State of the Union (Heresy)

[SkimaskMohawk]

I remember seeing him make those kinds of posts too, but any reason for no FAQs is weak, regardless of the staff. They play the game, they see the discussions, and they get the emails. It takes a few hours to work through the actual mechanical issues at play to give a proper answer. Things like "can jaghati shoot both his heavy bolters" is a no brainer for the developer to answer and could literally be done in the last 5 minutes of the day before going home.

It's management direction that stopped FAQs, not lack of time in 3 years. And the complete disparity of rules in the pdfs speak to that same direction of neglect. 

[Noserenda]

Yeah Anuj certainly hinted he wasnt too happy with Terminator troops and said he wasnt involved in the PDF.

I personally wouldnt accept "working on a new edition" as a reason to not write any FAQs, that was just a choice the team made. If they are keeping a good record of the questions coming in its a very small amount of work.

[MegaVolt87]

I'm actually surprised the PDFs are such a mess. I was expecting something more curated. Part of the explanation to me with the points is deliberately pointing things out of armies like the bane blade variants to take the legion ones instead. This lets them say "look, they have rules and points for the new edition, you can use them". The indomni termi's? seems like a good way to sell stock just sitting around. You even get assault cannon access outside of BA and IF's with that unit. 

[Petitioner's City]

7 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Yeah Anuj certainly hinted he wasnt too happy with Terminator troops and said he wasnt involved in the PDF.

I personally wouldnt accept "working on a new edition" as a reason to not write any FAQs, that was just a choice the team made. If they are keeping a good record of the questions coming in its a very small amount of work.

Of course he wasn't involved, he left 2 years ago. But sometimes people write of him as the former head of this new edition but he was never head of the project too - that was Hoare. I Io sometimes wonder if he left once he realised there wasn't that promotion opportunity (something I think anyone can really empathise with). He seems much happier at CA and running his hobby events, and making his own house rules (he is very active in the cursed city group, for example, but also critical of GW). Seems like a very nice chap, there and in his voxcast interview, but has a strange dislike of flying dwarves 

[Joe]

Anuj has made some rather inappropriate remarks recently putting down community projects like Mournival and the such. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't a shared opinion and was another factor in why he left. It's a stark contrast to other former Games Workshop writers, like Tuomas Pirinen (Mordheim).

[Petitioner's City]

2 hours ago, Joe said:

Anuj has made some rather inappropriate remarks recently putting down community projects like Mournival and the such. I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't a shared opinion and was another factor in why he left. It's a stark contrast to other former Games Workshop writers, like Tuomas Pirinen (Mordheim).

Can I ask what he said? He clearly has a lot of respect and love to Neil Wyllie (whom he credits on FB as project lead, so poss I overestimated AH's involvement in the day-to-day work) - possibly it's to do with player communities stepping on their own toes and then it getting into weird "we can't do that anymore" mentalities (which also are possibly not weird, due to how fan fiction can ruin future publications, etc), or just feeling that his former colleagues should be better credited but we (or a significant number of us) tended to be all "the community is great, FW bad", etc. 

[spessmarine]

20 hours ago, MegaVolt87 said:

I'm actually surprised the PDFs are such a mess. I was expecting something more curated. Part of the explanation to me with the points is deliberately pointing things out of armies like the bane blade variants to take the legion ones instead. This lets them say "look, they have rules and points for the new edition, you can use them". The indomni termi's? seems like a good way to sell stock just sitting around. You even get assault cannon access outside of BA and IF's with that unit. 

mess feels a bit of an exaggeration, for the most part it feels decent
though, if you were a fan of the not typically associated with astartes vehicles then yeah I can understand the disappointment

[Joe]

On 7/4/2022 at 12:10 PM, Petitioner's City said:

Can I ask what he said? He clearly has a lot of respect and love to Neil Wyllie (whom he credits on FB as project lead, so poss I overestimated AH's involvement in the day-to-day work) - possibly it's to do with player communities stepping on their own toes and then it getting into weird "we can't do that anymore" mentalities (which also are possibly not weird, due to how fan fiction can ruin future publications, etc), or just feeling that his former colleagues should be better credited but we (or a significant number of us) tended to be all "the community is great, FW bad", etc. 

Most of the comments have been made in the Heresy Tactics group on Facebook, but they essentially boil down to "fan PDFs cause unnecesary confusion and shouldn't exist" and constant flip-flopping on "people should be happy with the rules Games Workshop have provided" and "okay, I didn't write that bit of the rules so it's obviously bad."

[Taliesin]

On 7/3/2022 at 9:29 AM, lansalt said:

I just saw this photo in social media and I'm again baffled by another GW's decision. The special edition of the new rulebook supposedly made to match the old hardcover Black Books... is actually smaller and does not match them.

 

 

 

I suspect the aim was just to create more of these beautifully styled luxury editions, rather than have them match the Black Books.

What would be truly bizarre is if we get more Black Book style books in this edition and then they dont match the new rulebook.

[Rejects of Anvilus]

22 minutes ago, Taliesin said:

What would be truly bizarre is if we get more Black Book style books in this edition and then they dont match the new rulebook.

GW to Heresy team, “Write that down …”

[SkimaskMohawk]

5 hours ago, Joe said:

Most of the comments have been made in the Heresy Tactics group on Facebook, but they essentially boil down to "fan PDFs cause unnecesary confusion and shouldn't exist" and constant flip-flopping on "people should be happy with the rules Games Workshop have provided" and "okay, I didn't write that bit of the rules so it's obviously bad."

I liked in crusade and heresy when he deleted all his comments on a thread about keeping the black books to play 1st edition. He was telling people that the group was edition locked and not to clutter it up with 1st edition comments, but obviously didn't apologize when it was pointed out that C&H doesn't edition (or even game system) lock lol

Edited July 5, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[MegaVolt87]

The fans did a better job than GW did with their PDF equivalents. The Panoptica PDF for the missing 1.0 units is incredible, thats what I was expecting GW to give us themselves. 

[Brofist]

Man, as one game industry guy to another, Anuj clearly loves the hobby, but he's way too close to the community. Its very hard to be involved in any online game communities when you're defensive about the product you worked on... and its very hard to NOT be, because you know all the details nobody else does.

Anyway the .pdf quality is all over the place, which is my main gripe. Given the time GW had to write it, the money they have, and the quality of writing in the printed books... I expected much better. Somebody said the .pdfs are where units go to die and I begin to suspect that may be the case.

[Marshal Mittens]

1 hour ago, Brofist said:

Man, as one game industry guy to another, Anuj clearly loves the hobby, but he's way too close to the community. Its very hard to be involved in any online game communities when you're defensive about the product you worked on... and its very hard to NOT be, because you know all the details nobody else does.

Anyway the .pdf quality is all over the place, which is my main gripe. Given the time GW had to write it, the money they have, and the quality of writing in the printed books... I expected much better. Somebody said the .pdfs are where units go to die and I begin to suspect that may be the case.

I think the price of many of the units made it clear they didn't want folks to be choosing those. Quality does seem very sporadic, with some excellently written entries, and some which seemed to be written by someone who was not familiar with the rules, and then not proof read. 

Edited July 6, 2022 by Marshall Mittens

[Mandragola]

I think the two PDFs (the legacies one and the exemplary battles one) are of pretty different quality. And actually, I think the quality of the legacies varies quite a lot.

For some reason they've made a decision that we should be using some of this stuff and not others. Units like Castra Ferrum Dreads could clearly have a role in people's armies but the assorted baneblade variants are beyond terrible. Bizarrely, they seem to have taken the nerf bat particularly strongly to some of their own units like the Minotaur, which they continue to sell.

I can't yet tell whether the units they've decided to not nerf are good. I don't mind the troop terminators for example - it doesn't mean a lot when they're support squads without Line, except that you can spend the elite slot on something else. Castra Ferrum dreads seem like they could have a niche and a few of the characters look fun. Kaedes Nex is likely to find a use in my Ravenguard force, as will a squad of Deliverers.

The Typos and stuff are less excusable, but then we're used to finding those in printed books we've paid for. This thing is free and easy to fix - though of course we don't know whether they'll get round to doing that, or how soon.

[Petitioner's City]

22 hours ago, Joe said:

Most of the comments have been made in the Heresy Tactics group on Facebook, but they essentially boil down to "fan PDFs cause unnecesary confusion and shouldn't exist" and constant flip-flopping on "people should be happy with the rules Games Workshop have provided" and "okay, I didn't write that bit of the rules so it's obviously bad."

I'd seen one comment about "I didn't write that" (although not stating it's bad), and this morning another warning people not to say something like "these rules are crap" as it was a passive attack on the writers (I think Wyllie for that rule, about AL infiltration shenanigans), but will dig about, he's now the visible person to have worked on HH and despite his NDA does give lots of hints about things.

Anyway, I do agree, he's inconsistent, and it's weird because he says these kind of things in the Cursed City group - but I guess they werent his team and I guess we all are inconsistent irl anyway 

[Orange Knight]

On 7/2/2022 at 4:34 AM, Brofist said:

UM and DA look like strong winners until you read the first page and realize RAW loyalists can't take anything from the .pdfs :)

How so?

I think this comes down to one of these "Rules as intended vs written" arguments.

 

Edit: Do you mean because they refer to the book as "Liber Loyalists" instead of "Liber Astartes"?

I wouldn't bat an eyelid at that, and would never even consider to limit anyone based on this.

Edited July 6, 2022 by Orange Knight

[Scammel]

...is anyone else finding it a bit of a Mannequin Pis-er actually just getting ahold of models at this point? I can get the IF Contemptor body, but have to wait for the plastic kit for the arms. The Phalanx Warder kit is sold out online so I've procured the last remaining pack from the Tottenham Court Road shop, but there's no resin or plastic mk IVs to go with them. The Warhammer World shop didn't have the weapons packs I needed, nor even the traitor armybook. All pretty rum.

[General Zodd]

22 minutes ago, Scammel said:

...is anyone else finding it a bit of a Mannequin Pis-er actually just getting ahold of models at this point? I can get the IF Contemptor body, but have to wait for the plastic kit for the arms. The Phalanx Warder kit is sold out online so I've procured the last remaining pack from the Tottenham Court Road shop, but there's no resin or plastic mk IVs to go with them. The Warhammer World shop didn't have the weapons packs I needed, nor even the traitor armybook. All pretty rum.

It’s definitely a downer, but I guess it shows how popular second edition has been that the demand is there? From experience, if you ask to be notified about FW stuff coming back into stock, it’s usually only a week or two before I get an email.

[SkimaskMohawk]

30k has always had a bit of a problem with acquiring the add ons you want. Some times it was 40k meta players buying up all of a certain weapon, other times it was LCTB undermining plans, or it could simply be the prohibitive cost of buying from Forgeworld post GW-conversion rate.

If you don't have... alternative means of producing parts, it can be frustrating. A friend with a 3d printer is extremely helpful in this regard. 

[Arkhanist]

Aye, it sucks in the short term, but hopefully sustained demand outstripping supply for FW heresy models is a good thing if it means stronger future support from GW, since it also shows that people didn't just buy the (relatively) cheap big box, but are going strong for the specialist units for 30k to make full armies.

[Noserenda]

Apparently they wildly overproduced the starter in relation to the rest of wave 1, especially the rhino, which is insane to me, sure they know lots of people would want to mount up the rest of their starter? So anyone can get a starter but the rest is going to be tricky for a couple of months while they catch up.

It probably pushed the Deimos predator back though :( 

[Orange Knight]

I fully intended to get 2 Rhinos but they were always sold out, so in the end I ended up painting some old ones instead...

[armarnis]

16 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

I fully intended to get 2 Rhinos but they were always sold out, so in the end I ended up painting some old ones instead...

nothing wrong and actually fits the heresy! deimos rhinos were superior to the mars pattern but more difficult to maintain.

[Arkhanist]

I'm just glad that mars pattern rhinos didn't get the same treatment as phobos pattern landraiders inc the IIB, e.g. with the same profile as the assault ramp proteus but in the extended pdf and not able to to be taken as dedicated transport. The phobos pattern was a heresy pattern, just a later evolution of the proteus which was early great crusade. Guess they want to sell more of the proteus pattern ones when they eventually come out.