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It's been a month, and we already have a ton of errata for Space Wolves ALONE, let alone the rest of the armies. At this point half the entries in the Space Wolf portion of the index are already invalidated by Errata. Should GW just give up trying to print out rulebooks and update an online version instead? They can still print the pretty pictures for whoever wants it, but they should give us an updating digital version as well.

Eh, the indices were a big undertaking, trying to fit everything into a few books. I'm hoping the codices will have more care taken with them.

Speaking only for myself, the value of their books has been gone for a while now. No idea of the shelf life a book will have before its invalidated (looking at you chaos legions, deathwatch and genestealer cults). There also seems to be precious little time put into ensuring the books don't require revision and correction and cynical geedubs seem to know their market well enough and the fact that the majority of players have just come to expect faq/errata's as facts of life and somehow see them as an elective good will measure entirely at the discretion of the capricious corporate god that is gw and not a regrettable phenomenon that should be few and far between. If gw was a car manufacturer any news of a recall would never discuss say class action lawsuits or private settlements out of court and would only be met by universal praise and comments like "With this new recall, gw shows they really get us consumers. They know deep down that every one of us has strong feelings about being incinerated alive by faulty fuel injectors. They really get that, now."

The final problem is, although there is always a tonne of fantastic photography and artwork, the artwork itself, the style and design, has become less consistent in tone and style over the years and the photography though technically quite brilliant and often making creative use of deep focus still too often isn't allowed to show more contrast and grim dark (or composite work like fw) and instead still has a high key commercial vibe and if we're lucky some colored gel kickers in the back. They replaced artwork of units in their respective books with photography, which again is often great work and highlights a unified theme but feels wrong, feels like white dwarf is invading a codex. The older books compartmentalized better without feeling the need to show as many shiny toys you can buy on every page possible. Finally, the new index's absurd contempt for pts over power levels is just insulting. It's passive agressive jervis crap that I can't help but feel may not have manifested if Cruddace alone was heading up the new edition. But that's pure speculation, for all we know the marketing department has its claws fully into all aspects of "game design".

What I also find funny is I can't help but remember all the bien passant's going on about codex's being a thing of the past and rambling on about living rule sets and free rules. And here I am looking at a $60 codex space marines with mary sue marine on the front. (models look fine, fluff is a war crime, the hague should get involved). So as a marine player, looking at a rulebook with a sycophantic replacement on the front I am thinking they should give up printing rulebooks and stick to catalogs and magazines. Especially with the marketing team cutting swathes through the fluff.

I was really hoping they'd do that with this edition and realize that the majority of their profits come from miniature sales (the books are expensive, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the miniature sales). Good rules will sell models.

However it's at least good that they're attempting to fix stuff via faqs and whatnot. However I am not against Codexes as a Premium product (with lore, artwork, showcases and tips in them) as long as the hard crunch rules are free. Even now I'm buying ancient codexes and armybooks solely for the hobby and lore aspects.

Considering they cost of one is $84 for me, they already are as far as my group is concerned.

I had been under the impression that they were going to take a page from AoS and have all the unit rules and whatnot available on an app that could be updated whenever necessary.
Going back to hard copy feels like a step backwards and is incredibly messy to fix when the inevitable faqs for them come out.
I dont understand why theyve gone this way. I feel AoS has it right on this one. I like having a hard copy as much as the next guy. Love the smell and feel of pages; but theyre too expensive.

Lets not kid ourselves, those toting the line that the codeci have goid fluff and pictures have got to be dazzled by some imaginary bright light coming from geedubs signs. Fluff is either straight up bad or rehashed. Pictures you can find a plenty on a google search.

at the end of the day people like hard copy books, going purely digital would proably drive some people away. but.. digital is already avaliable if you like it

I just wish GW would update their digital versions to reflect the errata.

Personally I want printed books but I don't want Codex's - I wanted campaign books and supplements.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Personally I want printed books but I don't want Codex's - I wanted campaign books and supplements.

Campaign books timed to release with new terrain/fortifications would be nice to see, especially more xenos love and more stuff like the objective box released along side new books would be cool.

Pretty much. The rulebooks are trash, and no sane person would ever buy them. Not only is the quality of the books going downhill, favoring more catalog pictures over the older fluff and art, the rules aren't even worth the paper they're printed on. 8th edition keeps dropping FAQs that immediately invalidate the printed version of the rules, and now with stuff like the flyer nerf they're not even pretending that the printed rules have any value. I'm not going to break forum rules and advocate pirating the rulebooks, but I can certainly see why people do it.

In the age of digital media this makes a ton of sense I mean you can release digital update to automatically faq stuff

No. GW should continue doing what they do: Publish rules, and then fix them as their shortcomings are discovered. GW is doing a great job at the moment.

It wouldn't hurt for them to actually hire a few technical editors. I will say that the quality from a grammatical standpoint has plummeted. There's very much a "rush this out the door" feel to the majority of the printed material I've seen from GW.

I got an insane amount of value out of my 5th ed book, none were perfect, but it goes from a book feeling almost like an institution or school of thought to some pamphlet ideology to sell essential oils. Shiny but hollow. I don't think we can get that back, too many faction keywords..

pismakron wrote:
No. GW should continue doing what they do: Publish rules, and then fix them as their shortcomings are discovered. GW is doing a great job at the moment.

But why should I buy something that is going to immediately be invalidated by FAQs/errata? Buying a printed book makes sense if the rules have been thoroughly playtested and I'm confident that I am buying the finished version. It has a lot less appeal when the book I'm buying is just a beta test, nowhere near enough playtesting has been done, and who knows what the actual rules might be in the future.

pismakron wrote:
GW is doing a great job at the moment.

Not measuring performance and rewarding incompetence with a participation trophy, a better factory for mediocrity I know not of. First attempt in learning shouldn't have a price tag.

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
No. GW should continue doing what they do: Publish rules, and then fix them as their shortcomings are discovered. GW is doing a great job at the moment.

But why should I buy something that is going to immediately be invalidated by FAQs/errata? Buying a printed book makes sense if the rules have been thoroughly playtested and I'm confident that I am buying the finished version. It has a lot less appeal when the book I'm buying is just a beta test, nowhere near enough playtesting has been done, and who knows what the actual rules might be in the future.

What gamebooks do you buy that never have a FAQ or Errata?

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
No. GW should continue doing what they do: Publish rules, and then fix them as their shortcomings are discovered. GW is doing a great job at the moment.

But why should I buy something that is going to immediately be invalidated by FAQs/errata? Buying a printed book makes sense if the rules have been thoroughly playtested and I'm confident that I am buying the finished version. It has a lot less appeal when the book I'm buying is just a beta test, nowhere near enough playtesting has been done, and who knows what the actual rules might be in the future.

I don't know. It is up to you if you want to buy the books or not. Personally I prefer rules that are fixed and fixed again. A good rulebook is worn, full of notes and glued in errata.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
No. GW should continue doing what they do: Publish rules, and then fix them as their shortcomings are discovered. GW is doing a great job at the moment.

But why should I buy something that is going to immediately be invalidated by FAQs/errata? Buying a printed book makes sense if the rules have been thoroughly playtested and I'm confident that I am buying the finished version. It has a lot less appeal when the book I'm buying is just a beta test, nowhere near enough playtesting has been done, and who knows what the actual rules might be in the future.

What gamebooks do you buy that never have a FAQ or Errata?

I'd like to know about this perfectly published game book with no FAQ or Errata too.

 Crablezworth wrote:

pismakron wrote:
GW is doing a great job at the moment.

Not measuring performance and rewarding incompetence with a participation trophy, a better factory for mediocrity I know not of. First attempt in learning shouldn't have a price tag.

Wut x 100?

pismakron wrote:
A good rulebook is worn, full of notes and glued in errata.

No, a good rulebook is one that has been thoroughly playtested before release and doesn't require errata.

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
A good rulebook is worn, full of notes and glued in errata.

No, a good rulebook is one that has been thoroughly playtested before release and doesn't require errata.

so what you're saying is a good rule book does not exist?

 Crablezworth wrote:

The final problem is, although there is always a tonne of fantastic photography and artwork, the artwork itself, the style and design, has become less consistent in tone and style over the years and the photography though technically quite brilliant and often making creative use of deep focus still too often isn't allowed to show more contrast and grim dark (or composite work like fw) and instead still has a high key commercial vibe and if we're lucky some colored gel kickers in the back. They replaced artwork of units in their respective books with photography, which again is often great work and highlights a unified theme but feels wrong, feels like white dwarf is invading a codex. The older books compartmentalized better without feeling the need to show as many shiny toys you can buy on every page possible.

Other than GW's attempt to destroy any good parts of the fluff, this is one of my major gripes atm. They've decided that we're all too simple to understand the nuances of original 40k, and have decided to give us watered down mainstream rubbish that has little to no artistic value and only represents the simplest of narratives.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Codex-Space-Marines-hb-2017-ltd-ENG

"Look at us! We're the heroes of the universe!"

What happened to Space Nazis who come in at the last moment to save you from your own failure, and then start purging the weak, impure, heretical, and xenos-aligned?

Also. That last image. Wtf is that last image? Dual-weilding heavy weapons while hovering above the ground with grav-repulsors strapped to their feet? WHY!?

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
A good rulebook is worn, full of notes and glued in errata.

No, a good rulebook is one that has been thoroughly playtested before release and doesn't require errata.

Such a rulebook does not exist and never will, especially not for a byzantine game like w40k.

It is like software: It is never bugfree on launchdate.

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
A good rulebook is worn, full of notes and glued in errata.

No, a good rulebook is one that has been thoroughly playtested before release and doesn't require errata.

I want to live in your magical fantasy land.

pismakron wrote:
Such a rulebook does not exist and never will, especially not for a byzantine game like w40k.

It is like software: It is never bugfree on launchdate.

Only because we, as customers, have accepted the fact that we buy unfinished garbage. If people refused to buy anything that was sold in this state we would get bug-free rulebooks.

I assume they would except people keep buying them, presumably in sufficiently large amounts.

What if their thought is this:

1) Print a new rule book (but not TOO many of them)
2) Print indices with rules for all the armies.
3) Get massive feedback from the player base
4) Based on he feedback, print all the Codices in a short time span
5) Print an X.5 version of the rules

 Peregrine wrote:

pismakron wrote:
Such a rulebook does not exist and never will, especially not for a byzantine game like w40k.

It is like software: It is never bugfree on launchdate.

Only because we, as customers, have accepted the fact that we buy unfinished garbage. If people refused to buy anything that was sold in this state we would get bug-free rulebooks.

So you're admitting to being the problem? Well that's a start.