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This is, of course, not an new idea and it does get floated every so often.

However, reflecting on the games I have played of late, it strikes me that the most fun I had was when everyone was playing out of the index. There are a few likely reasons for this:

1) The edition was new and fresh - suddenly everything crap was good again! This impression, of course, wears off over time.

2) The power levels of basically everything (barring a few IG builds and Gully the Man) were pretty low, but comparable to one another.

3) Some time needed to pass before the greatest cheese chefs among us, and at large among the masses, discovered the perfect recipes for imperial/chaos soup.

4) Everything in the book seemed to have been done at the same time, with a single vision of how the rules were to play out in practice.

and

5) There was less "stuff" in general (stratagems, warlord traits etc).

Reasons 1-3 suggest that things were not so different from right now, but that the problems that we are beginning to see with 8th as 2018 comes round the corner were there from the inception - but let's ignore that unfortunate impediment to a good thought experiment for now.

What I would like to discuss is whether other people think that the best way for 8th to move forward (post every army getting a codex) would be in a more pen and paper RPG style "setting book" format.

In this format a new book would release from time to time, accompanied by models (and of course shiny new custom dice), with something new (a unit, a warlord trait a relic and a stratagem for instance) for EVERY faction. The book would be worked upon by a single team, with a single vision and covering some particular time-slice of the fluff, to be consumed or ignored as deemed appropriate by the play- group.

In this way, hopefully, everyone could have something to look forward to and GW could sell a bunch of models to a bunch of different players, rather than trying to convince all of us to, say, buy a Dark Angels army.

Thoughts?

1. No, everything crap wasn't good again, it just naturally took a few weeks for us to work out where everything was now.

2. No, they really, really weren't.

3. About 2 weeks. This isn't rocket science after all, just some very basic maths and reading comprehension.

4. Are you saying it was intended that the majority of the Craftworld Eldar, Necrons and Tau lists were/are unplayably bad?

5. Yes, and it was oh so bland.

As for your suggestion, hell no, I don't want 50 different rule sets for my army.

To all your points: hell no.

ok, I'll bite....what about no codex, but indexes that update every year?

My hope at the beginning of the edition was to have indexes then campaign style books for new model releases. Then have chapter approved updates on the indexes every year.

Then perhaps have codices be the home of things like warlord traits, stratagems etc.

I think codexes and special rules are good, but I think chapter approved should be a more living document that GW keeps online and either free or a online purchase yearly for 12 months of updates. There they can adjust points and rules quickly. make it a small biweekly update. Say this week. after review we have decided unit A points cost has been adjusted to Y, unit B has adjusted to Z. change rule C text to read ____. organize all previous changes by army for easy use and boom profit.

I play Imperium.

I'm okay playing games where everyone uses Index and games where everyone uses Codex. Or any variation.

I'll find a way.

In all honesty, my only major gripe is this.

GW took pains to actually give us a true, living ruleset. Bi-yearly errata, rules updates, beta-rules, etc.

But the way we are getting these? Well, it's a mess right now.

You have a rulebook, your codex, Chapter Approved, and you still need your index for combinations not re-listed in your codex (some of which are pretty damn important).

This is super messy and because of the initial pace, it basically got bad immediately after release with the only clean and succinct period being the initial rules+index release window.

This game and GW's distribution of it is being mired by the ultra-traditional release scheme they've stubbornly stuck with. But it's a bloody living game and dead-tree books are not doing it any favours.

Army starter boxes should come with a mini-rulebook (along with index/codex entries for the contents). They should publish big, impressive fluff-filled setting books for collectors because even if their proof-reading tends to suck, their production values have always been stellar and those would certainly still sell (hell, they're collectors items, mark 'em up and few would bat an eye). But the end of that little mini rulebook should have a website where people can go an get the latest/greatest set of rules for the main game and their army (plus a beta rules document). These documents would be kept up to date, they would be free, and it would eliminate the multi-book headache.

But people still love their dead tree editions, so get on board with Print-on-Demand technology and sell PoD army books and rulebooks for people that want hard copies, but don't make it the primary means of distributing your LIVING rule set.

It is their insistence on not evolving their distribution that is now holding 40k back and as time goes on, it will become more and more unfriendly to new players so long as they insist on sticking with dead tree as a primary means of getting rules to people in a game that is trying to sell itself on being an ever-evolving, consistently updated and evergreen version of 40k. This method is not sustainable, and for their current plan to work, they need sustainability.

Hell, if they don't want it to be free, I'd be fine with a more tightly controlled set of paid ePubs than we currently have (because I still need a rulebook, Chapter Approved, my index, and a codex even in eBook formats, which kind of defeats the purpose of having these in formats where all those changes and errata can be done whenever they want to push an update to them).

Getting rid of codices isn't the way to go, those are fine. The problem is that we have a living ruleset being jammed in to a dead, static format that is averse to the frequent updates they appear to want to do.

I see people constantly complaining about all the books you have to have. You always, in practically every edition, need the BRB and the codex of your army. Now, things get a little tricky. Index stuff is there, but most people don't use it. I'm of the mindset that index units not in the codex are probably not going to be in the next edition so I'm not bothering with it.

That leaves us with Chapter Approved. I'd much rather Chapter Approved be almost a subscription based program. And before people freak out, hear me out. GW is basically making everyone buy Chapter Approved each year. It's in the books and it's happening if you want to stay in congruency with the game. I'd rather have Chapter Approved be a yearly price point where you get access to that year's Chapter Approved, as well as an online version that is updated as GW goes. If you pay the price for the year, you get access to that year's up-to-date ruleset online.

I completely agree OP.

The codices introduce a mess that clealry GW is unable to balance.

I’m really tired of hearing that playing with the indices was bland. No, it wasn’t. There is a major fallacy among many gamers that more choices ALWAYS equals better. When really, only meanngful choices are better. Plus, this so-called blandness is only relative to the soupy mess that 7th edition was.

More bad choices is not better or more ‘flavorful’. There’s a reason why pepperoni pizza is delicious - it’s simple and enjoyable because the food is good. If you don’t like pepperoni or cheese puzza there’s a good chance you dont actually like pizza.

If you need a glut of choices to enjoy something, you probably dont actually enjoy the thing itself.

dosmill wrote:
I completely agree OP.

The codices introduce a mess that clealry GW is unable to balance.

I’m really tired of hearing that playing with the indices was bland. No, it wasn’t. There is a major fallacy among many gamers that more choices ALWAYS equals better. When really, only meanngful choices are better. Plus, this so-called blandness is only relative to the soupy mess that 7th edition was.

More bad choices is not better or more ‘flavorful’. There’s a reason why pepperoni pizza is delicious - it’s simple and enjoyable because the food is good. If you don’t like pepperoni or cheese puzza there’s a good chance you dont actually like pizza.

If you need a glut of choices to enjoy something, you probably dont actually enjoy the thing itself.

Playing with Indexes was bland. That was their general idea, if you remember. Indexes weren't this golden age miniature wargaming. Just something to upgrade everyone at once to this completely new edition. And there were many oversights.

Of course, I would be okay with just playing with Indexes. I mostly do IG anyway.

I use the BRB for 2 minutes to set up the mission.
I have the codex just in case we need to look up a special rule.
No army needs more than 2 pages out Chapter Approved. Copy those 2 pages and tuck rhem into your codex.

dosmill wrote:
I completely agree OP.

The codices introduce a mess that clealry GW is unable to balance.

I’m really tired of hearing that playing with the indices was bland. No, it wasn’t. There is a major fallacy among many gamers that more choices ALWAYS equals better. When really, only meanngful choices are better. Plus, this so-called blandness is only relative to the soupy mess that 7th edition was.

More bad choices is not better or more ‘flavorful’. There’s a reason why pepperoni pizza is delicious - it’s simple and enjoyable because the food is good. If you don’t like pepperoni or cheese puzza there’s a good chance you dont actually like pizza.

If you need a glut of choices to enjoy something, you probably dont actually enjoy the thing itself.

The indexes weren't even a pepperoni pizza, you were basically just eating an empty crust. Not sure what this nonsense about the codices introducing imbalance is either, the gap between Index: Guard and Index: Necrons was way bigger than that between Codex: Guard/Nids/Eldar and Codex: AdMech.

 Voidswatchman wrote:
This is, of course, not an new idea and it does get floated every so often.

However, reflecting on the games I have played of late, it strikes me that the most fun I had was when everyone was playing out of the index. There are a few likely reasons for this:

1) The edition was new and fresh - suddenly everything crap was good again! This impression, of course, wears off over time.

2) The power levels of basically everything (barring a few IG builds and Gully the Man) were pretty low, but comparable to one another.

3) Some time needed to pass before the greatest cheese chefs among us, and at large among the masses, discovered the perfect recipes for imperial/chaos soup.

4) Everything in the book seemed to have been done at the same time, with a single vision of how the rules were to play out in practice.

and

5) There was less "stuff" in general (stratagems, warlord traits etc).

Reasons 1-3 suggest that things were not so different from right now, but that the problems that we are beginning to see with 8th as 2018 comes round the corner were there from the inception - but let's ignore that unfortunate impediment to a good thought experiment for now.

What I would like to discuss is whether other people think that the best way for 8th to move forward (post every army getting a codex) would be in a more pen and paper RPG style "setting book" format.

In this format a new book would release from time to time, accompanied by models (and of course shiny new custom dice), with something new (a unit, a warlord trait a relic and a stratagem for instance) for EVERY faction. The book would be worked upon by a single team, with a single vision and covering some particular time-slice of the fluff, to be consumed or ignored as deemed appropriate by the play- group.

In this way, hopefully, everyone could have something to look forward to and GW could sell a bunch of models to a bunch of different players, rather than trying to convince all of us to, say, buy a Dark Angels army.

Thoughts?

What game are you playing to have such an unrealistic opinion? lol. Literally everything you mentioned is wrong for reasons people above have mentioned.

What game are you playing to have such an unrealistic opinion? lol. Literally everything you mentioned is wrong for reasons people above have mentioned.

Clearly a game that takes place in a very different environment, with different sets of armies, from yourself. It probably helped my first impressions that the people that I play with don't tend to run Necrons or Tau (the armies with which people seem to be having the most problems finding anything interesting/viable to do).

Indeed, my impressions were probably helped by the fact that I play Dark Eldar (among others) - which while there are problematic elements of the index list - was an army that was, on the whole, improved by the index compared to its previous standing.

1. No, everything crap wasn't good again, it just naturally took a few weeks for us to work out where everything was now.

2. No, they really, really weren't.

3. About 2 weeks. This isn't rocket science after all, just some very basic maths and reading comprehension.

4. Are you saying it was intended that the majority of the Craftworld Eldar, Necrons and Tau lists were/are unplayably bad?

5. Yes, and it was oh so bland.

As for your suggestion, hell no, I don't want 50 different rule sets for my army.

You are undeniably correct about 1, and indeed I suggested you might be in the opening post. It took a little longer - at least in my group - for people to work out the apex choices (but I think that is because we were excited about getting stuff on the table that had not been viable for YEARS, and which looked like it might be a bit better this edition viz mandrakes).

I didn't find the Craftworlders to be incredibly bland in the index - actually had a really good game of craftworld (me) vs chaos at 1500pts, which remains one of my favorites to this day. I was able to run a mixed list of aspects and felt like they all pulled their weight, even the banshees (hell, even the scorpions). Different strokes for different folks I guess.

As for the Crons and Tau, as afore stated, not much going on with them up my way - so my view is obscured to precisely how much like chewing cardboard they were and are like to play.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that the index days were the halcyon days of yore where everything was good and the rivers flowed with milk and honey. It was just a somewhat refreshing change from the "oh, so x faction has a new codex, which means that x faction is the new hotness". It was nice to see almost everyone get goodies at the same time - and THAT is what I am in favor of. There has been a lot of chat about the various books that one needs to play any given army, I have no stance on this. Some armies are always going to need more than one book when your rules system allows for allies.

I also prefer the game when my units stay on the board for more than a turn or two. I do admit that alpha strike was ALWAYS going to be an issue, and that is something that is clear as day from the index when read with a knowing eye.

I still don't understand why the AoS approach to rules is not considered.

Keep the rules side of the equation free. Just download the pdf. You want something like basic rules, faction rules and individual unit rules. Whenever balancing issues arise, the pdf:s can be altered to address that with a minimum of hassle for both GW and players. You also don't need to push a library cart around whenever you wish to play a game.

Hell. look at some tactics discussions. I swear, some of them look like this: "Oh, so you're playing Astra Eldar Marines Angels? Great, you need their Codex for the basic unit rules of course, but the army really starts to shine when you use the rules from the C'ash C'ow supplement. Best if you run the formation you find in the Atalcosts supplement, too. Yeah, and you want the artifacts from the Bank Breaker supplement, And don't forget to take your allies from the Palmgrease Codex, where it's absolutely crucial that the HQ takes the Gamebreaker artifact from the Pocketburner book and the Cheddar formation from the Arm and Leg book (you also want the dataslate which gives him +1 WS). I mean, honestly...

Sure, you won't be selling rule books anymore. Then again, you save on inventory space, and I'm pretty sure in this day and age physical books just work as a deterrent of entry anyway. People feel they have less money to spend on plastic crack if the Internet tells them they need a Wheel of Time's worth of rule books to make their army viable on the table. Pretty sure the financial hit of not selling books would be compensated for by the increase in plastic sales.

Because gw is gw and they are not capable of real evolution only giving lip service to it.

They know they can't make you replace models but they can make you buy rule books.

 Imateria wrote:
1. No, everything crap wasn't good again, it just naturally took a few weeks for us to work out where everything was now.

2. No, they really, really weren't.

3. About 2 weeks. This isn't rocket science after all, just some very basic maths and reading comprehension.

4. Are you saying it was intended that the majority of the Craftworld Eldar, Necrons and Tau lists were/are unplayably bad?

5. Yes, and it was oh so bland.

As for your suggestion, hell no, I don't want 50 different rule sets for my army.

3 is bull. It takes 3-6 months for 40k meta to fully shake out. People have a good idea of the theory behind what's good and what isn't after 2 weeks, but prep (purchase/build/paint) and practical on table maximization take time.

GW needs to release their app on a subscription basis, for like 5 bucks a month, whatever your currency is. The app is updated whenever GW wants to. No need for codexes, indexes, chapter approved, FAQs. Its all in one app.

GW should only sell miniatures and fluff (black library), and exclusive goods like hardcover books by pre-orders. All rules and codexes should be free PDF downloads together with erratas on their website. I can see that increasing the flow of fresh blood into hobby dramatically, breaking the wall for people who don't know if they want to invest into hobby or not. When you know that the only thing you really need are the miniatures, you will just go and buy more miniatures. And my guess is that's what most people want - more miniatures and paints to paint them, and play them, not hoarding books with same lore dumps and old imagery reprinted for 20+ years. Not to mention BRB/codexes being heavy and taking space, and nobody really wants to carry that around.

A single rule library app with search option would't be bad either.

 Rasclomalum wrote:
I still don't understand why the AoS approach to rules is not considered.

KIlling Warhammer Fantasy was not a popular decision. They needed to give the rules away to lure players into trying it.

40K was able to sell Indexes we knew were going to invalidated in short order. 40K is GW's big money maker. They don't need to give it away for free.