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 azreal13 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
Anyone still excited about the new rulebook coming up?

I'm excited to see what it does, but I'm always excited to see what is in a release.

Me too, this is the one time my cynicism for cash grabs and customer exploitation is outweighed by my excitement for new challenges and changes.

Assuming there are any and it isn't just 6th in a new dress.

You and Zion are better folks than I. Debating on the pennies I'm saving for either finishing off a massive pile of Cryx or p/e Baldur tier list from Circle or a SM/IG Tournament list. I am waiting for the fall out of later this month.

I should really just paint and play what I have...

It is a symptom of a game published by a company that is entirely reliant on one or two games for its profits. To be accurate, GW is now reliant on 40K, because Fantasy has slumped since 8th edition.

There are loads of wargame rulesets that do not have the release profile of 40K, because the publisher was not doing it primarily for profit -- e.g. WRG Ancients and DBA rules -- or because the publisher has lots of other products and does not need to invalidate the rules to make people buy a new version (Osprey's Field of Glory rules).

All of the WRG rules and FoG have had updates: WRG Ancients went though seven editions between 1969 and 1986. There was only one significant change in the rules mechanics -- 7th edition. The rest of the changes were minor and incremental, to introduce a wider selection of armies, correct typos, minor changes to weapon factors, and so on.

Osprey have done Field of Glory Ancients, with a good range of campaign books, then produced Napoleonics and Renaissance. They also have an extensive historical reference book library so they are not reliant on making FoG Ancients players buy a new edition every few years.

In comparison, GW have been developing the WH/FB/40K system since 1981 and still have not managed to "get it right". They have got to the stage now of recycling ideas and mechanics. It starts to look like a shell game rather than a rules development process.

As a new player, I can't say I feel that yet, Killkrazy. Not doubting the history in the least, though. When I started talking to Infinity folks about 3rd about what's going to change from the perspective of 40k they looked at me like I was crazy... They expected tweaks, improvements, and nothing major.

As my fledgling wargamer self ventures forth into all different types, I feel odd shifting away from the monolith that has been 40k. It's part sunk cost, part fluff love, part history with the game. This whole process and the general issues with game and company just have been a lot of frustrations. I can see the faces of the friends I played with 4 years ago saying "finally, welcome to the post-40k crowd... you now know..." I get the old duders who play other things, but I also get the old dudes with mountains of 40k. The latter just ignore GW entirely and purchase bulk models off the former as they leave.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Pacific wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Was Pancake Edition's (mmmm..pancakes) provenance ever determined/proven?

I do wonder, if one was to credit GW with competence just for a second, that if there was a long term plan, that 6th was a stop gap, and Pancake was always meant as 7th, or was pushed to 7th and 6th knocked up in short order (which would explain a lot.)

It would be one way we might see Pancake, or son of Pancake, in the wild.

It was completely a fan-made ruleset.

But we have who's word for that?

Did the originator actually come of and say so, or has it been assumed because 6th didn't resemble it in he slightest?

Just my own unfortunately, from someone who works in HQ at Nottingham. The rules were being used by a club somewhere or other and had been published on the net on that basis - one of the guys who had made them contacted GW as he was really worried a legal-hammer would come down on him and the club. They told him not to worry about it, and then went back to laughing at the internet self-destructing with 200-page discussions over a new set of rules that were nothing to do with GW, and had no resemblance at all to what would finally be 6th edition.

Quite correct.

The GW stores were sent en email pretty much reiterating that point.

Because laughing at your customers from behind a one way mirror is a much better business practise than reassuring them

Though noone was laughing that 6th edition was NOT pancake.
GW was raging that pancake was discussed at all.
Posters usually praised pancake and were disappointed by 6th edition.

My only complaint with 6th was the FOC.

Allies were too abusable, fortifications were pretty much pointless and Lords of War didn't exactly have a place, although I do like them.

A new version of 40K? Already? /Sigh

No doubt, this will be a very rushed version.
GW seem to have had poor profits recently, they even released their big seller, the SM codex, which didn't seem to boost profits.
So, their next big seller is the 40K rulebook.

I've been a teacher in an 11-16 school for 20 years now. I've played GW stuff since the 80's. The last few years of GW gaming has been horrendous.

I've run a Warhammer 40K club in school for the last 10 years. I've watched the number of players dwindle from a strong 15-20 players down to (now) 2 of us. We had interest from 2 new players this year, but upon seeing the prices of GW stuff, they never returned. The 1 player that does come, only purchases second hand figures from ebay.

GW's escalation of prices are dwindling their player base so badly now it seems they're going to rush out a new 40k to keep the profits going.

What can we expect in the new release?

1. Ensuring codex backwards compatibility. If they didn't they'd lose a lot more customers who bought recent releases.
2. A few changes to rules to ensure regular players *have* to purchase the new rulebook (ensuring their profits)
3. An even bigger slant away from cheaper troop choices towards the more expensive big models they produce.
4. A bigger price tag than the ridiculous £45 rulebook we already have.

Last time we had flyers brought in to increase profits on those big models.
What this time? I don't know, but I'll expect it to push towards more sales of their biggest most expensive models.

One thing's for sure, my club (if it ever expands again) will keep on using the single 6th edition rulebook it took ages to save for, with the in house rule of "no flyers allowed".

Apologies for this drifting totally off topic, but I needed to rant.

I know GW are a profit driven company, but surely they can see that lower prices and a bigger base of customers is better in the long run than slowly pushing all their customers away?

PS: Can anyone recommend a good set of rules that will allow me to use my existing 40k models?

NTRabbit wrote:
Because laughing at your customers from behind a one way mirror is a much better business practise than reassuring them

Ooh let's all talk about GW's policy re: discussion of upcoming releases, there's a fertile area of debate

 TheKbob wrote:
As a new player, I can't say I feel that yet, Killkrazy. Not doubting the history in the least, though. When I started talking to Infinity folks about 3rd about what's going to change from the perspective of 40k they looked at me like I was crazy... They expected tweaks, improvements, and nothing major.

As my fledgling wargamer self ventures forth into all different types, I feel odd shifting away from the monolith that has been 40k. It's part sunk cost, part fluff love, part history with the game. This whole process and the general issues with game and company just have been a lot of frustrations. I can see the faces of the friends I played with 4 years ago saying "finally, welcome to the post-40k crowd... you now know..." I get the old duders who play other things, but I also get the old dudes with mountains of 40k. The latter just ignore GW entirely and purchase bulk models off the former as they leave.

It is just a matter of my different perspective.

GW's view is that the game must be kept in a state of frequent change or people would stop buying it. They are probably correct, because most people if they want variety could buy a different game instead, rather than play only one game and need it to keep changing.

As I started wargaming before GW existed, I have always regarded WH/40K as one among a large number of options including SF, Fantasy and all the historical periods, not to mention naval, air and strategic games.

From this viewpoint a player wants a rulebook that is "finished". The rules should be "good", enjoyable, balanced, and free from errors and ambiguity. Many modern games reach this state in two or three editions, after which you don't need to buy any more books or models unless you want to expand your army or start a new one.

The variety available outside GW has increased over time. Since models do not perish, and can usually be used with different rulesets easily enough, a player would rather achieve variety by having more rulebooks than by changing the situation in a single game.

The argument could be made that GW, instead of constantly changing 40k to provide a dubious variety, ought to "finish" the rules and then make some other games. Presumably this is more difficult for them than just cycling round various changes in the existing rules.

@ Gimgamgoo,

I see you've no doubt been playing as long as I have, do you have any of your old sets of rules? If I may suggest, just step back into your favorite one.

I'm thinking that is what I might do. I have my 4th and 5th edition books still, and the old codexes -- to tell the truth I haven't bought any new codexes because they are too expensive -- so if people were willing it could easily be done.

OOD codexes and rules come up on eBay pretty cheap too.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The argument could be made that GW, instead of constantly changing 40k to provide a dubious variety, ought to "finish" the rules and then make some other games. Presumably this is more difficult for them than just cycling round various changes in the existing rules.

Even if they don't move on to other games giving us a new faction* should be easy and renew a lot of interest. And it's not like there aren't plenty of in cannon armies waiting to be given models and rules, or room for new ones to appear in the fluff.

I mean Deathwatch, Mechanicum (admittedly FW are doing this already), Arbites, Eldar Exodites and Squats could all have books.
As well they could do something like a Mercenaries book, or introduce whatever it is out there beyond the Ghoul Stars, throw in some minor Xeno empire that would still cover enough worlds to be worth mentioning on the fringe (or maybe make them nomadic so they aren't so much like the Tau), hell even the Men of Iron could be fleshed out and a proper AI faction brought it.

It should be easy to keep a setting as big and as rich as 40k from getting stale without shuffling around the rules every 2-4 years.


*A real faction I mean, not Knights, Militarum Tempust or Legion of the Dammed, I'm talking something actually worthy of the name 'codex'.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The argument could be made that GW, instead of constantly changing 40k to provide a dubious variety, ought to "finish" the rules and then make some other games. Presumably this is more difficult for them than just cycling round various changes in the existing rules.

Even if they don't move on to other games giving us a new faction* should be easy and renew a lot of interest. And it's not like there aren't plenty of in cannon armies waiting to be given models and rules, or room for new ones to appear in the fluff.

I mean Deathwatch, Mechanicum (admittedly FW are doing this already), Arbites, Eldar Exodites and Squats could all have books.
As well they could do something like a Mercenaries book, or introduce whatever it is out there beyond the Ghoul Stars, throw in some minor Xeno empire that would still cover enough worlds to be worth mentioning on the fringe (or maybe make them nomadic so they aren't so much like the Tau), hell even the Men of Iron could be fleshed out and a proper AI faction brought it.

It should be easy to keep a setting as big and as rich as 40k from getting stale without shuffling around the rules every 2-4 years.


*A real faction I mean, not Knights, Militarum Tempust or Legion of the Dammed, I'm talking something actually worthy of the name 'codex'.

You forgot Imperial Knights sir.

Shuffling the rules every 2-4 years (and the codexes) is about all the current crop of GW designers are up to, in my opinion. And it's easy money. I think established wisdom is that GW are struggling a bit, though, so hopefully things will improve with time. If they keep doing these one-unit codexes, we'll know they're selling, and we can expect 4 more weeks of winter, so to speak

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It is a symptom of a game published by a company that is entirely reliant on one or two games for its profits. To be accurate, GW is now reliant on 40K, because Fantasy has slumped since 8th edition.

Ehh...that's the thing though, there are other companies that rely on just one or two games but are doing it better. A willingness to publicly admit mistakes and fix them quickly is something GW is sorely lacking I think.

I think one can safely remove 'publicly' from that statement. If there was any sort of culture of improvement within the corporation, we'd be seeing evidence of it in the product, public admission or not.

Well, that was unexpected.

Still, given that they're trying to release a fix edition so to speak (after only 2 years) rather than just forcing us to wait the usual 4+ years for a new edition shows that they obviously realize they're doing something wrong. Who knows, maybe old GeeDubs is beginning to see the error of their ways.

About the promo poster and the tag line.

I have a feeling that there will be another poster to go alongside of this one, with the tag line of "There is only war!"

What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th. Provided that means 'improving gameplay' and not 'improving our idea of forging a narrative'...

I personally want to see a good amount of the fluidity and clarity of 5th return, with accomodations to the new units in 6th, and with a sizeable kick in the nuts to the 'D weapon' rule, a very savage reworking of the allies chart to alter some glaring oddities and cut right back on the Battle Brothers rule and current handicapping of any non-imperium army that isn't 'taudar' and every vehicle in the game receive an extra HP. But that's just my wish-listing.


So, somewhat cautious, very optimistic from me.

 Idolator wrote:
About the promo poster and the tag line.

I have a feeling that there will be another poster to go alongside of this one, with the tag line of "There is only war!"

I'd buy WDs every week just for a series of cool looking posters.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It is a symptom of a game published by a company that is entirely reliant on one or two games for its profits. To be accurate, GW is now reliant on 40K, because Fantasy has slumped since 8th edition.

There are loads of wargame rulesets that do not have the release profile of 40K, because the publisher was not doing it primarily for profit -- e.g. WRG Ancients and DBA rules -- or because the publisher has lots of other products and does not need to invalidate the rules to make people buy a new version (Osprey's Field of Glory rules).

All of the WRG rules and FoG have had updates: WRG Ancients went though seven editions between 1969 and 1986. There was only one significant change in the rules mechanics -- 7th edition. The rest of the changes were minor and incremental, to introduce a wider selection of armies, correct typos, minor changes to weapon factors, and so on.

Osprey have done Field of Glory Ancients, with a good range of campaign books, then produced Napoleonics and Renaissance. They also have an extensive historical reference book library so they are not reliant on making FoG Ancients players buy a new edition every few years.

In comparison, GW have been developing the WH/FB/40K system since 1981 and still have not managed to "get it right". They have got to the stage now of recycling ideas and mechanics. It starts to look like a shell game rather than a rules development process.

Its not really the same thing though. Historicals game companies usually (and there are exceptions) don't sell models exclusively for their games (FOW tries) because there is a huge number of already existing models in various scales. And besides, a French Grenadier is a French Grenadier. Its not like they're going to get assault cannons in the next ruleset (well, only if you're playing fantasy historicals). Historicals players tend to play multiple rulesets for a given period, depending on whim, and often just play their own versions/variants.

GW has not only the rules to push (which depend on churn to sell), but the models, which have to be pushed as well. The advantage GW has is there isn't another game of the same scope with the same expansive background.

I've been playing since 2nd ed, and was a completist until around 4th, but just couldn't keep up. Now I barely have the rules for the armies I own. I do have a list of models I like and want to paint (rather than game with), but who knows if I'll actually buy them. I have the disposeable income, I think I'm just getting too old to keep up

I will, however, keep am eye on this, and if it includes all the rules for escalation, etc., then I'll likely get it. Its not like the new edition invalidates my current codexes. I do also think this is an attempt to really push the i-books, though, since the faqs/errata will be added right in. I'm never going that way, so if they do really push that, that'll be the end of my playing. Which has nothing to do with cost, just personal opinion about liking physical books.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th. Provided that means 'improving gameplay' and not 'improving our idea of forging a narrative'...

I personally want to see a good amount of the fluidity and clarity of 5th return, with accomodations to the new units in 6th, and with a sizeable kick in the nuts to the 'D weapon' rule, a very savage reworking of the allies chart to alter some glaring oddities and cut right back on the Battle Brothers rule and current handicapping of any non-imperium army that isn't 'taudar' and every vehicle in the game receive an extra HP. But that's just my wish-listing.


So, somewhat cautious, very optimistic from me.

I'd love this to be true, but it sounds too close to made up gak by a red shirt to me, something to try and justify how amazing the new book is going to be to cynical existing players.

It would be great, but past history makes me gun shy at this point.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th. Provided that means 'improving gameplay' and not 'improving our idea of forging a narrative'...

I personally want to see a good amount of the fluidity and clarity of 5th return, with accomodations to the new units in 6th, and with a sizeable kick in the nuts to the 'D weapon' rule, a very savage reworking of the allies chart to alter some glaring oddities and cut right back on the Battle Brothers rule and current handicapping of any non-imperium army that isn't 'taudar' and every vehicle in the game receive an extra HP. But that's just my wish-listing.


So, somewhat cautious, very optimistic from me.

I'm hoping for the best, but then I remember Mat Ward and Jervis are amongst those writers...

And I'll continue to look forward to other events and painting figs. I boxed up my GW and put it away, for now. I keep my army bags handy for a game, but the armies won't be an active project outside of keeping an eye out for OOP figs to add to them (Brets, SoB).

what did jervis johnson do?

 Sir Arun wrote:
what did jervis johnson do?

Hung around long enough to get his own way.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th. Provided that means 'improving gameplay' and not 'improving our idea of forging a narrative'...

I personally want to see a good amount of the fluidity and clarity of 5th return, with accomodations to the new units in 6th, and with a sizeable kick in the nuts to the 'D weapon' rule, a very savage reworking of the allies chart to alter some glaring oddities and cut right back on the Battle Brothers rule and current handicapping of any non-imperium army that isn't 'taudar' and every vehicle in the game receive an extra HP. But that's just my wish-listing.


So, somewhat cautious, very optimistic from me.

I'm hoping for the best, but then I remember Mat Ward and Jervis are amongst those writers...

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

And Mat ward has started to write really rather good codices!