Bring Back The War In Wargaming (40k Rant)
a rant from ed and solofiredfirst
A huge part of our life has been spent reading, hobbying, and playing Warhammer 40,000. Big fans. But lately, we’ve found ourselves feeling more distant from the tabletop game we love. Somewhere along the way, Warhammer 40,000 stopped feeling like a wargame and started feeling more like a board game.
We’ve all been feeling it for a while now, right? Warhammer 40k 10th Edition has smoothed off so many edges that it feels less like solving battlefield puzzles and more like playing chess with dice rolls. Sure, it is more “balanced,” but at what cost? A lot of the things that made 40k feel like 40k are quietly disappearing beneath the surface.
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game.”
— Soren Johnson, lead designer of Civilization IV
List Building: Streamlined to a Fault
Let’s start with list building. No wargear costs? Value meal unit size choices? That takes away one of the most exciting (and dangerous) parts of crafting a list, tinkering with combos, and sometimes, yes, learning the hard way that shoving every piece of wargear you could on a unit wasn’t the right call. We used to spend hours pouring over lists – tweaking wargear, juggling options, trying to hit 2,000 points on the nose. Now, it feels boxed in, routine, even mundane.
Sure, it’s great that things like Accursed Weapons or Nemesis Force Weapons have consolidated profiles. That helps players build cool, flavorful units without an anxiety inducing 40-minute rules deep dive. But overall? It’s just… flat. Everything’s streamlined, but nothing’s memorable. A Space Marine is a Space Marine is a Space Marine.
Detachments: A Missed Opportunity
Remember when faction choice told a story? They were more than just stat packages — they were expressions of how your army fought, how they thought, what they valued. Now? Detachments are generic loadouts with extra steps. You get a power, a gimmick, and a keyword soup. The soul of your faction gets washed out trying to fit into a “versatile, flexible” mold.
Identity used to be (and maybe still is) the heartbeat of this game. You chose your chapter, warband, craftworld, or dynasty not just for the paint scheme, but for how they played on the table. Now the Detachment system flattens all that into interchangeable bonuses that don’t care who your dudes are or why they’re fighting. I have my go-turn stratagems & detachment abilities, then play the long game. Everyone, everywhere, all the time.
Terrain: From Tactical Tool to Board Game Obstacle
And then there’s terrain. Oh my goodness gracious.
Symmetrical boards. Preset layouts. Terrain footprints. First floor line of sight blocking. All of it feels designed for a game that’s afraid of imbalance. Yes, guidance on terrain for the game board was needed. But this isn’t guidance — this is a straitjacket.
When picking a deployment zone doesn’t matter, when terrain doesn’t make you think, maneuver, or react, then you’ve taken away one of the best parts of wargaming: adapting to asymmetry. The battlefield should force decisions, not rubber-stamp them. And when every board looks the same, that precious element of unpredictability – the thing that makes every match unique – is gone.
Contributing to the samey-ness of all the tournament focus is the clear push to pre-determination. For every mission and layout, players have pre-measured and pre-planned all their moves. Objectives? Decided for the most part before the opponent is even known. The experience has been pushed towards absolute fairness (in a dice game lmao) by giving everyone an open-book test. To play to the theme – very very flat.we are convinced there must be a desire to know the outcome of the game as soon as the pairings are up – let’s skip all the pesky dice rolling and having fun. Get to the win condition and the next round – I have something important on the schedule after I wrap this up.
And beyond the gameplay implications, let’s talk about how these tournament boards look.
When we see tables with the “recommended” terrain loadouts, they feel flat — visually and creatively. They’re often devoid of the kinds of terrain pieces that bring character, atmosphere, and immersion to the battlefield. No towering ruins, no cratered no-man’s-lands, no weird xenos tech half-buried in the dirt. Just generic, symmetrical blocks arranged for balance – not narrative.
This game used to inspire stories just by looking at the table. Now it looks like a board game with some MDF clutter on it. Clean? Sure. Competitive? Maybe. But does it make me want to get my army out and put them on the board? Not even close.
Conclusion
Warhammer 40,000 didn’t need to become a tournament-friendly board game. It needed better tools, clearer design, and a renewed respect for what made it great: asymmetry, identity, and creative problem solving at the table.
Somewhere along the way we became old. We can feel the grognard tendencies seeping in. But we do believe having the perspective of the past gives us license to yell at the clouds and steels our conviction that it is the children that are wrong. If you love the way the game state is right now, you do you boo. We’ll always love the game of Warhammer 40,000 but propose…it’s time to get back to wargaming.
We have learned a ton of things running BOLTERCON and our most blessed clubhouse. What is at the top? The people crave effort, they crave immersion, they crave a real time challenge. Predetermination may be the way the winds blow, but we’re thinking that we will be the change we want to see in the world – bring the hobby + sportsmanship + challenge back to tabletop.
Our cogitators are cogitating – how can we bring back the fun, the pathfinding, the actual real-time decision making fun of tabletop wargaming? Look for much more about our 40k GT to come as we march towards BOLTERON 2025!