I actually expect that the book is worth the £22.50 (easily), being a full-colour, 100+page, hardback book (especially compared to the £15 softcover, semi-colour, usually sub100 page books). Do you think it's worth it?
Hashut's Blessing
I don't actually think it is. The hard cover and full colour pictures are nice and all, but IMO not worth the 50% markup on the old style books. In the end, for me an army book is a gaming aid and fluff resource, and these new features don't really add to that.
Well I like that its hardcover. If at a tournament, you dont need to bring an extra tray to transport your army (:
(what i hate is that the special characters are integrated in the army list, I will never use them but every time I look something up they are in the way)
Well I like that its hardcover. If at a tournament, you dont need to bring an extra tray to transport your army (:
Bolg
You must have the smallest O&G army in creation. I don't think I could fit any of my armies on the space of a rulebook... not even the most expensive elite ones.
AGPO: It’s only £5 more than the current paperbacks - £17.50 for a sub-100 page book, semi-colour, soft-back or £22.50 for a 100+page, full-colour, hard-back (which has smaller print apparently, to fit more stuff in). It handily stays on the page you open it to as well.
I agree that £22.50 is a little higher than I want to pay (not including the obvious “I would love to pay as little as possible”), but it’s better value than the current books, IMHO. Having said that, BoW has pointed out that although it’s full colour, many of the pictures themselves are actually sepia anyway…
You must have the smallest O&G army in creation. I don't think I could fit any of my armies on the space of a rulebook... not even the most expensive elite ones.
snowblizz
No, not really, I love hordes, But whatever the sise of the tray I brought. It never fitted so at lest if I forget my tray I've got something solid (:
Finally got 'round to getting the O&G book. There are quite a few Chaos Dwarf mentions that I’ve spotted so far, including the usual stuff about the Black Orcs and their (possible - it’s left vague) origins and the fact that the Chaos Dwarfs taught Orcs metallurgy, and that’s what separates them from Savage Orcs. The most interesting bit though is quite a detailed section on the Dark Lands, which mentions the Chaos Dwarfs and then goes on to describe Hobgoblins. There’s nothing new, but the empire of Hobgobla Khan gets name dropped, mainly for the purposes of comparison to the Hobgoblins which other greenskins regularly encounter, who are the servants of the Chaos Dwarfs. Greenskins hate Hobgoblins, whom they regard as treacherous villains, and almost always kill them on sight. They don’t include them in their armies because they don’t trust them.
One of the more interesting little things though is a new Goblin special character called Gitilla the Hunter. He’s essentially a Mongol-themed Goblin Wolf Rider (so, a Hobgoblin…) except he has nothing to do with Hobgoblins. I find this quite annoying.
Oh, and the new format looks great, but goddamn is it a bitch getting my book to match it…
I didn’t have that many problems adapting my new army list to the format of the O&G book. Actually, it makes it look better and it’s easier to find the model’s abilities when you’re looking up things in a hurry.
Do you think I was off base with the Wolf details as discussed eariler? (You know, in immortals)
didn't have that many problems adapting my new army list to the format of the O&G book.
No, I mean my Chaos Dwarf Armies book. I'm bringing its formatting up to date with the 8th Edition format, of which the O&G book is the first example. It's quite a bit different, even from what I'd extrapolated from the preview images.
Do you think I was off base with the Wolf details as discussed eariler?
I knew what the new rules were, so actually getting the book was just confirmation. I think all that needed to be said has already been said about the issue.
Yes…I agree about the wolves and “all that has been said…”, but I just wondered what you though now that you own a copy of the new O&G.
And about the adaptations to your army book, I meant that I changed my army book with our new RH erratta AND reformated it so it had the same layout as the O&G book. (I sometimes say “List” instead of “Book”.)
Oh I see. Could you post it then? I’m mildly curious. I have the army list part of mine down fine - the hard part is inserting the big splash pages between each section, as adding in a load of huge images plays havoc with how everything after it is set up. Honestly, making your own Armies book is a quick way to learn the limits of Microsoft Word.
Yeah, that’s how I’m doing it - I just put together a lot of the graphics and stuff in such an amateurish fashion (i.e. just figuring out how to make it look like what I wanted by trial and error) that adding in new pages causes weird knock-on effects. I’m working around it though. There are some interesting design decisions in terms of the rules in this book too - upgrade special characters for units are gone, it seems, replaced by Hero choices that you have to buy a unit for which they then can’t leave. Then there’s the magic item thing, of course, but I don’t think I’ll be condensing all mine just yet!
AGPO: It's only £5 more than the current paperbacks - £17.50 for a sub-100 page book, semi-colour, soft-back or £22.50 for a 100+page, full-colour, hard-back (which has smaller print apparently, to fit more stuff in). It handily stays on the page you open it to as well.
I agree that £22.50 is a little higher than I want to pay (not including the obvious "I would love to pay as little as possible"), but it's better value than the current books, IMHO. Having said that, BoW has pointed out that although it's full colour, many of the pictures themselves are actually sepia anyway...
Hashut's Blessing
TBH, that doesn't represent better value to me, because it's forcing me to buy extra stuff I don't want. It's like my home insurance company including compulsory motor insurance in my policy. Even if the motor insurance is incredible value, I don't want it because I live in a city centre and don't drive. All I want from an army book is the army list and the rules, for which I'm now being charged an extra £5.
In my opinion, army books are one of those things that really should be loss leaders, kinda like White Dwarf is. They're a one off expenditure which helps to sell extra models and modelling supplies which are GWs real money spinners. However, the more expensive you make all the books, dice and other implements the more you raise start-up costs, which is a big barrier to starting a new army.
For example, I've recently started 40K again, and I've been fortunate to be able to borrow a set of codexes and rulebooks from a friend. If I was starting from scratch however, I'd have needed to buy a codex at £17.50, a rulebook at £35, £9.20 for dice and templates, £3.10 on a tape measure, not to mention any supplies like army cases or gaming boards for when I actually get round to buying some figures. That's a start up cost of £64.80 before I buy a single model, and with WFB it's even higher.
I guess it depends what you get out of it - as someone who’s (much) more of a collector, writer/reader and rules designer than a gamer, Codecies and Armies books are more than just a way to facilitate the more tangible aspects of the hobby for me. I get quite a lot of use out of them, even ones for armies I don’t own. So a better product is worth the money as far as I’m concerned, but I get why people don’t feel the same way.
How much I look forward to the fluff sections is very much dependent on the book in question. With the new Grey Knights book for example, there’s a whole load of extra fluff exploring the origins of the chapter, no doubt with some really cool modelling ideas. With the greenskins, it’s all been said and done before for me. I can see why some people would like the shiny book, there’s no doubt it looks pretty cool.
It’ll never happen, but what I’d really love to see GW do is move into full-on army supplements. For example, producing a comprehensive book covering Chaos in the Warhammer world, with beastmen, cultists, chaos warriors, demons and chaos dwarfs all covered, maybe with some campaign rules for the Great War against Chaos or Archaon’s great incursion. Likewise an inquisition supplement could cover all three ordos, the fluff from Inquisitor, include rules for Deathwatch, Grey Knights and sisters of battle as well as the more radical inquisitors, daemon hosts, and rules for fighting daemonic incursions with your own army.
Yeah, it would be good to see big lavish source books like that - rather like RPG supplements - but I don’t think it fits in with their current business model as regards releasing figures. GW are very much focused on waves and ranges, rather than just sculpting stuff and chucking it out there as in previous decades. I wonder how much of that is down to the way plastic manufacturing works, actually - I imagine they have to plan what they’re going to make quite meticulously now, given the investment necessary for setting up the machines, rather than just being quite as hoc about it.
