Warhammer 40K studio manager Stu Black reflects on the launch of 10th edition

polygon.com:

This weekend, Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan goes up for pre-order, beginning the churn that will, in a number of weeks or months, lead to the formal launch of the tabletop wargame’s 10th edition. There are a number of changes in store for longtime Warhammer 40K fans, including a streamlined rule set and updates for several classic miniatures.

Against a backdrop of Games Workshop’s marquee franchise experiencing a huge upswing in popularity, and with an Amazon streaming series in the works (with none other than Henry Cavill), Polygon spoke to 40K studio manager Stu Black via email about what’s next for the iconic franchise.

[Ed. note: Polygon’s questions have been lightly edited for clarity.]

Polygon: I think the most clever bit of the announcement of 10th edition — and of the Warhammer 40,000: Leviathan boxed set — was the reveal of the new Combat Patrol format . It uses existing products already on store shelves around the world as a kind of preconstructed style of play , minimizing the effort needed to paint up a new army and keep pace with the competitive meta layer of the game.

It really does feel like y’all have quietly stocked shelves around the world with dozens of Trojan horses, though. How did the concept of using this line of boxed product as the core of a new format come about? What were your design goals for the Combat Patrol format? And how did you and your team go about balancing all of these different factions that had already been living in their cardboard boxes for some time now?

Stu Black: Combat Patrol builds on the smaller missions from the previous edition and the Combat Patrol boxes were designed with that smaller-sized game in mind, so it was natural for us to take that one step further