The Warhammer 40k World Championships Rules Update and What it Can Tell Us About the Next Dataslate

We’re less than a week away from the 2024 World Championships of Warhammer in Atlanta, Georgia. Players are packing their bags, lists have been locked in, and Games Workshop has released an updated event FAQ, made specifically for this tournament. And while there were some rules notes for every game featured at the WCW, the biggest and most notable of these docs is the rules update for Warhammer 40k, which has some pretty spicy errata and clarifications. In this article we’ll cover what this document is, what’s in it, what they mean, and what it means for the next Dataslate.

First off, if you haven’t seen the doc that was circulated to event attendees, you can find it here:

World_Championships_of_Warhammer_40k_Rules_Updates_2024

What is this Document?

This is a set of rulings written by Games Workshop’s rules writers specifically for the 2024 World Championships of Warhammer 40,000. It’s an official FAQ for that event and that event only – it’s not a dataslate, and shouldn’t be used as an official rules update from Games Workshop.

Can I use these rulings at my events?

Oh yeah, you totally can. But you can also not use them.

Should I use these rulings and adjustments?

Yeah, probably. They’re pretty good.

Are these rulings going to become official?

Great question. The answer there is a resounding “probably.” As an event pack written by the rules staff, these represent pretty much the official line of thought on these issues, and we can more or less expect these to show up in a future FAQ/Errata doc or Dataslate.

That said, I say “probably” and “more or less” because these can absolutely change before we see a full dataslate/balance update. The best example of this in the past was around rules and abilities which let you ignore modifiers to a unit’s characteristics and effects like Armour of Contempt or damage reduction. GW events originally ruled that those effects did not ignore damage reduction or AP worsening, but later reversed course on that in a dataslate update. So while we can expect things to look like this in an official update, some can absolutely change.

Ok, with those questions out of the way, let’s dive into the clarifications and changes.

Core Rules

Most of these are geared toward transports and how they’re used.

• Clarification: You can’t make a reactive move in response to a unit disembarking. This was something most players already knew, but it’s a good clarification to have. Disembarking isn’t a Normal move – it only counts as having made one – so disembarking within 9″ of an enemy unit which can make a reactive move will not trigger said that move. This is a great way for your units to get around that problem – keep your transport more than 9″ away when finishing the move, and then when you get out you can be more than 6″ away. If you’re using a Land Raider or other assault vehicle, that sets you up nicely for a 6″ charge.That said, if you disembark from a Transport that hasn’t moved and make a move that ends in the correct distance, that will trigger the necessary conditions for a reactive move.
• Clarification: Consolidating towards an objective marker can be done in any direction as long as you move closer and stay within range. Also note that you can’t make a Consolidation move with a model if it is already touching or on top of an objective marker. This is another one that savvy players already made a lot of use of, and remembering to think about exactly where on an objective mat you want your models to end up after a fight is one of the places you can build up incremental advantage.
• Units cannot disembark from a Transport which arrived on the table using the Rapid Ingress Stratagem. This is pretty common sense – the rules for Disembarking limit them to your Movement phase, and units arriving via Rapid Ingress do so during your opponent’s movement phase.
• You cannot use defensive Stratagems to worsen the AP of enemy attacks (e.g. Armour of Contempt) when an enemy unit fights on death. This is another clarification and one that might not have been obvious to players. Similar to how you can’t use Stratagems to buff a model fighting on death, models fighting on death bypass the standard “nominate a unit to fight” process that typically triggers stratagems to be used. Wings: Yeah I think this is closest to a “surprise” in what’s here, as I’ve legitimately seen this ruled either way.

Pariah Nexus Missions

These clarifications and changes are primarily focused on Actions.

• Overwhelming Force triggers for both a unit and its attached units. So if you go after an attached unit that started the turn on an objective, you score VP for destroying both the leader and the bodyguard units this turn.
• If part of an attached unit is destroyed while doing an action, the remaining part can still complete the action. This is a fine clarification on something that was somewhat ambiguous. If your unit dies while doing an action then the attached leader can keep on doing the action.
• Embarked units in transports count against the 25% Strategic Reserves limit for Smoke and Mirrors.
• Units doing Actions can Fire Overwatch without causing the Action to fail. This is a fun clarification that makes doing Actions a little less all-or-nothing.
• You can’t start to Terraform an objective an enemy unit is already attempting to Terraform. This is a weird one but sure.

Faction Rules

There are a number of faction-specific items in the doc, and some which change the power level of specific units.

• Vindicators and Leman Russ Tanks: The Siege Shield and Line-Breaker abilities do not let you Fire Overwatch at units within Engagement Range after they have made a charge in the Charge phase. This was a bit of an odd one – Big Guns Never Tire only works in your Shooting phase and so couldn’t help you with Overwatch, but the wording on these abilities seemed to indicate they were just “always on” when it came to giving permission to shoot at targets within Engagement Range. That’s been clarified here.
• Astra Militarum: Tempestus Aquilons can only use the Precision Drop ability in your Movement phase. This is a pretty important power level adjustment on Tempestus Aquilons, but a very necessary one. Previously they could use Precision Drop in conjunction with Rapid Ingress to pull off some incredibly stupid tricks. The most hilarious one we came up back when we were writing our Hot Take about the unit was the idea of waiting for Skarbrand to deep strike in near Be’lakor, then to Rapid Ingress in a 3″ circle around him, preventing him from charging anything except the Aquilons. The ability to immediately screen out nearly any unit via Rapid Ingress was pretty nasty and we’re glad it’s gone. Wings: They’re still very good after this, but this reduces their dual impact as a defensive tool.Additionally, Tempestus Aquilons which use the servo-sentry ability are not eligible targets for the Grenade Stratagem in that same turn. This one is more a clarification than a change, though. Wings: Yeah can confirm this is already how this was being ruled at big UK events.
• Black Templars: Vows activated with Fervent Acclamation trigger extra abilities on Righteous Crusaders Enhancements. This is in-line with similar clarifications for Space Wolves and the like, and makes for more fun combos when you put the two together.
• Blood Angels: Death Company Dreadnoughts can move into Engagement Range with their Surge moves. This is a change to the Codex wording, and makes Death Company Dreadnoughts substantially more threatening. You could argue they could already do this but it was pretty unclear before, and always a bit of a miss to leave out the wording anyways.
• Chaos Knights can use Knights of Shade Stratagem after they roll their charge rolls. The timing wording on Knights of Shade is ambiguous – it just says “Your Movement phase or your Charge phase,” and so the ruling here is that you can pretty much use it at any point in those phases, including after a Charge roll. Presumably this can also apply to Advance rolls. Wings: This makes the devious War Dog Karnivore even more spicy, as you can park one deep into a ruin then any opponent who comes near has to worry about you taking a punt on a speculative 10″ charge or whatever.
• Dark Angels: Watcher in the Dark can only be used after a mortal wound is allocated to an ADEPTUS ASTARTES model in the unit. This really only applies if you’re attaching an Inquisitor to a unit, but specifies that the little Watcher goobers will not step in to help if they get Precision mind-blasted by Ahriman. This fixes the timing issues with the ability as well, making it possible to use the ability reactively, so you can use it against Start-of-the-phase abilities like Doombolt.
• Lion El’Jonson’s All Secrets Revealed ability isn’t automatic. You can choose when this is used. This seems intuitive, but after reading the ability a few times I can see how it could be interpreted that it just happens automatically the first time an enemy unit is targeted by a Stratagem within 12″ of Jonson. In a similar fashion, they made it clear that this is also true for Kaldro Draigo’s One with the Warp ability.
• Death Guard: Objectives markers stay infected if you lose control of them. They lose the Nurgle’s Gift ability if you don’t control them, and note that the Stratagems which key off being in range of Infected Markers also require that you control said markers. So this doesn’t mean much.
• Genestealer Cults: Setting up via Cult Ambush is affected by rules like Omni-scramblers. You don’t get to ignore those abilities when setting up your unit.
• Space Marines: You don’t need a Combat Doctrine active to use Adaptive Strategy. 
• Hellblasters can’t use For the Chapter! on anything except being killed by an enemy attack or a Hazardous test. This seems fine.

What Does it All Mean?

Well, the answer is “not a ton… yet.” There are a few power level changes here, and the biggest change here is to the Tempestus Aquilons, where removing the ability to Rapid Ingress outside of 3″ of an enemy unit is big, and something we hope shows up as a more general game rule. It’s the most impactful of these changes, and we expect most if not all will make their way into a Dataslate and FAQ/Errata update at some point soon. It’s a lot of little quality of life adjustments that clear up some minor issues.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.