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9th is advertised as the most playtested edition. This has to mean there's stuff that didn't make the cut.

Given some of the things that had to be FAQed with lightning speed, this concept fascinates me.

Methinks it's time for some rampant speculation (read:fabrication) for comedic effect: What are Make up some of the potentially ludicrous rules/bugs you think they might actually have caught during playtesting!

e.g. "Charging, RAW, added to your Engagement Range instead of your Charge Distance, resulting in units lining up and having fistfights at 15 meters like it was a JRPG"

or

"Due to a wording error in the Transports section, Rhinos could embark and disembark from Tactical Marines"

They didn't want to squat r&h , they just forgot them in the Same corner as they forgot half the cultists and koptas moulds.

Well balanced points values for all units and weapons....

Quite frankly I want to hear from the playtesters themselves what was cut based on the mess we got currently

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Quite frankly I want to hear from the playtesters themselves what was cut based on the mess we got currently

I'd absolutely love that too, but since we don't have that, I figured it'd be a good opportunity for a laugh to think about anyway.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Well balanced points values for all units and weapons....

I was going to say this, and still am.


Army balance and points, they saw it and threw it out for powerful marine rules.

 Amishprn86 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Well balanced points values for all units and weapons....

I was going to say this, and still am.


Army balance and points, they saw it and threw it out for powerful marine rules.

pst, wraithknights are listening

For a while, terrain pieces were treated as models in their own right, resulting in it being possible to declare them as a target for charging.

Intercessors had 5 Wounds at one point. This was dialled back as being "a little too obvious".

A keyword mix up led to the Swarmlord being considered a Swarm. At that point in time, this meant he could not traverse terrain taller than his knee, but could hide behind it.

I seem to recall that statement was bandied about.. but can you confirm where exactly it was said it was "the most playtested edition ever"

I certainly believe you, and I recall seeing/hearing it but just curious if its in writing somewhere. For posterity yous see.

I think they made marines go full 10th edition where you dotn roll dice and just say "yeh they are dead now" as you point at the target of your Facemeltors and deem which of your opponents models go back into their storage. But someone play-tested by a unicorn who did not have a marine army and decided it was too much. Much to the dismay of all of his colleagues.

 Super Ready wrote:
For a while, terrain pieces were treated as models in their own right, resulting in it being possible to declare them as a target for charging.

I think that was around the time that they were considering the table actually was completely devoid of all terrain before the game started. Players had use their own points pool and bring the terrain as part of their army. Non-Imperial forces could use Imperium styled terrain but had to pay double the points for it. Quadruple the points cost for non-Citadel brand terrain upon asking the opponent's approval before the game. I also heard that it was briefly considered that players had to buy objective markers out of their points pool as well.

Claiming this to be "the most playtested edition" doesn't mean much as previous editions set that bar very very low.

What'd they leave out? Common sense, rational thought, Squats.

Play testers, after a long in depth process decided that Reece was correct in his initial findings and the Stompa and Killa kans were indeed OP so removed all buffs they gave them before pushing 8th out.

Likewise they also decided that increasing stats and giving useful rules to boyz and Grotz that had been hit with the nerf hammer was just too complicated and instead left them as is with their points increased.

On the last day of the meetings the one guy who actually once played a game as an Ork, but only the one time, was absent and couldn't stop the other developers and play testers from nerfing Flash gitz again.

In a regression to previously badly worded editions, initially Commissars could be attached to enemy units, execute the unit's leader, and the unit would come under the control of the Commissar's owner.

The team felt that, whilst amusing, it was ultimately not realistic that a Commissar could convince a unit of Chaos Space Marines, Dark Eldar Wyches, or Genestealers to switch sides mid-battle.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
In a regression to previously badly worded editions, initially Commissars could be attached to enemy units, execute the unit's leader, and the unit would come under the control of the Commissar's owner...

Related: GW attempts to resurrect Shadowblade's hidden-in-enemy-units trick, but forgets to limit what the unit is, allowing a Callidus Assassin to auto-RFP a tank when she throws off her disguise.

They the out the baby, And the bathwater.

Remember folks, "most playtested" is not synonymous with "most carefully edited".
Most of the quick errata things are editing and reading issues. I expect most of the actual play testing is with broad statements and early draft documents. "Try using basic marines with 2 wounds and tell us how it feels" type stuff.
Play testers are definitely not being given the finished product and being asked to perform a copy editors job.

They doubled all weapons damage and all models wounds, resulting only in unecessary bookkeeping and no actuall effect on the gameplay.

Zustiur wrote:
Remember folks, "most playtested" is not synonymous with "most carefully edited".

And it's a relative statement too. If the last edition was playtested once, and this was playtested twice, that's technically the "most playtested edition".

Of course I'm not implying GW only playtested 9th twice. They playtested it at least 3 times.

In the first draft of the Imperial Guard Codex, Sly Marbo was Primarisized as part of a drive to release a new wave of Imperial Guard Primaris characters.
He was armed with a heavy intercessor assault knife, a repeating bolt demolition charge, and a heavy valaris pattern twin stubber pistol.

AdmiralHalsey wrote:
In the first draft of the Imperial Guard Codex, Sly Marbo was Primarisized as part of a drive to release a new wave of Imperial Guard Primaris characters.
He was armed with a heavy intercessor assault knife, a repeating bolt demolition charge, and a heavy valaris pattern twin stubber pistol.

Don't forget the Mk.X Flak Jacket, or "Wet Flannel" pattern.

The wording for Callidus Assassins' "Reign of Confusion" excluded the word "opponent". This meant you could use the Assassin to interrupt and ruin your own stratagems. 11 separate playtesters reported this, all with some variation of the phrase "of course I'd never be stupid enough to actually do this, but...".

An unexpected capitalisation on the instance of one word in the targeting rules, had UK players pulling out Google maps in order to calculate the distance between their attacking model and northern town Hull.

The original wording of the roll-off to go first was fairly convoluted, a casual reading would result in the player with the higher dice roll winning the game on the spot. Actually playing a game took significant rules-lawyering. The issue was sent back "working as intended" the first time.

 Super Ready wrote:
An unexpected capitalisation on the instance of one word in the targeting rules, had UK players pulling out Google maps in order to calculate the distance between their attacking model and northern town Hull.

Due to a different typo in the unit of measure for weapon ranges, a majority of weapons could still be fired within the UK. The issue wasn't caught until GW received complaints about the poor taste involved in allowing Imperial Guard artillery to shoot targets in the UK from the French coast.

This is to say nothing about the rules typo that lead a sentence to read 'May charge your opponent' and not 'your opponents model'.

After the first mid game hospitalisation, GW hurriedly updated the beta.

A quirk with the Daemon keyword temporarily allowed Avatars of Khaine to lead Slaaneshi Daemon armies.

Gretchin Movement was typoed to 55" instead of 5". This led to the brief period of testing known only to non-Ork players as the "Grot Tsunami".

Due to a lack of oversight, the AM codex used instead old 8th edition R&H units and values and mostly keywords, leading to custodes AM CSM armies.

Due to a lack of oversight buyable fortifications were able to move like infantry in the owners phase.

A copy and paste error made the Ork battlewagon into a truck and vice versa.
leading to the rise of the Truckapocalypse.

Due to a bizarre error in the files sent to the printers the 9th edition Chaos Space Marines codex is a complete and perfect reprint of the 3.5 codex. Despite the difficulty of adapting the rules to the 9th edition rules set Chaos Space Marines players around the world rejoice. The decline in their general saltiness on the forum causes the loyalists players of dakka to brand them all as "Black Knights".

I believe they threw out all the advice given to them by the playtesters and did what they wantd anyway. Then threw them under the bus. My faith in GW is at an all time low.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Due to a bizarre error in the files sent to the printers the 9th edition Chaos Space Marines codex is a complete and perfect reprint of the 3.5 codex. Despite the difficulty of adapting the rules to the 9th edition rules set Chaos Space Marines players around the world rejoice.

Two things in this break any possible verisimilitude:
A, CSM players being happy about something
B, Not even GW designers are daft enough to touch 3.5 with an eleven-foot pole.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Due to a bizarre error in the files sent to the printers the 9th edition Chaos Space Marines codex is a complete and perfect reprint of the 3.5 codex. Despite the difficulty of adapting the rules to the 9th edition rules set Chaos Space Marines players around the world rejoice.

Two things in this break any possible verisimilitude:
A, CSM players being happy about something
B, Not even GW designers are daft enough to touch 3.5 with an eleven-foot pole.

A: Wrong. This would make us very happy.
B: They already did. They just removed all of the spikes, chaos symbols, and daemons and called it c:sm 2.0.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Due to a bizarre error in the files sent to the printers the 9th edition Chaos Space Marines codex is a complete and perfect reprint of the 3.5 codex. Despite the difficulty of adapting the rules to the 9th edition rules set Chaos Space Marines players around the world rejoice.

Two things in this break any possible verisimilitude:
A, CSM players being happy about something
B, Not even GW designers are daft enough to touch 3.5 with an eleven-foot pole.

A: Wrong. This would make us very happy.
B: They already did. They just removed all of the spikes, chaos symbols, and daemons and called it c:sm 2.0.

Well, not the adaptability but rather the balance .... but yeah

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Due to a bizarre error in the files sent to the printers the 9th edition Chaos Space Marines codex is a complete and perfect reprint of the 3.5 codex. Despite the difficulty of adapting the rules to the 9th edition rules set Chaos Space Marines players around the world rejoice. The decline in their general saltiness on the forum causes the loyalists players of dakka to brand them all as "Black Knights".

Including Thralls being toughness l (yes, that is a lower case L)?, Whole squads of Raptors being able to be a single Aspiring Champion, Voltron style? Fabius Bike, too?

 Argive wrote:
I seem to recall that statement was bandied about.. but can you confirm where exactly it was said it was "the most playtested edition ever"

I certainly believe you, and I recall seeing/hearing it but just curious if its in writing somewhere. For posterity yous see.

I think they made marines go full 10th edition where you dotn roll dice and just say "yeh they are dead now" as you point at the target of your Facemeltors and deem which of your opponents models go back into their storage. But someone play-tested by a unicorn who did not have a marine army and decided it was too much. Much to the dismay of all of his colleagues.

It's not that hard to be, since IIRC they did exactly 0 pre-release playtesting before 8th Edition, so it just has to be more playtested than 8th Edition which was playtested, but not rigorously, so like any playtesting at all is "most playtested".

When the bar is on the floor, you can raise it and it can still low enough to trip on.