Decadence & Decay

Games Workshop did an online Warhammer Preview titled Decadence & Decay on Saturday. It included previews for Warhammer 40,000, Necromunda, Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game, Warhammer Underworlds, and Age of Sigmar. You can read their post with all the previews on Warhammer Community. While the Warhammer Underworlds miniatures are tempting me, I only play 40k, so those previews are what I’m going to focus on.

War Zone Charadon Act I: The Book of Rust

This is a new campaign book and the start of a series focused on War Zone Charadon. Typhus has been tasked by Abaddon to attack the sector and is bringing was to the Forge World of Metalica. The preview says that in addition to background material, this book will include new rules for the Death Guard, Adeptus Mechanicus, Imperial Knights, and Drukhari.

I’m not sure what to really expect from this book. There were two sets of narrative books during 8th edition and I feel like they were drastically different. The two Vigilus books were 200-page books covering the battle for the planet in a ton of detail. On the other hand, the Psychic Awakening books were 100 pages each with only about 20 pages of narrative and the bulk of the book serving as codex updates for the included factions. Personally, I prefer the style of the Vigilus books with more lore focus, so I hope this will be structured more like those than the Psychic Awakening line.

I’m also not sure what rules material makes sense in the book giving the timing of its release. The Death Guard and Drukhari will have new codexes releasing soon (Death Guard in December, Drukhari in January), so they shouldn’t be in need of general codex updates and it would be disappointing to have a new unit show up outside of the codex so soon. For the other factions, we don’t know when we’ll get 9th edition codexes, but they both got updates in Engine War at the beginning of summer. I think the rules I’d be happiest to see would be army building options to reflect the forces in the narrative. For example, rules to represent a mixed Black Legion and Death Guard force led by Typhus. We’ll have to wait for previews to see what we’ll actually get though.

Crusade Mission Pack: Plague Purge

This is a second mission pack for Crusade campaigns. It looks like it will be pretty similar to Crusade Mission Pack: Beyond the Veil, except that it is themed around the events in War Zone Charadon rather than the Pariah Nexus. I’m hoping to play lots of Crusade games, so I’m excited to get more missions and rules for it.

Codex Supplement: Dark Angels

The next supplement for Codex: Space Marines will be out in January 2021 and bring the Dark Angels fully up-to-date with the new 9th edition codex. This will contain the datasheets for Dark Angels specific units along with new stratagems, relics, secondary objectives, Crusade material, etc for the Dark Angels.

Codex: Drukhari

The next xenos faction getting a codex will be the Drukhari. The two notable changes talked about are updating unit and weapon stat lines and changing the army building rules to be better aligned with 9th edition army building. For unit stats, they previewed the Incubi datasheet that moved them to WS 2+ and their klaives to S +2 and damage 2. That makes them substantially better at killing elites in melee. I’m excited to see how this philosophy plays out across all the armies. The new codex might also mean that I finally build and paint the Drukhari models that I got in the Blood of the Phoenix box last year.