Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Yesterday the Bolter & Chainsword released a guide to playing Space Marines in 5th edition. This 74 page document has advice about how to play your armies in 5th Edition, and articles about how the rules will be changing. Fully illustrated throughout, this is a living document and you are invitied to submit critique, submit new articles, and discuss its contents.

Shall They Know Fear - The Bolter & Chainsword Guide to 5th Edition

damn! looks awesome. i'll definatly give this a download after work. I always wanted to play white scars....

While I don't have the time to read that, I really applaud this kind of fan excitment! Well done B&C!

hehe...gives me something TO READ at work today. on page 24 and enjoying it so far.

nice article.

Deadshane1 wrote:nice article.

Agreed. Definitely more fair and balanced then I thought it would be. I was expecting it to be much more of a "5th Edition Hurr!" piece.

While no YakFAQ, I've got to admit a good job done by B&C. Gotta take a shower after writing that

Me too ... got all excited.

Of course, it would have been nice if they had at least gotten the current 4th edition rules correct - I'm looking at the commentary related to "size categories" in the opening pages.

It makes it harder to enjoy the rest when they get something that basic wrong right off.

While I can't say that I agree with everything they've included, I think that, in general, it's a great piece of work - and the production value alone makes it a very pretty document.

Have to take the laptop into the loo and have a read later today. 74 pages? Whew! Is the 5th Ed. rules section that long?

edit: i guess not, after 30mb of download the wi fi and laptop couldn't take it, they're gonna have to break it down into downloadable chunks for us who don't have mega-machines
edit II: nice, more managable at 9mb, downloaded and waiting to be read. Thanks!

While there are some good points brought out, you have to suffer through several areas of "we know better"/snobbery scattered throughout.

Terms like, "What were they thinking?" are better left to message boards. I was hoping for a more neutral document, since that stuff detracts from the purpose of laying out the differences of 4th vs 5th.

The layout is REALLY nice.

The art is a mixed bag. Some nice pieces others... ung.

Magical double post.

Cruentus wrote:Of course, it would have been nice if they had at least gotten the current 4th edition rules correct - I'm looking at the commentary related to "size categories" in the opening pages.

It makes it harder to enjoy the rest when they get something that basic wrong right off.

Yea... this annoys me too....

Turns out most people read the rules and read area terrain and then treated everything as area terrain.... I can't tell you how many people I had to sit down with and teach the real way LOS worked in 4th.... and then how many more times i had to teach them again until it sunk in... a very painful experience indeed... especially at tournies...

I am just glad they wrote it more clearly this time for the reading impaired...

Agreed

Guys

If you know better, then use the living document aspect and submit a better view / article and get it published.

We want your feedback to help a lot of people. So the best thing to do is write something and submit it for inclusion

P.s. thanks for the Layout comment ... took me a long time.

I couldn't get past the first couple pages....I had to get some cheese to go with the whining.

I suspect this book was done to bash GW but is in the guise of a "guide". I would bet that the so-called life of this living document is short.

General Hobbs wrote:

I couldn't get past the first couple pages....I had to get some cheese to go with the whining.

I suspect this book was done to bash GW but is in the guise of a "guide". I would bet that the so-called life of this living document is short.

Then, perhaps, you should read it again.

I *read* the first dozen or so pages, then skimmed the rest.

While I find there to bee too much information presented as opinion for it to be an effective guide, I still found it overall good. Many of the sections contained some really good suggestions and information.

I have to admit, however, that I nearly dozed off in many parts (not exaggeration), as certain areas were not edited well enough for my tastes and were overly verbose.

I only saw a couple typos where a wrong word was used (as if the spell-checker suggested the wrong word & it was accepted) or a link was left out.

All in all, I have to give it an 6 for content (see below), a 9 for effort and a 10 for intent!

I know B&C is all about the power armored guys and stuff, but I'd really like to see it expanded to cover ALL the armies. That would have bumped the content up to an 8 (though, you DO get an 8 for the content that was provided within your expected limitations).

Eric

@ MagickalMemories : Thanks for the comments, there has been a lot of effort put into this and there will continue to be.

The "life" of this living document will be at least till tomorrow

We should be releasing version 1.1 tomorrow after work GMT. Hopefully incorporating changes noted here and tightening up a few of the articles (thanks for the feedback)

Very very nice!

Exalt.

G

General Hobbs wrote:

I couldn't get past the first couple pages....I had to get some cheese to go with the whining.

I suspect this book was done to bash GW but is in the guise of a "guide". I would bet that the so-called life of this living document is short.

Then you must have missed this part ->

"In Closing:
Change is something that old and new gamers alike struggle with.

It’s something we don’t like to welcome with open arms as it wanders over to our house, wakes us up, and drags us kicking and screaming out of our comfort zone and forces us to think in different ways about things we were more than content having thought about previously.

Admittedly, we can all acknowledge that this fact is not necessarily a bad thing. We may or may not like it. We may or may not welcome it, but it’s certainly not a bad thing.

Opening our minds to new changes will only make our lists and our gaming stronger. Trying things that have never been tried before will expand our gaming borders and develop our gaming experience which will, in turn, evolve into a much richer and rewarding experience."

I appreciated the part regarding the Black Templars. It confirmed many of my own suspicions as to how the game will change that army.

I haven't forgotten about that Tactica, by the way. I'm still working on it, though at the moment I'm waiting for my 5th Edition Rulebook and the BT FAQ to be released before I write any more.

CK

Thanks everyone for your feedback, I am pleased to see people giving the other articles a chance. We have taken on-board everyones comments and the new version (online already) has the following amendments.

1. Corrections where appropriate.

2. Additions to articles to aid clarity.

3. "Why 5th Edition" moved to the end of the document and defined as Editorial

4. Two versions are now being produced, the first one is now for Screen viewing and as such is much smaller at around 9mb (40% of the original). The second version will be for printing and remains at 300dpi and a link will be added for it when we get that process underway. We will continue to look at ways to make the guide more convenient to use.

So for your enjoyment, the first revision of a living document: -

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/publications/5theditionguide.pdf

wOOt! The 9mb is much appreciated! Thanks!

Absolutely beautiful document, congratulations on all your hard work. It is always so inspiring to see what great things people are willing to come up with for this hobby.

I'm hoping you'll be able to utilize feedback provided to you via this thread. . .will that work?


I don't have time to read over the whole thing, but I glanced over a few sections and some stuff jumped out as unclear or incorrect to me. You may want to consider changing or correcting these things:


1) I didn't notice anywhere (and I may have missed this) any sort of discussion about the possibility of GW releasing FAQs for their older codices to make them compatible with 5th edition (such as the Black Templar codex).

I know this is a 'living document' that will allow you to change things on the fly, but it still seems like you may want to mention at this point that some of the rules in codices that don't seem to make any sense with the 5th edition rules may possibly be getting changed in the near future.


2) Page 17 ramming:

Another by-product is the ability to trap a transported unit within their transport. A unit may not get out of their vehicle if all the exits are blocked and can only Emergency Disembark if within 1” of an enemy model. So one could ram it and remain against an exit point for instance, forcing the unit to disembark via another access point – certainly a nifty tactic versus any transport with only one exit point (Chimera for instance) or with other already blocked access points. And don’t forget if the passengers can’t get out and the vehicle is “Destroyed – Wrecked” then they are lost.

This passage doesn't currently seem to make any sense; What tactic exactly are you trying to suggest?

You haven't discussed the changes of what an "emergency disembarkation" in the document and you only briefly mention it here in a way that doesn't make any sense to your readers.

Emergency Disembarkation is used whenever passengers are unable to disembark without coming within 1" of the enemy or into impassable terrain.

Your first point is true: You can use ramming to potentially force units out of another access point if they have it, but when you're talking about a vehicle with only one access point, the ramming vehicle constitutes an enemy. So if a tank rams a Chimera blocking its lone access point, the transported unit will just get out using emergency disembarkation.

In other words, your advice seems to imply that you can use ramming to wipe out a transported unit by ramming a transport vehicle with a single access point and blocking it with the vehicle. . .something that is completely wrong.

Frankly, I think advising players to use ramming as a tool to force opposing embarked units to disembark is fairly silly since a ramming move has to be done in a straight line so will entirely depend on where the vehicles are positioned to each other at the start of the movement phase. It is highly unlikely that the player will have any kind of choice as to where he will be ramming an opposing vehicle.

I suggest you remove that entire paragraph and perhaps consider adding it back into the transport section describing how emergency disembarkation now works (because that *is* a pretty big change that doesn't appear to be discussed in your document).


3) Page 25, Black Templars: The author repeatedly says that a Templar character with a retinue that is wiped out will only provide 1 Kill Point to the opponent. This is completely contradictory with the Kill Point rules in 5th edition which clearly state that a character with a retinue will give up 1 Kill Point each for both the character and the retinue.



That's all I have for now, but if I see anything else of note I'll be sure to let you know.


Kudos and great job again!

Its good to get feedback Yakface, and thank you for the kind comments, we are trying to do something that will help a lot of players with this

Yeah it's OK but woefully incomplete.

Where are the sections for IG, Ork, Space Elf, The Other Space Elf and Robot players?

I mean it has =I= and Teh Spase Demonz so where are the rest?

Oh Kid ... As a B&C Member of long standing you know what we cover

But thank you for iterating the point !

I am sure if there is enough demand we might step forward, in which case sir grab your pen and start writing those articles!

Br Argos wrote:Oh Kid ... As a B&C Member of long standing you know what we cover

But thank you for iterating the point !

I am sure if there is enough demand we might step forward, in which case sir grab your pen and start writing those articles!

So the Spase Demonz wear power armor now?

OK serious stuff...

FANTASTIC GORGEOUS PRODUCT!

But for those of us on slow connections a text only version would be welcome.

Other than that nothing to add.

Well the good news is the latest version (not due for release till later today, is down to 4.4mb

Thanks for the comment, we will try and reduce the size or indeed make a text only version just for you !

I liked it a good bit, though I thought some of the army specific info was a tad rudimentary. Then again, I have been cramming such information into my head from Dakka for the past month and a half, and I was probably fairly excited when it was new.

I really do appreciate the idea and execution though. With the exception of the few points Yak pointed out that struck me as odd, it is really nice to have an overview of what changed since it will be rather difficult to read the rules with fresh eyes and not assume somethings from 4th are still in there (like Last Man Standing.)

In response for people asking for a smaller version ...

Next Version is released, Version 1.13

Its down to 3.5mb on server (IE7 may make that load twice) with new intro piece and more additions and corrections.

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/publications/5theditionguide.pdf