Something went swuuuusch

[Manus]

...and that sound was the all the new rules stuff flying past me without me not seeing anything - and understanding even less.

I get, partly from Geifer, that several new thing are incorporated into regular games of 40K 

Geifer helped me out with escalation:" Escalation is an expansion to 40k (in the update kind of way, not the optional kind of way) that adds a Lord of War choice to the FOC, similar to the Fortification slot, allowing you to play one of the super heavy vehicles and gargantuan creatures found in the Escalation book (and Forgeworld's PDF list of their models) in armies below Apocalypse size. In short, Baneblade in a 1500pts army, just as an example. The rules follow those of Apocalypse, which means it introduces D strength weapons, large templates and the like to smaller sized games. To counter-balance, super heavies give up additional victory points, and the opposing army gets a minor bonus or two, provided they don't bring along their own Lord of War."

Now on to: dataslates? minidexes? stronghold?? please help and old man out, so I might be able to play again someday !!!!

[Lord Draconiroth]

And that, sir, is why I've washed my hands of 40k right now. Probably for at least the year...

[Geifer]

Stronghold Assault is easiest. You know the fortifications in the rulebook? Stronghold Assault provides more of that (and repeats these, with I think one or two additions/overhauls). You get rules for the Wall of Martyrs kits, the Planetstrike terrain, that Marine satue and smashed aquila, Fortress of Redemtion and big bird bunker. Additionally, there are two or three future kits that got a rules representation, but instead of showing them you get a censored by the Inquisition drawing. Still, rules are rules and they are there, for a promethium pipeline and void shield generator. What makes the book most interesting, at least to me, is the ability to use defense networks, which are a number of different fortifications with the same theme (either a Wall of Martyrs Defense Network or an Imperial Strongpoint from the Planetstrike kits). Instead of a single fortification, you get several that connect to form a, well, large fortification network. The other interesting bit is the armory for your terrain, which has building upgrades as well as additions like AA emplacements, tank traps and barricades that you can buy extra to improve a lone fortification or network.

The book repeats the Apocalypse weapon rules including strength D since they are needed for the Aquila bunker, along with the rules for massive fortifications (AV15 bunker). It also revises the rules for buildings and fortifications for more user friendliness (although it makes damage to occupying units more severe, guess that's the opposite of user friendliness ).

Alright. Dataslate formations? Same thing as in Apocalypse really, except for normal games. You have something like "Unit A: 1-3; Unit B: 1+; Unit C: 0+". It's an optional extra to your army list that follows a very loose set of rules and differs from one dataslate to the next. You have Belakor (insert apostophes as you please) that is a single Daemon Prince you can add to a Chaos army, a Tau suit formation that let's you get a set of free special rules for just taking the appropriate number of units, while not heeding the FOC, or Ultramarine Tyrannic War Veterans that I haven't really read, so don't remember exactly how that differs from the others.

"Mini"-dexes, that's also a bit of a wide range of things. At the larger end you have the Adepta Sororitas codex that updates the White Dwarf army list that replaced Codex Witchhunters. That's slim by the standards we know from book codices like Chaos Space Marines and such, but offers the same army list you would expect from a book release. It's merely limited in size because Sisters still have their limited selection of seventeen year old metal models and that's what stops them from having a proper codex like everyone else. But functionally it is no different than any other normal codex. You have your HQs, Elites, Troops, Fast Attack and Heavy Support, you have a warlord table, you have an armory and you have one per army relics for your characters.

Codex Inquisition is quite a bit slimmer than that, offering a copy and paste job of the Inquisition elements from Codex Grey Knights with added warlord tables for the three Ordos and a relic for each Ordo, and Coteaz's special scoring rules changed to refelct the different way the codex is set up. Valeria doesn't feature either, since she has no model. The "army list", however, consists of what amounts to only two units, really. Yes, two special characters and a generic character from each Ordo give you your choice of Inquisitor HQ, and then you get Henchmen with a couple of dedicated transport options as Elite choices. This necessitates special rules like if they are the primary detachment, the Henchmen score because the codex has no Troops, which would make playing missions with objectives quite difficult otherwise. They ally differently, too, allowing you to take an Inquisition ally in addition to your regular allies. This codex plays a lot less like the other codices, obviously.

Tomorrow, GW releases Codex Legion of the Damned, and there is every chance that this is a codex consisting of just a single unit, as found in Codex Space Marines. While you can ally with other Imperial armies, you can also play a Legion of the Damned army by itself, if the product description is correct (and I'm going by this and rumors here, so anything I say from this point on should be understood as such). You nominate a Sergeant as your warlord, you get a warlord table, there is one chapter relic confirmed (to represent Sergeant Centurius, the old limited edition model, if you so choose). We can reasonably assume that the rules are not altered, ruling out dedicated transports. We can reasonably assume that as with any other GW Digital codex, only existing models feature in the codex, ruling out getting any other units than the Legion of the Damned squad we know and love.

You are obviously aware of Codex Imperial Knights, which by all accounts adds super-heavies to the normal game that do not follow the restrictions of Escalation, nor come with the downsides, and that are rumored to ally in a similar way as Codex Inquisition, meaning they are not bothered by anything else taking up your actual ally slot. It will have a warlord table, but we know it'll consist of only two units, super-heavy ones at that, so it's also quite divergent from a normal codex.

That's it, I think. I'll add a short summary at the end:

Escalation: Apocalypse units in normal games, using an additonal Lord of War FOC slot
Stronghold Assault: A fortification codex to fill your existing Fortification FOC slot
Dataslates: Additional units or formations that have loose rules for adding them to your army, which you have to look up individually
Digital codices: Actual army lists with varying degrees of content that can act as your Primary Detachment, or either your Allied Detachment or a separate detachment forming one additional allied detachment, depending on which codex you use

[Manus]

WOW - that was a lot thank mate. Lots of new stuff to take in, and getting used to, now I see what some people have been complaining about - and yes I guess some things would be hard to counter, but again that war, you never know what you get.

[eiglepulper]

This is why I've pretty much quit 40k. Too much thrown out too suddenly, and I just said to myself "There's the excuse you've been looking for to stop the addiction - I mean, game."

It might be to some people's taste to have ream upon ream of new books/slates/dexes large or small/etc barfed out of the slavering maw that is GW, but it isn't for me. I've already started to curtail my holding of 40k stuff in favour of Malifaux and Bolt Action and am much happier now that I have made the decision to break with my past.

The *only* thing I might possibly buy in the future is the updated SW Codex which is rumoured for later this year. However, it will definitely be a case of read first before purchasing to make sure that it is worth it before parting with (probably) £30 which would buy me a reasonable amount of stuff for my other two game systems.

R.

[badfang]

OK, konfession time - the last game of 40k I played was RT (1st Ed?) and the game really struggled to stop me falling asleep.

Right, now that's out of the way I probably don't need to say that I love Orks  but even with Pete and Andy's help I don't think GW have ever really done justice to a race whose army composition is determined primarily by the number of boyz and grots, the amount of scrap to be found locally and the limit of their meks' imagination - and sadly, I suspect they never will. And the gaming system itself has so many rules and steps that I can't see it ever being any kind of immersive WARGAME unless they introduce chess type clocks to the mix.

Eigelpulper mentions Malifaux (small scale skirmish game and therefore 'fast') and BoltAction (straightforward rules and therefore also 'fast') which can get much closer to exerting the kind of pressure that (for me at least) is essential to anything purporting to be a wargame.

Far as I'm concerned 40K just has too many zoggin roolbooks.

[Geifer]

The funny thing about that is that modern 40k is actually in a pretty good shape as a game. It's just that GW's latest drive to sell as much as they possibly can cram down our throats blurs the picture. 40k is quite fast to play, only slightly less so than 3rd ed, with many of the nicer details of 2nd ed reintroduced, and a balance between the wargear selection of early 4th ed armies and sparse selections from late 4th ed ones. And for all the options that are available, it is still quite possible to bring a rulebook and single codex and have a perfectly entertaining game.