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Cutting, merging, simplifying, etc won't do any good until GW removes any and all guilty parties involved with the atrocious slog of inconsistent rules writing and gets people who will actually attempt to create some level of internal and external game balance. I rather have rules scattered all over the place but with relatively decent overall game balance over everything being condensed together but still having issues like criminally underpriced Wraithknights and the comically overpriced plus useless Sun Shark Bomber.

Rules bloat, imbalance, multiple rules sources, and the cost prohibitive barrier to entry that is reinforced by all these expensive rules sources are very problematic for 40k. The general state of balance is probably the biggest problem for veteran players while needing multiple expensive books is a huge issue for getting new players into the game. Digital rules distribution for free will fix both of those issues (well fix one and facilitate the improvement of the other) and they can still sell codexes with all the fluff and printed rules each time they do a major change up of a faction.

The thing is with codexes & supplements that they drive sales like crazy compared with fluff books. They will need a steady stream of new books with rules who create hypes a n order to sell miniatures. Just putting it all online at the same time isn't going sell as much plastic.

 Vankraken wrote:
Digital rules distribution for free will fix both of those issues (well fix one and facilitate the improvement of the other) and they can still sell codexes with all the fluff and printed rules each time they do a major change up of a faction.

Can't see it happening. Selling rulebooks provides GW with an income stream; giving rules away for free cuts that dead. You can sit there and tell me they'd sell more models until you're blue in the face, but unless you have some compelling data to back that up it's not going to convince GW to stop making money from BRBs and splatbooks on the off-chance. I know I wouldn't buy significantly more models than I currently do if they made the rules free; I might buy a few here and there, but likely not enough to make up for the money I spend on rules.

... every game currently competing with GW that provides rules for free is sufficient evidence, as those games are eating GW's lunch.

I know 40k has a huge footprint in the UK, but that is simply not the case outside of there. 40k, in the US, is known mostly by reputation (for good or ill), while games like Malifaux, X-wing, Infinity Wars and so on are "the" tabletop wargames.

It didn't use to be this way, but that is the reality of the market now.

No one wants to drop 1K into a game and the lose automatically because your opponent chose the right codex.

Codex consolidation would be a great thing.

Squatting Necrons would be even better.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Codex consolidation would be a great thing.

Squatting Necrons would be even better.

What do you have against Necrons? Their fluff is cool, and while they are too cheap for what they do, none of their rules are inherently bad. Unlike, say, D-Strength template weapons.

Martel732 wrote:
No one wants to drop 1K into a game and the lose automatically because your opponent chose the right codex.

This has noting to do with the simpification of the game nor with the reduction of codex, but this is a real issue with 40k.


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 Psienesis wrote:
... every game currently competing with GW that provides rules for free is sufficient evidence, as those games are eating GW's lunch.

I know 40k has a huge footprint in the UK, but that is simply not the case outside of there. 40k, in the US, is known mostly by reputation (for good or ill), while games like Malifaux, X-wing, Infinity Wars and so on are "the" tabletop wargames.

It didn't use to be this way, but that is the reality of the market now.

You are confusing codexes / army books with core rules
X-Wing is doing great but their equivalent of codexes aren't free nor online at all. They are all cut into pieces and put into the boxes together with the miniatures.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Codex consolidation would be a great thing.

Squatting Necrons would be even better.

What do you have against Necrons? Their fluff is cool, and while they are too cheap for what they do, none of their rules are inherently bad. Unlike, say, D-Strength template weapons.

Some people would call the fluff boring. Ignoring half the wounds dealt to them is pretty bad.

 oldzoggy wrote:
X-Wing is doing great but their equivalent of codexes aren't free nor online at all. They are all cut into pieces and put into the boxes together with the miniatures.

While this is technically true all of the rules on those "codex equivalent" cards can be found (legally) online for free. If you use a printout from a squad builder for your list you don't need to buy any rules at all.

I say merge them, but that's based solely on my 2nd ed. biases.

I think it's a bit insulting to the gamers to price codices at $45-50-60 and then separate races into 3-4-5 different books. Even more so when some of these codices/branches consist of 4-6 entries or types of models.

There is zero reason why an Eldar codex should not include Harlequins in the main book...but GW knows that they can sell two products instead of one, etc. If I were to ever buy into current 40K (say, with a new edition) I'd be pretty ticked. In 2nd ed. the codices gave you a lot more material than the current ones. The Chaos Codex gave you lists for Daemons, Chaos Cultists, and Chaos Space Marines...the codex was a friggin' tome of info/knowledge/rules etc. Likewise the Eldar codex included Harlequins and even Exodites (only a few entries). The Tyranids book included Tyranids and Genestealer Cult lists etc.

They released Sisters of Battle as their own codex because they decided not to release the Imperial Agents codex they had originally planned (and now released, only 19 years late!).

None of this matters though, as the rules seem a bit crap, and GW is going where the money is. I'm sure most players in 40K right now own a heck of a lot of expensive books - and will buy them again when they're replaced.

 Peregrine wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
X-Wing is doing great but their equivalent of codexes aren't free nor online at all. They are all cut into pieces and put into the boxes together with the miniatures.

While this is technically true all of the rules on those "codex equivalent" cards can be found (legally) online for free. If you use a printout from a squad builder for your list you don't need to buy any rules at all.

I know its all out there but just how legal are those resources? Are they just 3th party companies posting pictures / rules just like battle scribe is posting 40k codex rules online or is it the Fantasy Flight who supplies these rules on-line.

I guess I'm of the mind that only a few things actually need to be done to clean the game up significantly. Cobine codices where needed. All SM codices in one book. All chaos forces in one book. Same for Eldar, tyranids, and IG.

Thought I do think that the inquisition and assassination codices should be lumped into a grey knight codex, a death watch codex, and an SoB codex. This should be done because most of the flavor of the inquisition comes from their chambers militant. I know this seems nonsensical, but it is my opinion.

Number 2 consolidate universal special rules, and individual special rules (some of them are the same)

Last, don't go overboard like they did with AoS. Some of the fun in 40k is in the complexness (bloated rules)

 JNAProductions wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Codex consolidation would be a great thing.

Squatting Necrons would be even better.

What do you have against Necrons? Their fluff is cool, and while they are too cheap for what they do, none of their rules are inherently bad. Unlike, say, D-Strength template weapons.

I'm not much interested in the Necron fluff, but I really dislike playing against them. The only thing that makes playing Necrons tolerable is my access to S(D) firepower, S(D-1) templates and Stomp 6.

 Madoch1 wrote:
I guess I'm of the mind that only a few things actually need to be done to clean the game up significantly. Cobine codices where needed. All SM codices in one book. All chaos forces in one book. Same for Eldar, tyranids, and IG.

Thought I do think that the inquisition and assassination codices should be lumped into a grey knight codex, a death watch codex, and an SoB codex. This should be done because most of the flavor of the inquisition comes from their chambers militant. I know this seems nonsensical)

Just how would this smoothen the gaming Experience in real life.
Let's suppose a game is played pre the great codex purge and post the codex purge the between a dark elf at player and a blood angels player.
Assuming that nothing else changed since this discussion is purely a discussion about the effects of reducing the number of codexes.

I fail to see how anything would change about that battle at all except that both codexes are now twice as heavy and cramped with units that they will never use.

The blood angels player (and all marine players by extension) get easy and legal access to all marine equipment, ending once and for all the stupidity of one chapter being more competitive than the others based on their access to certain equipment.

It's cheaper for players who own multiple armies, which represents a large number of the 40k community.

It's cheaper for players who collect all the codices for their own knowledge or just because they like collecting the books.

Plus, with proper formatting, the books wouldn't be that much larger, seeing as there is a vast amount of essentially wasted space in the current codex layout.

The Codex system is so outdated by now its predecessors are being outmoded.

In general though, I'm a big fan of consolidation with the idea behind formations being used to create different sub groups. You could even give certain units a rule that allows them to only be taken in formations that specifically allow them if you wanted to keep certain things exclusive.

The basic issue is that the Ally system really exists to resolve a setting issue with the way things are siloed. It's pretty much a roadmap of the way things should be consolidated into more streamlined factions.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Madoch1 wrote:
I guess I'm of the mind that only a few things actually need to be done to clean the game up significantly. Cobine codices where needed. All SM codices in one book. All chaos forces in one book. Same for Eldar, tyranids, and IG.

Thought I do think that the inquisition and assassination codices should be lumped into a grey knight codex, a death watch codex, and an SoB codex. This should be done because most of the flavor of the inquisition comes from their chambers militant. I know this seems nonsensical)

Just how would this smoothen the gaming Experience in real life.
Let's suppose a game is played pre the great codex purge and post the codex purge the between a dark elf at player and a blood angels player.
Assuming that nothing else changed since this discussion is purely a discussion about the effects of reducing the number of codexes.

I fail to see how anything would change about that battle at all except that both codexes are now twice as heavy and cramped with units that they will never use.

Considering you could fit all that information into a softback book for less than one of the current books...that's how?

I like the thought of streamlined core rules, e.g. if a special rule grants +1A, just modify the profile and be done with it, drop some of the silly names for descriptive ones.

Make the fluffiness rules a free download - but make the books that can be wrapped around them something closer to how forge world do books, all the fluff but designed to have the pdf printed and placed into a folder in the back - so you don't need to replace the background books - and the rules can be sorted as and when.

 Elbows wrote:

Considering you could fit all that information into a softback book for less than one of the current books...that's how?

And how would this effect the game that is played ?

Does it really need to be spelled out to you? Can't figure out how a single softback book is better for all gamers at the table?

I'll start with the obvious first point:

Mechanically, ALL of the rules are in one place, rather than being spread across multiple books.

There's no hunting whether the rule is in the main rulebook, a Codex, a supplement, or datafax.

Lots of books would be fine if GW didn't feel the need to shoehorn in extra pages of special rules and exceptions into every release. USR's might as well not exist because there's very little universal about them.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'll start with the obvious first point:

Mechanically, ALL of the rules are in one place, rather than being spread across multiple books.

There's no hunting whether the rule is in the main rulebook, a Codex, a supplement, or datafax.

A few questions about these 1 book ideas.

- How big would you accept this book to be and would you be willing to invalidate armies of players in order to make it fit.
- How do you prevent the game from becoming stale / dead
- What would you release instead of those 10+ codexes / supplements GW releases in a year. They somehow need to match the previous book related new release hype sales.
- How would you handle new releases without breaking the 1 book and no supplements rule.


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 Blacksails wrote:
Does it really need to be spelled out to you? Can't figure out how a single softback book is better for all gamers at the table?

Yes it does, since it is utterly unclear to me how a game played with.

Codex Blood angels + a blood angels army . vs Codex dark eldar + a dark eldar army

would be any more complicated than a game played with.

Codex all marines + blood angels models vs Codex all eldar + dark eldar mini's

if the rest remained the same. I just do not see it. Both players use exactly the same rules during the game, the only difference is that they now need to reference a less specific book during the game in case any of the players do not jet know their codex by heart. Or to put it in other words, why would I or my opponent enjoy a game more if our codexes had an other name and contained multiple factions instead of just the one we happen to play.

You can have unit cards with every box, like how many games have their rules organized. Alternatively, free PDFs with the rules could be made available and updated, and/or an epub version that automatically updates when a new release comes out.

New book/hype sale stuff can be covered with campaign books, new scenarios, game expansions for different types of play, and various art/fluff books. Further, model releases could still happen on a regular interval, either updating old sculpts or releasing waves of new models for a number of factions at a time.

The game would avoid being stale/dead by being actively supported with the above style releases, like how many games work, and by having active tournaments, global campaigns, and other large events supported by GW.

But ultimately, the current system doesn't work well and something needs to change. I'd prefer electronic, constantly updated rules and/or unit cards.

 Blacksails wrote:
You can have unit cards with every box, like how many games have their rules organized. Alternatively, free PDFs with the rules could be made available and updated, and/or an epub version that automatically updates when a new release comes out.

New book/hype sale stuff can be covered with campaign books, new scenarios, game expansions for different types of play, and various art/fluff books. Further, model releases could still happen on a regular interval, either updating old sculpts or releasing waves of new models for a number of factions at a time.

The game would avoid being stale/dead by being actively supported with the above style releases, like how many games work, and by having active tournaments, global campaigns, and other large events supported by GW.

But ultimately, the current system doesn't work well and something needs to change. I'd prefer electronic, constantly updated rules and/or unit cards.

=
You know that this system isn't the "Squat and merge codexes" option at all right. Its just give us an infinite amount of supplements + auto updating digital books and it comes really close to what GW is already doing.

But the most interesting thing of all.. You still did no answer the only on topic question how does it simplify the actual game, compared to lots of factions with each their own codex who only have to use that codex ?

Right, so let's go with all the unit rules are in a single softback book. This book would likely have no fluff or pretty pictures to keep it reasonable, but that also would likely keep costs down (if we're living in a reality that GW is reasonable with pricing).

This book would simply be divided into factions, with all the current rules found in the existing codices and allies as currently written. For marines, this is particularly beneficial as it eliminates the nonsense of one colour of marine being better than another colour because the administration turned down their equipment requisition form because Battle Brother Bob can't correctly spell Adeptus. All marines are now equal, have access to more equipment, and allows for more options and customization among chapters, especially for DIYers or minor chapters.

For everyone else, not much really changes. For specific factions like Ad Mech, they no longer have the nonsense of being split across two books because GW decided it'd be fun to play a prank on the playerbase. We'd no longer have a whole codex dedicated to a single unit with weapon swaps (why Knights are so bare bones is beyond me), and the Imperial Guard would still have their stormtroopers in the right location, rather than wandering off and declaring their independence.

For anyone using allies, they now only need a single book. This is easier to carry, easier to reference, and easier to purchase. Your opponent is happier too, seeing as their book would also have all the rules, meaning everyone would be that little bit more familiar with all the other factions, or at the very least, have easy access to look up opposing rules when their opponent claims their unit has a re-rollable 2++ save and 4+ FnP.

I still prefer an electronic solution, but that would be my case for a single book of nothing but unit rules.

What if they stopped filling codexes with fluff and pictures and just kept it to rules? It would decrease book size and also probably price. Then they could sell seperate books full of fluff and pretty pictures

 oldzoggy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'll start with the obvious first point:

Mechanically, ALL of the rules are in one place, rather than being spread across multiple books.

There's no hunting whether the rule is in the main rulebook, a Codex, a supplement, or datafax.

A few questions about these 1 book ideas.
- How big would you accept this book to be and would you be willing to invalidate armies of players in order to make it fit.
- How do you prevent the game from becoming stale / dead
- What would you release instead of those 10+ codexes / supplements GW releases in a year. They somehow need to match the previous book related new release hype sales.
- How would you handle new releases without breaking the 1 book and no supplements rule.

- The OP said it'd be a softback, so that'd be <100 pages. As above, I absolutely would be willing to invalidate armies to make it fit. That said, each army would have a half-page of "count as", and many entries would be generic configurable, so probably only 1% of stuff (mostly conversion) wouldn't have an obvious fit. 90% of the special snowflake rules would be cut, along with 80% of the special USRs.
- To me, the game is already dead; deconstructing it and rebuilding it would resurrect it for me.
- 40k is fluff & model driven, so new releases with more fluff and pretty pictures to go with nicer models would be just fine. These models can be specific cases of a generic configurable.
- As above, specific cases of generic configurables.

Alternately:
- release models with datasheets
- annual update consolidating things. 40k Forces 2017 gets replaced by 40k Forces 2018, then 40k Forces 2019. And so on.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Elbows wrote:

Considering you could fit all that information into a softback book for less than one of the current books...that's how?

And how would this effect the game that is played ?

Actually i was thinking that it would make some of the armies easier field, like chaos. They need an all encompasing codex. separating the demons and csm codex is and was dingheaded. But also, if you own several faction, like me, you wouldnt have to carry around so many books. But in reality it would work best in conjunction with the consolidation of rules.

again, just my opinion.