Hy GW I thnik you need a document control system for your warscrolls :)

[Uveron]

Quickly revisiting the first post of this thread. 

A big thing to keep in mind when dealing with GW, is that despite the apparent size, they are a small company.  In many ways they are still making games in their garden shed. 

Now I think a Fan Made resource that is needed is a list of the most update Warscrolls and locations. (Including a note to say to check an FAQ, should it be needed). It could be built using the 'TGA Ultimate Guide to Bases in Age of Sigmar' template.  No need to remake the warscrolls just create our own version numbering system. 

 

[stato]

3 hours ago, polarbear said:

The warscrolls should definitely change with the FAQ changes. Stuff like changes to the weapon ranges on Kharadron models needs to be on the scrolls. The FAQ should only remain for questions of technical aspects of the game, ambiguous wording, tricky situations etc. A lot of players wouldn't even know to go to a FAQ to find out their warscrolls are incorrect. 

Problem with that is what about the printed ones?  I have the KO cards and use them in game. In my last 6 games only one opponent referred to the WH AoS app, and that was only for their own units. None of them checked up on my scrolls or use of FAQ for KO, infact most didnt know what my units did anyway and were happy to have me explain it, and this was in a tournament!

EDIT: To clarify, by ranges i assume you mean thunderers? that is updated on the app (and i think on GW shop download). The other KO changes, D3 instead of 3 damage etc. , are FAQ only.

EDIT2:  Moan - The KO cards are still for sale with the old Thunderer card included, how ****** for KO players is that!   and infact, that right there is reason enough for GW to not want to update scrolls with FAQ, why would people buy cards if you could view better ones for free online!

 

[polarbear]

13 minutes ago, stato said:

Problem with that is what about the printed ones?  I have the KO cards and use them in game. In my last 6 games only one opponent referred to the WH AoS app, and that was only for their own units. None of them checked up on my scrolls or use of FAQ for KO, infact most didnt know what my units did anyway and were happy to have me explain it, and this was in a tournament!

EDIT: To clarify, by ranges i assume you mean thunderers? that is updated on the app (and i think on GW shop download). The other KO changes, D3 instead of 3 damage etc. , are FAQ only.

EDIT2:  Moan - The KO cards are still for sale with the old Thunderer card included, how ****** for KO players is that!   and infact, that right there is reason enough for GW to not want to update scrolls with FAQ, why would people buy cards if you could view better ones for free online!

 

Yeah I meant the Drill Cannon. Though the range on it was changed for the Gunhauler too I believe to 24 inches. In a sea of great things the company has been doing, I think it is pretty bad for GW to be selling outdated products. Same thing with the Grand Alliance books. They border on scamming the customer. 

[stato]

5 minutes ago, polarbear said:

Yeah I meant the Drill Cannon. Though the range on it was changed for the Gunhauler too I believe to 24 inches. In a sea of great things the company has been doing, I think it is pretty bad for GW to be selling outdated products. Same thing with the Grand Alliance books. They border on scamming the customer. 

Oh yeah the Gunhauler changed, forgot about that. Suppose we will actually see some now it will be in the xmas box 

The easy way to not selling outdate products... dont update them!  careful what you wish for 

[Uveron]

5 minutes ago, polarbear said:

Yeah I meant the Drill Cannon. Though the range on it was changed for the Gunhauler too I believe to 24 inches. In a sea of great things the company has been doing, I think it is pretty bad for GW to be selling outdated products. Same thing with the Grand Alliance books. They border on scamming the customer. 

To be fair the Grand Allieance Books are not that outdated. I just wish they would put a sicker on them listing what has been updated since it was published.  for a fair amount of units its still the only place they exist. 

[BunkhouseBuster]

37 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

Easy to do if faqs aren't a thing. 

There's nothing stopping both, digital copies and paper form for those who want to print them out.

 I like a book to hold an read, but when I'm playing away from home I'd rather have the option to speed up the whole process. 

Back in my hey-day of playing 40K nearly every day, back in the days of late 5th to mid 6th Edition, I was printing off every FAQ as GW released and keeping them in a binder, with every other FAQ for that edition.  I was taking it a bit too seriously, but I found a logistical satisfaction being the rules guy at my local GW, and helping to arbitrate games.  But that all died as 1) GW began cranking out much more frequent Codex updates and 2) stopped publishing FAQs for a while.  To me, it's easier to use a post-it or bookmark to find a page with relevant information than it is to scroll through an app or other digital repository.

I can respect that others prefer digital to analog, but my original point from my prior point stands - don't stick with just one way, especially if that one way is digital.

42 minutes ago, polarbear said:

...

In a sea of great things the company has been doing, I think it is pretty bad for GW to be selling outdated products. Same thing with the Grand Alliance books. They border on scamming the customer. 

By that logic, you could argue that charging any amount of money for rules that might be updated is scamming the customer.  The rules are  meant to change over time, so it is an assumed risk on part of the customer anytime they buy a Battletome, Codex, rulebook, or expansion.

Besides, it's not like they are still selling the GH2016, is it?

Unless GW, or any other publisher, comes out an says "These are the rules and they aren't changing!", then there is a chance that any book you buy will be "outdated" in a few years.  I mean, I bought every single 40K Codex, Rulebook, and expansion during 5th and 6th Edition, and most everything for 7th Edition (and the only reason I haven't done that with AoS yet is financial constraints.)  But I don't regret those 40K purchases one bit, since there is still cool fluff, neat ideas for alternate game modes, and they are still available for me to read and share with others at a later date.

Which ties into my original thought pretty well - keep legacy copies of the rules and fluff available.  Some of us will want to go back and look at the older versions or our gaming material, either for nostalgia, research, legacy play, or sharing an awesome moment of our lives with a new generation of gamers.  If we are forced to use a digital-only form of our gaming content, then those older versions will get wiped out as the "V1.3.62" replaces "V1.2.09", which already replaced "V1.0.0" 6 months prior.  That's why the printed, official copies are important to me, because every book offers something to this game and others.

[polarbear]

2 minutes ago, BunkhouseBuster said:

Besides, it's not like they are still selling the GH2016, is it?

They are, on my app at least. 

[BunkhouseBuster]

11 minutes ago, polarbear said:

They are, on my app at least. 

But it's still perfectly valid for legacy play, comparison to later versions, collection completionists, or for hobby historical value.

[AshCrow]

9 hours ago, Planar said:

I wonder if anyone else thinks this is a good idea.

I just checked the Stonehorn warscroll on GW website this morning. To my (mild) surprise the site still lists the old warscroll (before the nerfs). All the changes are still only on the FAQ. This strikes me as counter efficient and confusing especially for new players.

It really puzzles me why GW is not adopting a simple document control system based on revisions. Instead of using the FAQs for updates they could simply update the actual warscroll and put a revision number on each new version.

Then they could keep a public register where they would mention which is the latest (and valid) version for each warscroll.

This sort of document control system is really easy to manage and allows to have all the useful information were it should be (i.e. on actual warscroll) instead of an obscure FAQ document.

In the Stonehorn's case the FAQ didn't change the rule, it clarified how it's supposed to be interpreted.

[Lucio]

I agree with the idea of updating the digital assets but the amount of work involved would likely ****** with the release cycles of new products even more. That said, a proper digital archive would be invaluable to the Specialist Games team, who rely on a significant amount of old material when putting together their products.

It's also a shame that they appear to have contracted out the app development, given the lack of an app for 40k, their biggest IP, it suggests they didn't renew the outsourcing contract.

[Uveron]

5 minutes ago, Lucio said:

It's also a shame that they appear to have contracted out the app development, given the lack of an app for 40k, their biggest IP, it suggests they didn't renew the outsourcing contract.

Or the App development was focused on the Paint app! 

[Freejack02]

5 hours ago, AshCrow said:

In the Stonehorn's case the FAQ didn't change the rule, it clarified how it's supposed to be interpreted.

This is wrong - the FAQ specifically changed the wording of Stone Skeleton to differ from the (still being used) warscroll:

‘Stone Skeleton: Halve the Damage characteristic (rounding up) of weapons that target this model. In addition, halve the number of mortal wounds this model suffers from a spell or ability (rounding up).'

Official Destruction FAQ and Errata, version 1.2

[someone2040]

So I'm going to say two things:

Yes, they should, and yes, it is a problem. You know, on the app, which 90% of the players use, they still have compendium versions of some of the scrolls updated in the Grand Alliance books? Yep, some stuff like Be'Lakor are still using the compendium version of his scroll which is actually incorrect, missing the Monster keyword.

The app and website should be the source of truth for the most updated warscrolls, and if it's correct then that's a real problem.

 

The second thing is, Games Workshop may not want to have errata inbuilt into warscrolls. Now, not saying this is their best thought out stuff, but there is something to be said for consistency. Knowing that the warscroll you have in your battletome (assuming your battletome is the latest version), is the exact same one in the app and there's one consistent set of errata that can be applied to all 'current' versions of the warscroll. I don't agree with it, I think I'd rather just know the app will always have the latest and greatest rules, but consistency is one thing to consider.

 

Anyway, those are my two cents. Yes, there are a ton of warscrolls, but it really shouldn't be a big deal to keep them up to date. Most of the warscrolls are unchanged since the grand alliance releases, and ultimately they're only updating warscrolls after that when they release a new battletome or when errata is released (seemingly once a year which is also a little pitiful).

[stato]

While I agree updated scrolls would be nice, do we actually need it?

Ive only been playing a year and still facing armies of builds where i have no idea what they do. To find out i just ask my opponent, and trust them.  Ive never felt the need to bury myself in the app to double check what im being told, either in friendly play or at tournaments. I currently play KO and so face a lot of people who dont know what they do. They trust me to explain and i share my cards if they are especially keen to learn; pointing out where FAQ changes have occurred (even on units i dont run). The few times things have cropped up ive just asked other players at the club or the TO, and its resolved easily and quickly.

There are still just many things in scrolls you could argue over if you wanted that have not had an FAQ, so while useful i dont think updated scrolls will actually reduce any issues for players that have issues.

[EMMachine]

The problem with the Warscroll Versions isn't a GW Problem only.

For six years I play a game named Dystopian Wars. In the first Edition of the game there company spartan games made statcards that were packed to the models blister.

The main problem was that those statcards had no versionnumber (like the warscrolls) and so, when stats were changed you couldn't see if you got an actual card or an outdated one. With 2.0 all army Lists were brought out as PDF by them for free, what solved the problem.

But I think that GW created another problem. I have the strange feeling that some times the updates were only made on the warhammer community page, so it is harder to find it after months.

One thing that could help would be some sort of List that contains the warscrollname, book, a upcounting versionnumber when the warscroll changed during publications, where to find the pitched Battle profile. This wouldn't be a copyright problem. Perhaps something like that.

Don't wonder about the language. I wrote this in german some time ago and never completed it.

[RuneBrush]

1 hour ago, EMMachine said:

The problem with the Warscroll Versions isn't a GW Problem only.

For six years I play a game named Dystopian Wars. In the first Edition of the game there company spartan games made statcards that were packed to the models blister.

The main problem was that those statcards had no versionnumber (like the warscrolls) and so, when stats were changed you couldn't see if you got an actual card or an outdated one. With 2.0 all army Lists were brought out as PDF by them for free, what solved the problem.

But I think that GW created another problem. I have the strange feeling that some times the updates were only made on the warhammer community page, so it is harder to find it after months.

One thing that could help would be some sort of List that contains the warscrollname, book, a upcounting versionnumber when the warscroll changed during publications, where to find the pitched Battle profile. This wouldn't be a copyright problem. Perhaps something like that.

Don't wonder about the language. I wrote this in german some time ago and never completed it.

I actually think this would be the perfect start if we were to undertake a task like this.  We know it wouldn't infringe on any of GW's IP and would be really useful.  It doesn't even really need a version number, just the publication and month & year of release.

[EMMachine]

1 hour ago, RuneBrush said:

I actually think this would be the perfect start if we were to undertake a task like this.  We know it wouldn't infringe on any of GW's IP and would be really useful.  It doesn't even really need a version number, just the publication and month & year of release.

Thanks. The Point with the version number is only to see, if there is a change in the warscroll during the publications.

If someone wants to use for example some Liberators in a Order Army and has Quest for Ghal Maraz, he perhaps wants to know if he needs the actual Stormcast Eternals Battletome or if the Warscroll is still the same.  I know there could be the problem, that in different languages could be different version numbers (if there was an error in the german version but not in the english one, that was fixed in a later publication the version number would be different.

Another problem, if you use some sort of Excel instead of a database would be, how the tables should look like, which factions should be in the same table.

I think I only have the data for Mighty Battles and Quest for Ghal Maraz in Google Tables like that.

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

I feel like this is becoming massively over complicated.  Realistically the best solution is for the GW app to have the most up to date versions of the warscroll with relevant faq/errata amended on the scroll.  

It doesn’t break the game for anyone using paper versions, they can still continue to use printed FAQ. 

And it saves a time and hassle for everyone else. This really is the digital age and there’s no reason for GW to be behind, no matter the company size. 

Having a Document Contol System in place has little downside and is low relative cost. I mean they must have the underworkings already in place, it’s just not efficiently managed. 

[Arkiham]

2 minutes ago, The Jabber Tzeentch said:

I feel like this is becoming massively over complicated.  Realistically the best solution is for the GW app to have the most up to date versions of the warscroll with relevant faq/errata amended on the scroll.  

It doesn’t break the game for anyone using paper versions, they can still continue to use printed FAQ. 

And it saves a time and hassle for everyone else. This really is the digital age and there’s no reason for GW to be behind, no matter the company size. 

Having a Document Contol System in place has little downside and is low relative cost. I mean they must have the underworkings already in place, it’s just not efficiently managed. 

i posted my example onto the facebook page. they gave the typical " this is a really good idea " response, so i dont expect anything to change.

 

that is, unless many people post similar things showing that there is a demand for it. 

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

6 minutes ago, Arkiham said:

i posted my example onto the facebook page. they gave the typical " this is a really good idea " response, so i dont expect anything to change.

 

that is, unless many people post similar things showing that there is a demand for it. 

They normally have a default reply like that for everything, so don’t be disheartened. It will be picked up, and also various GW reps are on this forum who I’m sure pass on good ideas. 

[Thomas Lyons]

On November 15, 2017 at 4:42 AM, stato said:

They wont do that though sadly, from GWs perspective the rules stand as fixed stand-alone documents and are not iterative, changing with each little update. Once created they do not change except for a major update at which point they release a new scroll, with the requirement to use it only required for tournament or strict matched play.  As far as i am aware i dont think any warscroll has been updated with FAQ changes. There have been replacement scrolls certainly but those were as a result of a new book or compendium, neither being specifically for FAQ updates.

They wont have different versions in the app as the app is a viewer of the fixed scrolls, so any variation must be replicated in a printed (or downloadable) copy somewhere.

There is an example of this.  The Thunderer warscroll, which had a bunch of values changed and abilities added.  It was "rereleased" with the GHB2017.  All current publications (cards and books) have the old scrolls.

On November 15, 2017 at 11:11 AM, stato said:

Oh yeah the Gunhauler changed, forgot about that. Suppose we will actually see some now it will be in the xmas box 

The easy way to not selling outdate products... dont update them!  careful what you wish for 

To be clear, 7 of the 12 KO warscrolls have either had damage values changed, range values changed, or ability wording changed or replaced.  Over 50% of the scrolls are different...and yet nothing has been done to update published sources :-(

[Keldaur]

Too many people around haven't really looking in how hard or difficult is to maintain a database which consists in merely 1000-2000 products with only a few real changes per year. The answer is it's not difficult at all, there is not an amount of erratas big enough to preclude that it requires extensive work. And the whole point that they are either "fixing the website pdfs" or "designing units" is hilarious at best. Please give me a break, the game designer is not the guy who is fixing the erratas in pdfs. Not to say that there hasn't been a single new model for AOS in a while, except if you prefer to delude yourself and consider the shadespire release as AOS releases. 

I actually find this exercises of "pragmatism" or "being reasonable" about why a company has not updated the information required to play their models and game are  the biggest reason why they aren't updated (and pretty much the reason GW will go back to their habits in the long run), if the client doesn't care, the company doesn't care. But go on.