Monday, September 10, 2012

The GW 6e FAQ

Time for a bouquet.

I am extremely impressed with the GW FAQ for 6th Edition released on the weekend. The response to its release has been almost universally positive - apart from one internet "personality" who sees all sorts of conspiracies in the fact that it's dated July and not released until September (Apparently this was purely to undermine the Nova Open - yep, GW knew Elvis was attending so faked the Moon Landings in Area 51 - Is it a coincidence Neil Armstrong died the weekend the FAQs were released? I think not!).

The FAQ seems to have addressed virtually all the identified "issues" that the first two months play have thrown up. In particular it removed the clunky mechanism around wond allocation - I had seen a spreadsheet to work through - and the ability to abuse it. It also removed one of the more obvious Ally combos by tightening the wording.

The key thing here is that the GW resonse vindicates everything I contend about their playtesting. The Studio/Design Team/Whatever They Call Themselves At The Moment probably play 400-500 games/partial games at best in their playtesting. Release the rules and 100 times this are probably played in the first fortnight - all with a fresh pair of eyes.

It would be arrogant of GW to think that they could foresee every potential eventualitity in their playtesting - especially if they are not looking at the sharp end as a primary focus. Therefore their best course is to do what they have done - watch the net for the first month and then put out a FAQ that addresses the flaws that come out.

Kudos to them for the work. Now where are the Vampire Counts, Empire and Daemon of Chaos FAQs

2 comments:

  1. Good FAQ overall. Clears up a lot of little things like Mawlocs + sweep attacks hitting fliers, and Necrons being able to embark onto Nightscythes.
    Still have a few unanswered questions like does deep strike count as movement and do challenges move before mindshakle scarabs are determined?

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  2. they didn't release the FAQ until after Dark Vengeance had come out, because they would look like complete morons for not printing the most recent form of the rules as dictated by the FAQ in the box.

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