I wonder...

[Mikey]

No rending in 5th ed., then?

Truth to tell, I'm not even sure what rending entails in game terms, but I'm sure the Harlequin's Kiss uses a lot of it.

[sunnyside]

Right now with rending.

If you roll a 6 to hit you automatically wound and punch through the targets armor. Also if you roll a 6 on armor penetration you get to roll again and add that result in.

In 5th, supposedly, rending means on a roll to wound of 6 the hit ignores armor. And with vehicles a 6 gives an auto glance but not more unless number rolled was already enough to be a penetrating hit.

Now the vehicle rules have all sorts of changes. So I won't touch that part.

But against infantry the change notably reduces the expected kills. How much depends on the target with it making more of a difference on big nasties. For the classic harly vs space marine I think it's something like a 30% reduction in kills. So it isn't like the unit can't kill things anymore. But now instead of killing 6 you'd kill 4 but the models cost the same amount.

[Mikey]

Ah. Explains why the assault cannon is a "rending" weapon - it's described as being able to "chew through" armor due to it's high ROF.

[sunnyside]

To be fair though the assault cannon was considered overpowered as is on marine forces. It'll probably stay popular. It's other groups like Harlies and Genestealers I'm more worried about.

[Deepcrush]

I always thought that the sniper rifle rules were weird. But thats just me.

[sunnyside]

I always thought that the sniper rifle rules were weird. But thats just me.

Ditto. Those are being changed, but I don't know that they're going to be any less weird.

[Aaron]

So are the rumors that the Orks had their toughness reduced true?

[sunnyside]

I really doubt it. They just got a new codex, and unless this is a "wipe the slate clean" type of edition they usually don't change stuff like that in the main rulebook anyway.

If it does wipe the slate clean there may be riots. Well, small riots.

Well, OK ,just some angry guy who bought a codex last week throwing a chair in a GW store, but the feeling would be there......

[Mikey]

So IS there a core rulebook, or just the different army-specific codices? And if there is, will that be changing in July as well?

[sunnyside]

Alright here's how it goes.

There is the "core" rulebook. However as you can imagine the first thing that happened after they put out rules is people started telling them how to change them. So there have been different editions of the rules. These have come out in

1987
1993
1998
2004
and now 2008 so about every 5 years.

In addition to that every army has a codex that gives the specific rules for that army. In the time I've been following the game these haven't been invalidated by new editions coming out. Just the underlying rules change.

Since maybe fully half of all players are Space Marines they also have specific there are extra codexes for specific space marine chapters that require you to have bought the "general" space marine codex as well. I don't think they do that with any other army right now.

New codexes for specific armies come out less frequently than the new editions. Well, for some armies they are more or at least equally frequent (if you guessed space marines you're getting the hang of this).

There is a third type of book the expansion/supplement. They put out about one of these a year I think and they've got some special theme to add variety for people. The last one I remember was Armaggedon which introduced rules for fighting huge battles with a bunch of poeple and for some really big machines of war.

Finally sometimes they put out "chapter approved" books. These represent little tweaks and special rules that they'd put out in their magazine "white dwarf".

However it should be noted that ALL these books are availible in any GW store to read like a library. I would say most people own the core rulebook and their armies codex and rely on the local store or the internet to provide them with access to the rest. Those that play a lot will get the expansion/supplement of the year.

Though there are a handful out there that get NONE of the books.

They simply rely on a combination of memory and access to internet or store versions of the books. This can be frowned on a bit especially at tournaments because if too many people do it at the store it gets hard to resolve rules arguments (as everybody wants to use the store copy), but is generally fine and the stores don't mind so long as you buy something there (i.e. they don't care if you buy a book or another mini).

[Reliant121]

I've often thought about the miniature 40K stuff and starting it. but its just way to expensive.

[Deepcrush]

If you are money tight then what you want to do is buy a Battle Force box set and play small kill teams battles for the first year to get the game down.

[Mikey]

So what's coming out in July is a new edition of the core rulebook, and new army codexes may or may not follow?

[sunnyside]

Right.

Though codexes will just march on. Dark Eldar are supposed to get one somewhat soon after. Then they'll be tempted to milk the space marine cash cow. Them maybe it'd be time for a new army.

On the plus side buying new books like that means they shouldn't be replaced for a long while.

[Mikey]

If a new codex is coming out, I guess that means that the DE aren't going the way of the squat in 5th ed.