Haven’t had time to go through them much, but here you go:
Main Rulebook FAQ: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1490286a_40K_Rulebook_v1.pdf
Grey Knights FAQ: http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1490286a_40K_Rulebook_v1.pdf
You know how you know GW hates you? Most of these FAQs have edit dates from July.
“ZOMG, Halberds are so awesome!” The Internet raves. ”It should be like, all Halberds, all the time!” Hokay, now, calm down. Yes, NFW Halberds are good. Going at Initiative 6 puts you before the whole wide world of MEQs (like 60% of 4ok, at least), even before those with furious charge. Since they’re power weapons, that are often at a boosted strength, you are really fairly likely kill a lot of the enemy before they get a chance to swing. But, of course, not everything is a MEQ (just as not every vehicle is a rhino), and even against a MEQ (Marine EQuivalent) there are times when the the +2 initiative isn’t going to be helpful. Perhaps, more importantly, all the other Nemesis Force Weapons can be pretty awesome, though costs and cost effectiveness for all of them vary widely by unit. So let’s talk about when to use NFW halberds, and what the real cost/benefit of them is. First, let’s get two things out of the way.
So, another round of GW FAQ updates is out, fixing various problems, clearing up questions, most of which shouldn’t have been asked, ALL of which shouldn’t have needed to be asked.
They very noticeably come much faster now, for which, many would argue, I should be grateful. The last Grey Knights and Main Rule Book FAQ was only a month ago. And I do, in way, feel grateful, but as soon as that feeling wells up, I grow bitter, because truth be told, these FAQs should largely be unnecessary. If Games Workshop play-tested in any sort of reasonable manner, most of these ambiguities wouldn’t exist. Unleash your average cynical gamer on something like the new Grey Knight Codex, and inside an hour, I think most of them would have had at least 80% of the questions I finally compiled. Only about half of which were answered by the original FAQ, and only a tiny fraction more were answered by the recent update. The fact that the original codex had so many ambiguities, and the FAQ only answered half the questions, is reflective of a fundamental un-seriousness in Games Workshops rules process. Don’t they care about rules, balance, a game that works?
No, they do not. Games Workshop is simply un-serious about rules. They design their rules around 12 year-old boys, and older gamers drinking beer and eating pretzels. You want a tight game, a game that cares about rules, what they mean, and how they can affect the outcome of two adults competing with each other in game of wits, that also happens to involve prettily painted toy soldiers? Go play warmachine. I’m serious, that’s GWs answer.
You know how I know? First new bit in the Main Rule Book FAQ: “Q: When two special rules or effects contradict each other how is this resolved? (p2) A: Roll off using ‘The Most Important Rule!”
Fuck off, GW. You plan to fail. If you wrote rules like they mattered, as if the game, which sells your models, was based upon them, you wouldn’t put forth answers like this. You’d seek to resolve the inconsistencies, ambiguities, and outright conflicts one by one until there simply weren’t anymore.
If you’re not aware of how much better and more logical a system warmachine is, you simply haven’t read the rules. Oh, I’m not saying you have to like the game, overall, aesthetics certainly has a lot to do with it, but the fact that rule system is tight, barely ever open to interpretation, and balanced, is unquestionable. If you are familiar with the system, how many times can you think of that people were unsure of how a rule worked, even in a complex interaction with another rule? How much and how long was somethign strongly unbalanced allowed to persist for? Oh, it has happened, I can think of a few instances. Count on one hand kinda “few”. How many can you think of has happened with Games Workshop rules?
Many hundreds, at least. You know it’s true.
Yes, the new FAQs come much faster. Yes, that’s progress. I’m reasonably sure they’ve been driven to this by Warmachine’s rise in popularity, and the acknowledgement that a lot of that is probably driven by a sensible ruleset.
And even with these changes brought about by Privateer Press eating their lunch, still they’re so lackadaisical? I am almost literally disgusted.
Rules are important. Rules matter. Rules lead to a system in which “tactics” can flourish. And as a intellectual, macho gamer — I basically play this game to measure my brain against my opponents — tactics are far and away what I care about.
And games workshop, which just happens to own the most popular war game system at the time, does not. And it pains me.
Let’s look at what the recent changes brought, shall we? Nothing momentous at all, but yes, it is good they’re making efforts.
The internets, by and wide, seem pretty happy with the new GK codex. Well, I’m not.
No, it’s not sour grapes cuz they made the GK codex less powerful, or nerfed my favorite trick. Quite the opposite, I think it made GK more powerful.
What I hate is that these FAQs (both the Main Rulebook FAQ and Grey Knight FAQ) is that it was kinda the usual thing, only more so. They answered questions that no one was asking, didn’t answer most of the questions actually had, and then made some extra stupid decisions besides.
So, I’m going to grade the FAQs. 1 pt for each questions answered, -1 pt for each totally stupid ruling made, and then divide that by the total questions people actually had. I’ll leave the questions they answered that no one was asking neutral.
Questions they answered that no one was asking (0 pts):
From the Main FAQ:
From GK FAQ:
OK, folks that is 4+14=17 absolutely useless questions. They don’t hurt anything, but seriously, no one wondered this stuff. Just wasting our time and assuming we’re stupid.
Man, and I just posted my GK FAQ section part 2, this morning, too.
Actually, a few key changes were made in the main rule book FAQ too, especially things affecting psykers. I’ll include those, too.
Here’s the FAQ’s. I don’t want to copy and paste the entire .pdf as I comment on it (probably fair use, but I don’t want to argue with GW about that) so just open them up in separate window and follow along as I go through 1 by 1.
Grey Knight FAQ (please note despite it saying updated 6/7/11, I’m pretty sure this was only released today. My posting my FAQ questions part 2 earlier this morning wasn’t that silly)
Can I say, for the record, as per usual, they only answered half the questions that needed answering, answered some questions no one was asking, and then made some horrible decisions on top of that. Yay for GW!
I tackled part 1 a few days ago, and after writing a quite lengthy post, I cut it short, not anywhere near done.
I’m doing the Boston Brawlcon 4th of July weekend. I desperately want many of these questions answered, as some of them will affect the viability of certain lists versus others. Of course, I’m probably only halfway through this series of articles, and if they FAQ’d the thing this weekend, I’d be deprived of something to blather on about, so I’m a little conflicted.
FAQ Questions, Part 1, can be found here.
As before, I will make some notes regarding RAW (read as written), RAI (read as intended), and GAP (game as played, which simply means what the consensus has been to play it as, in the lack of any other direction, or perhaps “screw it, rule is fucked)
Here we go!
So, lo, the some 11 years awaited new Grey Knight codex has been released, two full months ago, and to some degree the dust has settled, and people have had the chance to fully absorb the codex.
I think it’s a good codex. It’s reasonably balanced, both internally (as in it is tough to choose what units to take), and externally (despite much moaning, it seems to be able to take on most enemies, while at the same time it does represent an “easy win” against most other codexes, not even tyranids). It’s certainly a decent “apology” codex to all those who for years and years wanted to play a Grey Knight army, in which group I myself would belong to. The previous codex was specifically intended to make an all GK army hard to pull-off.
I even like most of the fluff, ridiculous though it may be. I do, however dislike how they made GK much more like regular marines. They were once WS 5, Strength 6 fearless, with a crippling lack of rhinos. Now they are basically just regular marines, all of whom, granted, are mini librarians, but other than that, they’re merely same old Astartes, but with shinier gear.
But the rules, the rules are good. Well, at least what we think the rules are.
Because Games Workshop, ever known for writing ambiguous rules, has done one of the worst jobs ever with this codex. Epically bad rules-writing. All they had to do was ask your typical 9th grade D&D rules lawyer what to make of these rules, and that would have easily told them how poor these rules were, but no, they couldn’t be brought to do that.
Let’s see how long a list we can make, shall we? After each question, I will make some notes regarding RAW (read as written), RAI (read as intended), and GAP (game as played, which simply means what the consensus has been to play it as, in the lack of any other direction, or perhaps “screw it, rule is fucked) Continue reading »
