40K Editorial: Is Forgeworld Fair?
Today we open a can of worms. I want to talk about Forgeworld and whether they have a decent enough handle on rules writing to be considered a true part of the game. Lets go…
The Early Days
First off, lets take a stroll down memory lane. Way back in the day, before the hardcover and pricey Imperial Armour books came out, Forgeworld started out with a pair of softcover books covering a bunch of mainly Imperial Guard vehicle variants, and a set of somewhat complex rules for flyers and superheavies.
If anything in the early days the Forgeworld rules were underpowered, with high prices in points being charged for what were at the end of the day minor variants on existing models from the core rulebooks. The flyers were hobbled by wonky rules and very high prices. Aside from some minor hysterics surrounding the Cyclops demolition vehicle, things were fairly under control.
Then Apocalyse Appeared, and the world changed.
With a consistent set of rules for superheavies and flyers, transports, destroyer weapons, and a large set of sample baseline units from the Design Studio, the Forgeworld designers at long last has a set of “rules of the road” to use as guideposts. And use them they did.
Post Anphelion, the Apocalypse-ready hardcovers arrived, retrofitting many of the most popular large models as the Scorpion, Cobra, and many others. This was also the dawning of the “big boys”.
Up until this point the big scary things in the game were still limited to the range of roughly 3 structure points. In any decent sized Apoc game, these could still be dealt with by determined focused firepower. Siege of Vraks part 2, brought us the mighty Reaver titan with its 6 structure points, 4 void shields, and the potential to blaze away with 8 Destroyer 5″ pieplates a turn for a somewhat affordable point cost. Suddenly things looked very different for those arguing that Forgeworld had their rules balance under control (ask JWolf’s Gladiator opponents).
Nowhere can this be seen better than the no holds barred steel cage match that is the Gladiator tournament at Adepticon, which has had to deal with an ever growing list of house rule tweaks and banned units to ensure a fair fight.
So my question is this – what do you think of the Forgeworld units as part of the “real game”? Where do you draw the line for your gameplaying? Codex only? No structure points units allowed? Anything goes? Note that Forgeworld is a HIGHLY profitable business unit within Games Workshop and the Imperial Armor books are now available from the main GW webstore. They would certainly like to see those models embraced wholeheartedly by the community.
What say you, my fellow tabletop Generals?
