What do people make of the release schedule/structure for 4th?
Guess a lot will depend on how well the rulebook lists hold up against the expansion book ones. I’d assumed the first four factions in Invasion would have basic/beginner lists in the rulebook (they don’t).
The expansion books could be rolled out really well. I do hope there’s a significant Clash style update in the future expansion books for armies that aren’t the focus though.
As someone looking to get back in to the game at the beginning of 4th, it’s very tempting to take the TR units from Nature and build it out into a full Neritica army. No doubt all part of Mantic’s plan!
a fiendish plan to get you buying more models for sure.
I’m excited by it, the campaign books sound cool, and not too frequent. I fell off GW because they’re constantly churning out new books with limited content. But one every six months, four factions at a time? Loads of lore and art? Sounds cool. And the Companion keeps me up to date.
I guess that’s key here. For me it looks like ‘Clash-style updates’ are a thing of the past and the Companion is THE go-to ressource. The books, overhaul 4 factions at a time, add lore and maybe scenarios and stuff. But the balancing tweaks and updates will be on the Companion. I’m pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere. No problem for me, as I already have a gold (is that the one for everything, incl. the Vault?) subscription and do not think of doing army lists by hand anymore.
I could well be wrong, but I feel that the tweaks through the companion would have to be published somewhere in print first?
They’ve said the companion will be the definitive source for rules into the future. I think Ronnie acknowledged lately books are out of date nearly as soon as they’re in hands.
They’ve broken with the COK model from what I can see. Remains to be seen how often rules and list tweaks occur now.
Invasion and the other books seem as much about art, lore and the narrative content as rules drops. The books still make sense in that aspect, even if the rules are on the app.
I’m not interested in the background. I tried and read all the stories in KoW 2 and 3, several CoKs, but it never clicked.
So if the books are meant to be for arts and background mainly, I’m not buying them.
I just hope the rule book stays relevant. I prefer using a book.
I think they would at least have to release an official errata document to base the companion changes on.
They have officially said that the books purpose is lore and art and background, and while they will have rules in the books the companion will be definitive source for all the rules so books not needed. That’s a great approach that makes me far more likely to buy the books, and I’ve ordered the rulebook and first lore book due to it.
Certainly they aren’t just to say “we’ve updated various units in the Companion” and not set out what those are. Pdf erratas have always been a thing.
100% If you think about it, a printed rules update of any kind makes little sense. Make it a pdf on the site, and an app update, since the book content has to be transposed to the app anyway. The book being about lore and art gives it at a shot at being something someone will revisit or want to have on a shelf.
Agreed! Army lists need to be tweaked from time to time, but I hope the overall rules stay. Errata and Q&A per Companion is okay, but I hope the core and advanced rules have a longer lifetime.
It was a bit ‘messy’ in 3rd, especially if you consider the localized versions where you could buy a German version of the green book, but the rules were outdated by the red book, which never was localized.
Updating the errata to coincide with the expansion book releases would give people a date to go and check for adjustments etc.
I think it’s great they’re for lore and art the fact they they’re not mandatory is a huge plus. Just cool optional stuff that doesn’t get in the way of playing the game if that’s all you want to do. Having an overarching narrative is great and I’m glad to see Mantic picking up their production game with this edition.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, having armies get their unique abilities in their expansion books sounds reasonable until you realise it’ll take 2.5 years for everyone to have unique orders.
Breaking the narrative into a bunch of lore books sounds great to me, but being army D in the last batch is going to feel so bad.
Matt Gilbert did say that it was possible some factions would receive new units “out of synch” with book releases, so who knows.
He gave the example of the Xirkaali, they might decide that they needed more units than they got on release.
I suspect that if in 2 years time it is clear that the lack of command abilities for particular factions is becoming a major issue, Mantic are capable of addressing via the app.
It’ll get addressed in the expansion books. All armies will still get CoK style updates when needed, even if they aren’t the highlighted factions in the books.
Mantic doesn’t want you to wait 2,5 years. They want you to start another army with their miniatures.
(And they nearly got me with Xirkali or the missing TK miniatures.)
Which is quite normal if your company earns money because you sell miniatures. 
But that is a problem if it comes to balancing the units. The RC was free of financial needs, so they tried to balance the units, no matter which unit brings the most cash…
Sounds like the Clash element will build up over the expansion book timeline. To start with hardly at all, then Death getting tweaks every book.
yeah, but given that you also decided on this course of action, I don’t think my ‘when needed’ matches yours at all!
which is kind of why it doesn’t change that the plan seems blatantly unfair, but I recognise that for a lore perspective it works. I just don’t like it as game design, and probably never will.