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I was thinking of what we need specifically in a codex. I think this thread needs to be made so people have a better idea of how they are going to judge something before they decide that X codex sucks.

1) The hobby needs to be integrated with the game. I think it was the 4th edition of Chaos that allowed for all nine legions to be played. Even if some of these legions needed to be nerfed, the fact that they did that was awesome. The fact that the nine legions, and custom legions could be represented allowed for people to put alot more of their soul into a playable fun army.

I think the way that HQ choices work now is a good step in allowing for this ( X character makes Y elite a troop). Is there a better way to do this?

2) Over all, the Codex needs to provide a mechanic that allows for each army to behave diffrently. This gives the army a personality on the board that distinguishes itself from other armies with similar war gear. All of the authors attempt this usually, so a good codex will have interesting rules.

The mechanics that I think are good are essentially resource management systems that allow for more in game decision making. Faith Points, Marker Light, Pain Token and other such systems give thoes aremies interesting problems that they awarded for solving.

Rules that are annoying are rules that just allow people to ignore certain rules. Making "Codex: Army With Power Weapons" isn't very interesting. This should only be done in relation to a debilitation that an army has, and even then it still isn't interesting. Army rules should force the player to play a game within a game. If they win this game they get rewarded on the table-top, if they don't, they get nothing or even punished.

I stated my opinions? What do you want in a Codex? Not the next codex, not what you wanted in this or that codex. Just think, if you heard that GW was making a brand new codex tomorrow, what principles should guide them making it?

For the love of game design, internal and external balance.

I think each codex should present a sample army example or numerous, to give ideas to the players how to assemble their forces.

Khornate25 wrote:I think each codex should present a sample army example or numerous, to give ideas to the players how to assemble their forces.

They already do, just before the army list section. They're not great armies, but they're armies. At least the loyalist and CSM books have these.

I would like to see a return of the hobby section that they used to have. The 4th ed books had a lot more hobby information, painting and modeling guides and the like. They weren't particularly in-depth, but they were interesting and gave me some cool ideas.

I think that if they cut down on fluff to the bare minimum levels in the codex they would be able to churn them out faster, which in turn the codecies would be overall more balanced because they would all be all created for the same edition. Fluff would then be able to be accessed through other books and on the GW website.

I think they should all be balanced. but it's almost impossible to have a game that's 100% balanced, unless you have all the armies the EXACT same thing.