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There isn't a good General 40K section on Dakka so I figured I'd post this under Tactics as it's the closest to...

I have been sitting down reading over the new Marine 'dex quite a bit when earlier this evening I had a thought about it. I am a 10+ year veteran of 40K and GW games in general. Space Marines have always been the army of choice for the core of 40K players, and the overwhelming majority of players get their start with Space Marines. I could have sworn GW was trying to "dumb down" the codecies, then we get hit with the monstrous new Space Marine book. I wondered how I would see the new Marine 'dex if I were just coming into 40K.

I realized that to a player unfamiliar with GW's style of codices and army books, unfamiliar with his new Space Marine army and their abilities, and quite possibly, unfamiliar to war gaming in general, the new codex could simply be this confusing monstrous tome. Yeah, some of you laugh that off, but you're looking at this through the eyes of an experienced gamer. Remember what it was like when you were 14 or 16 years old and just finding 40K. To date, it has the be the hardest codex to read and yet it is the codex that the core of new players are going to be confronted with.

The new Space Marine player is now confronted with what are an overwhelming number of unit choices and options. I think the "static" of all the information bombarding the reader creates a whole series of problems. A new player doesn't really comprehend yet that they don't need to know every single rule for every single unit that they don't own or play with yet. They can get overwhelmed thinking they need to know the intricacies of what every special unit ability means. Why? Because they see the example armies and the armies people play in the game store filled with all these wiz-bang gizmo type units. It's like a young child in a candy store, it's sheerly overwhelming and instead of them being able to make a choice they stand there in shock then try to gab everything in sight. The same goes for the new player and this codex. There are a ton of choices now for the Space Marine player. As a vet I think that's great! But this can spell years of disaster for a newbie without proper guidance. With more choices comes more ways to make bad choices and combinations and really screw up your army list, meaning the learning curve just got sharper. This can eventually lead to a bunch of very disenchanted new gamers who may simply quit the hobby, which is a loss to us all!

My solution to this is not to say give us less choices or "fix" units. The problem is not in the army or the units themselves, rather the problem lays in the writing of the book itself. I dare to say there almost needs to be a separate, simpler army list for new players, or one that has been better written and edited. A transition between the Black Reach boxed set and the current full on Space Marine codex experience is needed.

I don't find it intimidating just frustrating. Lets take a look at the Scout entry. Ok boys and girls, lets open our Codex to page 66.

Scout Squad

Special Rules

And They Shall Know No Fear (back to page 51 to find out what this is)
Combat Squads (p.51)
Combat Tactics (p.51 - or the page of the IC you take)
Infiltrate (Not in the Codex)
Move Through Cover (Not in the codex)
Scouts (Not in the Codex)

Now I do understand that you must have the core rule book to play, but when building an army it is nice to be able to figure out what a unit does without having to swap books every 5 min.

Now lets continue with Wargear.

Hellfire shells (explains it right there in the entry enough to play...but poisoned? Main rule book)

Shotgun (Its right here - and yes, I have seen enough Assault weapons I don't need to look this up)

Sniper Rifle(Sniper is not explained in the codex...Main book again.)

Camo Cloaks....no entry soo page 100 it says.

So I flip to the Wargear section and look up Camo cloaks. Now I want to browse the gear and see what other items I can take.....entry after entry of "See model squad X on page X. Why not cut out a few of the small inconsequential pictures and put ALL the frickin information in one place?!?!?!?!

And don't get me started on point cost in spot and rules in another...There is nothing we can do about this as it has been going on since what...Eldar Codex I beleive?

I forsee my codex's spone being DESTROYED before I play enough games to memorize what everything does. And to be honest I have never felt the need to memorize everything because there was always the FOC page that I could zerox and have all I need right there.

Edited for spelling

Yes, the size of the codex is intimidating to new players. Despite having been painting for some time, I'm only now actually dipping my toe into the game. Like many others, I've bought AOBR, as an ork player to boost my blossoming army. There are plenty of marines in the box, so I thought I may as well build a 1000 points or so of marines. Hence buying the codex. There is a lot to go through to fully understand what's going on, and even then, I won't truly know the strengths and weaknesses of each unit type for some time. Fortunately, being sufficiently above 14 or 16 years old, I'm happy to spend the time playing around to see what works and so don't mind. It's a bit much though.

I would never want to see GW drop the amount they put into a codex though. One of the main attractions of the GW universe is the wealth and depth of fluff and army options. Why sacrifice depth for simplicity? This game isn't snakes and ladders or tic-tac-toe. Yes, it's complicated, but we all know the benefits of enjoying this crazy, frustrating and glorious hobby!

At least this time around there's a bit of cross referencing to help new players find their way around the SM book.

The new Space Marine codex is a very easy to read and understand book compared to the last one. Writing a list is easy, I pull out a pen and paper and have a list written in 10 minutes, rather than mucking about in Army Builder or Excell.


If you want a watered down, smaller, easier to understand codex which is like Space Marines but with less units and less options, they allready have that - it's called the Dark Angels codex. An abject failure by all accounts. In other words, they experimented with a simple no-options list, found it to be a failure, and amped up the options a little. I don't think there's much to be gained by having a simpler codex. Either the codex is strictly worse than another codex and therefore useless, or sometimes better and players of the simpler codex will get chided for playing on "easy mode".

I'm not a fan of all the cross-referencing. I'm sensitive to their desire to standardize rules across multiple documents, but cross-referencing everything isn't the best approach in terms of usability, and actually increases the chances of errors or document failures.

I'm particularly not a fan of the recent codecies that separate the army list entries from the descriptions of special rules and equipment. The army list entries already have the advantages of a logical organization protocol that all the readers are familiar with, so it would make rules and equipment easy to find. Instead, they now separate special rules into fluff sections (which have no consistent logical organization) and equipment into the wargear list--except where wargear appears in the descriptions which requires another cross-reference... I miss the days when special rules were in the army list.

I finally just had to memorize the fact that the rules for Eldar vehicle upgrades is on the page that describes war walkers.

I have no problems with the new codex to be honest, didn't take me that long to read through it, i prefer the new one rather than the old one imo

Flavius Infernus wrote:I finally just had to memorize the fact that the rules for Eldar vehicle upgrades is on the page that describes war walkers.

I really like the new design for codices. It´s really easy to find what you need to find. It´s true that Eldar Codex was the first one, and it´s hard to find some stuff, but the next ones are better done IMHO.

For an experienced 40k enthusiast the new codex is great - plenty of fluff,pictures and maps, and a rules set which by GW standards (ahem) seems clear, well referenced and largely consistent.

I dug out my WH40K compendium to compare it with the first army list for space marines. - We've come a long way. (random rolls for character equipment, 600 point predators, 80 point terminators, none of the special rules for the units anywhere near the list.) Still it was nice to see that a squad of 10 marines got a free flamer and missile launcher back then too.

Back OT:
while I see that it's quite a big book for new players to get their teeth into - it must be good for GW as it instills a "must buy more models" fixation. All those lovely new figures in the dex are very tempting. ( even for an old hand like me.)
There are many young/new players in my gaming group and they're all spending their parents money on shiny new toys. Librarians are flavour of the week it seems. Tigurius got zapped by a weirdboy today, - ouch

I have to say that I really like the new format for the codices. I didn't like it at first, but once you know what things are it is sooo much better. I mean, really, will you need to reference Combat Tactics or Combat Squads once you have played the game?

Flavius Infernus wrote:I'm not a fan of all the cross-referencing. I'm sensitive to their desire to standardize rules across multiple documents, but cross-referencing everything isn't the best approach in terms of usability, and actually increases the chances of errors or document failures.

I'm particularly not a fan of the recent codecies that separate the army list entries from the descriptions of special rules and equipment. The army list entries already have the advantages of a logical organization protocol that all the readers are familiar with, so it would make rules and equipment easy to find. Instead, they now separate special rules into fluff sections (which have no consistent logical organization) and equipment into the wargear list--except where wargear appears in the descriptions which requires another cross-reference... I miss the days when special rules were in the army list.

This right here is what I dislike about the new codex layout. When you're new to the game or to a particular army, it's really brutal to put together a list because you're constantly flipping not just to a couple of different pages in your codex, which is bad enough, but you then have to constantly flip in between various pages in the rule book. JUST SO YOU CAN SEE IF A UNIT IS WORTH YOUR TIME AND EFFORT. If I didn't have to flip between a unit's fluff and their wargear section I might not mind this so much.

Somnicide wrote:I have to say that I really like the new format for the codices. I didn't like it at first, but once you know what things are it is sooo much better. I mean, really, will you need to reference Combat Tactics or Combat Squads once you have played the game?

You mean, the same format as before?

Nothing alphabetized?

Having to flip multiple sections to look stuff up?

Yeah, it's utter crap.

Oh, you said you LIKE it.

Gee.

Having started playing the Tau codex and now moving on to the New Space Marine codex I'm a much bigger fan of the old way GW layed things out in the Tau codex.

I can see why people like the layout of the new eldar, ork, Chaos Daemons, and SM's though. It is great for the people hand writting lists to just flip to the back and start pulling every unit out.

I'm much more of an army builder/Excel list builder though and would rather have all a unit's special rules & wargear options explained on the same page.

I doubt GW will change the layout but here is my hope:

Move the Colored picture modeling part to either BEFORE or AFTER you start listing the units. I find myself having to flip through the 10 or 20 pages of models every couple minutes as I look things up.

Well, as long as you aren't a complete moron you don't have to flip back and forth.

Oh, you said you had to.

Gee

You're only losing half of your preconceptions. As a new player wouldn't know what the previous codex was like:

A) They wouldn't know the format has changed.

B) They wouldn't know this one is larger.

So this new player wouldn't be any more or less intimidated by this codex as any other.

I've seen relatively new players (3-4 years experience but only played one army) be quite intimidated by the new SM book. The amount of options alone is a hell of a lot to process.

Doing up an army builder data file for it took me about twice as long as it took for me to do one for the new ork codex.... and I had to learn to program army builder for that one!

Doing the Army Builder Data File may have helped me process the options as well. Though truth be told the options aren't all that different than before, just the costs are different.

To me its much more difficult to process the edition changes than the codex updates. Between 40K and Fantasy I must have 7 different rules editions with 5 or more versions of Infiltrate/scout/etc all with different meanings. I'd kill for one BRB for both games so they used the same basic system, and Scout here meant Scout there, and so on.

Breton wrote:Doing the Army Builder Data File may have helped me process the options as well.

Oh, sure, get my hopes up that that had been posted onto Wolf Lair's site, only to have them crushed when I see it's just a 4th ed update and no new Space Marines.