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Alessio Cavatore has left GW last Friday. Here some quotes burried in a Warseer Fantasy rumour thread:

Tlotsqi wrote:Alessio Cavatore left GW last friday, he works now for River Horse, 2 people I know have him as friend on Face Book where they saw this info.
I hope that it's not linked to the 8th edition developpement, I heard that some changes have been strongly discussed, and I don't know if it was in a good climate or not.
That's why I post this info here. But perhaps it's not the better place to anounce that.

River Horse Games Website wrote:Alessio has been a games designer for the last twelve years, working for a large British games retailer/manufacturer, with which he still collaborates as a part-time rules editor.
River Horse Games is his venue for flexing his creative muscles in new and different areas of the wide gaming world.

Tlotsqi wrote:Well, on facebook it suggets that he's already working at full time for River Horse, and his mail at GW doesn't work no more...

This one I found myself, and it confirms the above rumour:

Bio link from River Horse Games wrote:Rules Editor (part time) : March 2008 - April 2010

Anyone left at GW?

BTW he is co founder of River Horse Games, and the first game he made there is Shuuro ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38764/shuuro ), something he described as Warhammer chess (think of chess pieces in abstract terrain). I met him October 2008 when he presented this game in Germany (Spiel 2008).

Given his problem counting to numbers with more than one digit, the prospect of an 8th edition likely scared him off. I mean, only one more edition after that before 10th!

Bummer. I quite liked his work at GW.

Funny how designers leave or are excused from employment right before an edition.

Andy Chambers right before 4th ed 40K as merely one example.

While I can't say I was a fan of his work, it certainly sucks to lose a job you love.

So, best of luck to him!

^^, that's rather shocking. He was the main rules guy on 5th Ed., which I consider the best edition by far. I wonder what happened.

Can someone refresh us on what rules he was responsible for?

Alessio was responsible for the prior edition of the Skaven army book.

He certainly did some great things while with GW. Sucks really.

G

there goes any chance of an FAQ

Good riddance.

5th edition really got me back into 40k, and as much as Alessio is responsible for that, I'm sad he's leaving.

It feels more like he left than was fired.

Firstly: Shame to see him go, despite a long time in LOTR land. He was one of the few studio members who could see cheese for cheese and tried to play it down and on the whole I think he did much more good than bad.

Secondly:
There will be more movements in the next couple of weeks out of the studio.

Also a WD member will likely be shifted across to the design studio. It has happened before.

Heavens forbid they actually advertise for an outsider who acctually knows how to use the system to break it/ rules lawyer it so as to prevent problems occuring.
GWAR and Stelek would be good choices off hand.

Well heres wishing him luck.

what stuff was he exactly in charge of? I'm holding back whether to mourn his leaving or hesitantly think about opening the champagne bottle reserved for Jervis Johnson's departure.

Good, that bastard ruined my Chaos space marines, then stripped my Necromancer lords from my VC and made them a broken army...until DE and Daemons. Oh and he made sure 40k daemons were a horrible army to try and pick up. To be fair I do love 5th edition, and KP more than VP

sexiest_hero wrote:Good, that bastard ruined my Chaos space marines, then stripped my Necromancer lords from my VC and made them a broken army...until DE and Daemons. Oh and he made sure 40k daemons were a horrible army to try and pick up. To be fair I do love 5th edition, and KP more than VP

Oh so he is the source of why I feel slight gag when I read my chaos marine codex. That cork is fething popping out tonight!

I'd say good riddance, but his replacement isn't likely to be any better.

i have to agree with what some others have said, good riddance. 5th ed 40k by far the worst edition ever, seeing as it made vehicles stationary bunkers again like in third edition. and the mess up of codex chaos was just bad, plus the splitting of daemons from chaos marines... well in a way it was good from a bussiness point of view but however they should have left them in chaos marine codex as they are in the daemon codex.

The problem isn't with the GW designers, its with their management (or lack thereof).

Alessio did some good stuff at GW and also produced some absolute dross - so why did the rubbish see the light of day?

I'm sure that a replacement designer is being lined up and will be just the same - some good, some bad (I think I'm correct in saying that the WFB Daemons and new 40k IG were done by the same bloke?) but what GW need is a studio management team:

Strategy Director (responsible for release schedule and long term planning)
Artistic Director (responsible for approval of art and model design)
Publications Editor (to ensure consistency in quality and format, also to keep tabs on the fluff/story progression)
Rules Editor (to make sure that rules were accurate, coherent and balanced)

These people would exist to run the studio like a business, not a commune.

BTW if any GW execs are listening I'd be happy to do one of these jobs...

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:a WD member will likely be shifted across to the design studio. It has happened before.

That's Latham, the WD editor. His latest editorial mentions he's going (gone?) across to games design. Maybe he'll have learnt the difference between 'affect' and 'effct' by then...

Heavens forbid they actually advertise for an outsider who acctually knows how to use the system to break it/ rules lawyer it so as to prevent problems occuring.
GWAR and Stelek would be good choices off hand.

That's a joke, right?

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:GWAR and Stelek would be good choices off hand.

Gwar would be useful member of their studio. Stelek, though, would be awful...

H.B.M.C. wrote:Given his problem counting to numbers with more than one digit, the prospect of an 8th edition likely scared him off. I mean, only one more edition after that before 10th!

Given the timing, isn't it more likely that he left after completing 8th edition???

12 years is a long time in any job these days. I never stuck one for longer than 5 until I got into my current one and I've been here only 8 years now. He's a nice bloke and a perfect gentleman. I wish him well in his new role.

Good luck to him.

Alessio was GW's lead rules designer from Feb. 2004-Feb. 2008, head of LOTR game for a long time and wrote several army books in person.

Maybe he realized that with Mat Ward writing 8th edition Warhammer rules (if that rumour is true), rules editing is not a part-time job anymore

Nothing personal or malicious, but I'm not sorry to see this guy go. Between the CSM book, and many of the worst 5E mechanics he is responsible for, I haven't found him to be great at what he does. Granted 5E had a lot of nice changes, but also just as many terrible ones, ones that his justifications and explanations of (especially in the developer podcast from almost two years ago) were just atrocious (such as defensive weapons and the ridiculous KP thing).

Sorry to see Alesso go but it sounds like pretty normal progression for me. The move from full time to part time was probably that they got someone else to do the bulk of the work then got Alesso to help tidy it up. GW has gone through lots of changes and they are still putting out good figures and good fluff so I'm happy.

Any workplace needs new blood to keep fresh and GWs method of cultivating in house talent is one that I like. I mean how gutted woud you be if you've been helping games development for 5 years then see an outsider come in and take the main job? As for time in the job, if you had worked on two editions of one game and had to rework army lists each time (or at least help oversee it) it must get fairly grim after a while. Always looking for a new gimmick for a new army must be tough.

I'm not surprised by the timing at all. I'm sure GW knew a long while ago that he wanted to leave/reduce his hours so they probably managed a transition stage to get them to the release of 8th ed and then that would be the best time to go.

Kroothawk wrote:Alessio was GW's lead rules designer from Feb. 2004-Feb. 2008, head of LOTR game for a long time and wrote several army books in person.

Maybe he realized that with Mat Ward writing 8th edition Warhammer rules (if that rumour is true), rules editing is not a part-time job anymore

Slight OT:

Seriously? Why is it they let the new guys re-write entire rules systems? What the feth is the logic behind that?

Holy Feth! The sky is falling! I just hope they don't move some suits from finance into game design....