School's out for summer

...and the GW blokes are out of their minds.

Qoui? is probably the word flying through your head right now, if you are French/an Eddie Izzard fan.

I have read Mr. Jervis Johnson's litle preview of the 5th ed. Warhammer 40k rules.

And I have serious misgivings about it all.



Ok, Mr. Johnson has a tendency to say more than he should about things coming up, a bit like Peter Molyneux (Black and White, Fable etc.) but in this case, I felt quite a bit estranged to his enthusiasm about the new edition. Especially the new Line of Sight-rules (LoS for short).

In the past editions, LoS has been rather stylized and not very close to reality. The reason? To make for smooth game play. Now all that has been thrown out the window for ACTUAL LoS, as in determined with a laser pointer (insert joke about Lasguns here).
I am prepared to say, yes, this makes for a more immersive game. Indeed. But to sacrifice good games design just so people can "feel" closer to their minis? There is something very wrong going on here.

I think Yahtzee summed it up very well when he said (something along the lines of): "Then I realise that games designers who sacrifice good game play just to make a (emotional/satirical) point have their heads so far stuck up their arses there is a danger of them choking to death on their own heads!" I think this is what has happened at the GW development team. Sure, it might be fun during play testing to go down there, checking LoS, but imagine the discussions that will rage (or possibly not. I hope I am wrong in this you know) across tabletops during tournaments. True, with a laser pointer at stand-by it will be easy to settle those disputes, but this rules change will not take it away. Quite the contrary. Also, it IS going to slow down gaming pace considerably.

All in all, the new edition is released in 5 weeks. I'll have more info on the rules changes then and will report my thoughts on it then.

And even if I am blown away by it (fat chance! I've seen the new sprue with markers needed for WH40k all of a sudden... forget it!) I still won't continue with WH40k. I will still keep updated on the background stuff going on, for the sake of the Space Outlaws (being a WH40k spin-off essentially), but I am not going to continue gaming. I have a full time thing keeping up with Warhammer Fantasy Battles. And I have already written off Confrontation 4.

So yeah, I'll stick to what I have. Those games work and the current WHFB version is very stabile in terms of game balance. It is going to last many years, hopefully. WH40k 4th ed. did not, though I liked that version quite a bit.

I'll end this rant here. Just want to add again the school's out! XD