This piece was a collaborative effort of community member Chaos Zach and your regular contributor Ian.
For anyone who’s not paying attention, Games Workshop recently announced the 4th Edition of Age of Sigmar. Though everything that’s been previewed for the game looks awesome, there was a serious sour note when GW announced two entire armies were being retired from the game (though they can be used in The Old World) along with a large number of miniatures leaving production and, ultimately, competitive play.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that competitive play is not the focus. However, I think the retiring of such a huge number of miniatures (and two entire armies) may have far reaching ramifications.
The problem with Legends
All events I’ve ever run have allowed Legends units. I want people to be able to use their favourite miniatures and personally have quite a large collection of Legends units between my Blood Angels successor and Black Legion armies.
For anyone new to the game, Legends units are out of production or limited run models that have rules and points but are not updated to be in line for tournament play (typically only updated once per edition). And this is very specific: Legends are legal in matched play, narrative play, and open play, but are specifically disallowed from Games Workshop run tournaments. In all other formats, they’re potentially legal.
I say “potentially” as most tournaments will and do follow GW’s guidance and disallow Legends. Okay, fine, you say, they’re still allowed in my pickup games with friends. This is true: you can bring them to almost anything outside an official tournament, whether it be a narrative event or friendly pickup game, assuming the event organisers/your opponent is cool with it.
The issue comes from the lack of updates. As points are updated, Legends units fall further and further behind similar codex entries, usually becoming very over or under-costed as the edition goes on. Take my now Legended Assault Marines with Jump Packs: they have almost identical rules and stats to their primaris compatriots–the only difference being more loadout options–but at the time of writing cost 70 points more for a full squad.
You can see why I no longer run 30 Assault Marines.
This then necessitates a conversation ahead of time with your opponent about bringing Legends unit with a renegotiated points cost. Though I’ve previously and continue to advocate for having that conversation, I understand how this can get tiresome.
So, yes, your Legends models will get rules, but using them may put you at a disadvantage. Again, you’re not running these in tournaments, but nobody wants to be penalised 70 points for running older models.
I think people do have a right to be a little upset in the cases where the models are going away “for good”. It’s definitely a bit of an “anti-consumer” move for GW to essentially sell you these models for a game then change how your purchase essentially functions.
I do think the vast majority of people are overreacting to the news (easy for me to say) and that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that tournament style match play is the default/preferred method of play by most people. Instead of people buying models that look cool, they are buying tools for their army. This isn’t a binary choice for Competitive/Narrative players: both groups often weigh both options.
To GW’s credit, they have said that all those models will receive “Tournament Legal” rulesets for the first year of the new edition (I think both 40K and AoS might be moving to a 12-month competitive cycle as opposed to the previous 6-month) which I think is a decent olive branch for people that want one last ride or need some transition time.
There’s a lot going away
There’s A LOT of room in Stormcast to use current warscrolls for your older models. In some cases I think GW phrased the article poorly as some of these older models are getting updated sculpts.
Skaven are getting a range refresh (we’ve already seen the new Clanrats) but without seeing the new range it’s harder to say what’s easy to swap around.
For Bonesplitterz, my hot take is this is an army that should never have been separated out (it’s two plastic kits and a handful of characters), and was reabsorbed back into the Orruk Warclans book at the start of 3rd edition. You could also probably use them as the regular Orruks.
For Slaves to Darkness, I have personally not liked all the different cults having their own bespoke rules: it adds too much to the game in a casual setting. Base sizing may vary but a lot of them will slot into the new Darkoath release.
Also, Beasts of Chaos will slot back into the Slaves to Darkness range if you really want to keep using your models (most likely using Darkoath Warscrolls).
How to solve the Legends problem
It’s not all doom and gloom. Following the above example, I could easily run my Assault Marines with Jump Packs as Assault Intercessors with Jump Packs, counting the meltaguns and flamers as plasma pistols. My contemptor dreadnoughts can count as legal dreadnoughts and helbrutes, my Spartan a Land Raider. There are plenty of analogues for the vast majority of Legends units. It’s by no means ideal (trust me: the thought of breaking the WYSIWYG of my carefully converted squads kills me a little) but it is a very easy and straightforward solution.
The other option is converting your Legends armies to the old games: aka Horus Heresy and the Old World. Both armies that have been retired for 4th edition Age of Sigmar–Savage Orruks and Beastmen–exist as supported options in the Old World and even if you don’t want to rebase your army to squares, there are lots of options for movement trays to convert your rounds. Even the Stormcast could be an interesting counts-as Warriors of Chaos army.
Though you won’t be converting your Legends-ed Eldar vehicles to the Horus Heresy, most of the units that were recently moved to Legends were Marines, both Chaos and Imperial varieties. For me, most of my firstborn marines are being shuffled over to Heresy. My unpainted characters and units will be converted to Salamanders and the rest will be made into a Blood Angels force. It’s far from ideal, but it is also exciting to suddenly have a full 3,000 point Heresy-era Blood Angels army that’s only a few MK 6 helmets away from being a reality.
Cool, but the old world ain’t my jam
Horus Heresy and the Old World are very different games from 40k and Age of Sigmar: telling someone to go play those instead of GW’s flagship games may not be a viable alternative. So what happens if a large part or your whole army is suddenly moved to Legends? How big of a problem will that be?
The answer to that entirely depends on your circumstances. For me, it’s pretty insignificant: 99% of my games are in a casual setting and/or allow Legends units. If I wanted to run 30 Assault Marines, I’d just ask my opponent if I could do a 10 point tax for those meltaguns instead of 70, and I bet they’d be fine with it. But I’m not a tournament-goer.
I really think this highlights the issue that the Warhammer community is over-saturated with tournaments rather than alternative events, whether that be more casual tournaments, narrative events, or beginner friendly game days. Maybe this is uniquely a southern Ontario problem, but there hasn’t been a single narrative event for 10th edition 40k that I’ve heard of in the area (and I can only recall one in 9th). If you’re a regular event-goer and want more events that support Legends, talk to the organisers and ask them to allow Legends, or try running an event that suits them.
Unfortunately, me simply complaining that there aren’t enough Legends-legal events isn’t going to change much. If you go to a lot of events and your whole army (whether that be your list specifically or the entire faction) just got shunted to Legends, that really sucks. Of course, you can be the change you want to see in the hobby and run your own Legends-friendly events (and if you’re near Toronto, Ontario, let me know!). But I get that it can be daunting.
What does this mean for the future?
I was pretty shocked when I saw great swathes of Stormcast models getting retired: some of which are only about six years old. That goes double when I realised the Beastlord was only 15 months old at the time of the announcement.
To me, this shakes my faith in the product GW is selling, specifically a miniatures game. This is not stated anywhere (as far as I know), but I’ve always thought of miniatures wargaming as something that’s more permanent and immovable. This isn’t Magic The Gathering where sets rotate out of standard play every year, it’s not a video game where the servers can get shutdown, it’s a collection of toys and rulebooks that sit on my shelf and–short of a house fire or me throwing them away–aren’t going anywhere. But whole armies getting sidelined to Legends–especially those with models that are so new–really makes me reevaluate what this hobby means, how permanent it is, and what my priorities are.
Sure, I can continue to use Legends units, but how much time am I willing to spend house ruling them? Do I want to buy, build, and paint something if the rules are going out to pasture in a few years? In some cases, the answer is yes: I quickly bought Astreia Solbright after the announcement because I thought it’d be a good miniature for the proto-RPG I play with my young niece. But I’m definitely more wary of expanding my Drukhari, an army that rarely gets updates and I could see it getting the same treatment as Beasts of Chaos.
Conclusion
None of this has made me set an army on fire, call for some pointless boycott, or claim that Age of Sigmar is dying. GW will continue to roll on as it always does, being the big fish in the small pond that is miniature wargaming.
All the same, I’ll take this moment to reflect on our hobby and you should too. If anything, I think this can be a moment where wargaming communities reevaluate their priorities and explore alternatives to the norm.
I feel like most people have talked about this online as GW personally coming away and taking your models (a la the Repo men in older seasons of the Simpsons). They are not, it’s up to you to make use of your Wardollies. Rules are temporary, models are forever.
UPDATED May 23, 2024: An earlier version of this post mentioned Legends units not receiving updates upon codex releases so that Legends units have relevant keywords and rules to be in line with codex units. Though this was true in previous editions, it seems GW is updating Legends units with relevant codex rules (for example, certain Chaos Space Marine Legends units have been updated with the DAMNED keyword to function with various Cultist-style units in the codex).