The rumors are over, 11th edition of Warhammer 40,000 is coming. This is no longer speculation, hopeful guessing, or wild internet theorycrafting. It’s confirmed. It’s real. A new edition of the grim darkness of the far future is on its way.
And when a new edition looms on the horizon, it’s only natural to start looking back at the one we’re currently playing. I’ve spent a lot of time with 10th edition, and like every version of 40k before it, it’s been a mixed bag of brilliant ideas, strange design choices, and the occasional rules interaction that makes you wonder if the Emperor himself wrote it during a particularly confusing warp storm.
So with 11th edition approaching, it feels like the perfect moment to reflect a bit on my experience with 10th, what worked, what didn’t, and the things that made me raise an eyebrow across the gaming table. More importantly, it’s a chance to share my own personal wish list for what I hope the next edition might bring.
Because at the end of the day, I love this game. I played a lot of 10th edition, and the prospect of a brand new version of Warhammer 40k is always exciting.
So let’s talk about it.
Overview – 10th Edition & Miniature Gaming
10th edition of Warhammer 40,000 was actually my return to the game after a long break. The last time I had played seriously before that was back in 6th edition. But my absence wasn’t really about being fed up with 40k. Instead, it was because the wider world of miniature gaming absolutely exploded around 2012-2014.
Suddenly, there were incredible alternatives everywhere. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game took the tabletop by storm, followed by exceptional Star Wars: Armada and later Star Wars: Legion. Privateer Press was dominating the competitive scene with Warmachine, and a wave of new titles kept arriving. Games like the outstanding A Song of Ice and Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game filled the gap that 40k once occupied for me.
For a while, those games completely replaced my need to collect, paint, and play Warhammer 40k.
But as the years passed and the dust settled, something funny happened: I started to miss it. The familiar universe, the armies, the ridiculous over-the-top lore. When 10th edition launched, I noticed that my beloved Tyranids were front and center in the starter set, and that was all the excuse I needed. I picked up an army and dove back in.
And almost immediately, I had a realization: for all its flaws, Warhammer 40k is still the most fun I have ever had pushing miniatures around a table.
Now let’s be honest here. 40k is a flawed game, and Games Workshop is a flawed company. That’s hardly a controversial statement. But the game has something that many of its competitors struggled to maintain: staying power and a steady fan base. It’s been around for decades, and here we are in 2026 with a pretty clear scoreboard.
Many of the games that once “replaced” Warhammer for me are simply gone. X-Wing and Armada are effectively dead. Warmachine and A Song of Ice and Fire both ran into design issues that pushed them into awkward corners. Even games like Legion never quite stuck with me long term and are floundering, trying to reinvent themselves.
Meanwhile, 40k is still here. It’s the game I still paint for. It’s the one I still want to play. My miniatures are still valid in the game.
And credit where it’s due, 10th edition was a genuine step forward. In fact, it might be the first edition of Warhammer 40k where I found myself thinking, this is actually a fairly well-designed game. Not perfect, and certainly not cutting-edge compared to modern tabletop design (say, compared to Warcrow, for example), but by 40k standards, it was probably the best version of the system we’ve ever had.
It works. It’s fun. And it addressed a lot of long-standing problems that had plagued the game for years.
That said… There are still a few things that kind of suck. Enough for a wish list!
And with 11th edition on the horizon, it feels like the perfect time to talk about them. So today I’m putting together said wish list, ten things I’d love to see improved, fixed, or completely rethought in the next edition of Warhammer 40k.
In no particular order… let’s get into it.
1. Strategems and Command Points
I hate them. There, I said it.
Stratagems and Command Points might be one of the most controversial mechanics in modern Warhammer 40,000 for me; they represent one of the biggest design missteps in the current game, in my humble opinion.
Now I understand why they exist. There’s a huge competitive scene around 40k, and there’s clearly a push to make the game feel more like a modern tactical system. The idea is that stratagems create deeper decision-making, more reactive play, and more strategic layers.
In theory, that sounds great.
In practice… it just doesn’t work for what 40k actually is.
At its core, Warhammer 40k is still a dice-chucking spectacle. It’s a game of eyeballing distances, rolling handfuls of dice, and watching ridiculous things happen on the table. That’s not a flaw, that’s part of its identity, and 40k should be leaning into that. It’s supposed to be fast and explosive, but strategems act as the complete opposite to that concept, slowing the game down dramatically and adding a lot of complexity to the resolutions of actions.
So when you bolt on this extra layer of “gotcha” mechanics with stratagems and Command Points, the result isn’t deeper strategy, it’s a slower, clunkier game.
Every turn becomes a minefield of “Wait, do you have a stratagem for that?” moments. Games grind to a halt while players scan cards or phone apps. Someone forgets to use half their abilities. Someone else drops a perfectly timed stratagem that feels less like clever play and more like a rules ambush that results in the inevitable “I didn’t know you could do that”. For obvious reasons, few of us have so much time that we can learn every nuance of every army in the game. There is just no way any reasonable person can track all this stuff, and strategems add a whole other layer to an already sprawling amount of faction rules.
Instead of adding meaningful depth, the system mostly creates feel-bad and gotcha moments and a thousand new ways for the game to become wildly unbalanced.
Personally, I’d love to see stratagems massively trimmed down, or preferably removed entirely.
Let the unit cards, army rules, and faction-specific enhancements carry the core gameplay. Those elements are easier to remember, easier to balance, and far more in line with the flow of a traditional 40k battle. The current stratagem system feels like an awkward layer of card-play that never really belonged in the game to begin with. Why are we playing Magic: The Gathering in the middle of our Warhammer 40k game? “What the fuck do you mean you counterspell!?”
To me, stratagems mostly do two things. They add a mountain of rules that nobody remembers, and they introduce a destabilizing factor where there are very obvious winners and losers.
And if you’ve played enough games of 40k, you’ve heard the same conversations after the match:
“Oh man… I forgot to use half my stratagems.”
or
“That stratagem is so unbelievably OP.”
It happens all the time.
Now, if stratagems absolutely must stay in the game, I’d love to see them treated as optional advanced rules. Let players choose whether they want that extra layer of complexity or not. Sometimes you want the full tournament experience. Other times, you just want to throw some dice, move some cool miniatures, and finish a game in a couple of hours without flipping through a deck of tactical tricks. But make those official, established optional rules so that it’s clear to players that “these are extra, not default”.
2. Simpler but More Impactful Terrain Rules
Terrain in Warhammer 40,000 is one of those things that looks incredibly important on the table… but often ends up feeling strangely irrelevant once the dice start rolling.
And that’s a problem.
Right now, the terrain rules are oddly caught between two worlds. On one hand, there are a lot of rules to remember, keywords, cover conditions, line-of-sight quirks, and special terrain interactions. On the other hand, the actual impact on the game is surprisingly small. In many cases, terrain barely changes the outcome of a firefight at all.
In fact, if you played a game of 40k with no terrain whatsoever, the difference in gameplay would often be… minimal, as there are so few units in the game at this point that garner any positive or negative effects from cover.
That’s not great.
The current system ends up feeling like a stack of rules you have to keep in your head that ultimately don’t matter very much. It’s complex to explain, awkward to apply, and yet somehow still underwhelming in terms of gameplay impact. I once wrote a 5,000-word essay just explaining the benefits of cover, which probably tells you everything you need to know about how intuitive the current system is.
What I’d love to see in the next edition is terrain that is both simpler and more meaningful.
The rules should be easy to apply at a glance and based on logic we can quickly eyeball across the table. No complicated chains of conditions, no digging through terrain keywords, and no debates over whether a model’s left kneecap is technically within a ruin footprint.
Just simple questions.
Are you in cover? Yes or no.
If the answer is yes, you get a clear and meaningful benefit, something like +1 to your save, full stop. No exceptions, no extra layers of logic, no obscure edge cases.
Terrain should be something that players actively care about during the game. It should shape movement, influence positioning, and create meaningful tactical decisions. Right now it often feels like decorative scenery with a rules appendix attached.
This one feels like a no-brainer to me. Terrain rules should be simple to apply and powerful enough that terrain genuinely matters on the battlefield.
After all, if we’re going to fill our tables with beautiful ruins, forests, and industrial complexes… they should probably do something.
3. Eliminate Dice Re-Rolls
I’m going to say something here that might sound extreme, but I genuinely believe it:
There should be no dice re-rolls in Warhammer 40,000. None. Ever.
Re-rolls are one of the most common mechanics in modern 40k, and in my opinion, they are also one of the weakest pieces of game design in the entire system. When designers lean heavily on re-roll mechanics, it usually means they’ve run out of better ways to represent abilities or create meaningful gameplay differences.
In other words, it’s a design crutch.
And in 10th edition, that crutch is everywhere.
Let’s start with the first problem: it slows the game down. Warhammer 40k is already a long game, and re-rolls add a massive amount of extra time to every battle. Roll to hit. Check which dice failed. Pick them up. Roll them again. Then do the same thing for wounds, saves, and sometimes even damage rolls.
For my army, I’d estimate that 40–60% of the dice I roll can be re-rolled in some way. That’s absurd. At that point, you’re not really rolling once, you’re rolling twice for half the game. I’m convinced the mechanic alone adds close to an hour to many matches.
The second issue is that re-rolls kill the drama of dice rolling.
Rolling dice should be exciting. You throw them across the table, everyone leans in, and for a moment, the fate of the battlefield hangs in the balance.
But with re-rolls, that moment gets completely deflated.
You roll the dice.
“Oh man, I missed.”
Pause.
“Wait… I get re-rolls.”
Pick them up. Roll again.
“Never mind, I hit.”
That entire moment of tension just evaporates. The first roll didn’t matter because we were going to do it again anyway. Nothing kills the momentum of a game faster than realizing the dice result you just saw isn’t actually the real result yet.
And then there’s the third issue, which in my view is the biggest one: re-rolls destroy statistical balance.
From a game design perspective, they undermine the entire math behind the system.
Every unit in 40k is built around probability, weapon skill, armor saves, and wound rolls. These numbers are carefully tuned to create expected outcomes. But the moment you introduce widespread re-rolls, those probabilities stop meaning what they’re supposed to mean.
A 3+ save isn’t really a 3+ save anymore if it can be re-rolled. The actual statistical survival rate changes dramatically. The same goes for hit rolls, wound rolls, and everything else. Add re-rolls to a resolution of more than one of these statistics and the numbers are all over the place.
And once you start stacking re-roll mechanics across an army, balancing the game becomes exponentially harder. The baseline math that designers rely on stops being reliable.
When I say re-rolls are bad design, that’s not just personal frustration talking; it’s a fundamental game theory problem. If you take even a basic game design course, one of the early lessons is that mechanics that constantly override probability curves make balancing systems far more difficult. Do it enough and unbalance is a foregone conclusion and cannot be repaired through other mechanical finagling.
Yet 40k leans on them everywhere.
Instead of destabilizing the entire statistical foundation of the game, I’d much rather see abilities expressed through clear modifiers, unique effects, or meaningful unit rules. Those are far easier to understand, easier to balance, and far faster to play.
Because at the end of the day, when the dice hit the table in Warhammer 40k…
That roll should matter.
4. Data Slates – Rules Updates & Faction Books
For this one, I’m going to say something unusual.
Don’t change a thing.
Credit where it’s due, Games Workshop has actually done a really good job supporting Warhammer 40,000 in 10th edition. Balance dataslates, frequent points updates, and quick reactions to what’s happening in the community have been a massive improvement compared to older editions. The game feels actively maintained, and that’s exactly how a modern tabletop system should work.
Do they always nail the changes? No, they don’t, but the effort counts, and I think it beats the hell out of radio silence.
So from that perspective, the current update cadence is excellent. Keep doing it.
However, there is a side effect to this approach that players have been frustrated about for years: codex books becoming outdated almost immediately.
We’ve all seen it happen. A faction book releases, players buy it, and before the ink dries, some dataslate, FAQ, or balance update changes multiple rules inside it. Suddenly, the book you just paid for no longer reflects how the army actually works.
It’s not a new problem, but with the current pace of changes, I think it’s time to rethink what faction books are supposed to be.
Instead of acting as the primary source of army rules, codexes should lean much more heavily into lore, art, strategy, narrative content, missions, and thematic mechanics that capture the identity of the faction. That’s the part of the book people actually enjoy owning.
Because here’s one of the strangest things about playing Warhammer 40k: if you face an opponent whose faction you don’t collect, you often have no idea what their army can do unless you’ve also bought their codex.
Imagine playing a sport where you only know half the rules and your opponent knows the other half. It’s bizarre when you think about it.
Army rules should be freely available online for everyone. That way, players can understand how every faction functions, what the threats are, and how the game actually works across the full range of armies.
The reason to buy faction books shouldn’t be access to the rules, it should be because the book itself is awesome.
The art.
The lore.
The narrative campaigns.
The unique missions and faction flavor.
Players will buy those books regardless. I know I will. I love my Tyranids, if a new codex drops, I’m buying it. But I’m fully aware that the rules printed inside it will probably be outdated before it reaches my house. That’s not why I want the book.
I want it for the atmosphere of the faction and the joy of flipping through a beautiful hardcover full of alien monstrosities.
If it were up to me, I’d go even further: include the full core rulebook inside every faction book.
That way, players only need a single book for their army that contains the lore, the faction content, and the core rules for the game. Charge $60 for it, I honestly wouldn’t mind. Having one complete, self-contained book for my army would be far more useful than juggling multiple rule sources.
Meanwhile, the actual army rules and points values live online, where they can be updated quickly without invalidating the book on your shelf.
To me, that’s the best of both worlds.
5. Crusade Rules Should Use Legacy Architecture
One of my absolute favorite ways to play Warhammer 40,000 is with the Crusade rules. The idea of narrative campaigns, evolving armies, and story-driven battles fits perfectly with what 40k is supposed to be about.
But while I love the idea of Crusade, the actual campaign system leaves a lot to be desired.
The biggest issue is that it tends to follow a classic “winners win more” design. If you win a game, you gain advantages that help you win the next one. Those wins stack, the gap between players grows, and before long, the campaign starts to feel less like a tense war story and more like a slow-motion steamroll.
That kind of design can quickly drain the drama out of a campaign. Once momentum swings too far in one direction, the narrative becomes predictable, and that’s the last thing you want in a game built on epic storytelling.
But beyond that, Crusade feels like a massive missed opportunity.
If there’s one place where Warhammer 40k could really push the boundaries of tabletop design, it’s here. And honestly, I think the inspiration should come from modern legacy-style board games.
Imagine buying a Crusade campaign book that comes with a box of sealed, unlockable cards or envelopes. As battles unfold in your campaign, certain outcomes trigger hidden content. You rip open a new mission at the table and suddenly discover new lore, special battlefield conditions, or unexpected story developments. Maybe special characters are introduced, new weapons, and more. There is so much sci-fi goodness built into the 40k universe; the options here are quite limitless, and you could tie these concepts into novels, new product releases, and online content.
One battle might unlock a desperate evacuation mission.
Another might reveal a secret objective tied to an ancient alien artifact. A devastating defeat might trigger a revenge scenario two games later.
Each mission pushes the story forward and branches into new paths depending on the results of the previous battle.
Over time, players would experience a living campaign that evolves as they play. Every season, a new expansion pack could add fresh missions, new story arcs, and new unlockables that keep the narrative moving forward.
The crazy thing is that this idea is just one of about a billion ways the Crusade system could evolve. The design space here is enormous, and it feels like something Games Workshop has barely scratched the surface of.
My point is simple: Crusade should be a major pillar of the game.
Lean into the narrative side of Warhammer. Expand the campaign systems. Give players something deep, dynamic, and story-driven to sink their teeth into.
Because if any universe deserves truly epic campaign play… It’s the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.
6. Bring Back Organizational Charts/Requirements
Alright, this one might be a bit controversial.
I know a lot of players love the current “take whatever you want” style of army building in Warhammer 40,000, but I think removing organizational structures from armies has created several problems.
The first issue is lore.
Warhammer 40k isn’t just a game system; it’s a universe. The factions, the military structures, the way armies are organized in the lore… that’s a huge part of the appeal. And honestly, if the lore and atmosphere aren’t important to you, why play Warhammer 40k in the first place?
Let’s be real for a second: the game itself isn’t some cutting-edge masterpiece of modern design. It’s fragile, swingy, and still carries a lot of DNA from older tabletop systems. What makes 40k special is the setting, the factions, the scale, and the spectacle of it all.
Back when organizational charts existed, armies actually looked like armies. When you built a strike force, you expected a core of basic troops, a few vehicles, a couple of command units, exactly the way military forces are described in the lore. The structure gave armies a sense of authenticity.
Your force on the tabletop resembled something that could plausibly exist in the 41st millennium. That era is gone. I haven’t seen anything that resembles a 40k lore army during the entire 10th edition run; it’s all about optimization of unit selection.
The second issue is game balance.
Right now, one of the biggest reasons games can feel wild and swingy is because players are free to build armies purely around points optimization. The result is a lot of strange, hyper-efficient lists packed with the same units repeated over and over, while the vast majority of the catalogue doesn’t see any play at all.
Three Terminator squads.
Three Devastator squads.
Three of whatever unit happens to be mathematically optimal this month.
Players build armies to maximize efficiency, which makes perfect sense in competitive play, but it often runs completely against the spirit of the game.
This isn’t Magic: The Gathering Arena where you’re crafting the perfect competitive deck. Warhammer 40k is supposed to be a narrative war game about massive armies clashing on the battlefield.
When every list becomes a spreadsheet exercise in optimization, something gets lost.
And that leads to the third issue: collecting armies used to have a purpose.
Organizational charts encouraged players to build complete forces. Even if a particular unit wasn’t the most optimal choice, you still had a reason to include it because it was part of the structure of your army you had to fill.
You might field a unit of Tyranid Warriors not because they were mathematically perfect, but because they belonged in the force you were building.
And the best part? Your opponent was dealing with the same constraints, forcing an equalization.
Those slightly sub-optimal armies often created far more interesting games than the current environment, where every list tries to cram in the most efficient units possible.
Now, I’m not necessarily saying we should go all the way back to the exact force organization charts of older editions.
What I’d really like to see is an organizational structure tied to detachments.
When you choose a detachment, it should influence what units you bring or can bring. Your army should naturally evolve around that theme. Collecting and painting would feel like building toward something specific instead of just optimizing a list.
Your Tyranid army and my Tyranid army could both be powerful, but in completely different ways.
Maybe your detachment encourages units A, B, and C.
Mine encourages D, E, and F. You can have x4 of A unit, but I can’t have any at all!
Now our armies look different. They play differently. They feel like distinct forces instead of slight variations of the same optimized list.
Right now, detachments rarely influence what units you actually bring. Instead, players build the most optimized army possible and then simply choose whichever detachment works best with that list.
Everything else becomes “sub-optimal,” and because everyone else is optimizing too, bringing anything less efficient often means getting crushed by turn one or two.
At that point, the system is forcing players toward the same narrow set of choices just to stay competitive.
And that’s exactly the kind of problem organizational structures used to solve.
Bring back some form of structured army building, and I think you’ll see more thematic armies, more diverse lists, and far more interesting games on the table.
7. Make Internal Balance The Priority
Organizational charts can help encourage a wider spread of units in an army, but they only work if the units themselves are actually worth taking.
And that brings us to one of the biggest long-standing issues in Warhammer 40,000: internal balance.
If the internal balance of a faction is off, then any kind of structural army requirement just forces players into an awkward situation. Instead of encouraging variety, it simply makes people field units they don’t enjoy because they have to, even when those units are clearly underpowered.
And that’s not fun for anyone.
One of the most frustrating things in 40k is looking at your shelf full of beautifully painted miniatures and realizing that half of them just aren’t viable on the table. There are so many fantastic models in this game that players would love to use, but the reality is that many of them are so inefficient compared to other units at the same point cost that they simply never get fielded.
Unless, of course, you’re intentionally running a sub-optimal army.
That’s always a bad feeling.
Take my Tyrannocyte, for example. It’s a really cool model. I love the concept, the look, and the idea of it smashing onto the battlefield like a giant alien drop pod.
But at 105 points, it’s barely worth half that in actual game value. So it sits on the shelf.
And that’s a shame.
This is why internal balance should be a major focus of 11th edition. Every unit in a faction should feel like a legitimate option. Not necessarily the best choice, but at least something you could reasonably include without feeling like you’re handicapping yourself.
At the same time, the game needs to avoid units that become automatic “take three” choices in every list. When one or two units dominate the efficiency curve, the entire faction’s army design collapses into a predictable formula.
And suddenly everyone’s running the exact same army, which is exactly what you saw in 10th edition. Tons of options, but everyone is running variations of the same small selection of lists. Most of the catalogue is just not seeing any play.
Internal balance might sound like a basic concept, but it’s absolutely critical to the health of the game. If every unit has a clear role and a fair point value, players can build armies based on theme, creativity, and personal taste instead of just chasing the most efficient spreadsheet entries.
And that’s the kind of Warhammer 40k most people actually want to play.
8. Improved Mission Design
I touched on this earlier when talking about Crusade, but this issue goes deeper than narrative play. It’s really about the structure of missions and how victories are determined in Warhammer 40k.
Right now, 10th edition often feels less like a battle and more like a Euro-style worker placement board game wearing a Warhammer costume.
You’re not always fighting a war, you’re playing a strange sub-game where units run around the table doing random administrative tasks in order to score points. Scan this objective. Perform that action. Score five points here, two points there.
The result is a bizarre level of victory point granularity that constantly pulls players away from the actual battle happening on the table.
Instead of focusing on the clash of armies, you end up sending units off to perform strategically questionable or thematically nonsensical actions simply because that’s how you score points.
And it feels… weird.
A lot of the current objectives feel forced, as if someone decided the game needed a certain amount of scoring complexity and then a design team had to invent a hundred different ways to make that happen. The design process feels backwards, a chicken before the egg; the points system came first, and the mission ideas were built afterward just to justify it.
Mechanically, the game suffers because of it.
At its core, Warhammer 40k is about two armies colliding on a battlefield. The missions should reinforce that idea, not distract from it. Objectives should be simple, clear, and grounded in the logic of the setting.
Things like: Take that hill and hold it, destroy the shield generator, or secure the landing zone.
You can still build interesting missions around those ideas. You could even introduce phased objectives, capture the objective, plant the explosives, destroy the structure, and escape before reinforcements arrive. Missions like that feel connected to the world of the game and create natural storytelling moments during play.
I especially dislike “surprise” scoring opportunities. Drawing a card and hoping that it gives you a chance to make an easy score somewhere is not a strategy; it’s luck, and neither player can do anything to predict its coming.
Players should always have a clear understanding of how to win the game.
And right now, that’s often not the case.
The current mission system is so packed with scoring mechanics that half the time, a winner is decided because someone forgot about a particular mission card or missed a scoring opportunity buried in the rules, or just got lucky with the card draws.
I’ve played a lot of 10th edition games, and I can honestly say I’ve never sat down after a match and had someone confidently explain every way points could have been scored in that game. There are just too many objectives, too many scoring triggers, and too many little systems layered on top of each other.
So players tend to fall into one of two traps. They either ignore the battle and focus purely on farming points, which is dull. Or they focus on the battle, wipe out the enemy army… and still lose because of the scoring system.
Few things feel stranger than getting tabled and still winning the game.
At that point, the mission system isn’t supporting the battle; it’s supporting a gaming system, and that feels off to me in the backdrop of a Warhammer 40k battle.
What I’d love to see in 11th edition is a complete rethink of the mission design philosophy. Objectives should be intuitive, thematic, and clearly tied to what’s happening on the battlefield, and it would be icing on the cake if they were tied to thematic event-driven stories in the game world.
Because at the end of the day, Warhammer 40k should feel like what it is supposed to be: A massive science-fiction battle in the 40k universe.
Better Vehicle and Aircraft Rules
At this point, I feel like I’m just pointing out problems that every Warhammer 40k player already knows exist.
And nothing illustrates that better than the vehicle and aircraft rules in Warhammer 40k.
I honestly doubt you could find a player anywhere on God’s green earth who thinks the current system works particularly well. Vehicles and aircraft have been a design headache for years, and they’re still one of the most awkward parts of the game.
The core problem is that these units almost always land in one of two extremes.
Either they are absurdly durable, borderline unkillable unless you’re packing the heaviest anti-tank weapons in the game, or they’re so fragile that they barely function as vehicles at all.
There rarely seems to be a middle ground.
The rules themselves, especially for aircraft, are often strange, overly complicated, and sometimes downright nonsensical. Movement restrictions, special targeting rules, weird interactions with terrain… the whole system often feels like it’s fighting against the rest of the game.
In fact, aircraft have been so problematic over the years that many tournaments and organized play events have simply banned them outright because the rules create too many headaches.
That’s not a great sign.
What vehicles and aircraft really need are simple, cinematic rules that fit the spectacle of Warhammer 40k. These units should feel powerful and exciting on the battlefield without turning into some kind of obscure combo card that breaks the game.
They should be big, dramatic pieces of the battlefield, tanks rumbling forward under heavy fire, gunships screaming across the sky, not strange mechanical puzzles that nobody wants to deal with.
And the funny thing is, if you look around the community, there are hundreds of house rules people have come up with to fix these problems.
At this point, many of those community solutions are honestly better than what Games Workshop has implemented over the years.
So if 11th edition is looking for a place to start cleaning things up, this is an easy win.
Vehicles and aircraft don’t need complicated rules. They just need good ones. I don’t have a suggestion, I’m not a game designer, that’s GW’s job, I just know when something sucks and vehicle and aircraft rules, certainly do suck!
Faster Gameplay
Warhammer 40k has always had a lot of rules, but honestly, I don’t think the rules themselves are the main reason the game feels so slow today.
The real problem is everything else we’ve already talked about on this wish list.
Stratagems and Command Points slow the game down.
Overcomplicated terrain rules slow the game down.
Dice re-rolls slow the game down a lot (like, literally adds at least 1 hour + to the game).
But even beyond those issues, there’s another major factor that rarely gets discussed enough: the game just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
With each edition of Warhammer 40k, the “standard” game size has crept upward. Today, the default expectation is a 2,000-point game, which seems normal, but 2,000 points today is not really 2,000 points.
The problem is that at the same time, unit costs have steadily decreased over each edition. The result is that a modern 2,000-point army contains far more models and units than it used to. In practical terms, a 2,000-point army today feels closer to what a 3,000-point army looked like two editions ago.
That’s a massive increase in size, and that equals a massive increase in time needed to finish a game.
There are so many units on the table now that, in some missions, it’s literally not possible to deploy everything because there isn’t enough physical space on the board. And to make matters worse, the boards themselves have actually gotten smaller over time.
So what you end up with is essentially a knife fight in a phone booth, packed with units, abilities, rolls, re-rolls, and re-rolls of re-rolls.
It’s chaos.
Personally, I believe the time it takes to play a game of 40k could be reduced by as much as 75% without sacrificing any of the fun, if the rules were streamlined and the core structure of the game was designed around gameplay rather than simply encouraging players to buy more models.
Now, realistically, I don’t expect Games Workshop to change that philosophy anytime soon. But as a community, it might be time to start questioning the assumption that 2,000 points is the “standard” game size.
Because at today’s unit costs, it really isn’t.
In fact, it’s kind of absurd.
A modern 2,000-point game often feels less like a tactical wargame and more like Yahtzee with miniatures, a chaotic avalanche of dice rolls where the sheer volume of units overwhelms any meaningful strategy.
And the worst part is how long it takes.
At this point, finishing a full game of 40k in a single evening is becoming increasingly difficult. In my experience, about half of our games don’t even finish. Eventually, someone looks at the clock, realizes it’s getting late, and we just call it.
A typical game can easily run four to six hours, and if players aren’t moving quickly, it can stretch to eight hours or more. Happens all the time for me.
That’s just not reasonable.
If there’s one big wish I have for 11th edition, it’s that the designers take a serious look at reducing army sizes and tightening the overall structure of the game. Combine that with improvements to the other issues on this list, and the result could be a faster, smoother, and far more enjoyable experience.
Because at the end of the day, Warhammer 40k should be something you can play and finish in an evening, not an endurance test.
Conclusion
For an article that started out by praising 10th edition of Warhammer 40,000, I sure did spend a lot of time complaining.
But the truth is, I really do think it’s been a great edition. It’s had a strong run and introduced some genuinely good ideas. The problem isn’t that 10th edition is bad, it’s that it’s starting to feel a little rusty.
And the reality is that Warhammer 40k is no longer competing against its own previous editions. The tabletop gaming world has evolved. There are plenty of modern games now proving that with clean mechanics and thoughtful design, you can have a fast, snappy, and highly enjoyable experience at the table. Sure, most of these games don’t have the staying power, but they do illustrate what can be done with good game design.
I’d love to see Warhammer 40k embrace some of that design philosophy.
At the same time, I completely understand that 40k is its own kind of game. It should be bigger, heavier, and more dramatic than most tabletop systems. That’s part of its identity. But I also think it already achieves that depth through its factions, units, and battlefield interactions, even without the extra layers that have accumulated over the years.
Stratagem bloat, overly complex mission scoring, endless re-roll mechanics, none of those things are necessary for the game to feel deep or meaningful. Somewhere in the middle, there’s a sweet spot, and I think Warhammer 40k could absolutely reach it.
I’m not asking for a massive overhaul of the system. What I’d really like to see is optimization and efficiency, small but meaningful improvements that smooth out the rough edges.
More than anything, I want Warhammer 40k to feel less like an ordeal at the table.
Collecting and painting miniatures should absolutely remain a big part of the hobby. That investment of time, creativity, and effort is one of the things that makes Warhammer special, and I would never want to see that aspect simplified or diminished.
But once the models are painted and you’re ready to set up a game, that experience should be lighthearted and fun.
It should feel exciting, not confusing.
Enjoyable, not frustrating.
And above all, it should be fast, smooth, and satisfying to play.
(4.4 out 5) Fantastic!
