So, this is apparently the huge announcement that we’ve been waiting for, except – it’s not really announcing anything we didn’t already know?
The new website, warhammer40000.com, has launched today with a lot of glossy stuff, but very little substance behind it from what I can see right now. The main meat that I’ve managed to glean shows that the game is being split into a factional conflict between the Imperium, Chaos, and Xenos, which we’d kinda been expecting for a while, and a new General’s Handbook-style rulebook with three different ways to play.
The big news comes from the three-page FAQ that has been posted, that tells us all of the miniatures currently on sale will be fully compatible with the new edition of the game (which is currently not being called 8th Edition, but then 7th Edition was never officially referred to as such), including all of the Forge World models. Codexes are out, but points are still in. To me, that seems to be the sum of what we know for sure…
You may have thought I was underwhelmed when you started reading this blog – and I kinda am – but I’m actually curiously excited. I’ve been amassing a fairly sizable collection of little plastic dudes for quite a while now, so I’m looking forward to potentially getting into this game from the ground level, rather than coming to the game at least a year after everybody had learnt how to play 7th, and feeling distinctly daunted by the dense ruleset. Having an easy way in sounds great, so I’m really kinda looking forward to seeing what this actually ends up being!
spalanz.com 
I’m interest to know what these “3 ways to play” will include, and how they will address balancing. Exciting stuff.
I’m guessing there will be a big crossover with how Age of Sigmar has implemented it, so (1) use whatever you like, and just have fun; (2) use these specific things to play through this specific storyline, and (3) use these points to balance your armies and then have at it. Whether (2) will be balanced will remain to be seen, though there have been some very cool narrative style missions in 7th edition that I’m reasonably sure they’ll be a lot of fun – I expect a major issue at first will be finding people who are willing to try it! AoS didn’t seem to take off around me for about 8 months, but the General’s Handbook definitely helped it. Having a GH for 8th Edition will hopefully be good from the get go, but I’m sure there will be plenty of naysayers who will try their best to ruin the game for everybody else!
I’m looking forward to the new edition for Warhammer 40k, I hope there’s a Grand alliance option like AoS, so I can mix my Black Templars with SoB.
Based on the whole Gathering Storm stuff, I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot of this going on, yeah! Not sure how I’d take advantage of that, having mainly Dark Eldar and Necrons, but you never know what might happen!!