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It seems like it's once a year.

I've been stalking the idea of starting a WH40K army for sometime, and have just got my foot in, starting at 7thed. But I feel like I started looking when it was still in it's 5thed.

Does it irritate any of you? Do they just do it because users are unhappy with the old rules? Illuminate me!

It depends. Some armies are done fairly regularly, but then you have examples like the DE who waited 12 years for their update.

Usually it's 3/4 years I think. The rulebook normally is 4/5 years, 6th to 7th was an anomaly being that it was only 2 years.

I started in 4th and I keep forgetting that, keep thinking it was 5th because the really quick turnaround between 6 and 7 really threw me.

Ah! Geeze, maybe I've been putting this off for a lot longer than I thought. -_- When exactly was 7thed released?

June/July this year? Definitely this year, not sure what month.

That's good, at least gives me time to get to know 7th ed before they release a new one. Since you've been playing since 4th ed, how different are they from one another? Are they subtle changes? or are they a total game changer?

Sorry about the questions, I'm brand new to the whole wargaming hobby.

Don't worry about asking questions

I have actually not played all that much. Not many people nearby who play. But from what I remember, each edition is fairly minor changes. 5th introduced True Line of Sight, 6th added flyers and 7th is basically a refinement of 6th.

It's usually pretty small changes rather than a huge game shaking change.

The core rules remain the same (the stats are the same, most of the numbers are the same, how people move, how dice rolls work, et cetera), they don't usually drop too much on you all at once. The biggest changes are almost always new content (Flyers, Chariots, new USRs) rather than edits to old content. They aren't that hard to wrap your head around but they combine with updates to army lists to alter competitive play significantly (5e was all about the Rhino parking lot because they made vehicles too tough, 6e expanded the types of things you could expect to deal with on the tabletop so skew lists became the order of the day, et cetera).

From edition to edition, the changes to the actual RULES tend to be minor. However, the way the game plays has changed drastically since 5th edition.

Noc

The goal (from a less cynical point of view) is to try and create an evolving meta situation similar to how things like MTG work where if they screw up balancing something the next Codex comes along and what you have to deal with changes, but it doesn't always work that way.

Historically GW has typically done two codex books a year, and a new ruleset every 4-6 years. Sometimes they did 1 codex book a year, sometimes 3.

Since the release of 6th edition, they've been going through books at a much faster pace, one every month or so, with the gap between 6E's release and 7E being the shortest ever, 2 years. So if you started looking at it at the beginning of 2012 and took the plunge in summer 2014, that would have spanned 3 editions. They've also been releasing a whole lot more supplemental material at a very quick pace.

In some ways this is good, the old codex schedule often meant armies would go a decade or more without updating. In other ways its unfortunate because GW does not appear to be putting much thought into their releases (barring the core codex books which seem to be getting better done), the supplemental material is often very thin on game content and what's there doesn't seem spectacularly well thought out or playtested at all.

So aside from having to purchase a new edition rule book every now and then, it's not so much a big deal... That's good, and 50-80$ every few years is nothing either, but that price annual would begin to annoy me. Glad it's not the case though.

What did throw me off is GW changing army names, and adding new armies, ie the imperial guard changing to the Astra Militarium. Which I still don't fully understand why these changes needed to be. And it seems there are a ton more mini codex/codex supplements now, ie Index Company champions, Apothecaries, Altar of War, Centurions.

Are these supplements required to field certain miniatures? Or are they going to be inclusive in my space marines codex to come?

I believe, mind you this is just my opinion, that GW will keep the CORE units and special characters in the main Codex. However, more specialized stuff (like the tyranid war veterans) will continue to exist only in data slate space. Other expansions such as the Sentinels of Terra and Clan Raukin (however they spell that), don't really add units, they just add special characters, warlord traits, a few scenarios, and usually some special items to give your army a more "specialized" flavor.

Noc

 Orkzwuzmade4rokkn wrote:
So aside from having to purchase a new edition rule book every now and then, it's not so much a big deal... That's good, and 50-80$ every few years is nothing either, but that price annual would begin to annoy me. Glad it's not the case though.

What did throw me off is GW changing army names, and adding new armies, ie the imperial guard changing to the Astra Militarium. Which I still don't fully understand why these changes needed to be. And it seems there are a ton more mini codex/codex supplements now, ie Index Company champions, Apothecaries, Altar of War, Centurions.

Are these supplements required to field certain miniatures? Or are they going to be inclusive in my space marines codex to come?

The army name change has only happened once, and the supplements tend to give different relics/alter FOC slots as opposed to giving things new models. They're not particularly important.

If you get a supplement for C:SM you will be getting either the power to include more Dreadnaughts and Techmarines than C:SM (Clan Raukaan) or an improvement to Bolter Drill, the ability to include more Centurions, and a character Tactical Sergeant (Sentinels of Terra) along with a unique Warlord Trait table, Relics list, and set of formations for each.

 Orkzwuzmade4rokkn wrote:


What did throw me off is GW changing army names, and adding new armies, ie the imperial guard changing to the Astra Militarium. Which I still don't fully understand why these changes needed to be.

Legal fallout. They did the same thing with their paints. They're trying to make everything they sell have a GW specific and copyrightable name such that it cannot be used by anyone else. Hence, the Imperial Guard becomes the unfortunately named Astra Militarum and the Imperial Stormtroopers become the even more hocus-pocusey sounding Tempestus Scions.

Not great signs.

And it seems there are a ton more mini codex/codex supplements now, ie Index Company champions, Apothecaries, Altar of War, Centurions.

Are these supplements required to field certain miniatures? Or are they going to be inclusive in my space marines codex to come?

Not required at all.

This is all very informativ.

With the sentinels of terra supplement, is that strictly for a 3rd company IF army? Or could that add some spice to any IF force?

(sorry, kind of off topic, but that interested me haha)

And I've been noticing that GW is very....protective...over their line of products. Gamestores apparently can't even sell their products online anymore.

 Orkzwuzmade4rokkn wrote:
This is all very informativ.

With the sentinels of terra supplement, is that strictly for a 3rd company IF army? Or could that add some spice to any IF force?

(sorry, kind of off topic, but that interested me haha)

And I've been noticing that GW is very....protective...over their line of products. Gamestores apparently can't even sell their products online anymore.

You can technically use sentinels of terra for any IF force. That's one of those supplements that had many people scratching their heads "you'll do a sub-book for a single company of a single chapter of largely codex-adherent space marines...but nothing for the Chaos Legions?"

Game stores haven't been allowed to sell online for many years now. They can't sell through an online "shopping cart" or catalog and cannot use images of GW models to sell GW models (e.g. you can't put up a picture of a Predator tank, give a price, and have online checkout). What many do do however is state that they do *phone* orders and post that they give 20% off all GW products, so if you already know what you're looking for you can just call them and place an order. Thewarstore and several other places operate like that.

Right, I think that's what diceheadgames does, and hell, 20% off is worth doing my shopping over the phone, just seems a tid ridiculous of GW to ban such things, the profits are still positive for GW, is it not? It seems they'd sell more products if through other parties. I'm sure stores get some discount for ordering straight from the GW warehouse, and just pass the savings on to hobbyist such as ourselves.

GW Must've been in a bit of financial hardship? Meh, still able to buy 'em, so I suppose it's not a matter of concern.

As for the supplement to the IF, that's interesting, I'll have to give it a glance.