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 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Matt Ward came up with Battle Focus

So the best rule in this book..

Came from Ward.

Ward's actually not that bad at writing rules...well, sometimes anyway. He has a habit of accidentally breaking gak, but I'd say the rules aren't really what ticks people off most of the time.

 Sidstyler wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Matt Ward came up with Battle Focus

So the best rule in this book..

Came from Ward.

Ward's actually not that bad at writing rules...well, sometimes anyway. He has a habit of accidentally breaking gak, but I'd say the rules aren't really what ticks people off most of the time.

*looks at GK book*

*looks at Necron book*

*looks at HE book*

I disagree.

You forgot to look at the BA codex while 5th was still being played.

His only real gem was the SM codex, which is the definition of middle of the road.

Stay on-topic guys, please. Take the Matt Ward discussion elsewhere.

 Enigwolf wrote:

Yup, as I mentioned to Peregrine, the price I paid for my pre-order was £30 to be delivered in a month or two. In terms of what else I remember, uhm, and aside from the IA:Apoc book list of contents.. Hm. I seem to remember that there are formations also within the IA:Apoc book. It stands to reason that these will be considered fully legal, since if you're playing Apoc you're also most likely playing with Forgeworld units anyway.

Good news indeed. I'm hoping for the newer FW stuff e.g. the Tesseract Ark, Avenger, Acanthrites etc get some good formations. I do wonder what the fate of the Pylon will be; 420 points for 3 S D shots is brutal and whilst it's true that it's potential is a bit limited if the opponent brings no super heavies/gargantuans, I'm yet to see a game where that's happened. Even then, instakilling tanks is brutal.

As apparent from the other poster on Warseer, other people were asking about Sisters of Battle too. Can you remember anything else concerning them that you might have overheard or that someone else had asked?

Hello all. I created this account just to ask this: did you, or anyone else, happen to ask why there are so few female Eldar models? They certainly didn't stint with the Dark Eldar. Thanks.

Evil Lamp 6 wrote:As apparent from the other poster on Warseer, other people were asking about Sisters of Battle too. Can you remember anything else concerning them that you might have overheard or that someone else had asked?

Very few people were actually "asking" about the Sisters of Battle. Actually, it was mostly the same people asking the same question to the same developers, "When are we/Are we ever going to see a Sisters of Battle release?"

There was little in the way of concrete answers that I had overheard save that there is still interest and support from within the Citadel Designers and Citadel Writers behind them. Phil Kelly made it a point to stress to me that there were three die-hard devs with full metal, playable SoB armies that were their main armies.

Sildani wrote:Hello all. I created this account just to ask this: did you, or anyone else, happen to ask why there are so few female Eldar models? They certainly didn't stint with the Dark Eldar. Thanks.

No, I did not, sorry.

I haven't had time to sift through the hundreds of pictures and upload them yet, sorry guys!

 SickSix wrote:

 tastytaste wrote:
Interesting Guy Haley (Author of Baneblade) on secret panel can we say new Apoc release.

Good catch. I am reading that book now and am enjoying it thoroughly.

If you are interested in hearing from Guy Haley after you finish that book - we do about an hour long discussion with him in our Forbidden Lore segment in this episode about Baneblade:

http://theindependentcharacters.com/blog/?p=2988

There are massive Spoilers in that interview so be warned.

(see the time stamps on that page if you are not interested in the rest of the show)

Guy is a great.... guy... and he is quite enjoyable to talk to and listen to.

 Enigwolf wrote:

Roadkill Zombie wrote:Ok, Thank you. At least now I know it wasn't necessarily intentional on the designers part. I used to work in the miniatures industry and there were many times where models would get designed, playtested, and were ready to go, but at the last minute, someone from the top would come down and change the entire way the model worked, right before the book went to the printer. That seems to be what happened here. Thanks again Enigwolf.

No worries. I don't think it's so much an issue of someone coming down from the top and changing the way it is. I think the issue is more of that because the Stormraven already set the upper limits for what a flying Land Raider is, everything else has to scale in proportion to it.

Peregrine wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
Keep the questions coming, guys. My memory doesn't last that long and I want to be able to make sure I transcribe and braindump everything I saw and heard at the event.

I got my specific question answered, but do you remember anything else about the new FW Apocalypse book?

I'll post for everyone else that the price was £30, with a release date in about 1-2 months.

Yup, as I mentioned to Peregrine, the price I paid for my pre-order was £30 to be delivered in a month or two. In terms of what else I remember, uhm, and aside from the IA:Apoc book list of contents.. Hm. I seem to remember that there are formations also within the IA:Apoc book. It stands to reason that these will be considered fully legal, since if you're playing Apoc you're also most likely playing with Forgeworld units anyway.

Micky wrote:Did they talk much about the process for designing rules to fit models, and designing models to fit rules?

All rules are designed to fit models. Models are not designed to fit rules. I specifically asked Phil the question, and I mentioned it in my report earlier.

Phil Kelly confirms that fluff drives the design of the race, which drives the models, which drive the rules.

Therefore, from this we can reason that it starts with the fluff and lore of the race being written (e.g. space elves that are more than just elves in space), followed by the design aesthetics of the race (e.g. Eldar are triangles). These then become sketches like we see in Jes Goodwin's work, which the designers sculpt models from. From the models, rules are created for them. Typically, there are enough designs created that each race is "balanced" in terms of unit options.

They could have given the flyer a better jink save or something along those lines so the Armour wouldn't have had to change. At any rate, you mentioned that Phil didn't seem to really like how the flyers turned out. That sort of suggests to me that he didn't have the final say in how they turned out and were probably something different when he wrote the rules for them. Anyway, we got what we got and I thank you for taking time to do all of this for all of us that were not fortunate enough to get to talk to him.

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Kelly has little choice over how the flyers in his book turn out.

I mean take the Helldrake, it just comes screaming outta left field when compared to the rest of the dex. Not to mention the just plain weak nature of the eldar flyers. Just seems strange and outta place to me.

On Topic however. Thanks for the info!

Was there any talk about how their design choices were influenced by the current strategic direction of how things are going? (flyers, monstrous creatures, cheaper troops, unique upgrades, etc)

So Enigwolf,

I have the old Apocalype, Apocalypse reloaded from GW and the Forge World books IA: Apocalypse 2nd Edition, and IA: Apocalypse II.

Are these books "good" anymore" Will the new FW book make the olds ones obsolete? The rules and datasheets from the GW book were almost all replaced with the new GW book.

I'm not seeing a reason to keep these beyond the pretty pictures, correct?

 kronk wrote:
So Enigwolf,

I have the old Apocalype, Apocalypse reloaded from GW and the Forge World books IA: Apocalypse 2nd Edition, and IA: Apocalypse II.

Are these books "good" anymore" Will the new FW book make the olds ones obsolete? The rules and datasheets from the GW book were almost all replaced with the new GW book.

I'm not seeing a reason to keep these beyond the pretty pictures, correct?

Correct. This book replaces all the previous books. Even those without datasheets will get them eventually in Warzones.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Micky wrote:
Was there any talk about how their design choices were influenced by the current strategic direction of how things are going? (flyers, monstrous creatures, cheaper troops, unique upgrades, etc)

Yes. As I mentioned before, designers come up with the fluff first. This fluff then drives model sketches, which become model designs. Then rules are made for the models. It will always be a model-drives-rules approach - did I answer this right? Not sure if that was specifically what you were asking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mr.Church13 wrote:
I've always had a sneaking suspicion that Kelly has little choice over how the flyers in his book turn out.

I mean take the Helldrake, it just comes screaming outta left field when compared to the rest of the dex. Not to mention the just plain weak nature of the eldar flyers. Just seems strange and outta place to me.

On Topic however. Thanks for the info!

I don't think Phil Kelly intended the Heldrake to be so powerful, and he gave that impression when talking about the dameon engines, too. Personally, I think from my own perspective, the Heldrake was something that slipped through balance playtesting and was picked up on by the community.

 Enigwolf wrote:
I don't think Phil Kelly intended the Heldrake to be so powerful, and he gave that impression when talking about the dameon engines, too. Personally, I think from my own perspective, the Heldrake was something that slipped through balance playtesting and was picked up on by the community.

Funny how this seems to happen every 2-3 army books.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Enigwolf wrote:
I don't think Phil Kelly intended the Heldrake to be so powerful, and he gave that impression when talking about the dameon engines, too. Personally, I think from my own perspective, the Heldrake was something that slipped through balance playtesting and was picked up on by the community.

Funny how this seems to happen every 2-3 army books.

..and funny how this always happens with new releases, not existing ones

A nice writeup over at the Responsible One blog. Broke each section down well:
http://the-responsible-one.blogspot.com/2013/07/enter-citadel-questions-from-bell-of.html
http://the-responsible-one.blogspot.com/2013/07/enter-citadel-sons-of-khaine-developing.html
http://the-responsible-one.blogspot.com/2013/07/enter-citadel-bringing-apocalypse.html
http://the-responsible-one.blogspot.com/2013/07/enter-citadel-here-be-giants-developing.html
http://the-responsible-one.blogspot.com/2013/07/enter-citadel-ask-audience-we-want-to.html

There are some interesting points brought up with play testing and model design under the Son's of Khaine panel. Why the smaller play tester groups? By keeping it limited to GW employees, the have means of accountability.

silent25 wrote:
A nice writeup over at the Responsible One blog. Broke each section down well:
{snip}
There are some interesting points brought up with play testing and model design under the Son's of Khaine panel. Why the smaller play tester groups? By keeping it limited to GW employees, the have means of accountability.

Thanks for the mention! That was a lot of typing. I have one more 'summary' post in the offing, but that's more a personal thing more than anything more information wise.

theresponsibleone wrote:

Thanks for the mention! That was a lot of typing. I have one more 'summary' post in the offing, but that's more a personal thing more than anything more information wise.

Well thank you for putting it all together!

Found the design panel information the most interesting and was unfortunately not covered that much in depth by other reports.

So they answered but still didn't address any of the issue with the Eldar release. They are apparently content with releasing a 'premium' product at a premium price with nothing more than internal testing by a dozen employees all of whom are probably strict yes-men. They remain oblivious to the fact that they still test their rules in a vacuum and most damningly of all they just laugh off the competition rather than trying to one-up them. Finally they admit that they are outputting a half-baked rules with little thought or consideration and chalk it up to lack of time when it fact it's a matter of not knowing the army that they are designing.

Wow, I understand that they enjoy and are dedicated to their work but that doesn't excuse straight up incompetence or obliviousness to anything outside of GWHQ.

 Ehsteve wrote:
So they answered but still didn't address any of the issue with the Eldar release. They are apparently content with releasing a 'premium' product at a premium price with nothing more than internal testing by a dozen employees all of whom are probably strict yes-men. They remain oblivious to the fact that they still test their rules in a vacuum and most damningly of all they just laugh off the competition rather than trying to one-up them. Finally they admit that they are outputting a half-baked rules with little thought or consideration and chalk it up to lack of time when it fact it's a matter of not knowing the army that they are designing.

Wow, I understand that they enjoy and are dedicated to their work but that doesn't excuse straight up incompetence or obliviousness to anything outside of GWHQ.

I'm confused by what you expect in terms of "addressing" what you see as the issues of the Eldar release.

I very much doubt their playtesters are yes men. The game is complex enough that mistakes do happen, but no-one is going through gleefully letting any old nonsense through.

I don't agree with the vacuum comment. I've playtested for other games and done FAQ and errata work. The signal to noise ratio of open beta testing is ridiculous. You get a massive amount of low quality, opinionated comment with little value. Having a dedicated group with a wide cross section of opinion is a far better use of resources, at least from my experience. You do want to listen to players, but the majority of the benefit of open beta is your players' egos.

The benefit of open testing for Games Workshop would be massively outweighed by competitors having enough warning to try and get a quick product to market to compete or even claim IP territory first. We won't see it from GW.

You seem to be reading an awful lot into the reports. The idea that Phil doesn't know the Eldar is outright laughable. GW do make some terrible marketing and business decisions, especially from a public relations point of view. But the level of trashing you're throwing out is misplaced.

theresponsibleone wrote:
You seem to be reading an awful lot into the reports. The idea that Phil doesn't know the Eldar is outright laughable. GW do make some terrible marketing and business decisions, especially from a public relations point of view. But the level of trashing you're throwing out is misplaced.

You can do open playtests of new mechanics without giving much away, just use codenames for units, for instance.

Anyway, I don't know if many people advocate an open beta, but they must be able to expand somehow and avoid some of the clangers. I can't believe that no play tests for the DA codex asked "where does my LE interrogator-chaplain fit in?"

Herzlos wrote:

theresponsibleone wrote:
You seem to be reading an awful lot into the reports. The idea that Phil doesn't know the Eldar is outright laughable. GW do make some terrible marketing and business decisions, especially from a public relations point of view. But the level of trashing you're throwing out is misplaced.

You can do open playtests of new mechanics without giving much away, just use codenames for units, for instance.

Anyway, I don't know if many people advocate an open beta, but they must be able to expand somehow and avoid some of the clangers. I can't believe that no play tests for the DA codex asked "where does my LE interrogator-chaplain fit in?"

People point to the Warmachine MK2 open beta and the rule set it provided. Problem is that when an open beta of rules is announced, sales drop to zero. This happened at my FLGS and the owner ended up getting rid of all WMH on clearance before MK2 came out. Was also confirmed by some ex-PP employees. PP was making little in the way of figure sales at this time and there was tremendous pressure to get the rule set out. Given GW makes their money on figure sales and not rules, this will never happen.

A separate note also with claims of needing a bigger playtest base. You can have the biggest playtest base in the world and means squat if the designer doesn't bother to listen to them. There were claims that Matt Ward was like this early on and that a number of problems were pointed out with the WHFB 7th Ed Daemons of Chaos and ignored. The book is held up as the pinnacle of poor design and balance.

Also there have been stories of time constraints on rule development. Why wasn't this unit better developed tested and improved? Didn't have time.

As reguards to pre clipping plastic parts.
The plastic recovery is minimal cost saving.Most sprues have less than 10p of plastic in them.(So the time spent clipping the sprue would probably equal the cost of the plastic re-cycled.)

More than likely its to reduce the packaging cost, as as far as material costs , the printed card board box is far more expencive than the plastic sprues in it!

Herzlos wrote:

theresponsibleone wrote:
You seem to be reading an awful lot into the reports. The idea that Phil doesn't know the Eldar is outright laughable. GW do make some terrible marketing and business decisions, especially from a public relations point of view. But the level of trashing you're throwing out is misplaced.

You can do open playtests of new mechanics without giving much away, just use codenames for units, for instance.

Anyway, I don't know if many people advocate an open beta, but they must be able to expand somehow and avoid some of the clangers. I can't believe that no play tests for the DA codex asked "where does my LE interrogator-chaplain fit in?"

@theresponsibleone: you may know how you want an army to look/feel, but it feels like they left the greater majority of that back in the designer's head rather than on the page where it counts. You can argue RAI all day but what you are paying for is ink on the page. If you are not putting any thought or effort into that ink simply because you feel that you already have a complete understanding of the army already and it should be either assumed or just absorbed through the fluff (GW does not have a good history or pretty much any history of good direct fluff to rules translations).

Just because he knows what he wants does not mean that you are getting exactly that when you shill out the cash for the Eldar codex or any of the supplement codices. It is bland and even admittedly experimental in terms of rules. Regardless of how I am reading into the statements, you have yet to bring up anything to the contrary in any of the recorded 'seminars'.

@Herzlos: GW would never advocate an open beta. Neither was I suggesting an open beta (nor would I). Simply broaden the playtesting base in order to get a more well rounded, balanced final product rather than simply saying that the love the designer may have for the army being enough. DA went to print without a comprehensive editor's lookover and as such what we get is a codex with unit discrepancies and of course: horrendously bland (woo, we got Stubborn instead of combat tactics, look at the unique flowers we are!).

I would call any other miniatures/rules company to the same standard, but when you release a product at a premium with the explicit statement that you are the best in the industry you should be called out when you start releasing sub-par standard products.

There's definitely improvements can be made, and I think they'd benefit well by grabbing some random regular from the floor of WHW (or a non-GW-staffer friend of any of the design time) and asking them to read over the book in exchange for a free copy and some mini's on release if they don't tell anyone. Some of the stuff reads as if it's not been proof-read by anyone.

Lanrak wrote:
As reguards to pre clipping plastic parts.
The plastic recovery is minimal cost saving.Most sprues have less than 10p of plastic in them.(So the time spent clipping the sprue would probably equal the cost of the plastic re-cycled.)

More than likely its to reduce the packaging cost, as as far as material costs , the printed card board box is far more expencive than the plastic sprues in it!

I get the impression that it's not pre-clipped, rather than it's spruelessly cast somehow, so there's no clipping required. For bigger things it means better packaging density and less plastic used, at the cost of a more expensive mould.