.

 

After reading this preview, I think they got me folks. Custodes seem really fun to play from what we saw here, if you happen to play Custodes already then I’m sure most of you can’t wait to get a chance to play this army in tenth. This has been one of my favorite previews so far, and even though I’m not thrilled to see Marital Karates return it looks like Custodes will get some really fun and unique flavor to how they play.

Orks

Orks have been shown off as well, and they’re simple and based on combat, perfect.

The first thing is their army rule, which is called, unsurprisingly, Waaagh!. At the start of a battle round, you can call a Waaagh! This gives every Orks model the following effects for the entire battle round:

• 5+ Invulnerable Save
• +1 to Strength and Attacks of melee weapons.
• Advance and Charge

Any one of these would be a pretty nice general army effect, so getting to pop all three during a turn is really, really good. You can pop this for the Invuln, weather the storm and then advance and charge and go to town with your massively buffed weapons.

The detachment rules and stratagems also lean heavily into this as well, rather fittingly, the detachment is called Waaagh! Tribe

 

You get more attacks with your weapons after using your army ability, and those attacks have the chance to generate even more hits, that’s some really good synergy.

One of the stratagems for this detachment is called  ‘Ere We Go, costs 1 CP, and lets you add 2 to both Advance and Charge rolls for a single Ork infantry unit. Even more synergy with Waaagh!, you love to see it.

The other stratagem is pretty standard:

However it’s one that no one would complain about having (except possibly T’au).

Some units and weapons get shown off as well, naturally we’ll start with the biggest and work our way down.

First is the Stompa, the Deffkannon might be the swingiest weapon known to man, giving you between 3-18 shots, with a ⅓ chance of hitting, and then doing D6 damage. You might obliterate anything in the game, or mildly inconvenience one Guardsman.

The Mega-Choppa is much better looking though,with buffs along the board. The sweep is pretty much able to murder, or almost murder anything up to and including a 10-man squad of Marines. Meanwhile the strike has good chances of just putting down Canis Rex in one round.

The Squig Launcha gets a more consistent number of attacks alongside retaining Blast (it goes from 2D6 to D6+6 shots), and while it does lose a point of AP, it kind of gains it back by being able to ignore cover in combination with indirect fire.

Ghazghkull returns, obviously. Like everyone else, he loses his damage cap, but he does get some pretty nice things. Gork’s Klaw doesn’t suffer from degradation anymore and he’s pretty much going to be wounding almost anything on 2+. The unit you embed him in will also be absolute monsters, with Lethal Hits and +1 to hit and wound as well. Finally, Makari is pretty much a Drukhari shadow field, which I just find really funny. You’ll be relying on things that aren’t ‘walking’ to get around the board quickly though.

Finally are the Beast Snagga Boyz, pretty much everything here has been smoothed out, except they now get three buffs that absolutely no one would complain about getting. Re-roll hits (against monsters or vehicles), a 5+ save instead of a 6+, and a 6+ Feel No Pain, amazing.

There’s not much to say about the Ork reveal, in a good way. What you see is what you get, and they’re pretty much designed to just run over and punch you in the face really hard.

Thousand Sons

The psychic faction get a pretty major shakeup considering the removal of the psychic phase. Rather nicely, it seems like it’s going to go pretty well for them.

Their new army rule is called Cabal of Sorcerers and essentially models with this ability generate a bunch of points at the end of your Command phase. From the two we’ve seen, Ahriman generates 3 points and the Aspiring Sorcerer model in the Rubric squad generates 1. These points can be used all through your turn and the opponent’s turn, before resetting to 0 at the start of your next Command phase.

As for what they can be used for.

These basically function as a very powerful set of alternate commands you can use.They all have their uses and each of them pretty much has something cool going on with it, with the last two being particularly horrifying. Another interesting thing here is that you’re able to re-use a stratagem within the same phase, which has the potential to be extremely powerful.

The detachment for Thousand Sons is called Cult of Magic and the rule is called Kindred Sorcery, basically at the start of each turn, you pick if you want all your Psychic weapons to have Lethal Hits, Sustained Hits 1, or Devastating Wounds. This feels like Hammer of Math bait if I’ve ever seen it.

We also see their stratagem.

This seems pretty situational, but in a pretty good way. It’ll completely bully units that have a lot of Psychic attacks, and it’ll also make a character think twice about using their Psychic weapons, but in other scenarios, it might be better to use the CP on other things. Good thing you can use 6 Cabal Points to make this free.

A few units were also shown off as well, starting with Ahriman.

On the one hand, he has lost a wound, but on the other hand, Psychic Stalk got a pretty nice change, and is now a way to snipe characters, a strength 6, D6 wounds weapon is pretty unpleasant to deal with. While his melee weapon is rather potent, the main interesting things here are him giving 3 Cabal points (the second highest), +1 to wound rolls for him and his unit, and the ability to just use a Cabal Ritual for free. Enjoy using a free Doombolt or turn armour off once per battle.

Rubrics do lose All is Dust, but they get a 5+ Invulnerable Save, and 2 attacks by default on their boltguns. The wound re-roll is pretty monstrous as well, especially since it’s tied to what you’re targeting, rather than where your guys are, so once again, these seem pretty neat.

The Mutalith Vortex Beast has been greatly simplified as well.

In addition to this, it gives any nearby psykers double range on their Cabal rituals, neat.

Magnus has also been mentioned some as well, with him generating at least 4 Cabal points a turn, and having a choice of auras as well, hopefully he’s pretty good.

All in all, their Psychic Powers have been smoothed out and dispersed over several phases. You still get a bunch of funny tricks to do, but you won’t be doing it all in one phase. They also seem much more reliable, which is always a good thing for psychic abilities.

Grey Knights

The elite psychic Marines get a whole bunch of fun changes to make them feel more like…elite psychic Marines.

The first of these is their army rule, Teleport Assault

A lot of their stuff seems to come with Teleport Assault by default, and being able to rapidly maneuver is ‘really useful’ at absolute worst, especially considering Grey Knights are likely to have guns that have a greater range than 9”.

Their detachment is called Teleport Strike Force, and unsurprisingly, quite a bit of it is based around teleportation. The detachment rule is called Teleport Shunt, and allows any Grey Knights with the Deep Strike ability to auto advance 6” and also count as flying when they do. Once again, more mobility, you love to see it.

The two Stratagems shown are expensive, at 2CP each, but they both seem like they could be extremely powerful, firstly the more fiddly one:

Being immune to long ranged shooting after teleporting in is pretty amazing. At worst it’ll make the sting of failing a 9 inch charge much less painful, and at best, it’ll let you charge your squad in, murder what they’re going for, and then be immune to long ranged fire now they’re out of combat.

The other stratagem shown off is called Radiant Strike and gives the psychic melee weapons of a Grey Knights Psyker unit Devastating Wounds.

This pairs pretty well with the Nemesis Dreadknight…

Surge of Wrath in combination with Radiant Strike will murder a lot of vehicles and monsters, probably not all of them, but a whole lot of them, of course, it does have some pretty potent guns as well, with the psilencer getting more attacks due to Sustained Hits, the incinerator getting more range, and the psycannon getting more damage.

Purgation squads are upgraded to a 2+ save (alongside a bunch of other units), and get to offer indirect supporting fire to other units, which is a pretty nice looking ability.

Finally there’s a look at Purifying Flame, which I assume replaces the psychic power…Purifying Flame for the Purifier squads.

It’ll be hard to judge this until we know how many models in the unit get to use it. If it’s ‘all of them’, it’s a pretty neat improvement, with more range and probably more damage as well, with the only drawback being that it’s not mortal wounds. If it’s just one model, then it’s not great. Naturally I’m heavily assuming it’s the former.

All in all, these changes look pretty cool. There’s a bit less in making their rules anti-daemon (which is narratively really cool, but also just leads to very weird scenarios when playing games), but more on how they’re a bunch of teleporting badasses, which is a lot more open to write rules around.

Next week

We’re hitting the point where we can realistically guess which factions are going to show up, which means we might just get a curveball thrown our way. But if not, I’m expecting to see Drukhari, Genestealer Cults, more Marines, and then possibly a bunch of weirdos of some flavor.

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