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 Kommissar Kel wrote:
No addition to the <keyword> is necessary if you use a little common sense.

Even if <regiment> and <chapter> are both set to Gribblies by you; they are still 2 different uses of the word Gribblies. 1 is Chapter Gribblies and the other is Regiment Gribblies. This is because the Chapter replacement is a replacement for when an effect occurs on <chapter> models. It was only ever TFGs that tried to use the replacement in both instances as a single shared keyword.

I know and read it the common sense way too, but I'd just rather the extra 3 secs it takes to just simply not give that stupid argument room to exist in the first place. Prevention.

mostly because the Regiments from the fluff wouldn't tranlate well when compared to chapters and such.

Earth127 wrote:
mostly because the Regiments from the fluff wouldn't tranlate well when compared to chapters and such.

You mean the fact that every single Cadian guardsman is in just one regiment called <CADIAN>?

I mean, that's the price you pay for playing guard. I've built an entire tank regiment and superheavy regiment, and aside from attached units from other regiments I have no infantry or artillery. So, my regiment is <2nd Concordian Armoured> for my tanks and <Concordian Independent Heavy Tank Regiment> for my superheavies, meaning the synergy goes down (if there were any to begin with) but the fluff goes up!

As it stands, it seems like they'd just be <Concordia>. The difference is even more staggering when you have, say, conscript platoons and superheavy tanks in the same <Regiment>. "What regiment did you say this was again, Colonel?"
"A Superheavy Infantry Siege Assault Defense Training regiment, sir." "Ah, I see." *scribbles in notebook.*

First question: does anyone know, for a fact, if GW does any Alpha & Beta testing on the rules as they are being written? It would seem to me that if they were in fact testing game play as they wrote the rules to ensure flow and ease of compatability for all armies we would not have all these issues. Further more as for the d-bags of the world it doesn't matter if you are playing candy land, MTG, or any othe game including professional sports they will exist; they will constantly try to find some stupid gray area in the rules that will benefit them(here in the good ole U.S.A. we like to call them poloticians and corporate lawyers ) they will kick and scream, yell and depate and even throw a temper tantrum that would make a 2 yr old proud if they cannot find and exploit some rule. We had a group of guys who every time they were in our flgs would stand around a table and debate rules, even those that were cut and dry just for the sake of trying to impose their own personal agenda of the interpretations of said rule. So yes GW please make the rules more black and white, but gamers please keep in mind that no rule is rock solid and as with all laws it is always open to interpretation.

There are a bunch of very reasonable things that are confusing even after the FAQ.

One that my group can't agree on is when deploying how do you count units in transports? We know the unit and transport is one drop, but if, let's say, you deploy 5 tac marines and a Captain in a razorback can you then place 3 drop pods 'in reserve', one or none, because you already have units not on the table?

We are currently going with only 1, but that is simply because we went with what one of the group thinks so that we could continue playing. I have no idea what to expect when playing someone else.

The Matched Play Mission Rules for reserves (BRB Pg 215) says at least half of total number of units

the replaceable keyword thing may get tidied up in the proper books, e.g. replace <LEGION> with <LEGION: myLegion>, so the LEGION keyword is still there

Loopstah wrote:
Clearly they do not understand their customer base.

they understand it just fine, the vaaast majority of 40k players understand this just fine, the rules lawyers are just a small but vocal group on the internet

BrianDavion wrote:

Loopstah wrote:
Clearly they do not understand their customer base.

they understand it just fine, the vaaast majority of 40k players understand this just fine, the rules lawyers are just a small but vocal group on the internet

Also, the internet is a tiny fraction of the player base. Most people just pick up a few units, paint them and play with their friends.

 JohnU wrote:
The Matched Play Mission Rules for reserves (BRB Pg 215) says at least half of total number of units

As I recall those are the rules for Narrative Play, not Matched, and they come on on a roll of 3+ starting on turn 2. The Matched Play rules state that any unit that does not come on by turn 3 is destroyed which does not work with those rules. The only way to get reserves in Matched Play appears to be if the unit has an alternate means of deployment, e.g. Space Marine Terminators' Teleport Strike rules. None of the Matched Play missions currently spell out rules for reserves that I can tell.

About the confusion about what's a regiment and what isn't, couldn't they have replaced "<Regiment>" with "<Regiment name> Regiment?" For example "Cadian" becomes "Cadia Regiment." That would clear up what's a regiment and what isn't.

Come to think of it if you do the same for all <yourdudes> slots they could have prevented the "SM and IG with the same name benefiting from buffs from both" errata from being an issue in the first place. That way "Cheese Warriors" (Chapter keyword replacement) and "Cheese Warriors" (Regiment keyword replacement) would become "Cheese Warriors Chapter" and "Cheese Warriors Regiment" respectively, and their having different rules would be much more evident. This of course does lead to some extreme silliness when "Alpha Legion" becomes "Alpha Legion Legion," though. (If you do run AL with CSM rules.)

Edit: Sorry about all the quotation marks.

There are many solutions that would have immediately solved the confusion.

1) don't even mention Militarum Tempestus in the regiment rules.

2) carry the symbols over to the official Regiments. Make Creed <Cadian> instead of Cadian.

3) list the, what, six keywords that might cause confusion and say you can't use them.

BrianDavion wrote:
the rules lawyers are just a small but vocal group on the internet

They certainly exist in the real world as well.

I am confused as to why people seem to be opposed to the idea that a ruleset should be clearly and concisely written, it not as if GW can't afford to have their publications written/corrected by a technical writer.

No one, aside from the aforementioned rules lawyers, is negatively affected by concisely written rules and it effectively means that every single rule is used as intended.

Most of the time the rules are clearer than what people make them out to be.

The problem occurs when someone starts applying english at a higher than 7th grade level to the rules(or emperor forbid, expect them to be written to the stringent accords of law). They are written for the everyman; like the newspaper or magazine articles they are written and to be read at a 6th or 7th grade level.

They are only unclear when a reader starts looking too hard at them(and especially when looking for loopholes or "the best" combinations)

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

They are only unclear when a reader starts looking too hard at them(and especially when looking for loopholes or "the best" combinations)

People will always look for loopholes so why shouldn't GW be criticised for allowing such loopholes to exist?

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Most of the time the rules are clearer than what people make them out to be.

No, they're precisely as clear as the reader understands them to be. Nothing more and nothing less.

The problem occurs when someone starts applying english at a higher than 7th grade level to the rules(or emperor forbid, expect them to be written to the stringent accords of law). They are written for the everyman; like the newspaper or magazine articles they are written and to be read at a 6th or 7th grade level.

The problem actually occurs when you write a ruleset for the 'everyman'. A ruleset for a wargame designed for pick up and tournament play requires clear and concise wording to minimize confusion and different interpretations. Don't blame people for a lack of effort on the part of the company. Don't blame the symptom, blame the source.

They are only unclear when a reader starts looking too hard at them(and especially when looking for loopholes or "the best" combinations)

The solution is quite clear then; write better, clearer, more balanced rules. If that were the case, we wouldn't have to have this discussion in the first place.

Well blacksails, I'll give you 2 choices:

You can send me your school transcripts and I can write a clear and concise game that you, specifically, should be able to understand and you can pay me £8million(gw's profit for 2016, ronuded down) per year for you personal game.

Or you can accept that that amount of money comes from casual payers as well as tournament players and that this is why "the most important rule" exists.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
...this is why "the most important rule" exists.

Just as an aside, anyone got a page ref for that? Can't find it in 8th.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
Well blacksails, I'll give you 2 choices:

You can send me your school transcripts and I can write a clear and concise game that you, specifically, should be able to understand and you can pay me £8million(gw's profit for 2016, ronuded down) per year for you personal game.

Or you can accept that that amount of money comes from casual payers as well as tournament players and that this is why "the most important rule" exists.

No need to move goalposts.

Nowhere did I ask or even hint or suggest I needed or required or wanted my own personal game, nor is that relevant to my arguments. My argument has been that I expect the company to produce a quality ruleset understandable by all with all the necessary steps taken to minimize confusion and abuse. The industry is chock full of games that meet that criteria, which is why it isn't an unreasonable expectation. GW remains one of the few companies unable to understand that a proper technically worded ruleset benefits everyone with no drawbacks.

I understand money comes form all players, and I further understand that the majority of people don't label themselves as strictly casual or tournament and that most people fall somewhere on flexible spectrum. To that end, its in GW's best interest, as well yours, that they produce a game that is geared for everyone, which conveniently would be a set of rules with the least amount of ambiguity.

Maybe you should accept that defending a flaw is baffling and that a ruleset that minimizes the sort of abuse you dislike would prevent people from abusing the rules in the first place, making this entire discussion irrelevant. Don't defend flaws in any product, it makes no sense. You don't benefit from loosely written rules. You benefit from quite literally the opposite.

Good rules benefit everyone, and in fact, benefit the most casual players the most. Tournament players generally go in with a specific mindset and guidelines and FAQs they have to meet. Casual is such a loosely defined term that two different self identified casual players may very well disagree on a loosely worded rule. A tight ruleset would prevent this.

the_scotsman wrote:
There are many solutions that would have immediately solved the confusion.

1) don't even mention Militarum Tempestus in the regiment rules.

2) carry the symbols over to the official Regiments. Make Creed <Cadian> instead of Cadian.

3) list the, what, six keywords that might cause confusion and say you can't use them.

4) they release an FAQ/Designer's Note that explains the intent of the rule. Oh, wait.


Seriously. GW has resolved this issue. Why are we still arguing it?

 Trickstick wrote:

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
...this is why "the most important rule" exists.

Just as an aside, anyone got a page ref for that? Can't find it in 8th.

Page 180.

Blacksails: no goalposts were moved. You claimed that they should not write the rules for the everyman. I pointed out the business sense of exactly why you write the rules for the everyman.

The personal game aspect of my response was also to show that if you do not write for the LCD you alienate a large portion of the populous. I gave an extreme example with asking for your transcripts as a baseline of vocabulary and structure i could reasonably expect you to know. If I simply were to write a game as clearly as possible it would be unwieldy and read like technical instructions; there would also be a chance(not attacking you at all here, just to be clear) that those rules would also be of a higher reading level than you could understand.

If you want Ironclad clear and concise rules; the game would have to be written by contract lawyers and played with a lawyer on retainer for each player.

The rules are meant to be tead and understood upon first reading. HW kept trying to add more and more complex rules in the last 3 editions while also attempting consistent verbiage; but with multiple writers that just caused more problems.

8th edition is by no means problem free; but the core rules are fairly clear and concise(yes there are still issues there), and the unit rules simply do exactly what they say on a case by case even if they share names. Some clarity is missing; I repeat this because many of the rules do not properly explain the how of their execution.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
A little nitpick I have with the <Regiment> systems is that it doesn't actually care about regiments so much as about homeworlds.

Interestingly, chapters are the complete opposite. Guilliman inspires a Marine with his geneseed quite a lot if he's an Ultramarine. Guilliman inspires a Marine with his geneseed not one bit if he is, ironically, a Son of Guilliman.

8th ed is a very... bespoke ed. Isn't it?

 EnTyme wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
There are many solutions that would have immediately solved the confusion.

1) don't even mention Militarum Tempestus in the regiment rules.

2) carry the symbols over to the official Regiments. Make Creed <Cadian> instead of Cadian.

3) list the, what, six keywords that might cause confusion and say you can't use them.

4) they release an FAQ/Designer's Note that explains the intent of the rule. Oh, wait.


Seriously. GW has resolved this issue. Why are we still arguing it?

Shouldn't the question be "what are we still arguing about"? No one is saying that keywords work differently than the FAQ says. It's about why the FAQ needs to exist in the first place, which is unresolved between "if GW had better rules, this wouldn't be a problem" and "if people had common sense, this wouldn't be a problem".

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
...this is why "the most important rule" exists.

Just as an aside, anyone got a page ref for that? Can't find it in 8th.

Page 180.

That is pretty well hidden. I would have thought it would have been near the start, not half way through the shooting rules.

I agree. As I said in my edit to blacksails there is still some lack of clarity. The sidebars in general should have just been paragraphs in the beginning of the rules or extra core rules after the phases.

Wobbly model syndrome should have simply been a part of the movement rules.

Character should have simply been a part of the pick a target step of the shooting rules

Most of the seem to be part of the first page "Core rules" I can only guess it was a formatting choice for the fold-out core rules from the box-set which is each page printed on a pamphlet.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:


Blacksails: no goalposts were moved. You claimed that they should not write the rules for the everyman. I pointed out the business sense of exactly why you write the rules for the everyman.

The everyman benefits from clearly written rules with no ambiguity. You don't need to write in lawyer-ese.

Quite literally every other wargame and most modern board games and card games have managed this. I expect GW to be able to do the same as it benefits the so-called 'everyman'.

Its that simple.

It appears though that you agree with me in principle, that it behooves GW to write the ambiguous parts more clearly so as to prevent these kind of discussions from happening in the first place.

I'm glad they 'FAQ'd' this stuff immediately, but it really shouldn't have made it to publishing for stuff caught so quickly by everyone.

My point is simple. Clear rules make for more enjoyable gaming. A good technical writer can make the instructions clear without being a mess of legalese that requires a law degree. The examples of this are out there of functional games that have far more complex interactions yet still work and flow smoothly.

I am not opposed to clearly written rules, but I think 8th is the most clearly written edition of the game GW has ever produced. It is one thing if the rule is so unclear, that people are genuinely unsure how to apply it, and completely another to rules lawyer about the Wraithguard not being able to shoot as they have no eyes or this keyword nonsense. Everyone actually knows how the rule is meant to be played, so for me that's clear enough.

There really are a few incomplete rules.

One of them pertains to certain <keyword> armies and their special units. There is currently a debate in YMDC that even Yakface is getting somewhat beligerent with about taking chaos legion specific cult troops in a non-cult army. We do not know what they mean by "<keyword> Army"; if they mean just a pure-detachment, or a pure army. All we know is that the rules on the <keyword> Army page has certain requirements, allowances, and restrictions; while detachments and battleforged armies have different ones that allow the units and <keywords> from that section to be taken outside of that page's rules.

The intention seems to be that the cult-units as troops are only available to the legion army, or that restricted-by-omission units in a Death Guard Army list cannot have the Deathguard Legion <keyword>. This will hopefully be made more clear with the actual Codices soon enough.

And Blacksails: we do agree in concept, but some specifics still fall into your looking too hard at the rules vs just playing with them. And the "Quite literally every other wargame and mist modern boardgames" portion is demonstrably false. There are questions on PP's rules forum along with epic arguments all the time. They alsi had to "dumb down" everything back in Prime re-load, and I believe they even recently had put out a 3rd/4th edition with multiple changes do to non-functiining rules.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:

One of them pertains to certain <keyword> armies and their special units. There is currently a debate in YMDC that even Yakface is getting somewhat beligerent with about taking chaos legion specific cult troops in a non-cult army. We do not know what they mean by "<keyword> Army"; if they mean just a pure-detachment, or a pure army. All we know is that the rules on the <keyword> Army page has certain requirements, allowances, and restrictions; while detachments and battleforged armies have different ones that allow the units and <keywords> from that section to be taken outside of that page's rules.

The rules are perfectly clear; some people are just inventing restrictions that don't exist.
(That being said, Ynnari thing could perhaps use some clarification.)

 Blacksails wrote:
You'd think after 8 editions and a few decades of experience they'd know how to write a tight ruleset.

With personal experience as a game designer, it's really, stunningly difficult to write tight rules that rely on the interpretation of the players. Simply because some people are willing to cheat in order to win, and if they can do so in a way that gives them the appearance of legitimacy they will.

You say that GW can't write tight rules.

I say that people are douche-bags, and rules-lawyering can be a form of cheating. They could write bullet-proof rules, and people would still try to figure out ways to game them.

This isn't entirely GW's fault.

It's amazing that other games manage to do it to a much higher standard than GW then.

People will be donkey-caves in any given situation, the job of a war gaming company is to write the best rules possible to minimize that impact and time spent in the rules decoding them.

No one's asking for perfection, but it can be a lot better, based on actual competitors who manage a level of writing most people are happy with.