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 Walnuts wrote:
Hey, so I've really been liking the positive response I've been getting in this thread. I mentioned that I wasn't planning on making a full codex of condensed unit rules, just the units that I use, but hell, maybe I could?

If anyone is interested in this, shoot me a PM. Maybe I could set up a facebook group, or a group email, and we could each pick a codex, and create a pdf with all the rules for each unit on a single page. Like, I'd totally be willing to bang out one or two full codexes if other people were willing to join in and do the same. Then we could share the final products. This could legit be a huge boon to the community.

Please get at me if you're interested!

I probably could do this.
I already did for my CSM FW units, saved me the trouble of lugging around two extra books (IA Aeronautica and Apocalypse) for literally, like, three or four units (Dreadclaw, Blood Slaughterer, Hell Talon, Blight Drone)
I could do the entire CSM and/or Daemons codex.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
From the Compendium.
You used to get 4 of those to a page, making the whole army list no more than 3-4 pages. It's not a perfect system by any stretch but even back in 1990 they had a better idea of how to lay stuff out. You could easily replace the lengthy grenade and missile types with the special rules of a unit.

And aww yeah, toughness 3 marines!

Ah, yes. I remember the days of Marines with bio scanners, vortex grenades and shuriken catapults.

Also, imagine the screams of fury of the players if Space Marines still had 4+ armor saves.

The old 2nd edition codexes were my favorite for layout. Giant fluff section, and all the wargear options and prices usually on two pages. The wargear page was something I was happy that carried over to third edition.

Digital codexes let you copy and paste. (At least the Apple ones). A long copyright statement automatically appends to every segment you paste, but that's deleteable.

 don_mondo wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
Well to answer the original question, yes; they could technically be laid out worse. You could have to solve cyphers to decode unit stats (new Thousand Sons supplement here we come!).

That said, the way they do it now is pretty dang bad. Believe it or not the older codex layouts were actually much better. Just one page per unit rather than "fluff and special rules" then "stats" in two completely different sections.

And that's why they changed it. The old layout was too easy to photocopy and share within the group. Yes, that really is the reason behind the current layout where a single unit's information is split between 2 or 3 locations.

IMO the new layout encourages pirating even more as you can just photocopy the pages actually needed for the rules and remove the rest, or flip back and forth on a pirated digital copy, something you aren't going to want to do with your uber-expensive hardback colour book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 SisterSydney wrote:
Digital codexes let you copy and paste. (At least the Apple ones). A long copyright statement automatically appends to every segment you paste, but that's deleteable.

The ebook versions can be converted to MS word easily enough and then reformatted in to something decent... however the time it takes to actually reformat the book is annoying. It took me 2 or 3 nights after work to get my crappy ebook Tyranid codex in to something decent, and I'd probably spend a couple more nights on it if I actually wanted it to come out in what I'd consider an ideal fashion.

Couldn't agree with the OP more.

For each of my hardback codices, I've had to copy the pages I'll actually need during a game, and place them in a usable format.

The Wargear - Photo Gallery - Unit Specs divide is the worst offender.

GW are going back to their roots: Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone wrote Fighting Fantasy's. If you want to do/know such and such turn to page 25, you cast successfully, now turn to page 34... This obviously makes for a much more gripping, fast paced and non frustrating game of 40k...

The layout of codices really bugs me. Sometimes it's just little things, e.g. in my Necron book:

- The order units appears in doesn't seem to follow any logical order. I mean, it vaguely follows the order of HQ, Troops, Elites etc., but then you have things like SCs at the back instead of the front. Also, with Dedicated Transports, I'd have thought it would be logical to either put them after the units that could take them (especially since 2 transports are unique to two respective units), or else put them after Troops (where they appear at the back of the book). Instead, they're crammed between HS and SCs for... reasons.

- Even within the categories, there's no logical order. Has GW really never heard of alphabetising? Would it really ruin everything if C'tan were placed before Deathmarks, instead of between 'Triarch Praetorians' and 'Flayed Ones'?

- Why are special rules placed in front of the unit entries, but all the rules for wargear and such are placed after them?

- On the same note, why is one recurring special rule (Entropic Strike) placed at the front, whilst other recurring special rules (Tesla, Gauss) are placed at the back, in the wargear section?


Also, something my other books do that really aggravates me - claiming to have an 'armoury', but instead having an Index. If I'm looking for a weapon in the armoury, it's because I want to know what it does - not because I want to know what page its rules are on.

Hell, I don't even see why we need a unit section and an army list section. Why can't we just have the options and point costs on the same page as the unit entries? As it is, we have to look in one place for the price of a weapon or upgrade, and then flip to a completely different section for its rules.

You know what really bugs me? That Games Workshop say codexes instead of codices and think the singular of dice is dice.

The codicies one really bugs me too. However in maths the modern textbooks we use refer to sigular dice as 'dice'. This is because most pupils have no idea what you are talking about when you say die. It makes the lesson far easier not to have a kid complaining that you are saying it wrong when you say 'die'.

Come now, everyone knows that the proper way to refer to a singular dice is 'd6'.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
IMO the new layout encourages pirating even more

As always, it's the legitimate users that suffer from dodgy practices like this. A well bookmarked pdf with the gunk removed is far more convenient. Companies can't compete with piracy on price, so if they ever find themselves losing out on performance they're in big trouble. Being able to get a superior product for free makes you wonder why you'd pay for it to begin with when they intentionally cripple it.

vipoid wrote:Also, something my other books do that really aggravates me - claiming to have an 'armoury', but instead having an Index. If I'm looking for a weapon in the armoury, it's because I want to know what it does - not because I want to know what page its rules are on

*sigh*

This more than anything else. What makes it that much more irritating is that you go to the armory and some of the stuff says "look in the main 40k rulebook" and some of it is "look at this page number in your codex" and some of it is "here is what it does". They seem to have no clear idea whatsoever what the purpose of that part of the codex is.

 Walnuts wrote:
While I like the current edition more than any past edition, what the hell happened to the way GW writes codexes?
Almost all the relevant information used to be included with each army entry back in the day, now it's like they try to scatter the info as evenly throughout the entire several hundred page long book as possible.

Um, actually, in 2nd edition, they had codices that were laid out like they are currently: Unit fluff and basic rules, then wargear rules, then a section with pictures, then wargear list with prices, and finally the basic unit entries. In 3rd edition, they stripped a lot down, but then as they went back to thicker books they went back to the 2nd edition system.

That said, there's good news! (Assuming someone hasn't mentioned this already.) The Ork codex is meant to be the first in a new style of doing codices from now on. It has a page for each unit with the unit name, base points, picture of the unit, some basic fluff, rules, options, all that on one page. You can see the style in White Dwarf with the entries for the Morkanaut, Gorkanaut, Mek Guns, Flash Gitz, and Looted Wagon. Now, sure, you still need to reference the stats for weapons and basic wargear elsewhere, but it would make no sense to reprint all of that multiple times in every book.

It could be much worse. They could be laid out like an FFG rule book.

The FFG 40K RPGs never struck me as poorly laid out. *has another look*

If you get your hands on the new Ork codex, the layout changed, btw.