The Future of Battletomes

[Gitzdee]

 

With the changes happening with the app and warhammer+ what do u all think about the future of battletomes?

I think battletomes are an outdated concept as a whole.

If they would put all army rules and warscrolls in the app for all who like to play games. They could have an app with rules/armybuilder and interface to keep track of things needed for your battle. With an option to print those.

Then do a separate release for the books with just the lore and art and fluff for the people who are into that. I think all would be happy. They could also do broken realms style books without rules to showcase new lore and models.

Could be that they are moving towards that kind of thing now but they really need to upgrade the apps to another level. 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Iksdee

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

I have said before that if there was a subscription service that gave you access to the rules portions of all battletomes for, like, 10 dollarydoos a month, I would pounce on that like a puma. The convenience of having all the most up-to-date rules in one place would be well worth it for me.

Warhammer+ and the new AoS app could be that. But it's probably more likely that GW will make us buy digital versions of our battletomes individually through the app. In which case I will buy my own army's tomes and look up all other faction rules through 3rd party summaries, like I have been doing.

[Gitzdee]

9 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

I have said before that if there was a subscription service that gave you access to the rules portions of all battletomes for, like, 10 dollarydoos a month, I would pounce on that like a puma. The convenience of having all the most up-to-date rules in one place would be well worth it for me.

Warhammer+ and the new AoS app could be that. But it's probably more likely that GW will make us buy digital versions of our battletomes individually through the app. In which case I will buy my own army's tomes and look up all other faction rules through 3rd party summaries, like I have been doing.

What it looks like now, and correct me if i'm wrong, is that we have to pay for warhammer+ to get the builder and also buy the battletome to unlock the digital version. I havent seen them myself but i've read that the digital battletomes are horrible at the moment. It all seems clunky.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Iksdee

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

8 minutes ago, Iksdee said:

What it looks like now, and correct me if i'm wrong, is that we have to pay for warhammer+ to get the builder and also buy the battletome to unlock the digital version. I havent seen them myself but i've read that the digital battletomes are horrible at the moment. It all seems clunky.

Unless I missed a piece of news somewhere, I don't think anything specific is known about the AoS app in particular. But I believe what you wrote is correct for 40k (which I have also not looked into very deeply).

[AaronWilson]

I think they make far too much money from physical books to ever swap to a full digital service. I think they know that a digital service for books would be better, but (and to be fair rightfully so for a business) I think they have a too big revenue stream from physical books to stop them.

[JackStreicher]

3 minutes ago, AaronWilson said:

I think they make far too much money from physical books to ever swap to a full digital service. I think they know that a digital service for books would be better, but (and to be fair rightfully so for a business) I think they have a too big revenue stream from physical books to stop them.

Yup. That‘s why I am all in for spiral binders (GHB 2021) style that let you update your Battletome easily.

There are ofc other ways like clamps and the lines which could be added into the book.

[RuneBrush]

I've said for some time that I'd love to see the basic "concept" of battletomes and codexes change.  Rather than a solid hardback book that contains everything, split it into two.  A lavish hardback coffee table style book that contains lore, background, artwork, painted miniatures, stories, painting guides etc and then a booklet that contains the allegiance abilities, unit rules etc - basically everything you require to play a game.  That booklet could then be made available in digital & warscroll formats to satisfy how different people like to consume that content.

I personally dislike using apps in physical games - part of the appeal for me is that playing a game is tactile, I can pass over a warscroll card to my opponent to read, I'll make my own quick reference cards for spells etc.  That's entirely my own view - partly stemming from somebody who uses public transport to travel to events a lot (the last thing you need is your mobile phone running out of juice when you need to find out if the train is running on time 😉)

5 minutes ago, Iksdee said:

What it looks like now, and correct me if i'm wrong, is that we have to pay for warhammer+ to get the builder and also buy the battletome to unlock the digital version. I havent seen them myself but i've read that the digital battletomes are horrible at the moment. I all seems clunky.

If it follows the same format as 40k has (and it's suggestive it is), each battletome will have a code in the back that will unlock the allegiance rules within the app (i.e. abilities and enhancements).  Having a subscription would only enable the army building part of the app (and warscroll builder is currently free and remains one of the better ways to create a list).  I'd agree that it is a little clunky, I think some of the reason they've gone this route is related to piracy where pretty much every full digital publication they've released has ended up being pilfered within hours of it being released.

What we don't currently know about though is if warscrolls are going to remain available to download for all, or if they're going to be locked away behind a purchase of some kind.  I expect we'll know a bit more in a couple of weeks on that front though.

[RuneBrush]

Just now, JackStreicher said:

Yup. That‘s why I am all in for spiral binders (GHB 2021) style that let you update your Battletome easily.

There are ofc other ways like clamps and the lines which could be added into the book.

Filofax armies 😲  You buy a generals handbook folder that contains all the battleplans for that year and realm rules etc and then the warscroll cards for an army has the allegiance abilities and warscrolls with holes in!

[JackStreicher]

5 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

Filofax armies 😲  You buy a generals handbook folder that contains all the battleplans for that year and realm rules etc and then the warscroll cards for an army has the allegiance abilities and warscrolls with holes in!

Exactly. Even Broken realms style books could have rip-out-Pages with holes in them (or not being part of the book, but being contained in a seperate booklet).

this way they could add an infinite amount of content that one could collect without ever being out of date.

Edit: Those kinds of Battletomes are cheaper and, oh boy, GW could create so many Accessoires to make it look cooler (And ofc make money off of it)

- Faction specific binders

- Faction specific Hard Covers that wrap around the binder to make it look like a real book.

- A leather Wrap-Hard Cover to make it look like a tome

- a magnetic cover to which you can attack your gaming aids etc.

Edited September 7, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Gitzdee]

12 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

Exactly. Even Broken realms style books could have rip-out-Pages with holes in them (or not being part of the book, but being contained in a seperate booklet).

this way they could add an infinite amount of content that one could collect without ever being out of date.

Edit: Those kinds of Battletomes are cheaper and, oh boy, GW could create so many Accessoires to make it look cooler (And ofc make money off of it)

- Faction specific binders

- Faction specific Hard Covers that wrap around the binder to make it look like a real book.

- A leather Wrap-Hard Cover to make it look like a tome

- a magnetic cover to which you can attack your gaming aids etc.

Its like microtransactions but not digital. If GW sees this it will happen like today.

[JackStreicher]

I made some quick mockups.

What you can see:
- A Cover which holds the spiral binder
- A standard black binder
- A Binder for Order
 

(Faction specific you could design the binder to look jagged, spiralled or even contain runes of your faction)

 

Truly: The Sky is the limit with this method.

Edited September 7, 2021 by JackStreicher

[Gitzdee]

Could even use this concept for warcry and other upcomming things. They could even do booster packs with different art pages so people will trade them to create a better community. It would also be a wallets worst nightmare. It already makes me feel nostalgic. 

Me: *opens pack*
Someone else: Yeey i got a foil Gordrakk page ! !
Me: *looks inside pack* nooo not another deathrattle skeleton

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

10 minutes ago, Iksdee said:

They could even do booster packs with different art pages so people will trade them to create a better community.

Don't give them ideas. If GW finds out you can include art cards with arbitrary rarities in things we are done for. Imagine if all your model purchases came with warscroll trading cards as well.

[Gitzdee]

32 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

Don't give them ideas. If GW finds out you can include art cards with arbitrary rarities in things we are done for. Imagine if all your model purchases came with warscroll trading cards as well.

I am a sucker for this kind of thing. I played mtg for close to 15 years. I and my wallet would be doomed XD.

Edit: They could even do guest artists like John Howe or Alan Lee. They would make them tons of money.

 

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Iksdee

[Fairbanks]

3 hours ago, Iksdee said:

 

I think battletomes are an outdated concept as a whole.

I don't some people comprehend what they are asking for.

Do you need constant updates to your battletome every time another army gets a Battletome? Do you want minutia changes on a weekly basis to try and "balance" the meta? Because I don't want to live in that world, and neither do you. It works fine for online games where they get a thousand games in a week and can make a change from 150 damage to 140 damage because such and such is a little too good. But in this game, where we get one game a week if we're lucky, we don't need our rules changed monthly. This is a major problem that Warmahordes had two years ago and it really just messed with new and returning players.

A paper book is fine, especially for a game we don't entirely play online with no real models.

[Gitzdee]

4 minutes ago, Fairbanks said:

I don't some people comprehend what they are asking for.

Do you need constant updates to your battletome every time another army gets a Battletome? Do you want minutia changes on a weekly basis to try and "balance" the meta? Because I don't want to live in that world, and neither do you. It works fine for online games where they get a thousand games in a week and can make a change from 150 damage to 140 damage because such and such is a little too good. But in this game, where we get one game a week if we're lucky, we don't need our rules changed monthly. This is a major problem that Warmahordes had two years ago and it really just messed with new and returning players.

A paper book is fine, especially for a game we don't entirely play online with no real models.

They are already doing this in the form of faq's and white dwarf releases. And what about new models that arent included in a battletome. Sometimes it is already outdated after a month or 2. Slaanesh got 2 battletomes in 2 years.

[JackStreicher]

2 minutes ago, Iksdee said:

They are already doing this in the form of faq's and white dwarf releases. And what about new models that arent included in a battletome. Sometimes it is already outdated after a month or 2. Slaanesh got 2 battletomes in 2 years.

exactly. They could just print the rewritten rules and you could put them into your spiral-binder-book

[Gitzdee]

We should tell gw about this and they can do a limited edition Space Marines one with girlyman on the cover. It will happen for sure! 

Ok all kidding aside. I do think they need to up their game with the apps. The reason imo with people looking for 3rd party stuff is that their own stuff just isnt good enough. They can try to make all content illegal but they will never get rid of all fanmade stuff. And i think fanmade content just adds to their popularity. They should focus on just being better and people will be drawn to them for quality content. Isnt that how we ended up here anyway? Quality minis.

Edited September 7, 2021 by Iksdee

[DoctorPerils]

I'd be all for binder BT/codices! Especially if there were a fold-out plastic protector where'd you'd keep the sheet for unit points values for quick reference, rather than flipping between pages.

I do still like the idea of the lore+art+tuts sections as a book, though that should be available with an ebook/PDF version.

[Reinholt]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I'd agree that it is a little clunky, I think some of the reason they've gone this route is related to piracy where pretty much every full digital publication they've released has ended up being pilfered within hours of it being released.

I completely agree this is why they have gone to this method, but it also reveals how wildly intellectually bankrupt GW is as a company.

Many firms have tried this exact policy, and do you know what you find in almost every case? Most of the "pirates" were people who never were going to buy your product anyways, and a huge number of these downloads among your actual customer base convert to actual sales. It's literally free marketing.

Hilariously, the musicians who were the most aggressive about combating piracy on Napster back in the day (and the push to shut those things down and move to subscription services) instead lead to a massive drop in market share and revenue for the entire industry. Ooops!

So I agree with your statement, and if true, it's also a sign that GW has somehow managed the rare two-for-one of being environmentally unfriendly while also harming their own sales.

Well played, GW. Well played.

[CommissarRotke]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I've said for some time that I'd love to see the basic "concept" of battletomes and codexes change.  Rather than a solid hardback book that contains everything, split it into two.  A lavish hardback coffee table style book that contains lore, background, artwork, painted miniatures, stories, painting guides etc and then a booklet that contains the allegiance abilities, unit rules etc - basically everything you require to play a game.  That booklet could then be made available in digital & warscroll formats to satisfy how different people like to consume that content.

I personally dislike using apps in physical games - part of the appeal for me is that playing a game is tactile, I can pass over a warscroll card to my opponent to read, I'll make my own quick reference cards for spells etc.  That's entirely my own view - partly stemming from somebody who uses public transport to travel to events a lot (the last thing you need is your mobile phone running out of juice when you need to find out if the train is running on time 😉)

I would love if the books were divided like this! While I don't mind rules being digital, it's still nice to have a reasonably priced tactile option, and for admiring Warhammer art there's nothing like a full book page... I agree that splitting these two should help with updating army rules--they're already poised to make the digital AOS tomes rules-only, so why not go ahead and split the physical battletome itself up?

[EccentricCircle]

The folder idea is a good one. D&D kind of tried something similar in the 90's ( I guess at the height of the filofax movement?) Rather than producing a single monster manual, and then following it up with sequels they made a ringbinder version, which you could then buy additional sheets for and keep adding to as more and more monster supplement were released.

It was a great idea but they made two key mistakes. The first was durability. They printed it on fairly thin note paper, which unfortunately meant that the pages didn't stand up to the heavy use required for flicking too and fro during gaming sessions. This would likely be worse for warhammer where you have multiple sheets to look at in a turn than for D&D where the DM might only be referring to one monster. The advantage is that the shelf life of rules is much shorter for warhammer, where a stat block is expected to last a year or two at most before getting revised. Whereas for D&D you would be using those same basic monster stats for half the 90s until 2.5 came out, possibly longer.

Their other mistake, and the key one really, was that they printed multiple creatures on the same sheet, figuring it was better to have different creatures on the two sides of the sheet. This made it all but impossible to actually organise the folder, as new monsters would come out, and there would be no way to slot them in alphabetically between creatures which shared a sheet of paper. This is easily fixed, for example by having full page art on the reverse. But it probably doomed what was otherwise a good idea for a product.

Even so, if you learn the lessons of the past, I think a filofax approach would work great.

I'd still want a nice hardback lore and art book though, and disagree with those who claim that is bad for the environment. The embodied energy of the internet, the tablet or phone you read the pdf on and the digital infrastructure supporting it all is collosal, so don't kid yourself that you are saving trees. Trees can and are replanted to offset the carbon used in paper production. I accept that printing books cheaply in China means a higher carbon footprint and environmental impact, than optimal, but they are fundamentally a sustainable technology, which your e reader is not.

Edited September 7, 2021 by EccentricCircle

[PJetski]

I just want them to move the battleplans and path to glory rules out from between the allegiance abilities and the warscrolls.

[schwabbele]

I hope they keep printed ones. I can't help myself but all the Apps and Digital BTs were ****** and had the UX comparable to a knife in the face.

[Andrew G]

6 hours ago, Fairbanks said:

I don't some people comprehend what they are asking for.

Do you need constant updates to your battletome every time another army gets a Battletome? Do you want minutia changes on a weekly basis to try and "balance" the meta? Because I don't want to live in that world, and neither do you. It works fine for online games where they get a thousand games in a week and can make a change from 150 damage to 140 damage because such and such is a little too good. But in this game, where we get one game a week if we're lucky, we don't need our rules changed monthly. This is a major problem that Warmahordes had two years ago and it really just messed with new and returning players.

A paper book is fine, especially for a game we don't entirely play online with no real models.

Two different discussions IMO(how often/massively should the rules be updated vs. should the rules exist in an easier to update format), but I appreciate and agree with the sentiment in a game where the players are also the enforcers/arbiters of the rules to keep changes to a minimal when possible.

That said, I play other games where the rules exist purely in a digital format with the only printed materials being lore/art and it's such a luxury in comparison to AOS. The developers have the same pressure to keep changes to a minimum (for the reasons already stated), but any changes that "need" to be made are integrated into the main rules app/army builder with a separate change log if you're a returning player.  In today's AOS, if I have a legitimate question about how your army works, you handing me a warscroll card means jack-****** without also referencing the FAQ/Errata.