Saturday 3 June 2017

In which I approved of Chapter Approved

Two bits of 8th edition news happened this weekend. Firstly, there's a new hover tank think for the Primaris Marines called a Repulsor. Its basically a flying Land Raider and even if I manage to offload my Primaris onto someone I might just buy one. Not long ago I read Aaron Demski-Bowden's Master of Mankind and in it Arkhan Land turns up with his personal flying Land Raider and this thing looks like a flying Land Raider so there we are.

More boringly, but perhaps more importantly, there's this:
Chapter Approved is being resurrected as the General's Handbook of 40k. I can't express how happy I am by this. Having a single, annually updated book just for points values means they won't have to start a new cycle of Codexes every time they want to rebalance the game. If something is OP they can just bump up the points in the next annual update. If something is stupidly below the power curve, just slip in a lower cost next time the book comes out. Its reactive, its simple, it isn't a thirty pound hardcover for every army that needs minor tweaks, which is increasingly what new Codex supplements have been about.

Its a very real cost of entry problem: army rulebooks cost a lot, edition rule books cost more, both go out of print and get replaced on a regular basis. Right now, for a core rulebook and a codex you're handing over the better part of a hundred quid before you buy a single model. It was getting untenable.

So, yes, long live Chapter Approved and long live the lowered barrier of entry! 

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