It is, once again, Balance Update time. 40K is in a fairly healthy spot, but as always there are some problem factions that have had things too good for too long, and a few teething issues with this year’s new mission pack that need ironing out. As usual, we’re here to break down what’s changed across the game, starting here with core rules changes, then looking at what’s happened to each faction.

In general, it looks good – as always there’s one or two baffling decisions, and a couple of signs of which factions might be next to climb to the top of toy soldier mountain, but overall this is a solid update, and we’re excited to see how it plays out on the battlefield.

Thanks, as always, to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the balance update.

You may also have seen that a lot of the files on the Warhammer Community downloads page have updated, but for a significant number of them this is just to merge in tiny things from previous updates, or no-brainer keyword fixes from this one. We believe we’ve extracted most of the relevant stuff!

If you are looking for info on your faction of choice, check out our rundowns below:

• The Q4 2024 Balance Update: Space Marines
• The Q4 2024 Balance Update: Imperium Factions
• The Q4 2024 Balance Update: Chaos Factions
• The Q4 2024 Balance Update: Xenos Factions

Pariah Tournament Companion

The Pariah Tournament Companion, which governs pretty much all competitive play, gets a few changes that look to be aimed at reducing the “rubberbanding” potential of some armies via Secret Missions (and one Primary mission).

Secret Missions

Players who select a Secret Mission can now no longer score any points for the Primary Mission in Battle Round 5.

Secret Missions have generally been a very positive addition to the game, but they made some armies with high reliability movement tools (e.g. Necron Hypercrypt, Grey Knights, Aeldari) a nightmare to play against when they were going second. Because they could also often score plenty of Primary points in the final turn, they could play extremely conservatively all the way through to the final turn, then move out to score an easy 30VP right at the end. Secret Missions are just generally a lot easier for the player going second in most cases, and this really compounded that.

This change forces players to play a more interactive game if they want to hit the 40VP Primary cap a Secret Mission imposes, needing to make sure they start going on the offensive on turn 3 to get a good score in turn 4. At the same time, it gives more agency to opponents to try and limit scoring via very aggressive point denial against a cautious list. Some armies are still going to be very good at them, and they’ll still very much be a part of competitive play, but hopefully this reduces the number of games when it feels like there’s nothing you can do to stop a foe scoring big.

Linchpin

On a similar note, the Linchpin mission is changed to give a 15VP per turn Primary cap, meaning you can no longer twiddle your thumbs early on, then score two monster 23vp turns at the end. This is another one that should reduce how hateful going first against some foes is on this mission, and is probably healthy.

Storm Hostile Objective

Storm Hostile Objective now can be scored in the first Battle Round if you want to (though can also still be re-shuffled if you don’t). Unlike the previous changes, this helps the player going second, as they’re often going to have an opportunity to score some easy points on it. It also means you should now think (even more) carefully about whether your Infiltrators should actually be set up on an objective or merely in range to move onto it on your first turn.

This also makes it a little more interesting as a potential Fixed objective pick, particularly if you’re an army that does well on the offensive anyway. Finally, it stops the confusion that arose from the turn 1 reshuffle being optional – now you actually want to keep it sometimes!

Attached Units and Marked For Death

Marked for Death gets even worse, for some reason, with a clarification that if an Attached unit is selected for it, you need to kill both the Bodyguard and at least one Leader from it, not either or. Certainly arguable on the wording, but it would have been good to see some improvements to counteract it (e.g. “No Lone Operatives”).

Terraform

Yes, only one player can Terraform a given objective, so don’t let your opponent rush out and do a bunch turn 1!

“Start of the Battle” Mission Rules

…happen just after “Determine First Turn”. Seems legitimate.

Core Rules Changes

The headline change here is a formalisation of “Surge” moves, of which the Khorne Berzerkers’ Blood Surge is the emblematic one. These have three new restrictions added – unless otherwise stated you can only do them once per phase, you can’t do them when Battle-shocked, and can’t do them when within Engagement Range. Mostly what this does is just put them all on the same footing, as the wording was inconsistent between different ones – the Wolf Guard Battle Leader’s version worked when Battle-shocked but Blood Surge didn’t, for example.

The only other small change is that the Leader rule gets some wording added to clarify that the character is no longer part of an Attached unit when that unit is destroyed, and vice versa if the character dies before the Bodyguard does.

FAQs

There’s a handful of new FAQ rulings, most of which are consistent with how you’d expect them to work. The first is a general one which clarifies that a rule changing Damage to 0 still works even if there’s another rule affecting that unit which reduces Damage and says “to a minimum of 1.”

In Timing/Sequencing, there’s a clarification that units which return to the table come back with any persisting effects still applied if they’re relevant (e.g. if Angron dies and returns with Oath of Moment active on him before the Space Marine player’s next Command phase), though if you add a new unit such as with the Reinforcements Stratagem, they are indeed new and such effects don’t apply. Sticking with things being destroyed, there’s a clarification that a unit’s abilities, Auras, and Auras it is receiving from elsewhere still apply until it’s actually removed – mostly applicable for fight on death effects.

A previous FAQ answer also gets a change. Previously, the answer to “If some rules take effect at the start of a phase, turn or battle round and another rule takes effect during that same phase, turn or battle round without specifying the start, can that latter rule take effect before all of those other rules are resolved?” was a flat no. This has been tweaked to say in most cases no, with an exception for reactive effects which happen on a specific trigger. The example given is Arcane Genetic Alchemy, which happens “just after a mortal wound has been allocated to an ADEPTUS CUSTODES unit from your army”, and can be triggered by a Doombolt even though that happens at the start of the phase. This feels like how most people would expect to play it, but the previous answer stopped it from working.

Further on in Positioning and Movement, there’s three additional clarifications on Surge moves. The first two both apply to cases where you make a move determined by a dice result; you don’t have to move the full distance if you don’t want to, and you don’t have to move at all after you’ve seen the dice result, though you do still count as having made the move.

There’s a longer question and answer on Overwatch, which basically boils down to – if your opponent overwatches you and you Surge move into Engagement Range of an enemy unit, you can’t then keep doing your original move, though if they overwatched you at the beginning of your move and you didn’t get into Engagement Range then you can keep going with whatever you were doing to start with. This probably matters most for overwatching something during a Charge move – if you kill one of their models, they can move d6” towards you and charge from that position, so you’re potentially just making their charge shorter.

Wrap Up

A smaller set of core changes than previous iterations, and honestly that’s a good thing at this point – it shows the game’s fundamentals are now solid. There’s still plenty of change coming to the battlefield though, so make sure to go read up on what’s happened with your favourite/least favourite factions in the rest of our articles.

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