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+.
- 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. Questoris Knights have OC 10.
- Grenades are now relegated to a keyword, just like the Smokescreens before them. Expect a CRB stratagem to keep them relevant.
- Vehicles and monsters have higher toughness. Most infantry-held weapons now only wound them on 5+s with few exceptions (and on top of that, high AP weapons are less common so armor saves are more important).
- Psychic phase no longer exists. Psychic powers take effect in whichever phase is specified by the power itself, and each psyker has a preset list of powers.
Core Stratagems
<tabs> <tab name="Battle Tactic">
- Command Re-Roll (1 CP): You know it, you love it. You can re-roll any one test.
- Go to Ground (1 CP): When the enemy shoots at one of your Infantry units, your unit gains both a 6++ save and counts as if they had cover.
</tab> <tab name="Epic Deed">
- Epic Challenge (1 CP): No longer a whole separate ruleset, this just gives one Character in melee the Precision rule so they can easily take out another attached character.
- Insane Bravery (1 CP): If you have a unit that fails their Battleshock test, you can pull this out to immediately pass it. Even better, you can use this multiple times in a game unlike last edition.
</tab> <tab name="Strategic Ploy">
- Counter-Offensive (2 CP): Lets you fight right after an enemy fights, letting you stamp out a dangerous enemy before they have a chance to fully wipe your squad.
- Heroic Intervention (2 CP): Pretty much here to limit any potential spam of it. When an enemy charges, you can have one of your units within 6" immediately charge after them, though they won't get charge bonuses.
- 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.
- Rapid Ingress (1 CP): Lets you immediately set up a unit from reserves in response to your enemy moving anywhere.
- Tank Shock (1 CP): When a Vehicle unit charges, you can roll a number of d6s equal to the Strength of one melee weapon (2d6 if the tank's Strength beats the target's Toughness); each 5+ deals a Mortal Wound to a maximum of 6 MWs. Don't use this to ram tanks, most of them don't have great Strength on their rams. Instead, use this to run down a loose squad.
</tab> <tab name="Wargear">
- Grenades (1 CP): When one of your Grenades units is chosen to shoot and isn't engaged, you can target one unit within 8" and roll 6d6; each 4+ scores a mortal wound, pretty much saving. While it's sad that you've lost stuff like Melta Bombs and Krak Grenades, this is a lot easier to work with.
- Smokescreen (1 CP): When an enemy shoots at one of your Smoke units, this gives them both cover and Stealth.
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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, roll 1d6; on a 6, it deals X hits to everyone within 6".
- 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, with a cap of 250/500/750 depending on the game's size. Units that deep strike can be set up at least 9" from an enemy.
- 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.
- Infiltrators: This unit can be set up anywhere on the board at least 9" away from the enemy DZ and from any enemies.
- 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. Unlike prior editions, each character will only have an explicit list of units which they can attach themselves to. Any attacks against this squad will be resolved using the attached unit's stats over the leader's.
- 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, meaning that it applies to Force Weapons again. However, it no longer really does anything than indicate that a certain weapon or ability is psychic in nature, in case you have something that can ignore it like a Sister of Silence.
- Scouts X": Yet another rule that got too many variants. Lets a unit move X" after deploying but before the game begins.
- Stealth: Enemies shooting at this unit suffer -1 to hit. Not quite cover, but it can still stack.
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. However, this can't be used when in engagement range, even on a tank or a monster.
- 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: The new edition of Gets Hot!, but even more dangerous since it also incorprates Perils of the Warp. After this weapon is used, roll a d6 for each model; a 1 kills a model, though Character, Vehicle and Monster units just suffer 3 Mortal Wounds.
- 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?).
- Lance: Here meaning actual lances, not something like a Brightlance. If this unit charges, they gain +1 to wound.
- 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. Once it's used, it's done.
- Pistol: Allows pistols to shoot while in engagement range. However, they can't be shot alongside any other non-pistol guns unless you're using a Monster or Vehicle.
- Lethal Hits: Any critical hits automatically wound. It's yet to be seen if this can potentially trigger anything like Devastating Wounds.
- Precision: Better known as Sniper or Precision Shots/Hits, might allow a unit to ignore the typical wall of bodies to pick out a single Character model to hit.
- 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 and they all use dumbed-down versions of their datacards.
- 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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| Votann |
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| Tau | |
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| Votann |
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| Tyranids |
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| Orks | |
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| Tyranids |
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