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 Great White wrote:
Guys I've been out of this for a while and I have a question that applies to this subject. What are these new supplement books? What is their purpose and what do they do? When would one use them?

think of them like sourcebooks for sub factions. if you're JUST looking for new rules they're a waste of money. if you want new fluff they're great

I loved the new hardcover format, but the newest format is a little irritating. With the photos rather than artwork.

Wow, this one is really hard to answer, as I agree with multiple statements, but you can only pick one.

I like the new format of, fundamentally, the rules for a unit on one page. I think that organization of datasheets is good. I didn't like the old organization of 'force org/points' in one part, and rules/description in another. I think being able to pick my units and my army list by going page by page is good.

I hate the simplification of many units, and the 'translation' of units into a few special rules. I was thrilled that they reintroduced old Ork guns, then dismayed at how flavorless and bland they were.

I hate them being in hardback and really expensive. GW lost a TON of money from me on this. When they were cheaper, I bought every Codex and Army Book. Now, I bought Orks. Now I don't know as much about the background, and haven't been motivated to keep up with the Black Library stuff (of which I used to buy ALL), because I don't know whats going on in the background.

I like the added pics and full color. I didn't dislike black and white, and in fact, loved a lot of the black and white artwork, but I will never complain about pretty pictures.

I hate the loss of artwork. There's a lot of characterful illustration you can add with artwork that doesn't work with minis. Orks hanging around the drops, Space Marines getting into their armor, etc. That stuff totally sells the universe, and it doesn't show up when you just have pics of painted models.

Fundamentally, GW could keep the organization of the new books and have all of the stuff that I miss. There's nothing in the 'dataslate' format that means you can't have artwork. There's nothing in that format that necessitates hardcover books, or even full-color throughout. You can have dataslates with complicated rules, especially if you don't try to compress the rules for, oh, four different Mek Guns onto one page.

Digital download makes it a bit easier

Do you want a poll or did you just want to confirm your opinion? Cause the answer options are pretty biased and not objective.

For me, the new books commit the worst sin a gaming book can commit. They're boring.

 MWHistorian wrote:
For me, the new books commit the worst sin a gaming book can commit. They're boring.

I'm sure, when I first started playing (back in 3rd), I enjoyed the 40k fluff.

Nowadays, especially with the newer books, I just struggle to get invested.

I often get frustrated with the new books' format. I have had to bookmark my 7th ed books to navigate through them, when in the past I was able to track down everything by memory. But then I've been playing this game for almost 20 years straight. Old habits die slow.

I don't like the switch to hardcover either. I have "The Horus Heresy Collected Visions", "The Gothic and the Eldritch", "The Emperor's Will" and "Xenology" prouldy on display on my living room shelf, but codices, as I see it, are meant to be gaming aids, not display items. I'll gladly pay a premium for a luxury finish on an artbook, but I find it harder to justify it on a codex.

To add insult to injury, the current batch of codices replaces artwork for pictures of models that in the best of cases are not much better painted than my own. Not only it takes away that "luxury product" feel GW so desperately wants to convey, it also cuts the fine thread that binds the wee bits of expensive plastic being pushed around on the table with the awesome epic battle going on in your head. For a game that depends so much on narrative and aesthetics, this is something GW should reconsider.

I also prefer the old dirty popsurrealist artwork to the current generic naturalism of the deviantart school, but that's a matter of personal preference only.

As for content, it varies from book to book, with Codex: Space Marines being one of the company's highs and Codex: Orks one of its lows.

Haven't read all the posts yet, so I may be saying something others have.

The new format is totally set up for digital publications. This comes from the ability to click on a key word, or do a search, or look at specific sections of the "book" in a non-sequential order.

Because of the non-sequential order of the digital publication, it can't easily be translated into a physical book that has a sequential order. Now, suddenly, you have to worry about key words being defined early in the book so that a reader won't get confused later on. You are not constrained by a physical page size- you can have an 8"x11" high resolution image of a model, then have a reference line, as much fluff as you want, heck, even more illustrations on one "page" of a digital publication. You can't do that with a physical book- you start to run into layout issues, adding extra pages (which costs more money), getting more "filler" artwork and fluff, etc. etc. You can really see this difference when you look at the digital Space Wolves codex and the paper codex- there is a ton of white space and large blocks of text not broken up by anything that is not present in the digital codex.

The new Codex layout/format is excellent for a digital publication, and I applaud GW for taking this route instead of just "scanning" a codex into a digital format and making you read it like a book. As far as I know, no other game company has made this leap into digital publications with the same amount of use and functionality. I wish GW would go a step further, and have each unit entry be HUGE, with a ton of artwork, fluff, and game stats on one "page". Can you imagine reading a short piece of fluff on Sven and his Grey Hunters along with a bunch of illustrations under the Grey Hunter entry? Or how about random character 'X' getting more than 2-3 lines in a paragraph? GW has only scratched the surface of what it can do with a digital publication, and if you ask me, they are spending too much time and money making a paper codex.

Hear me out before you say "I don't have a digital device to read a codex on!" GW could make a "reference list" for each codex of maybe 2-3 pages that has no fluff, no images, etc. with just point costs and options for each army. Charge $10 to download it, watermark it, secure it, etc. etc, and you'd then have your codex minus all the "good stuff". The other good part about an all digital codex library? GW could make "patches" ad hoc for a codex. In many ways, they are doing this now, but I think it'll become more common and robust.

Digital publications/codex is the future, with a paper codex going the way of the Dodo bird. Old Dinosaurs like me that prefer paper will just have to adapt, or stop playing.

The new format is actually very similar to the old format used back in 3rd/4th edition, Im actually glad the bestiary is gone and all the rules are found on a single page per unit. The bestiary was a waste of paper and an illogical way to spread rules out over too large a section of a book.

As for things not being able to made troops, etc. that is what unbound is for. Contrary to everyones irrational fear of it, it is a core part of the rules and doesnt have to be used to make things broken and can instead be used to make things fluffy.

I only bemoan the loss of artwork personally.

 Tamwulf wrote:
Haven't read all the posts yet, so I may be saying something others have.

The new format is totally set up for digital publications. This comes from the ability to click on a key word, or do a search, or look at specific sections of the "book" in a non-sequential order.

Because of the non-sequential order of the digital publication, it can't easily be translated into a physical book that has a sequential order. Now, suddenly, you have to worry about key words being defined early in the book so that a reader won't get confused later on. You are not constrained by a physical page size- you can have an 8"x11" high resolution image of a model, then have a reference line, as much fluff as you want, heck, even more illustrations on one "page" of a digital publication. You can't do that with a physical book- you start to run into layout issues, adding extra pages (which costs more money), getting more "filler" artwork and fluff, etc. etc. You can really see this difference when you look at the digital Space Wolves codex and the paper codex- there is a ton of white space and large blocks of text not broken up by anything that is not present in the digital codex.

The new Codex layout/format is excellent for a digital publication, and I applaud GW for taking this route instead of just "scanning" a codex into a digital format and making you read it like a book. As far as I know, no other game company has made this leap into digital publications with the same amount of use and functionality. I wish GW would go a step further, and have each unit entry be HUGE, with a ton of artwork, fluff, and game stats on one "page". Can you imagine reading a short piece of fluff on Sven and his Grey Hunters along with a bunch of illustrations under the Grey Hunter entry? Or how about random character 'X' getting more than 2-3 lines in a paragraph? GW has only scratched the surface of what it can do with a digital publication, and if you ask me, they are spending too much time and money making a paper codex.

Hear me out before you say "I don't have a digital device to read a codex on!" GW could make a "reference list" for each codex of maybe 2-3 pages that has no fluff, no images, etc. with just point costs and options for each army. Charge $10 to download it, watermark it, secure it, etc. etc, and you'd then have your codex minus all the "good stuff". The other good part about an all digital codex library? GW could make "patches" ad hoc for a codex. In many ways, they are doing this now, but I think it'll become more common and robust.

Digital publications/codex is the future, with a paper codex going the way of the Dodo bird. Old Dinosaurs like me that prefer paper will just have to adapt, or stop playing.

Actually, I hate the digital version. I bought Space Wolves this way, and it's horrible. I don't know how to describe it, other than to say, I'll never buy a digital codex again. There are so many problems that I don't even know where to start.

You can't refer to a page by its page number (and expect someone else to know what you're talking about). Since none of the pages you want to access are sequential, you have to book mark EVERYTHING which is good for nothing. Flipping through an eBook codex while making an army is horrible. I could go on, but it just makes me mad thinking about the iPad codex I bought, lol.

I have purchased almost all of the books. For every army, I photocopy the reference sheets in the back, the points section, and the pages of the common independent characters and units that people play. I don't bother with Beastmaster or Voidraven, for example, because I so rarely see them on a table. I then rephotocopy it 2-up, double-sided so that 1 page turns into 2, and 4 pages can fit onto 1 sheet of paper. All of the codices except space marines fit nicely into a 1" binder. I bring the mini core ruebook (which tucks into the front cover of my binder), and the space marine book stays in my backpack. I'm pretty familiar with SM anyhow.

Sadly, I will probably end up buying SW in paper, just because I hate the iPad version so much :(

And/but: I wish they sold the codex as two separate books, fluff and rules. They could sell it as a bundle, for all I care; there's just no reason to carry around fluff.

I played Dark Eldar.

We got shafted, we gained NOTHING new & LOST our actually cool special characters. Granted everyone lost their special characters but seriously, NO new units...

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I played Dark Eldar.

We got shafted, we gained NOTHING new & LOST our actually cool special characters. Granted everyone lost their special characters but seriously, NO new units...

There is hope, Tyranids got one of them back. So maybe this will be the new way, Special Charters will come back in some form or another. Thing is, in time. When who knows.

Davor wrote:

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I played Dark Eldar.

We got shafted, we gained NOTHING new & LOST our actually cool special characters. Granted everyone lost their special characters but seriously, NO new units...

There is hope, Tyranids got one of them back. So maybe this will be the new way, Special Charters will come back in some form or another. Thing is, in time. When who knows.

We didn't get the Doom back. We got a pseud-Doom we can take multiple times.

I truly have mixed feelings about the 7th edition codexes, compared to previous editions. On one hand, visually they are the most stunning yet. But it is the format that I really dislike.

Is it too much to ask, to lay it out in the following manner. Give me the fictional fluff first. Then proceed that, with the model gallery of photos. Next, I would like the unit descriptions. To follow up the beastiary, the Weapons and Wargear section should follow accordingly. Next to last, the Meat and Potatoes of the codex, the Army list. Finally, the summary/reference section closes out the book.

I would like the art part of a codex consolidated to the front of the book. This will get my inspiration flowing to start up my New army, or rehab an old army.

Then that leaves the rules part of the codex near to the rear of the book. For ease of list building and in game reference, that part should be consolidated to the back. Just a few suggestions to those who might be on the codex editing committee.

 Vaktathi wrote:
I used to buy all the codex books, when they were $20/25 it was doable, and they didn't weigh a metric ton.

I still have a bunch of 3rd and 4th books kicking around due to the low price back then.

Nowadays the codices cost more per page than my University textbooks.

Edit: Thought the thread was moving fast, for some reason the second page wasn't appearing.

No new art or fluff? No thanks. You can only recycle the same old stuff for so long. The boring lists certainly don't help.