Our guest writer is going over his thoughts on the already clunky book problem for Warhammer 40k 8th Edition, from a new player’s perspective.
Kyle Sawdy, hasn’t started 8th Edition 40k yet and here is why.
This is a negative post because I am sad. My hobby is dead. I know this is beating a dead horse because some of you have went through this 3, 4, 5, even 6 or more different times. It’s rough to a newbie though in this day in age.
I started playing/painting 40k about a year and a half before 8th edition came out. I purchased all of these things in that short time:
- 7th Edition Rules
- Codex: Space Wolves
- Champions of Fenris
- Curse of the Wulfen
- Sanctus Reach: Hour of the Wolf
- Codex: Imperial Knights
- Codex: Harlequins
- Imperial Armour Volume Two – Second Edition: War Machines of the Adeptus Astartes
I got all of this at roughly 10% off, and I was really appreciative of that at my local game store. Still, it came out to cost me roughly $450.
Then, 8th dropped…
I now have 8 books of “Don’t worry, your old rule books aren’t useless anymore! They are full of lore and stories of the Imperium and the Grim Dark of the Future!”. AKA, I now have $450 of books worth roughly nothing.
I love lore, but I liked playing the game, and now to play the game I need to go buy more books. My friends tell me things like “Oh, it’s fine! The new books are cheaper! You just need the “X” book!”. But then the Codices came out. Now, I am told I need the Index AND the Codex in order to field my army. Never mind the fact that I now need to buy ANOTHER book to field my two Forge World models, and yet another book if I want to field my Knight.
I know this is a rant.
I feel like I am not irrationally angry. I just wanted to play games with my friends, and even though I COULD buy the books, it’s just left such an incredibly poor taste in my mouth to be sitting on hundreds of dollars of stuff that became useless so shortly after I got it.
Now, I want to play games with the new people in the San Antonio area to make new friends, but I can’t bring myself to dredge out my models just to go to the game shop and be like “Do you mind if I use your rule book?”, in hopes that they have the rule book that I need.
I got into 40k because as a veteran it is sometimes difficult to make friends, even as an outgoing individual such as myself. Instead, I am now left with no direct access to games and roughly $5,000 worth of models, books, and a display board that will now just gather dust, depreciating with every passing minute.
If you have got this far, this post was mostly meant to get this all of my chest, as I haven’t been able to vent any of this to anyone really since 8th.
But also I wanted to start a discussion. What’s been your experience in your local game shops since 8th? Have you seen more new people? Have older players been dropping off (once again)? I have heard nothing but good things for the RULES, but what about the costs?
I would like to get your thoughts. And remember, this is a discussion. It’s fine to disagree with other people’s opinions, but don’t flame them for not agreeing with you.
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About the Author: James Rodriguez
I’m a huge fan of anything tabletop. I play strictly Chaos in Warhammer, and Imperial in anything Star Wars. I spent 8 years in the military. Now I’m happy to be a civilian working with a great group of people.
“We are all tyrants. Do not fool yourself. We were bred for nothing else.”
-Mortarion
