Games Workshop Warhammer 40k - Codex V.9 Space Marines (En)

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How does the Space Marines 9th edition codex holding up a year into 9th edition 40k? Well before we answer that, let us take a look at the book itself. The 9th Edition Space Marines codexwas released on October 10, 2020, so it’s available now. There is also a special Collector’s Edition available, if you fancy it. Scouts are elites now and as predicted stay at a single Wound, so you officially have zero reason to take them (watch us be proved wrong on this by the very first top 4 Marine list post-codex). For Noise Marines, these same rules apply if you’re taking them in any Legion other than Emperor’s Children, but when you do go full Fulgrim they become Troops and can gain a Legion trait.

Death Guard players had to wait months longer than planned, but when the codex did come, it came along with some extra goodies – primarily the long-teased and fundamentally foul Lord of Virulence model, and a Death Guard Combat Patrol starter box – the first of its kind for a Chaos army. The datasheets are generally pretty clear, and seem to have been set up with a focus on limiting options. This could be seen as a bad thing, but so far as we can tell, anything non-Legends is still legal, and the only hangup seems to be that you might have to poke around a bit to find the sheet your chosen layout lives on now. Some of them are still a bit complex – Vanguard Veterans are kind of a nightmare, for example – but in general the trend toward streamlining datasheets has come close to apotheosis, with only a couple of options to choose from and lots of things that were ‘optional, but you’re going to take it every time’ in-lined to be default, and many common abilities filed away together instead of being reprinted a dozen times. Games Workshop released Codex: Chaos Daemonson September 3, 2022, having teased new daemonic saves and abunch of miscellaneous rules for the faction in the run up to the release.

Which 40k codexes are out now?

Edge of Silence • War Zone Charadon ( Act I • Act II) • War Zone Octarius ( Book I • Book II) • War Zone Nachmund ( Vigilus Alone • Rift War) • Crusade ( Beyond the Veil • Plague Purge • Amidst the Ashes • Containment • Catastrophe • Wars of Faith) • Arks of Omen ( Abaddon • Angron • Vashtorr • Farsight • The Lion)

Though there’s no doubt we’ll have another dozen Marine additions in a year or two, the new units go a long way towards ‘completing’ the Primaris range – a Primaris army now has all its possible characters, a broad spread of roles for infantry, its own bikes, and the complete set of vehicle equivalents. At the same time, though, the old Marine units make huge gains against their bigger counterparts thanks to gaining an additional wound, and retain a great deal more flexibility in their weapon options. Whether we’re one step closer to the entire old range being squatted or whether Space Marines really stabilise around there being a hundred datasheets with big and little versions of the same units is an open question; our guess is that as long as people keep buying the little guys, they’ll stay relevant and therefore in production.Prescience : you know it. You love it. +1 to hit is pretty good. Though it is less important as Death to the False Emperor was modifiable and Let the Galaxy Burn is unmodified. Useful, but not required. 6/10 The Dark Angels supplement – the fourth such Space Marine chapter supplement – features custom-made “datasheets, Warlord Traits, Relics, and a Psychic Discipline, as well as a suite of Crusade campaign rules that represent the sombre quest of the Unforgiven”, according to GW.

You can also nab custom AdMech-themed player aid datacardsand dice alongside the codex. Who knows, maybe they’ll help you curry favor with the Omnissiah. The most notablechange made to the factionin this rulebook was to fully integrate the Sisters of Silence (the Imperium’s all-female arm of psyker hunters) into the army proper, where they had previously operated as an add-on rather than a full force. Besides that, the Custodes got extensively updated subfaction rules for the different Shieldhosts, and new,switchable ‘martial ka’tah’ buffs – as well as theusual bundle of new Stratagems, Relics, and Warlord Traits. The Primaris Captain gets his new Indomitus loadout added to the datasheet. Other than that he’s pretty much unchanged except the obvious with his aura only affecting CORE units, which excludes himself (which is common to all the Captains, naturally). This is also our first sight of some of the new and slightly confusing wording for loadouts – if he doesn’t have an MC power sword he can get the plasma pistol/power fist thing from that one exclusive model, or the Indomitus wargear set by swapping out his MC auto bolt rifle. Or if he doesn’t do that he can swap that auto bolt rifle for a stalker version. If he has either of those he can also, uh, take an MC power sword. If he’s a Dark Angel he can swap either of those guns for a special issue bolt carbine and if he has that and doesn’t already have an MC sword he can take a power fist. There’s a few instances of this elsewhere in the book with wargear kind of swapping around to accommodate all the different fixed model variants that came out through 8th edition, and it’s not exactly the neatest bit of rules-writing.

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Also making T’au enthusiasts happyis this book’s success in making a far wider variety of potential T’au battle-plans and list-building options competitively viable after a long period wheremost lists were dominated by triple Riptidebattlesuits, Coldstar T’au Commanders, hordes of Drones, and not much else. Old favorites like Crisis Battlesuit squads, Devilfish transports, and Hammerhead gunships have been rejuvenated, and T’au-heads are loving it.

Infernal Power: A Stratagem turned psychic power. One friendly daemonkin or Daemon engine within 18” can automatically wound on unmodified hit rolls of 6, and those wounds count as 6s for the purposes of rules that care about such things. 6/10 Like the Speeders, there’s three variants of the Gladiator – the Lancer, the Reaper, and the Valiant. At a first look all of are somewhat overcosted. The guns are pretty fun – the Reaper can throw out a cool 40 shots at rapid fire range, and they’re all T8 and W12 which is a substantial upgrade over the Impulsor chassis in terms of Toughness, but uh, the Lancer is the cheapest at a flat 200pts and for that it gets 2 fragstorm grenade launchers and a weaker version of the Repulsor Executioner’s heavy laser destroyer, with 2 shots at S10 AP-3 damage D3+3. It does share the Aquilon Optics rule making it +1 to hit with the turret. You can get 5 Eradicators for one of these, with 3 more wounds and access to re-rolls. Like a lot of Marine units these aren’t really bad per se, but there’s better options for the same job in the same codex, never mind all the Forge World kit, and these are directly competing with Eradicators Firestrike Turret Games Workshop announced the new Eldar codex as part of its Las Vegas Open preview stream on February 1, 2022.Centurion Assault Squads get the ASSAULT LAUNCHERS keyword now (unsurprisingly) and are otherwise unchanged.