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All unofficial documents are equal, but some unofficial documents are more equal than others.

Thanks Killkrazy, now my head hurts.

I'm not understanding the "gets hot" ruling. So its one save no matter whether you have one or two (or three if that type of weapon ever is published) wounds from over heat? You save all or you save none? Have other people been playing it this way?

Posted By jfrazell on 10/12/2007 6:14 AM
Thanks Killkrazy, now my head hurts.

I'm not understanding the "gets hot" ruling. So its one save no matter whether you have one or two (or three if that type of weapon ever is published) wounds from over heat? You save all or you save none? Have other people been playing it this way?

I noticed that as well.  I, and everybody I've ever played against, rules an armor save for every overheat, with each failed armor save being a wound.

The FAQ seems to say that you only ever take one armor save, and thus only one wound, no matter how badly you overheat.  It helps plasma a little, more with marines than with IG (who'll still fail most of their saves), but as Yak as pointed out, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to stray from RAW on this one. 

I've asked this before, but I'll ask again: does anybody have anything close to a reason why "official" FAQs are so sporadic and incomplete?  There are, at this point, at least 3 high profile un-official FAQs out there, any of which could begun official with an afternoon's effort by any member of the design team.  Am I missing something, or is writitng FAQ's too much like work, and thus spurned by any member of the design team that had the authority to write them?

Thats an insanely good, if frequently asked question. To further that, statements by one of the design higher ups (Thorpe?) were that they were going to start addressing that. Of course that was months ago at this point. You know we're not talking a lot of effort here, take Yakfaces FAQ or Adepticon's, read it over, send to that party requesting approval and release to use it by GW, and post it on the GW site. WHATS THE ^%&$% PROBLEM!

Posted By Polonius on 10/12/2007 8:51 AM

I've asked this before, but I'll ask again: does anybody have anything close to a reason why "official" FAQs are so sporadic and incomplete?  There are, at this point, at least 3 high profile un-official FAQs out there, any of which could begun official with an afternoon's effort by any member of the design team.  Am I missing something, or is writitng FAQ's too much like work, and thus spurned by any member of the design team that had the authority to write them?

According to Jervis at the last Adepticon official FAQs have to be translated into 8 different languages. In other words, they take a lot of time and resources to update and they obviously don't feel that time and money is worth the expenditure.

the phrase "copout" comes to mind.

Posted By jfrazell on 10/12/2007 10:33 AM
the phrase "copout" comes to mind.

I would have to go with actual work.

But you can still get the English one up and then over time release the rest. That covers most of the gaming audience anyway. Translate it into German, French, and Italian and you have like 95% (numbers I'm guessing on) of the market covered. I agree with jfrazell, "copout" does come to mind. You guys know I'm pretty positive on GW, but this is one area that really, really bugs me.

Ozymandias, King of Kigns

Q. When a multiple-wound unit (that already contains a wounded model) suffers a
wound that will cause instant death, is the owning player compelled to put it on an
unwounded (whole?) model or can they choose to place it on the already wounded
model?
A. Yes, you must remove whole unwounded models where possible from an Instant
Death attack.

Can someone explain this to me? Why couldn't I say that a model that has a wound already takes the hit?

"whole unwounded." It should be "wholly unwounded" but I think it gets the point across. It's just the addition of clarifying words like this that make the rules so much better.

Posted By yakface on 10/12/2007 9:21 AM

Posted By Polonius on 10/12/2007 8:51 AM

I've asked this before, but I'll ask again: does anybody have anything close to a reason why "official" FAQs are so sporadic and incomplete?  There are, at this point, at least 3 high profile un-official FAQs out there, any of which could begun official with an afternoon's effort by any member of the design team.  Am I missing something, or is writitng FAQ's too much like work, and thus spurned by any member of the design team that had the authority to write them?

According to Jervis at the last Adepticon official FAQs have to be translated into 8 different languages. In other words, they take a lot of time and resources to update and they obviously don't feel that time and money is worth the expenditure.

What on earth is wrong with GW that translation is such a big issue to them? Eight languages is not a huge number of languages in terms of localization, and GW is not a small company. Three pages in eight languages is only a few thousand Euros worth of translation work- it should be part of the budget of the associated codex. They do a hell of a lot more than that every month with White Dwarf.

"Hurf Bluh 8 Languages" reeks of excuse, but I suppose it's improper to public announce that the studio is underfunded, understaffed, or just doesn't give a damn.

According to Jervis at the last Adepticon official FAQs have to be translated into 8 different languages. In other words, they take a lot of time and resources to update and they obviously don't feel that time and money is worth the expenditure.

Publish in english and let the community translate. I am sure there is no shortage of volunteers.

There are also enough multi-lingual people to know if there's an error. Barring a huge conspiracy , it will be correct.

Posted By Phausi on 10/12/2007 4:48 PM
Q. When a multiple-wound unit (that already contains a wounded model) suffers a
wound that will cause instant death, is the owning player compelled to put it on an
unwounded (whole?) model or can they choose to place it on the already wounded
model?
A. Yes, you must remove whole unwounded models where possible from an Instant
Death attack.

Can someone explain this to me? Why couldn't I say that a model that has a wound already takes the hit?

Because say you have a unit of Ogryn. The unit gets wounded by a Lascannon (which will cause instant death) and 4 Bolter shots.

Since instant death isn't applied until after the model suffers the wound, without such a clarification the owning player could assign 2 Bolter wounds to an Ogryn and then apply the Lascannon wound to the same wounded Ogryn model (instant death then kicks in, but the model has already lost all 3 wounds anyway). The final 2 wounds are then applied to another Ogryn.

 

There are two ways to clarify the issue to prevent this abuse:

1) Make instant death wounds have to be applied before any other wound is applied from the same firing unit.

2) Force players to apply instant death wounds to unwounded models, if applicable.

 

This FAQ obviously chose to go with the latter solution. In the yak/Adepticon FAQ we went with forcing players to apply instant death wounds before any other type of wound and forcing players to allocate the wound to already wounded models (as that fits in with the normal application of wounds when dealing with units of multi-wound creatures).

 

Posted By Triggerbaby on 10/12/2007 5:21 PM

What on earth is wrong with GW that translation is such a big issue to them? Eight languages is not a huge number of languages in terms of localization, and GW is not a small company. Three pages in eight languages is only a few thousand Euros worth of translation work- it should be part of the budget of the associated codex. They do a hell of a lot more than that every month with White Dwarf.

"Hurf Bluh 8 Languages" reeks of excuse, but I suppose it's improper to public announce that the studio is underfunded, understaffed, or just doesn't give a damn.

I always assumed they simply had somebody on staff that can translate, since they do so much work in each language.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  It's possible that every translating drone is busy with White Dwarf and the webpages, but a FAQ would literally take an hour to do....

Posted By Polonius on 10/12/2007 6:40 PM

<rb></rb>I always assumed they simply had somebody on staff that can translate, since they do so much work in each language.  Perhaps I'm wrong.  It's possible that every translating drone is busy with White Dwarf and the webpages, but a FAQ would literally take an hour to do....

I would disagree with that sentiment. Since every word and stray term used in a FAQ can make deep-rooted changes in the game you have to be extremely careful when translating them on par with their rulebooks/codices.

It can't be an easy process. That said, I do believe that GW should put much more emphasis into updating their FAQs, I just don't think we can assume it is an easy job to do.

 

Fair enough. I suppose it's trickier than I imagine. I guess my approach is this: If non-english markets are a large and/or growing area for GW, they have to have at least some staff that speak the language fluently and are versed in GW products. For those large segments, they'll rely on the translation staff to bring them FAQ's. I'd imagine this is true for French, German, Italian and Spanish.

For other areas, the number of affected players goes down, so frankly, they can either translate their own, or wait a little longer. Using gamers in Poland, Hong Kong, etc. as a reason to delay FAQ's might be true, but it's a poorly thought out policy. The majority of gamers have to be english speakers nativly, and a huge majority speak it at all. Add in the major western european languages that should be easy to translate, and 80% or more of GW's audience would be served.

It's laudable, it really is, if GW is trying to bring it's product to it's entire fan base at once. But these aren't being delayed a month or two. It's years between updates.

Like many things with GW, I'm really not even that mad we're not getting FAQ's, it's that they won't just say they won't do them. They keep claiming to have up to date FAQ's, or promise to get new ones up, but they never explain why they're delayed. It's part of GW's approach to information: they have to keep it, because it's fans can't be trusted with it.

I agree. The little tidbits dropped by Jervis or Gav at events saying: "updated FAQs are coming soon, we promise!" are the real killers.

If they just came out and said: "FAQs are not our priority and when we find the time to squeeze them in we'll update them but that may never happen to due budget and time contraints." I think players would still be dissapointed but they wouldn't feel so jilted as well.

It is not cheap and easy to translate game language (I know because I work in videogames) but neither is it impossibly expensive and difficult. Plenty of companies do it and GW surely do lots of translation already for rulebooks and codexes.

The way to approach technical translation is to make manuals that explain the differences and special meanings in your text compared to ordinary speech. Then you work carefully with a professional translation company to ensure the translators are trained and familiarised with your requirements. After a couple of months to-ing and fro-ing the translation company will have got its staff up to speed and freom then on they are in charge of training new staff so all you have to do is sent them text, money, schedules and any technical changes that happen.

Obviously this takes a significant amount of forethought and organisation to start with. It also assumes that your original material is well prepared and makes good sense.

Oho! Problem. GW have always been so awful at writing rules clearly, and so contradictory about issuing FAQs, that clearly they do not have the management capability to get things organised properly.

We'll never know, of course, but I would not be surprised if the UK GT FAQ turned out to be the work of one or two enthusiasts who took it on themselves to get something done, because no-one higher in the studio was going to see to it.

As GW has a limited "canon" of officially correct responses compared to the very large number of queries, the one or two guys are working with their own wits and prejudices and whatever they can dredge up from the WWW. Hence the inclusion of large chunks of the Yak FAQ, and the various perverse decisions.

I just thought of something with the unwounded models/instant death ruling. That almost seems like it could be used to assassinate an enemy character attached to a unit.  Lets say that a Tau Shas'o and his two battlesuit bodyguards get jumped by a unit of drop troop vet  plasma gunners and a unit of melta gunners.  The Plasmas shoot first killing one suit and wounding the other.  If the Melta Gunners only scored one wound, wouldn't it have to be assigned to the character?