40K 7th Edition Early Rumblings – 7th Edition – the Big Picture

– It’s real – and coming fast.  Look to see 40K 7th on shelves May 24th (that’s 3 weeks from now)

– It’s a “tuning release”, so don’t look for massive change.  Instead look for a lot of minor tuning to fix the exploitable sections of the core rules.

– A set of core rule and codex FAQs is said to accompany the release, so if you really don’t want to, you could just print out all of those, stuff them into your books and keep playing.  Of course, GW would be happy to sell you another 500+ page coffee-table rulebook for upwards of $100

– Retailers reported sending back existing stocks of the core rulebook, Dark Vengeance, and the psychic cards.  So…

-Look for updated psychic powers. This shouldn’t shock anyone as I don’t think GW has ever NOT tinkered with them during an edition changeover.

Obvious targets for tweaks which we have been hearing are:

-Allies, said to still be in, but with more restrictions

-USRs are getting tweaks

-Saves and how cover is handled, is being updated

-Integration of Escalation and Stronghold Assault are reported

So on balance, it is right up the alley of that “living rulebook” approach to new rulebooks we reported last year. The goal of that philosophy is for GW to drop regular “updated, cleaned up” versions of the rules every few years that integrate everything that has been added to the game since the last edition, instead of the old style of introducing a lot of new unknown changes all at once – which disrupts the community and metagame.