Monday, May 1, 2017

8th Edition rumor round-up 5/1

A lot of things about when 8th edition is going to hit and what it will contain have been floating around the web this weekend. Here's a collection of what's what but as with all rumors, take with applicable salt:

"Day one any beyond:

June 10th launch, they’re going to drip feed us rumors for the rest of  May.  Expect to see full Space Marine datasheets sometime around the end of next week, with a couple of fluff pieces talking about how the galaxy got ripped in half and how all the marines got taller.

For those of you who are saving your pennies, here’s what the launch schedule looked like so far.

About 1-2 weeks beforehand all 7th edition exclusive products are being pulled from stores for good. Codex’s, Rulebooks, Dark Vengeance, not the new campaign books such as Gathering Storm [since] those are still fluff pieces, but expect those to become much harder to find.

Then on day 1:  5 new, free soft cover/PDFs launch with all the core 8th edition rules.

They are:
The Rules:  Containing your prophesized 12 pages of core rules, plus outlines for open play and the 14 universal FoC, ranging from 1 HQ and 1 Troop choice = 1 command point allies to massive 20+ slot charts that grants a fist full of command.  The new force org charts are pitched as a great way  [to] customize your army, one of them is a big guns esq 1 troop/HQ 5+ Heavy support, but really they’re just designed to scale command points to game size.

A few of the wilder ones, such as the aforementioned big guns list, have restrictions and special rules that might sway players one way or the other in terms of army composition, but the more well-rounded ones grant the most command points (which are such a big deal. I cannot stress this enough, proper use of command points can make or break strategies), and the real meat and potatoes special rules granting armies are going to be built from the FoC structures found in your army codex, once they bring those back.

The free PDF version of the following books will be sectioned up amongst
faction lines, but the paper ones are going to be the mash-ups listed below.

Armies of the Imperium: Exactly what it says on the cover, a splash of lore
and datasheets for every imperial unit in the game.

Armies of chaos:  The spiky version of the above.

Armies of Xenos: Split up among proper faction lines (Eldar, Tau, Necron, Nids), and containing datasheets and rules for the rest.

A galaxy in flames:  Art and fluff book.  Brings everyone up to speed on the setting, pushing the story forward by a few weeks and setting up the opening of a AoS style narrative campaign."
Also:

The battle tome will become the template for the codex, not the other way around.  Each dex will get the special army wide rules, 6-12 relics, 6 warlord traits, and 6 psychic powers, only now it’s written that you can chose to ether select or roll on warlord/psychic charts.  It will also contain full rules and points for all the old and new units in a given army, and special rules for things like warbands, campaigns, narrative missions and the like.

Formations are back, but they cost points now, and so are decurons, but they will be a lot more flexible and take cues from their AoS counterparts

And then there was some speculation on what the starter would contain:

"Starter Set
The starter set goes live the 17th and is going to be Death Guard Vs. Ultramarines, $120 box.  Chaos gets a blob of cultists, a few terminators, a few plague marines, a lord, and drones.  Loyalists get 2 tactical squads, a devastator, an assault squad, plus a librarian and a captain.  Comes with dice and rulers as well.

In addition, there will be the standard soft cover core rules booklet and a small campaign book.  The campaign book has the stats for all the dudes in the box, plus a series of narrative missions that set up the ground floor for the first real story arc of the new edition."
There was also the video GW released yesterday that seems to confirm the thought debunked rumor that we were going to get larger marine models:


All interesting stuff. What do you think?