Anticipation can lead to disappointment: New Codices

What's interesting here is that he full codex has been available to download for several months now... illegally. It isn't going to be any surprise to most people. I know at least one person who has been playing games using the new rules for a while now.

I've now seen the real book in store and I like it. I don't think there will be (or have been) people complaining that any of the character has been removed, as they have with chaos. It feels like a much more polished and slightly more competitive book than the last one, and actually reintroduces a lot of the mad orky things that players like to see: Weirdboyz, shokk attack guns, random amounts of movement and unpredictable looted weapons, for example.

I haven't seen any rants against the new book. That probably means it's one of the best receieved releases GW have put out in ages, at least by the internet set.

The chaos dex was a lot more complex. Actually my response was to make a chaos army, which would seem like an endourcement. I actually like the ork book a lot more as a book, but I don’t really like orks as an army, so I’m not planning on getting any.

In the case of chaos I’ve been a fan of chaos, particularly khorne and slaanesh, for a long time. In the old dex I couldn’t have actually made the army I’m planning to do as it would have been against the rules (and fluff). Now I can make my black legion within both the rules and fluff… kind of.

I couldn’t bring myself to make an army with the old codex. It was filth. I made a cool daemon prince that I never fielded because I’m so against siren (and I’d have ended up using it, I’m a bad person).

Anyway I like the new chaos book more than the old one and I like chaos, so I’m making an army. I wish the chaos book was as good as the ork one but it isn’t.

As for your general question of whether a new book could make me quit, then it’s not a simple question to answer. If a new book is so bad that it totally changes the environment due to a horribly overpowered ability then that could spoil the game for me. I don’t think it’s likely that an army I play would get nerfed and I’d quit because of it.

After having the chance to really study the ork book I think there are some issues with it. I do like it, but the units are not balanced.

For elites you can have tank bustas, lootas or burna boys, and everyone will just take lootas and more lootas, and then maybe some more lootas. They are clearly better than the others at any task, and even get the same stuff for a lower cost than the other mobs.

This seems to be a direct response to the old book, where tank bustas and burna boys were common (the latter with no burnas in many cases, just a force field). Now these have both been made far less useful since they are high cost and have to move around to be effective, and you can't take extra ones without special weapons to soak up wounds. The compulsory movement of tankbustas makes them kind of weird in escalation games, where your opponent can just bring on a vehicle miles out of their range and have the tankbustas chase it around.

So anyway now everyone has models for burna boys and tankbustas that they don’t need any more, and everyone wants to buy lootas – and guess what, GW have released some new figures for lootas. <Insert your preferred conspiracy theory here>.

There are some real failings in the rules that will require clarification. For example, what are the weapon options for a nob in a shoota mob? A PK replaces his choppa, but he no longer has a choppa as he has exchanged his slugga and choppa with a shoota. Hi might buy the PK before getting his choppa, in which case he probably can’t have a shoota… needs clarification.

Probably the most odd thing is that their sample army list has some costs wrongly calculated. I’m pretty sure that the Nobz mob cost is calculated incorrectly, for example, and should be 200 points – or maybe 180 depending on whether you take the number in the unit from the army list or the photo. That’s a bit poor.