Warhammer 40k 9th Edition Core Rulebook Pdf

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Theawesome Warhammer 40,000 Indomitus box is on the way, and in our previous article we took a look at the contents of the box and all the awesome miniatures that you get inside! Today we are taking a deep dive into the new 40k 9th Edition Core Book itself taking a look at the rules that have changed and how they will impact the game!

For those who would rather watch than read you can check out my review of the book in our new video below! And if you want to get the latest videos from us as soon as they are up then please give us a subscribe over on YouTube!

The first thing you notice when you pick up the new Core Book is how absolutely gorgeous it is! The vivid cover art depicts Abaddon versus Guilliman with a striking blue and red scheme that really captures the spark of hope of the Indomitus Crusade against the horrors that beset humanity

The book itself is filled with fantastic artwork, both old and new, that excites and inspires you delve deeper into the lore and the universe. Text blocks are placed pleasingly against dramatic images, and event the small accents and incidental detailings drive down the grim darkness of the far future! Check out this page below with some Geiger style bio-mechanical piping and quotes scribbled on the side of the page!

This continues into the main rules themselves with really clear text to spell out the sections in both a watertight way explaining everything in detail, but also following each of these segments with a series of bullet points detailing the most important factors that effect that rule. This way you have the points for quick reference during a game, but also the more detailed ruling if you need to refer to them, something that I feel is a massive improvement in how the rules are presented and how they can be interpreted.

We also see new stories that bring the factions talked about to life, detailed background about the Imperium, all the races that we currently know, and even some mentions of races that we have not met yet!

As mentioned earlier, everything is broken down really clearly with both detailed blocks of text and supporting bullet points, there are also a lot more rules clarifications written into these sections too that make it clear what is intended by the various terms throughout the book.

Not only does this address some things that the previous edition encouraged, but I feel it also looks much more aesthetically pleasing on the battlefield, so I hope we also see this come to Age of Sigmar too!

We now get a clear order to the way modifiers are calculated. Previously it has often being ambiguous as to the order in which you make these calculations. Under 9th edition you now calculate in this order

This is a fantastic change and really makes aircraft feel like they should, no longer are they just doing laps of the battlefield and crashing due to weird interactions with other models on the ground!

We see some updates in the shooting phase that will affect a lot of armies! For a start Heavy weapons are now only -1 to hit for Infantry, which means that Vehicles and Monsters suddenly get a lot better! Previously tanks would have to sit around like sentry turrets as taking a -1 to your shooting for moving was a massive penalty. Now they will be able to move around the battlefield like you would expect them too! rolling up to support other units. I love this change and feel it drives a more fluid play-style where you and your opponent are making an orchestrated dance around the battlefield reacting to threats and objectives.

This will lead to most characters having a unit that acts as a bodyguard, and will make taking out these defensive units very important. I was never very fond of the old character targeting rules, and this mixes things up massively by still allowing your characters protection, but giving the other player options in the form of attempting to thin out the bodyguard unit before turning their guns on the now exposed character! I think we might start to see a lot of units dedicated to protecting their commanders, and again I think this will look cool on the tabletop!

Previously there were a couple of nasty combos that could make it impossible to even hit a unit, so now with this change it means that everyone always has a change of hitting something! This is a great change in my opinion, as I felt armies that stacked multiple modifiers to hit was a negative experience and never really led to a fun game for everyone involved. By limiting them in this way it means that they still make a difference, but it does make a mockery of whatever you are fighting.

Units with the Fly keyword do note ignore the vertical distance of terrain when charging, they need to have enough movement to get over the scenery piece. They can still however move over intervening models without penalty.

These add a new dynamic and mean that units may well be more suited to trying to do these tanks rather than fighting enemy units, giving the players a lot more options in the ways they can win the battle, and things to think about in how you can deny your opponent victory.

Terrain is broken down into 4 main categories, then trait keywords are then applied to the piece in order to represent different rules. This is a fantastic system as it means that not only are current Games Workshop scenery kits fully represented by the rules, but also long discontinued kits and your own DIY terrain that you have created for your battlefield can have working rules that interact with the piece in the way you would imagine,

By breaking down terrain into the 4 categories of Hills, Obstacles, Area Terrain and Buildings it means that the way rules and models interact with them can be distinguished here without there having to be generic blanket scenery rules for all battlefield terrain. This will make things a lot more clear cut in a tournament environment where knowing if something is area terrain or not could have a massive impact on your being able to win your game.

We also get a couple of pages with some suggested terrain densities that explains how heavily populated the board is with scenery and how it impacts and favours different types of army. This is a really helpful section that aids with knowing how many pieces of scenery to use when crafting your battlefield.

Each mission has a maximum of 100 victory points that can be earned within them, 45 for the primary objectives and 45 points for secondary objectives (You select 3 secondaries and can core a maximum of 15 points for each of these), the final 10 victory points are awarded if you have a battle ready painted army. While this has caused a few grumblings online, I am very much a fan of this as feel that the painting side of the hobby should be rewarded as much as the gaming side!

The final way of playing, Narrative play, has seen the biggest change out of the three with the addition of the Crusade system. This system allows you to take a small initial force and tell the tale of them developing, growing, gaining experience, finding awesome relics or even having horrific injuries inflicted upon them. It takes all the excitement of Warhammer 40k and adds roleplaying elements and a way of crafting a continuing narrative about your force as your Crusade progresses.

You start with a 50 power army, and as you progress you will be able to add additional units to your pool of units (Games still have an agreed power level, so if you are playing someone with less power than you, then this just gives you a larger pool from which to draw your models from)

Just like with Matched Play we get 18 unique missions split between the various game sizes giving players a huge amount of variety just from this core book, and in the same way as Matched Play these are collected together in a Mission Pack with the Crusade specific rules that interact with these (Such as Agendas, sub objectives that can earn you bonus experience!)

One of my favorite parts of this book is how well it sets the tone for WFRP. Just after the Contents is a collection of six two-page spreads of awesome scenic images with a short story that continues through the half dozen images and sets the tone for the world as you start flipping through the book.

Before I go too much further in this part, I want to make sure I give the artists of the book credit. Sadly, individual works are not credited like newer WotC publications, but we do have a list of the artists that have work in the book: Dave Allsop, Michael Franchina, Andrew Hepworth, Jon Hodgson, Ralph Horsley, Pat Loboyko, Sam Manley, and Scott Purdy. The instant classic cover was done by Ralph Horsley as well. Thanks everyone!

This chapter is fantastic for a brief introduction to the Old World that has been expanded in every release since. For a core rulebook, I find the amount of lore stuffed into it great and enough to get any gaming group started.

Rules. There are a lot of rules in this book. Interestingly, some major sections of the rules have been updated in newer releases, such as critical hits in Up in Arms, and magic rules in Winds of Magic. These updates are optional and seek to take advantage of feedback that Cubicle 7 has gotten since the edition released about 3 years ago. Using the rules as-is in this book is nothing terrible, as these systems work just fine for the vast majority of players here.

The color plates showing scenes from the Empire, while also sporting short descriptions of it from two different viewpoints, are beautiful and very helpful to explain the setting to players new to WFRP, although it could have been made clearer that there are two different people voicing their opinions, and who those are. Following that introduction is more information about the Empire given as an in-game letter, which is a very nice way of doing this.

I will explain this in a bit more detail: One of the biggest criticism of simulationist rules systems (to which WFRP definitely belongs) is the impossibility to balance out a large number of character scores. (This is why almost noone plays GURPS anymore, which totally ignored that issue, requiring players to divide points between a three-digit number of skills.) That criticism is valid if a game actually requires you to do this. There are several approaches to solve this issue: One is to define skills extremely broadly to reduce their number to a manageable amount. That actually leads away from the simulationist approach, though, taking away its advantage of detailed descriptions and believeable interactions.

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