Warhammer 40,000/10th Edition Tactics
This page is meant to index pages for the Warhammer 40,000 tactics dumps, and also acts as a repository for more general 40k tactics.
This is the current 10th Edition's General tactics. 9th Edition Tactics are here.
Significant Changes
- WS/BS and Attacks are now integrated to the weapon's statline, trimming down on the needs for monsters to have double-attack rules or heavy weapons with hit penalty rules.
- Leadership has gone from a roll-under to a roll-over setup, with the sample Marine's Ld7 being made into a Ld6+.
- With the Psychic Phase gone from the turn order, this will presumably be how you will test for those as well.
- Battle-shock is now resolved at the start of your command phase. All your Units Below Half-strength must roll.
- With 40k filled with too many units that know-no-fear, it was silly how we had any entire rule taken from Warhammer fantasy battles about soldiers fleeing mid-frights that the majority of armies would never do in-game or lore-wise. Reworked to make units suffer shellshock instead of spontaneous 'tactical retreat', and suffer several debuffs: 0 OC, make Desperate escape test when falling back, and unaffected by friendly Stratagems.
- Objective Control (OC) is a stat that will show how many models a single model in your squad represents when capping objectives. Battleline units tend to have an OC of at least 2, while tanks and monsters can go up to 5. Presumably, Knights will be giving OC 10.
- Grenades are now relegated to a keyword, just like the Smokescreens before them. Expect a CRB stratagem to keep them relevant.
Core Stratagems
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- Rapid Ingress (1 CP): Lets you immediately set up a unit from reserves in response to your enemy moving anywhere.
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- New Orders (1 CP): You can swap out one secondary objective with a second one once per game. Gives you a chance to switch around a bad game with a better objective.
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USRs
After spending two entire editions trying to negate them, GW finally decided to reintroduce Universal Special Rules once more. Alongside these rules is also the introduction of "Critical Hits" and "Critical Wounds", which pretty much stand for rolling unmodified 6s for hits and wounds respectively.
- Deadly Demise X: New name for the various rules for Vehicles exploding and thus on tanks and some monsters. If this unit dies, it deals X hits to nearby enemies.
- Deep Strike: After spending all of 8E and 9E trying to reword it in a million fancy rules, they're now back to where they started. The reserves these units hide in are the same as the strategic reserves
- Firing Deck X: Despite 8th Edition mostly doing away with it, firing ports are back. Some transports let you have X models inside inside it fire a gun at an enemy within range, so it once again means your chimeras and especially your trukks can do a lot more now.
- Invulnerable Save X+: This is still kicking around, but now the datacard makes it more obvious with a big shield instead of just a line in the rules.
- Feel No Pain X+: Another rule that didn't need a hundred different rewordings. It's another save you can take after getting wounded, just like the Emperor intended.
- As the Terminator Librarian shows, this will also be how you're able to resist psychic powers.
- Leader: Pretty much explains which characters can attach themselves to units.
- Lone Operative: Prevents certain heroes from being shot at unless they're within at least 12" of the shooter.
- Psychic: With the psychic phase gone, this is your only way to indicate what weapons and rules are psychic powers (which also means that it applies to Force Weapons again).
- Since these powers are on the card and not anywhere else, is it possible that psychic tests are back to being Leadership tests instead of being mere 2d6 rolls against a power's TN?
- Scouts X": Yet another rule that got too many variants. Lets a unit move X" after deploying but before the game begins.
- Stealth: Presumably provides some form of cover without needing to be in there.
Weapon USRs
- Assault: Like last edition, Assault Weapons can be fired after advancing. Unlike last edition, doing so no longer inflicts any penalties to hit.
- Anti-KEYWORD X+: Any attacks against a unit with the mentioned KEYWORD that roll an X+ to wound count as being critical wounds.
- Blast: You get +1 attack for every 5 miniatures in the target unit. For instance, shooting a 10-man strong unit with a blast weapon which has natively D3 attacks will net you D3+2 attacks.
- Conversion: Remember how Conversion Beamers were actually better the further away they were from the target? This makes any hit rolls of 4+ on a target over 12" away count as a critical hit.
- Devastating Wounds: Rolling critical wounds makes any damage the attack deals mortal wounds. Can give otherwise outgunned squads the ability to threaten tanks.
- Extra Attacks: Lets you use an additional weapon after fighting in melee. Likely to be saved for any special melee pairs, like whatever the greater daemons use or a Succubus' shardnet+impaler.
- Hazardous: Might well be the way Gets Hot! will be reworded.
- Heavy: Weapons with this rule can be fired on the move, but they add +1 to BS if the model hasn't moved before shooting.
- Ignores Cover: If you need to ask what this does, it ignores the rock you've been living under for the last nine editions.
- Indirect fire: Your mortar and artillery rules. Lets you shoot at non-visible units at a -1 to hit, and the target receives cover (though it will often be paired with the Ignores Cover rule) and destroys non-visible models (so guess spill-over attacks by shooting one dude is no longer a thing?).
- Melta X: Meltaguns and other Melta-adjacent weapons always worked better at half-range anyways. This adds +X to the gun's damage if you fire it within half its listed range.
- One Shot: Single-use weapons.
- Pistol: Presumably allows pistols to shoot while in engagement range.
- Lethal Hits: Any critical hits automatically wound. It's yet to be seen if this can potentially trigger anything like Devastating Wounds.
- Precision: Probably Precision Shots/Hits, might allow a unit to ignore the typical wall of bodies to pick out a single model to hit. Or the old Sniper rule.
- Rapid Fire X: A mix between how last edition did it and the Orks' Dakka weapons. If this gun is fired at half-range, they now add +X extra attacks instead of automatically doubling the number of attacks it makes.
- Sustained Hits X: Rolling a critical hit deals +X additional hits. Seems stuck on very rapid-fire weapons like Shuriken Cannons and Heavy Bolters.
- Torrent: Given to spray weapons like the Flamer, granting them their auto-hit properties.
- Twin-Linked: Back from the dead, this lets you re-roll to wound. Even better, this can now be applied to melee weapons in some cases where the model is dual-wielding, like Lightning Claws.
Playing the Game
Modes of Play
- Combat Patrol: Capitalizing on all those premade detachment boxes, this lets you play with one immediately with special rules provided in the box. The tradeoff is that you can only use what's in the box to make the army.
- Boarding Patrol: Returning from last edition, now a clear prototype of what was to come.
- Incursion/Strike Force/Onslaught: The big battles and the least constrained.
Tempest of War
<tabs> <tab name="Primary Missions">
- Take and Hold:
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- Overwhelming Force:
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- CHALLENGING GOAL PLACEHOLDER:
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- PLACEHOLDER:
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| Chaos | |
| Eldar | |
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| Tau | |
| Tyranids | |
| Votann |
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| General Tactics | |
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| Tau | |
| Tyranids | |
| Votann |
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| Tyranids |
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| General Tactics | |
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| Tyranids |
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| General Tactics | |
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