6th Edition Round-up - The Facts (sort of)

So before we start, in case you haven't seen it yet there's a teaser trailer over on the GW website or you can watch it on YouTube here. Not much to it but there's no doubt that it's announcing when pre-orders will start for 6th edition: 23rd June 2012.

What do we know for sure about 6th edition then? Well there's certainly a lot of rumours running around at the moment. With several sources claiming the same things I'm farily sure they're on the mark. However, it's still difficult to differentiate between genuine information and wishlisting.

What we can be almost certain of is that 6th edition will be released on 7th July. How can I be sure? Well think about it this way. We've got a video saying pre-orders will be up on 23rd June, I'm then playing in the GW 40K Doubles the weekend after and the weekend of the 14th July I'm going to the GW Open Day. If you read the description of that then I think it's pretty obvious that what they're avoiding saying is that it'll be chance for them to discuss the new rules with their customers and show them off in a few demonstration games. Keep you eyes on this blog for details of it. That means 6th has got to land somewhere between the doubles and the open day i.e. 7th July. This is what the rumour mongers have been saying for a while anyway.

Another little tidbit of information makes it certain the next White Dwarf will be the 6th edition one. At the editorial in this month's issue he hints that the White Scars vs. Orks will be replayed next month. No point doing that if you haven't got the new ruleset to demonstrate.

Looking at the events GW are hosting later in the year we can be pretty certain Chaos Space Marines will be getting the first new codex of 6th edition. What makes me think this? Well aside from the rumours on various sites GW having a Painting Chaos Terminators Masterclass in early September. It would be a little strange for them to do this at the moment when Chaos aren't exactly flavour of the month. With a new codex in August they would be though!

Now I'm not going to list off the more specific rumours about the new rules because frankly Faeit 212 does a far better job at this than I would. However, from what I've read it seems like it will be decent shake up of the rules. I'm slightly concerned that it will be more complicated. In some ways it needs to be but I hope it doesn't spoil the flow of the game. Love it or hate it, 5th edition is a straightforward set of rules that make for a pretty rapid game. When I first got into 40K in 2nd edition it used to take us an entire day to play a 2K game because things were so complicated.

I'd also like to see them reduce some of the grey areas in the game. Now I accept in any game with tape measures and true line of sight there's going to be disagreements but when you look at other game systems they have some nice ideas for how to address these. For me pre-measuring would be a good thing. Let's face it at the moment there are ways to do it subtly and legally but they'll no doubt piss off your opponent. Either you're in range to shoot or you aren't but you'd think trained soldiers (and certainly super-soldiers) would be able to assess range before chosing a target.

Anyway, before I get carried away wishlisting, I'll stop rambling!