Getting ready for 8th

[snowblizz]

Well in a couple of month there's the new edition I haven't even gone through this one yet.

Here's the kicker though. 8th apparently is going to use percentages again. Gotta love that, some of the basics are written based on this and I've been asking for compatibility with 6/7th and now the game is moving back...

Now the kicker though, which was brought up on a "other app" mail-list is, what to do with units that belong to a category but is not bound to its limits. We already have %:s in there but can we handle units that are core but whose pointvalue should not be counted towards the category limit? Apparently the other program doesn't quite handle that.

[IBBoard]

I'd seen the article in WD and the emails, but hadn't seen anything on the changes.

What I think we'll do in WF is to keep the percentages showing as they are and just use them as literal percentages - i.e. "you have spent 500pts of a 1000pt army in Core, therefore Core is 50% of your army size". If there is a requirement that Core > 50% and Swordsmen don't count towards that limit then we'll need to do a separate validation module. It should be easy enough to write and can take advantage of the "Extra Data" tags to pick the ones that don't count towards percentages, but we just need to find out the details (e.g. is it "50% of the total army" or "50% of the cost of units that count"?)

TBH, percentages are probably easier to handle than strange increasing limits.

[snowblizz]

Ok, another problem brought on by 8th edition.

A massive generic magic item list. About ten times as large as the current one.

Right now all magic items are equipment options and of course copypasting the 70-80 item list into the unit entry for each character is of course what I'll have to do but we are definitely going to need something to deal with this. Tabs or something.

[IBBoard]

Tabs will solve the UI issues (I think I ticketed it already) and I had plans for common equipment from a system, but haven't put anything in yet. One important thing about how well a central re-usable list of equipment (such as magic items) would be is whether all races pay the same.

Also, how different is the handling of magic items to normal equipment? Do we need "equipment" and "special equipment"? Or is that going to be too messy and we're better off with grouping and requirements that use those groupings?

[snowblizz]

So far I know, not having seen the book but having at this point very reliable information, the cost for all the magic items will be the same for each army. At least until the first "real" 8th edition book is released. And if not then any new book will need 2-3 pages of lists just with revised costs so I very much doubt it.
There will be 2 kinds of "common magic items" for a while though. The BRB ones and those "common" in armybooks. But the latter is treatable just as race specific items really.

I don't know if there is any large differences. They need to be able to interact, e.g. taking a normal shield you can't take a magic armour including a shield. Some items can be combined with mundane, some do not. But this is still unknown for 8th.

I think what I'd be looking for is to say: this model can take X items from 'category 1', Y items from 'category 2', and so on. The categories would include items from a common and race specific list. To make it complicated for you I'd like to be able to cap it at points as well as WHFB does.
On the face of it I think listing mundane and magic equipment as the same would work. Especially armour that where some can be combines. So you'd immediately notice when picking a mundane shield that some magic armours are unavailable. You can (at least still) pick mundane + magic weapons though.
Most of this I've actually been able to implement with exclusivityGroups. But how I can make that interact with the list of generic items I don't know.

Just thinking of it of course the most complicate stuff is possibly the Battlestandardbearer who can take up to 50p of magic equipment OR a magic banner worth whatever. Or maybe not, it might just be the way the-other-one handles equipment.

Of course there's still the "axillary" options. Brettonnia have virutes, Beatmen mutations, Vampire Counts Vampiric powers etc. Some of these are included in the magic item limit, some races do not count these. But that's likely not a problem.

[IBBoard]

That sounds like how I'd roughly expected to do it. What will probably happen is that equipment items will get a "group" attribute of some type that is used for grouping on the UI (standard values being things like "Weapons", "Armour" or whatever you want) with the backward-compatible option of not grouping them. Constraints on taking combinations of items could then be handled through requirements (once they're written) that could work on any combination of data that we allow.

The only thing that would need special handling is the re-use across multiple armies. That might be incorporated in the .system file, and we'd need a way to say whether the .race file adds to or overrides the default system items (since there are bound to be cases for both).

[IBBoard]

I've got the new magazine, and it doesn't look like too much of a change so far. The categories are going a bit more like the older versions, but with standard unit limits for what are considered "special" and "rare". Based on an advert then the army books are generally compatible, so there hopefully won't be any major kickers until they get to re-making the more esoteric armies.

[snowblizz]

Actually the slots are gone!

Well there are percentages, but on the core , special and rare + characters.

The slot counts are completely ignored. So you have the main rulebook giving armybook breakdowns. Stupid.

[IBBoard]

Yeah, but it's not like 40K 2nd -> 3rd where they restructured everything and every army book was invalid. From what I read then the limit on "3+ units" and "0-1 Rare" or whatever has moved back to a more 5th/6th Edition "25%+ units" with the constraints on Special/Rare being a percentage and a system-wide cap of 2 or 3 of each unit type (which used to be part of the description of each unit in the army book, because they were in with the other troops).

[snowblizz]

<=25% Lords
<=25% Heroes
25+ % Core
<=50% Special
<=25% Rare

Army needs 3 units minimum, no double rares and no triple specials. Unless you play 3k+ games when it doubles to 6 special and 4 rares.
The kicker is where High Elfs apparently get some loosened restrictions. Like they had in the armybook. But in the main rulebook.

All stuff that should really be in the armybooks. May be my single biggest gripe with the new rules. I don't like the precedence it sets.

It is a smaller change than 5th->6th WHFB and 2nd ->3rd 40k that's for sure.

[IBBoard]

5th-6th? I thought it was 6th-7th that was the big change. Was it really 4th that I started with before moving to 5th and then giving up on WH in favour of 40K when 6th came out?

I can see the sense in the new limitations being put in the main rule book, since it basically behaves like a modified version of the old limits. Having the High Elf alterations in the rulebook does seem a bit odd - I'd have thought it would be best as a temporary addendum, if at all. It does indicate that perhaps they'll be the only ones breaking from those rules, though.

[snowblizz]

Nope, 5th had percentages, I barely got to "enjoy" it until the new 6th edition wiped the slate clean adn started with Ravening Hordes. Don't think I ever played a 5 ed game.

4th-5th was another "minor" change, book were mostly carried over as-is. High-elfs got a new 5th ed book, Undead were remade into Vampire Counts only to be made redundant about 6 months later. Oh yes, Chaos (all three kinds back then *grumble*) got its own box set basically. Bretonnia and Lizardmen I guess were also "new" for 5th ed, and in the starter set.

All the other armies had basically 4th ed books. Oh yes, Dogs of War was new army for 5th.

Another blast from the past, GW is again selling "spell cards". The lores may be listed in the book but they decided to charge us extra for that convenience. You could downlaod a pdf and print them yourself for a while there.

[IBBoard]

I lose track of which edition is which sometimes, but I do remember all of the old armies books, and the Dogs of War articles in White Dwarf that came before the army book. They're doing quite well (in GW terms) if they've now managed to get to a third edition in a row that is roughly compatible and doesn't need a complete re-work of everything!

I'd noticed the new cards and had just Tweeted about it before I read this. Looking at the initial price then it does seem cheaper than the old 4th Ed Battle Magic boxes (IIRC it was £20 or £25 for the first one and then they had a slimmer, cheaper one later with a green wizard on the front), but I did also see that it looked like the main Empire Colleges, at which point they'll make their money from people buying all of the add-ons. I didn't know they'd had PDFs of it before, though.