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hubcap wrote:So maybe Apocalypse becomes the loosey-goosey fluff 40k and normal 40k becomes more streamlined and tournament-friendly.

Or maybe I'm just talking myself into it because I would like to see the return of more funky Chapter Approved variants in any form whatsoever.

Well we're getting the Liber Apocalyptica in the anniversary edition of WD--340 in the UK numbering. Along with the "rules" for Apoc. style fantasy games.

Think we get a big Emp's children noise weapon cult list or something similar in the Liber, I assume we'll get something for every legion/cult.

Alessio needs to be the next to go.

Care to elaborate why?

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Heritor wrote: Alessio needs to be the next to go.

Alessio is the only one who should stay.
his books are the best. powerful enough to stand up to almost 5 years warhammer and yet the fluffers can find plenty of units to make their happy little armies.

Skaven and Vampire counts are the two books that i feel have given me the best value for my dollar.compare that to my dark elf book, which sucked from day 1.
keep the tournament players involved in writing books,when tournament players are happy with their books, then everyone else will fall in line. fluffers and comp-queens will always have something to complain about.

WHO should stay or go is irrelevent. What the new guys bring to the table, now that is the question.

The biggest gripe I have about the Infamous departures is the passing of the gauntlet, as in Continuations from one guy to the next for this company SUCK.
The stability of these guys and thier different ways and thought processes conflict, and ruin the game.

I hate the way when Noob took over when they all the sudden decided out of the blue to scrap the whole system. Alessio was on bord in the vampire count days, when they came up with the new types and models, and considering the stuff they pulled on them this time around, My gripes hold true.
A perfect example is the stupidly new Vampires, who were already given the "New and Improved with more Vitamin C", what ever happened to the Skaven, or dark elves, or the chaos, or the high elves? one or two new guys doesn't count as a revamp. ( he he)
Of all of the armies NOT to mess with, they have to retread the Vampire Counts, and not just bring back the UNDEAD? !@#$ vampires. They are tired and already played out before boreing us to death( or undeath).

If they can't come up with new stuff, why bother continuing the madness?

Techboss wrote:I took a quit jaunt over to Warseer. I was not very impressed with what I saw going on.

I think this sums up Warseer pretty succinctly.

hubcap wrote:So maybe Apocalypse becomes the loosey-goosey fluff 40k and normal 40k becomes more streamlined and tournament-friendly.

I doubt it. Normal 40k will continue to be just as loosey-goosey as it's always been. The difference is that in Apocalypse they've admitted that they're not even trying.

reds8n wrote:Think we get a big Emp's children noise weapon cult list or something similar in the Liber, I assume we'll get something for every legion/cult.

Yeah that's much better than giving them real rules. Unbelievable.

Am I the only one who's seriously fed up with this Apocalypse crap? Apocalypse: where anything goes... with opponent consent (and nothing goes without it). Well then what the hell do I need GW for? I mean if I need my opponent's consent to use my ing army then what's the point even having official rules?

Sure, no problem dude! You can play your Emperor's Children army - just as long as you let me play my Space Marine Custodian Primarch Titan Legion with Harlequin Solitaire Black Library Strike Force and Adeptus Mechanicus Necron C'tan Machine Cult allies (don't worry, it's cool - I made my own datasheets for them!) - now let's play some WARHAMS! Ok, I take Flank March and put all my Solitaires, C'tans and Primarchs in reserve. Hurr! Gee, thanks for the rules "support" GW.

Go send Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars to Apocalypse and then maybe we can talk.

>>Am I the only one who's seriously fed up with this Apocalypse crap? Apocalypse: where anything goes... with opponent consent (and nothing goes without it).

I have rate Apoc low since the start. Mind you, horses for courses, a lot of people love it.

>>Well then what the hell do I need GW for? I mean if I need my opponent's consent to use my ing army then what's the point even having official rules?

Don't forget the golden rule, you can always D6 for whether an army is allowed or not :-)

Sure, no problem dude! You can play your Emperor's Children army - just as long as you let me play my Space Marine Custodian Primarch Titan Legion with Harlequin Solitaire Black Library Strike Force and Adeptus Mechanicus Necron C'tan Machine Cult allies (don't worry, it's cool - I made my own datasheets for them!) - now let's play some WARHAMS! Ok, I take Flank March and put all my Solitaires, C'tans and Primarchs in reserve. Hurr! Gee, thanks for the rules "support" GW.



I got a solid Lawl out of that. Thank you, good sir.

And yes, I completely agree. The whole- "You can do whatever the hell you please" schtick is bollocks. there is no point in having rules at this point. Lest just go play RISK 2210 and be done with it.

Yup. Hear hear on the "Apocalypse is crap" vote. Why do I need GW's shiny expensive book to allow me (and my 17 mates) to dump anything and everything 40k-related on a single table and make"kapow kapow" noises?

So far I haven't come across anyoone over the age of around 8 who gives Apoc the time of day:

Anyone over the age of 8 with 2 brain cells to rub together could cobble up a "mass participation" game and didn't need the book. Anyone under 8 with or without the braincells just uses it as a licence to play Army Men with their unstoppable grey horde of Space Mareenz.

At this point with regard to GW's complete lack of any desire to produce an actual "game" its not just the little boy pointing at the emperor and shouting "Look mum, he's got no clothes", its actually the damned emperor himself running butt naked down the high street shouting "Wheeeeee, freedom! Everyone look at my willy!"

Gav's out? That nearly ensures my 40k 'comeback' with 5th Ed..
Just hoping to see some Inquisitionstuff soon then, but it's probably not done by Gav, wich is a very good thing in the first place.

Cheers!

ps: Skirmish Games rock!

Tetchy wrote:AAAAAPPPPPOOOOCCCCCAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYPPPPPPPPPPSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEE

Same reaction I had, but they needed some sort of excuse to create boxes of overstocked models, didn't they? So why not also make a simple book and charge for it?

I am over the age of 8 and I have been playing Mega Battles for a long time. I do like Apocalypse, it gives some cool ideas in it. Some people like to come up with their own material some would rather have someone else do it for them.

I am sorry to see Gav leave even though I was not a big fan of his stuff. He was always nice to talk to at events and he did have some good ideas. I hope the next person will do great things as well.

see, I've been loving apocalypse
I like the setup
I like the formations
I like the FO big games you get to play
and you know what, my friends like it, and they're the people I enjoy playing with, so no hassle with the cheeseball armies, or flailing kiddies

Tetchy wrote:So far I haven't come across anyoone over the age of around 8 who gives Apoc the time of day

Perhaps this reflects more on how you choose to play 40k, rather than what the rest of the gaming community might prefer.

I know one group which is practically switching over entirely to Apocalypse gaming. And surprise, surprise, they're all adults. Many of them are even married. Oddly, they don't have the issues with made-up stuff that you seem to be afraid of. You see, they focus on Apocalypse games to have fun, rather than bringing WAAC where it doesn't belong.

Savnock wrote:Well, criticizing someone's writing skills often reflects upon their personality as well. Take Alessio: he's got a rep as a cheesy powergamer and rules lawyer, to the point that it was joked about nervously in White Dwarf when he was hired. Take a look at the codices that he had a hand in for Fantasy, and you see his favorites ending up brokenly good while his formerly least liked opponent lists end up weak. And then the main rules rewrite, where his obvious love of special-rules block movement (Brettonians, Skaven) makes him nerf skirmishers by march-blocking them within 8" of the enemy, effectively removing an entire class of (very historical and common) light infantry tactics from the game. Cheesy reworking of the basic rules to favor a class of army that was already quite powerful. Classic Alessio.

People write bad rules because of something in their character. Whether that be boundless creativity tainted with a bit of sloppiness (Andy Chambers), failure to think beyond the (very good) fluff to hard rules consequences (Gav), or biased favoritism written into fiddly rules (Alessio), it's people's strengths that also create weaknesses in their work. So things get a bit personal when you're analyzing what it is about someone that makes them write poor rules, even when you only know them through their work and a few interviews.

Boy, it would be interesting to see Gav working on Warcraft. I'm not a fan of that game or world, so I'd be interested to see whether he improved or damaged it if Blizzard hired him to do their non-electronic material background stuff (fluff for short).

I didn't play a whole lot of 6th Edition, but from what I understand and read about it back before 7th was that people were bitching about Skirmishers a lot and about how they were way too good.

Even now, they're still great, especially if you're playing skirmishers who want to be in combat, since 360 LOS and movement is a really big deal in WHFB. Their ability to redirect is also really damn good too. So seeing as how they're still great rules and that only a few armies really take and rely on big blocks of infantry and stay "competitive", I'm not seeing this as "Alessio buffing Skaven & Bretts" so much as "GW fixing something the player base saw as overpowered".

JohnHwangDD wrote:I know one group which is practically switching over entirely to Apocalypse gaming. And surprise, surprise, they're all adults. Many of them are even married. Oddly, they don't have the issues with made-up stuff that you seem to be afraid of. You see, they focus on Apocalypse games to have fun, rather than bringing WAAC where it doesn't belong.

That's fantastic. If people enjoy Apocalypse then more power to them. But the fact still remains that when you make everything require opponent consent then "rules" cease to be rules and become more like "suggestions".

Abadabadoobaddon -

That's fantastic. If people enjoy Apocalypse then more power to them. But the fact still remains that when you make everything require opponent consent then "rules" cease to be rules and become more like "suggestions".

Lucky 'Everything' isn't up to your opponent's consent then Sir.....

Of course, many of 40k's rules (LOS, terrain) are largely suggestions - hence the FAQs.

So choosing to have a looser approach (i.e. no FOC, unrestricted Allies) versus a tighter approach (tournament-style 40k) hardly matters. Besides, a lot of Apocalypse is implied consent, such as Codices and GW-published datasheets being presumed to be allowed.

I guess the thing is whether or not The Most Important Rule (p.5) really is the most important rule.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oddly, they don't have the issues with made-up stuff that you seem to be afraid of. You see, they focus on Apocalypse games to have fun, rather than bringing WAAC where it doesn't belong.

But there you see we have the classic response. And I give the classic rebuttle: Producing a tight ruleset in no way reduces the "fun" players of the game can have. It is easy to "fluff up" and have fun with a tight ruleset if that is your preference. It is downright difficult to "tighten up" and have fun with a fluffy ill-thought-through ruleset, on the other hand.

I'm not afraid of making stuff up. But sadly I don't have the time. As I am paying the rule designers to design a game - I want precisely that - a game that works, not one i have to make up (or hunt for) a load of house rules to decide whether something works or not. Sure I can d6 it, sure I can come to a friendly understanding (which is more normally the case), but I shouldn't *have to* if I have paid a fortune for a rulebook, and a codex or twenty and the game is in its umpteenth edition.

And that is why I play other games, because the outlay of similar amounts of money results in a game my mates and I can play without a bazillion unanswered questions and house rules.

So the question remains, why pay for Apocalypse when all it amounts to is a load of suggestions, most of which are just common sense anyway?

As I implied, "mature gamers" who like large games have already been playing large games and don't need GW's permission and suggestions to do so. Those "immature gamers" who like large games have a right to their own enjoyment of course, and if GW is content to peddle stuff aimed at them and not at the "mature gamer", then so be it... Its no skin off my nose if people want to piss their money down the drain for something of little worth.

Tetchy wrote:Producing a tight ruleset in no way reduces the "fun" players of the game can have. It is easy to "fluff up" and have fun with a tight ruleset if that is your preference. It is downright difficult to "tighten up" and have fun with a fluffy ill-thought-through ruleset, on the other hand.

Which is exactly why we're seeing a return of the strong, flexible core list codex and the option-heavy variant armies that were previously based on an existing core list are being shuffled off to the looser ruleset game. They're "tightening up" the rules. Apocolypse is becoming the catch-all for so much stuff that people want "real rules" for because the latter half of 3e and the first part of 4e saw a great experiment in variant lists which were relatively unbalancable in the increasingly tournament-style-centric basic rules. That experiment failed, and now the design team is moving away from having varient lists for every sub-force that has ever appeared in the fluff cluttering up the main rules.

Tetchy wrote:I'm not afraid of making stuff up. But sadly I don't have the time. As I am paying the rule designers to design a game - I want precisely that - a game that works, not one i have to make up (or hunt for) a load of house rules to decide whether something works or not.

Again, that's precisely what's happening, albiet admittedly as a damage control procedure. The horse is out of the barn and the pooch has been screwed...players now expect that an all-Noise Marine Emperor's Children list exist, so the game needs a place to keep it without it screwing up the main rules balance.

Tetchy wrote:Sure I can d6 it, sure I can come to a friendly understanding (which is more normally the case), but I shouldn't *have to* if I have paid a fortune for a rulebook, and a codex or twenty and the game is in its umpteenth edition.

The fact that the game and that codex is in its "umpteenth edition" is fair warning that armies change. It's been that way for 25 years now, counting all the games GW produces. The rules are cyclic, and the effectiveness of specific army builds is therefore equally cyclic. Despite the popularity of the tournament scene, the nature of the cyclic rules release model assumes that you are collecting as much of and as variety a collection of an army as you can, as a labor of love and a hobby. As such, collections geared to a highly specialized force usually suffer the most when their turn in the cycle comes up, because the game rules and the effectiveness or availability of specific units therein changed to keep the game more interesting and support the business model by making new units and minatures more attractive.

I'm not saying that this cyclic rules model is wrong or right, I'm saying that this is the way the game is. It's not a recent innovation undertaking to screw your army of expensive minatures, it's just another stage in a cycle that's been in progress for over two decades now. It's not something you have to accept but rather something that, by buying that first codex or model, knowingly or unknowingly, you have already accepted. This part of the metagame. It happens.

Tetchy wrote:So the question remains, why pay for Apocalypse when all it amounts to is a load of suggestions, most of which are just common sense anyway?

As I implied, "mature gamers" who like large games have already been playing large games and don't need GW's permission and suggestions to do so. Those "immature gamers" who like large games have a right to their own enjoyment of course, and if GW is content to peddle stuff aimed at them and not at the "mature gamer", then so be it... Its no skin off my nose if people want to piss their money down the drain for something of little worth.

Because, as I said earlier, Apocolypse is damage control in new release format. GW stood by idly for too long while the tournament scene was allowed to infect all aspects of both games. Now they have to release a book just to remind some player that it's okay to play with wacky houserules, crazy formations, less restrictions, and above all [/i]just for freaking fun[/i]. It's a reminder that you can always carefully select a friend or friends that you can trust not to screw you over with WAAC and make up whatever you want to in games with them, and it's aimed at those players who either have let that aspect of the game slip away from them or those gamers too new to remember days when you got that kind of crazy crap in White Dwarf all the time.

Cities of Death is sort of the same thing, in its own way. They're making the core game "serious business" play (which any group can take less seriously, if they so choose) while allowing for less refined, restricted play in thematic books like Cities of Death or Apocolypse (or the rumored upcoming Planetstrike and the Kill-Team/small games book). I for one think it's an interesting new model. At least they're finally doing something we've been griping about for years now - throwing veterans a few bones now and again.

Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

Techboss wrote:

Am I the only one who's seriously fed up with this Apocalypse crap? Apocalypse: where anything goes... with opponent consent (and nothing goes without it). Well then what the hell do I need GW for? I mean if I need my opponent's consent to use my ing army then what's the point even having official rules?

Sure, no problem dude! You can play your Emperor's Children army - just as long as you let me play my Space Marine Custodian Primarch Titan Legion with Harlequin Solitaire Black Library Strike Force and Adeptus Mechanicus Necron C'tan Machine Cult allies (don't worry, it's cool - I made my own datasheets for them!) - now let's play some WARHAMS! Ok, I take Flank March and put all my Solitaires, C'tans and Primarchs in reserve. Hurr! Gee, thanks for the rules "support" GW.

Go send Blood Angels, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, and Black Templars to Apocalypse and then maybe we can talk.

I agree. I don't play apocalypse but think its great if others like it. But its a different system and has become the be-all and end-all excuse for a lack of effort by GW or GW actively killing my lists. "Just use apocalypse" er no.

Two key differences between Cities of Death and Apocalypse.

1. CoD contains a bunch of well thought out rules for the specialist city fighting arena whereas Apoc does not contain a bunch of well thought rules for fighting mega size battles.

2. £18.

[q
That is kinda like saying I found a cubic zirconia after manually filtering through 10 metric tons of poo with my teeth. No thanks.

Psychopomp wrote:Apocolypse is becoming the catch-all for so much stuff that people want "real rules" for because the latter half of 3e and the first part of 4e saw a great experiment in variant lists which were relatively unbalancable in the increasingly tournament-style-centric basic rules.

Yes, it's a good thing they're getting rid of all the unbalanced variant lists by sending them to Apocalypse. That must be why the Blood Angels' White Dwarf list is Apocalypse-only.

Oh wait, it isn't. But that's ok, we can make an exception in their case - it's not as though they were 3rd editions most glaring example of an unbalanced variant list.

Oh wait, they were.

Except that Blood Angels weren't a variable list, they had their OWN codex.

Nice try though, I appreciate the effort.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I think the 4th edition Blood Angels Codex is all they need. I would have preferred the Dark Angels and Black Templar books to be as short, sharp, to the point, and down-loadable.

Yeah abby RED MARINES are not just a variant of BLUE MARINES they are their own special tactical force (army) and you'll hurt their feelings if you dare suggest otherwise.

Remember, orks with trucks is a variant list. Space elves with a super-secret council of doom is a variant list. But red marines are a distinct army type.

Blood Angels have had a codex since 2nd Ed, how long have the Emps Children had theirs? Oh wait....

Ozymandias, King of Kings

Ozymandias wrote:Blood Angels have had a codex since 2nd Ed, how long have the Emps Children had theirs? Oh wait....

Ozymandias, King of Kings

You got it, Ozy. BA are the original-and-best(TM) variant army.