Indexes or Codexes for 40k rules?

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**Jammer87**

I enjoy the spot light on my army in the codex but if they went to an index format there are more pros.

Less books
Higher likelihood of balance. I don’t have to worry about A team vs B team book writer balancing issues
If I want to research an army it’s right there available in a few books
Fewer books so a possibility of more regular updates

Just some thoughts. I collect Space Wolves.

**Jammer87**

I don’t want frequent updates. I want regular updates. There are times that armies lag well behind because they go without an updated codex an entire edition. Dark Eldar springs to mind

**Jammer87**

Jidmah wrote:
I put some thought into this, and assuming that books are the only way to go, I'd propose this:

Index Astartes
- Contains all loyal Space Marine Factions, including Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Death Watch and Grey Knights
- Consists of two books, one fluff and one rules only, similar to the current Chapter Approved. Reasoning behind this is the size and weight of a single book.

Index Imperium
- Contains everything else loyal to Terra: Adeptus Mechanicum, Guard, Knights, Inquisition, Sisters, Assassins
- Two books

Index Chaos
- Daemons, Knights, Chaos Legions, Renegades
- Two books

Index Aeldari
- Craftworld, Drukhari, Harlequins, Ynnari
- Two books

Index Tyranids
- Hivefleets, Genestealer Cult, full reprint of Blood Brothers datasheets
- Two books

Codex Orks
Codex Necrons
Codex Tau
- One book each. You never need Tau rules in an Ork game.

This way, you'd bringing a soup army no longer requires bringing an entire library of books.

Bunching up many armies into one book also has one major downside - updates from GW would always have to be done for all of them at once.

This is what I would prefer. Since there are six Indicies/Codicies they could update each one once a year- while publishing a different index/codex every other month. Offsetting with GWs AOS line and specialist games. So all of the errata and other information could be compiled throughout the year and an annual update would get published.