ARBBL

We have managed to get hold of a full copy of the rules already and will be having a game or two at mine next Saturday (10th June) to try them out. Anyone who is interested is welcome to come along.

First impressions? Optimistic?!

They seem to have addressed most of the things I hated about the system without as introducing anything new that I hate as far as I can tell. It's all the good bits of the age of sigmar rules but without the really silly parts (random turn ordering and out of game nonsense). The points being kept separate from the rules with the promise of being rebalanced as an ongoing thing should mean that any problem lists get sorted out without having to wait for the codex to be replaced. The new wound table and vehicles having toughness and wounds means that everything can now hurt everything even if it takes a lot of it, so my nightmare matchup of nids vs knights where 90% of my army literally can't hurt anything is no longer something that can happen.

I'm optimistic for now. Not enough to preorder stuff, but if it seems to play well next weekend then I'll be buying things on release.

Having played, I can now confidently say that the new rules are a massive improvement and well worth trying out.

I'd be up for giving you a game sometime.

Next week?

I must say I have an intense dislike of the new books. If I want a Long Fang squad I have to turn to page x to find the cost per model, do some sums, turn to long fang rules page to find out what weapons they can have, turn back to page x to realise the weapons I want aren't listed there but on page y, do more sums (possibly flicking back to page x if I want a space wolf specific weapon). What was wrong with puting points and rules in one place and costing the squad on its minimum number and saying +z points for extra blokes?! This may be the thing that kills it for me unless the game plays well!

The point of having the points in a separate place is that now they correct balance issues by just updating that one page. It does make figuring out a list harder than it needs to be though. I just added up how many points each of my things were then worked out what I wanted from that list. Now I have done that, I doubt I'll need to look at the points table again for that army. I guess that is harder for the armies with a lot of optional wargear though.

I think the problem is more than just those with optional gear but also those that share common units (basically space marines) because the you essentially have to work from 2 rules sections and two points lists.

I must say the Primaris stuff might just be enough to tempt me back.....we shall see.