Lets discuss the multiple errors in the "Space Marines Errata"

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**the_scotsman**

Duskweaver wrote:
GW would never hire BCB, because they recruit for attitude/enthusiasm, not skill/ability/competence. Basically, if you're not a slavering fanboy, dont even bother applying.

This, as they say, works out about as well as you would imagine.

To drop the snark for a moment, that hiring policy obviously does work out OK on the retail side of the business, and on the purely creative side (art, miniature design, etc.). It falls down on the rules writing and editing side, because those are roles that really would benefit from a greater emphasis on competence over enthusiasm. It continues to astonish me that GW don't employ a single trained technical writer in their rules team. But that's apparently what they 'want'. They're a miniatures company that vomits out rulesets occasionally to give people an excuse/incentive to buy more miniatures. They're not primarily a game/ruleset producing company. As a company, they don't really 'care' about the quality of the rules. Obviously the people actually writing the rules care, but they're not competent enough to do any better at it because they're mostly ascended fanboys, not really professional designers/writers. Any who turn out to actually be good at it (Priestley, Chambers, etc.) tend to eventually go off and work for more 'professional' game design companies, where the game design is the focus, not miniatures sales.

(Full disclosure: I used to work for GW.)

I mean, hiring someone who is just a technically-minded person and isn't a slavering fanboy is one thing, but hiring someone who is an extremely vocal critic of the corporation online is another, and I would never blame a company who viewed hiring a person like that as a ticking PR time bomb.

You never want to envision a situation where someone says something mean about a bit of rules editing online and someone not PR-facing logs on to go full keyboard warrior on them.

**JohnnyHell**

chromedog wrote:
So a new thread on GW about shoddy rules writing ...?

Sounds like a day ending in "y" to me.

BCB, if it grinds your gears so much, why continue to play?
It's not because of the rules, obviously.

By his own admission he doesn't play. His hobby is soapboxing about GW's rules.

**Wayniac**

You seem surprised. Every single fething thing they print has glaring errors and even the errata needs errata. It's beyond ridiculous at this point and yet most people don't care.

**the_scotsman**

My favorite intended feature of the errata was not even allowing the much weaker one-parter chapter tactics of the successors to apply to vehicles.

Oh noooo, a blood angel tank might get +1 to wound when it charges! A thousand sons land raider might get +6" range to its psychic powers! That would be OP!

**Agamemnon2**

Wayniac wrote:
You seem surprised. Every single fething thing they print has glaring errors and even the errata needs errata. It's beyond ridiculous at this point and yet most people don't care.

He's not surprised, having GW make errors is what gives BCB life. He thrives based on their mistakes.

**Wayniac**

Agamemnon2 wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
You seem surprised. Every single fething thing they print has glaring errors and even the errata needs errata. It's beyond ridiculous at this point and yet most people don't care.

He's not surprised, having GW make errors is what gives BCB life. He thrives based on their mistakes.

He takes it extreme but he's not wrong. It continually amzes me how peole are willing to put up with grossly inferior proofreading and book quality from GW. Any other company would be raked over the coals for it and told to get their gak in order, but it's somehow okay for GW to do it and nobody cares because "muh pretty models".

**slave.entity**

Duskweaver wrote:
GW would never hire BCB, because they recruit for attitude/enthusiasm, not skill/ability/competence. Basically, if you're not a slavering fanboy, dont even bother applying.

This, as they say, works out about as well as you would imagine.

To drop the snark for a moment, that hiring policy obviously does work out OK on the retail side of the business, and on the purely creative side (art, miniature design, etc.). It falls down on the rules writing and editing side, because those are roles that really would benefit from a greater emphasis on competence over enthusiasm. It continues to astonish me that GW don't employ a single trained technical writer in their rules team. But that's apparently what they 'want'. They're a miniatures company that vomits out rulesets occasionally to give people an excuse/incentive to buy more miniatures. They're not primarily a game/ruleset producing company. As a company, they don't really 'care' about the quality of the rules. Obviously the people actually writing the rules care, but they're not competent enough to do any better at it because they're mostly ascended fanboys, not really professional designers/writers. Any who turn out to actually be good at it (Priestley, Chambers, etc.) tend to eventually go off and work for more 'professional' game design companies, where the game design is the focus, not miniatures sales.

(Full disclosure: I used to work for GW.)

Makes sense. Who are some examples of ascended fanboys that work for GW? The only one I'm familiar with is Laurie Goulding but he's Black Library. But I assume this hiring practice extends to all GW divisions?

**Marin**

Nothing new really, i think GW will try to unify most of the chapters, but having to buy 2 super expensive books to play your army is not good design.
I guess they were to busy to make SM OP without breaking the game and did not work on the small details. I hope i`m wrong but it looks that SM will be worst than Ynnari.

Congrats to our cat, again finding mistakes in GW documents.

**Daedalus81**

the_scotsman wrote:
My favorite intended feature of the errata was not even allowing the much weaker one-parter chapter tactics of the successors to apply to vehicles.

Oh noooo, a blood angel tank might get +1 to wound when it charges! A thousand sons land raider might get +6" range to its psychic powers! That would be OP!

The problem isn't that weak tactics wouldn't do much. It's that the stronger ones would become the only ones people play (e.g. probably Scourged or Alpha Legion).

**Reemule**

Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

**casvalremdeikun**

the_scotsman wrote:
My favorite intended feature of the errata was not even allowing the much weaker one-parter chapter tactics of the successors to apply to vehicles.

Oh noooo, a blood angel tank might get +1 to wound when it charges! A thousand sons land raider might get +6" range to its psychic powers! That would be OP!

An unedited version of Alpha Legion Tactics on vehicles would be pretty harsh. So it could be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

**Daedalus81**

Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

Let's say I go to the restaurant with my friend. That friend orders a steak rare and many times it comes medium rare. He complains and sends the food back. I think he should just eat the steak or just not order it any more.

The comments you see are poorly vented frustration with someone who complains about everything. We get it. gak happens. Everyone else can make do. Until people stop buying the books the process at GW won't change and people won't stop buying books, because at the end of the day it's still usable and not that big of a deal.

**Lemondish**

Another release, another BCB thread.

Never change, buddy.

**Klickor**

People saying that RAI is obvious should remember that "UNIT" and "unit" are two completely different things. The Killshot stratagem only works with the normal predators and not with baal predators. Same with the whirlwind one. If I remember correctly any Landspeeder works for the spotting but only the normal Whirlwind works. Not obvious the first time you read it that it only affects certain units even if there are other units that have mostly the same name. Small details like that matters in this edition so GW shouldn't be forgiven for such mistakes.

**Tyranid Horde**

I find these threads quite useful, they're not something you should try to do yourself, but if you play someone who tries to RAW things out it's quite important to know the rules in depth like this.

GW's rules team need to be more careful. They can't catch everything, but they need some sort of consistency, especially in errata.

**Sgt. Cortez**

If you can't make out which unit is meant with Reiver Squad or Aggressors I'm not sure the incompetence is on GWs side.

The Beast question and Ironclad bonus are interesting though and will probably be solved in the next FAQ.

**TwinPoleTheory**

Do changes to 'Drop Pod Assault' affect FW drop pods, if so, do they affect CSM drop pods? The errata specifically addresses the Codex drop pod and arguably only the Codex drop pod. Nothing like a tactical wargame to bring people to the pedantry exercise.

**bullyboy**

Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

BCB will probably reply with "you're"

**Reemule**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

Let's say I go to the restaurant with my friend. That friend orders a steak rare and many times it comes medium rare. He complains and sends the food back. I think he should just eat the steak or just not order it any more.

The comments you see are poorly vented frustration with someone who complains about everything. We get it. gak happens. Everyone else can make do. Until people stop buying the books the process at GW won't change and people won't stop buying books, because at the end of the day it's still usable and not that big of a deal.

He complained in a thread clearly labeled. No one came to this thread by mistake. Its not the restaurant analogy. If it was, it wouldn't be you just happened to eat at a place and he whined about the Steak, it would be you went to that place, and eagerly waited for him to get a steak he didn't order, and then gleefully said, HA, don't come here anymore, you dumbass!

**Galef**

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
If you can't make out which unit is meant with Reiver Squad or Aggressors I'm not sure the incompetence is on GWs side.

Kind of agree. This is a game meant for nerds to have fun with toy soldiers. GW is a models company and put that first.

The rules are more like Saturday morning cartoons like Transformers and TMNT: basically 22min commercials for the toys. They did not have the best plots of most coherent story lines AT ALL, but they did their job at selling toys to kids.
Treat the rules like this, use "common sense", roll some dice or move on

-

**Daedalus81**

Reemule wrote:
Daedalus81 wrote:
Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

Let's say I go to the restaurant with my friend. That friend orders a steak rare and many times it comes medium rare. He complains and sends the food back. I think he should just eat the steak or just not order it any more.

The comments you see are poorly vented frustration with someone who complains about everything. We get it. gak happens. Everyone else can make do. Until people stop buying the books the process at GW won't change and people won't stop buying books, because at the end of the day it's still usable and not that big of a deal.

He complained in a thread clearly labeled. No one came to this thread by mistake. Its not the restaurant analogy. If it was, it wouldn't be you just happened to eat at a place and he whined about the Steak, it would be you went to that place, and eagerly waited for him to get a steak he didn't order, and then gleefully said, HA, don't come here anymore, you dumbass!

These threads make me roll my eyes, but I don't care to legislate what BCB does with his time. People are entitled to their opinions and they must accept the criticisms that might follow - provided nothing breaks forum rules.

**Peregrine**

Galef wrote:
Sgt. Cortez wrote:
If you can't make out which unit is meant with Reiver Squad or Aggressors I'm not sure the incompetence is on GWs side.
Kind of agree. This is a game meant for nerds to have fun with toy soldiers. GW is a models company and put that first.

The rules are more like Saturday morning cartoons like Transformers and TMNT: basically 22min commercials for the toys. They did not have the best plots of most coherent story lines AT ALL, but they did their job at selling toys to kids.
Treat the rules like this, use "common sense", roll some dice or move on

-

This is exactly the problem! GW publishes a low quality product because they're too lazy to do better, and not only do their customers keep buying they even defend GW and present this lack of quality as a good thing! It's this weird "oh yes, hurt me more daddy" masochism, except without any of the sexy fun parts.

**Daedalus81**

Peregrine wrote:

GW publishes a low quality product because they're too lazy to do better

There's a difference between being lazy and being overworked with crazy project timelines and poor management and resources. GW COULD throw money at the problem, but WHY would they? They're already dedicating resources to FAQ and errata as needed.

and not only do their customers keep buying they even defend GW and present this lack of quality as a good thing!

Incorrect.

**Galef**

You are missing the point. GW is not being lazy. They just have different priorities than what you think they SHOULD have. They could absolutely make a tight coherent ruleset with little to no errors.
How could they not? It's easy if that was the goal, but it's clearly not their goal. So why get upset about it and call them incompetent?
The rules function well enough with even the slightest bit on common sense applied and GWs sales have never been higher. That's a win for everyone.

-

**ClockworkZion**

Despite the fast paced release schedule I think we can safely say the current 40k rules are the tightest they've been in a very long time and the only way they could get tighter is slowing the release schedule way back down (and act no one sees happening since GW is making money hand over fist with this model) or by hiring a larger design team (which could lead to some serious bloat issues within the development team).

I do believe 40k needs to steal the idea of having a single standardization document on rules verbage from their AoS team, but that's a minor thing in the grand scheme of things and could be implemented whenever we end up in the next edition (where they hopefully nick the way initiative and command points work too).

**Peregrine**

Galef wrote:
You are missing the point. GW is not being lazy. They just have different priorities than what you think they SHOULD have. They could absolutely make a tight coherent ruleset with little to no errors.
How could they not? It's easy if that was the goal, but it's clearly not their goal. So why get upset about it and call them incompetent?
The rules function well enough with even the slightest bit on common sense applied and GWs sales have never been higher. That's a win for everyone.

-

Because willingly deciding to publish an error-filled product is inexcusable incompetence and/or abusive business practice, even worse than the theory that GW tries to do better but is too incompetent to succeed. Stop making excuses for GW.

**Grimtuff**

bullyboy wrote:
Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

BCB will probably reply with "you're"

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, as the man in question does not know the difference between less and fewer; as evidenced by the very first sentence ITT.

**Galef**

Peregrine wrote:
Stop making excuses for GW.

I'm not trying to, I fully acknowledge that the "product" isn't perfect, but it's hardly as bad or "inexcusable" as you're making it out to be.
I'm just trying to get some people to stop taking that so seriously, use common sense to "fix" the error yourself and get back to having fun.

-

**BaconCatBug**

Grimtuff wrote:
bullyboy wrote:
Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

BCB will probably reply with "you're"

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, as the man in question does not know the difference between less and fewer; as evidenced by the very first sentence ITT.

Guess what, I am not paid to write forum posts, and I don't charge you for them. Once I start charging you £50 per post, then you get to complain.

A typo in a internet forum post made at 10pm after 5 seconds of work is not comparable to a professionally made book.

Also, you're wrong in any case: https://commonenglisherrors.com/one-less-thing-vs-one-fewer-thing-one-correct/

**timetowaste85**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Reemule wrote:
Come on people. If someone makes a factual statement and it makes you:

Ask them to leave.
Make a personal attack.

You are the problem. Your terrible, and you should be ashamed.

Let's say I go to the restaurant with my friend. That friend orders a steak rare and many times it comes medium rare. He complains and sends the food back. I think he should just eat the steak or just not order it any more.

The comments you see are poorly vented frustration with someone who complains about everything. We get it. gak happens. Everyone else can make do. Until people stop buying the books the process at GW won't change and people won't stop buying books, because at the end of the day it's still usable and not that big of a deal.

You missed a bit; in this example, the friend would have to actually be a vegetarian (or some other equivalent that abstains from eating meat), yet still order the steak like this. That would be a more accurate analogy. Because BCB doesn’t play. He only cries about how bad GW are. Some of us are into GW for painting, some for lore, some for the game. BCB is in it to complain.

And no, that isn’t a personal attack; that is factual evidence, provided in [almost] every thread he starts/responds to. I had other words I WANTED to use, but the nature of said words would fall under “personal attack”. So I toned them down.