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Slipspace wrote:
GW rulebooks have, for some time, had the rather amazing ability to be laid out so badly that every edition of WH and 40k for the last 15 years has had at least one rule I can never find, even though I know it exists. At this point I think it's actually a talent.

Haha, I agree!

Or you could pick up a free Battle Primer, which has the gameplay rules straight from the rule book. If your FLGS doesn't have them, they are also available to print for free.
Youll need the BRB for detachments, missions, etc., but most of those are either easily memorized, or the work is done ahead of time before you even start play. Not really a need to bring the big book along and flip through it all day for some casual games.

 conker249 wrote:
Do what I did. Take it to Office Max, have them cut the binding, take the rule pages, place them in a newly spun spiral binding. It is really nice to have the 40ish pages together in a format that lays flat and open. The lore portion is in its own binding.

Thank you for the idea. I will be doing this! Any chance you could save me the hassle of turning some pages by telling me which ones you had removed? I am feeling exceptionally lazy right now

Slipspace wrote:
GW rulebooks have, for some time, had the rather amazing ability to be laid out so badly that every edition of WH and 40k for the last 15 years has had at least one rule I can never find, even though I know it exists. At this point I think it's actually a talent.

well you have the added problem that a majority of rules are finding their way into the FAQs and erratas. Which is what happens when you publish a 4 page rule book. Take your time. Make it 15 pages. But get it right. Or maybe i'm asking too much.

Or maybe GW could stop obsessing over the page count and instead focus on the quality of the content, writing as many (or as few) pages as necessary to create a solid ruleset?

Honestly, I'm kind of impressed with the 8th ed. rules. Just returned to the hobby after skipping 7th completely, and it seems like a lot has been streamlined since I played back in 4th/5th/6th. Is it perfect? No -- but it never really has been.

Skaorn wrote:
I think this has been my experience with practically every GW book lol

Amateurs at work.
This has to be said somewhere.

So I dare OP to go and try Necromunda with that clusterfeth of a rule 'layout' across 4 books (and climbing).

I agree with you completely. When scratchy played itchy’s ribs as a xylophone, and several bones played differentl notes, I was similarly outraged. I sure hope someone got fired over that.

I find the codices to be worse. Why are the faction and warlord traits at the back of the book? Shouldn't they be where the army specific rules are? And why isn't there a reference sheet for unit profiles?

 fraser1191 wrote:
I'm sorry it wasn't written like the national building code

This is hilarious.

Well I think the problem is not with the rulebook, but some rules themselves; LoS, cover, all of the codexes (we can complain on something from every single codex; and I'm the first to do so)... you name it. The rulebook itself, specially the core rules are quite handy, although the fight phase might be quite confusing. In the consolidation and initial 3' movements, people I've played with do a "drift" with their minis 2,99' around the enemy base/hull to get closer to other units, because tecnically, they "moved closer to the closest enemy unit" 0,01'.

 lolman1c wrote:
It is annoying i have to admit... for example:the rule about a vechile being 75% obscured means it has +1 to the save is not actually in the area talking about cover... you have to go specifically to the infintry in cover section seperate from the cover main rules and there it talks about vechiles in cover... despite it supposed to be about infintry in cover... i remember it took us like 20m to find this rule when someone said it wasn't real.

True dat.
I STILL haven't found what the keyword JET PACK does.

 pique311 wrote:
[
The rulebook itself, specially the core rules are quite handy, although the fight phase might be quite confusing. In the consolidation and initial 3' movements, people I've played with do a "drift" with their minis 2,99' around the enemy base/hull to get closer to other units, because tecnically, they "moved closer to the closest enemy unit" 0,01'.

Wait I've just realised it can't be done because you are getting closer to two units at the same time! Though it is theoretically legal against a vehicle or big single miniature unit. This means you can still block a transport like in 7e and kill the units inside? BS I say.

I think the rules, and GW updating them relatively often makes this edition very, very promising.

It took me quite a few games to get the hang of it, especially with the consolidate, pile-in and heroic intervention moves.

They DO need to release an updated, free rulebook at some point though.

I highly recommend the ITC champions mission pack. Much better than what GW created.

phydaux wrote:
I'm looking at getting back into the game after a long absence, so I finally broke down and bought the main rule book. After reading through it cover to cover twice, I've got to say this:

The 40k 8th edition main rule book is an absolute FAILURE.

I'm looking forward to your review of the new Necromunda rules...

 carldooley wrote:

 lolman1c wrote:
It is annoying i have to admit... for example:the rule about a vechile being 75% obscured means it has +1 to the save is not actually in the area talking about cover... you have to go specifically to the infintry in cover section seperate from the cover main rules and there it talks about vechiles in cover... despite it supposed to be about infintry in cover... i remember it took us like 20m to find this rule when someone said it wasn't real.

True dat.
I STILL haven't found what the keyword JET PACK does.

Keywords in 8th do nothing.

Literally, Keywords have ZERO inherent rules. They only act as an anchor for other rules to latch onto.

Also not a fan of the layout.

My biggest gripe: Infoboxes should contain clarifications or asides, not actual rules; they're hard to cross-reference. (Rather, our expectations for how rules text should be layed out make cross-referencing infoboxes difficult. Still, that's something that a professional designer should be taking into account.)

Codexes are better in one sense — everything's laid out in the full text itself — but they really would benefit from a better quick-reference section. I'm a Nurgle daemons player, and the sheer number of auras/special rules/strategems can be a little overwhelming, especially when paired with a Death Guard detachment. If I could photocopy 1 or 2 summary pages per army, that'd help a ton; as it is, I have to create my own summaries. (And spreadsheets for army comp. ... Seriously, GW's leaving so much money on the table by not making this stuff more accessible.)

So you claim the whole book is a failure because of one fault (the formatting). Pretty harsh, do you judge people the same way? Nothing & nobody is petfect this includes all the holy books on this planet which claim to be the word of god.

 Galas wrote:
Actually, I would call the rulebook an absolute success.

Afterall, it has make you come here, to rant and vent with a ton of hypherbolic statemets. And, isnt that what this hobby is all about?

I'm sad I can only exalt this once.

 Ecclesiarch 616 wrote:
So you claim the whole book is a failure because of one fault (the formatting). Pretty harsh, do you judge people the same way? Nothing & nobody is petfect this includes all the holy books on this planet which claim to be the word of god.

You forget that GW is held to a higher standard than something daft like religious texts. People here expect GW to have a PERFECT game system in place with no faults or errors that is worded in such a way that there can be no misinterpretation of the rules by anyone while also being absolutely perfectly balanced and also keeping the character of every army intact and fun to play with no dud rules, stratagems or units.

The big thing 7th did correctly was separate the Fluff, Pretty Pictures, and Rules into 3 books.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
I didn't notice it being bad. It seemed well enough laid out for me.

What's missing, and what's scattered around? There's only like 6 pages of rules, then a little section on missions with the force org and the basic strategems and such.

Well. There are descriptions here and points there for one thing...

I rarely touch my BRB, I agree it's horribly laid out. I generally just use the Base rule publication/PDF. Battlescribe handles the detachment information, the rest I don't even want to bother with.

Beyond the rules, one of the things that irks me is the uneven page count given to the various factions. I wish they'd done a minimum 2-page spread for each of the factions.

I'm puzzled that people actually use their rulebook. The small cardstock rules pamphlet plus a a photocopied set of the missions is all I take to my games.

Core rules + Codex FTW

Slipspace wrote:
GW rulebooks have, for some time, had the rather amazing ability to be laid out so badly that every edition of WH and 40k for the last 15 years has had at least one rule I can never find, even though I know it exists. At this point I think it's actually a talent.

I know that feeling, sometimes i have the suspicion that those rules are Alpha Legionaires....

At first i thought you were going to complain about the rules, but then i realized you are just complaining about the lay out of the new books, which, alright ill give you that, the books are kinda laid out like crap this ed.

I concur that it is an oddly laid out tome. It is too big and heavy to be a good rulebook with such a thin rules section in it.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Ecclesiarch 616 wrote:
So you claim the whole book is a failure because of one fault (the formatting). Pretty harsh, do you judge people the same way? Nothing & nobody is petfect this includes all the holy books on this planet which claim to be the word of god.

You forget that GW is held to a higher standard than something daft like religious texts. People here expect GW to have a PERFECT game system in place with no faults or errors that is worded in such a way that there can be no misinterpretation of the rules by anyone while also being absolutely perfectly balanced and also keeping the character of every army intact and fun to play with no dud rules, stratagems or units.

I find it quite the opposite. GW gets a free pass just for being GW all the time. Their games struggle to match the most basic homebrew systems published for free online, never mind professionally produced products. They haven't published a book in 15 years that could stand on its own merits. An identical product would have crashed and burned if published by anyone else.