Talk Fantasy Football

Lychanthrope wrote:I ordered the Almanac, but it better be a legit rule book and not a reprint of the failed previous docs. I want the rules with the corrections made. Here’s to hoping.

What are the errors?

There were no less than three docs that clarified rules, or corrected rules, etc. that people were referencing.

The Almanac is NOT a rule book. It has lots of rules in it, but is not a rule book. It also doesn’t have any of the experimental teams from the My Dugout app. Is it useful, yes. Is it a rule book, no sadly. At this point the only rule book is in the boxed set, and as far as I know still has errors. I am not ever buying that box set, already bought one of those a long time ago, so....

The rulebook btw is pure garbage (and partially the reference sheets). GW insists on focusing the boxed sets as newbie introductions, and the rules suffer greatly from it. The rules are dumbed down version of the full game. And I think they kept the "Advanced" section which in 99.999% of all games ever played is actually part of the core rules. Whenever you need to look up rules, you can't just go to the "Throw ball" chapter or "Block" chapter, you need to know wether the specific sub-rule is an "advanced" rule or not.

The Almanac is pretty spectacular though. They kept their promises, but it would be nice to have ALL the stuff, not just White Dwarf, pdfs and Death Zone books. I'm thinking about Blitzmania and app contents for example (as pointed out above).

The rules are an exact copy of the CRP/LRB6, the basic rules, the advanced rules, the sequence of both, the text, all of it. All we did was update the art and the diagrams, so what you think is pure garbage is what everyone has been playing for a lot of years and was very reluctant to see changed. Myself included.
Could it be better written and better presented? Yes, of course, everything ever printed can be. But that's for the future.

The app teams are still experimental, and I'd be loathe to put them into print until they aren't, hence why they aren't included.

JT-Y wrote:The rules are an exact copy of the CRP/LRB6, the basic rules, the advanced rules, the sequence of both, the text, all of it. All we did was update the art and the diagrams, so what you think is pure garbage is what everyone has been playing for a lot of years and was very reluctant to see changed. Myself included.
Could it be better written and better presented? Yes, of course, everything ever printed can be. But that's for the future.

The app teams are still experimental, and I'd be loathe to put them into print until they aren't, hence why they aren't included.

While I love the content of all the books (I bought absolutely every single Blood Bowl product released thus far in the new edition), the layout was no good and is kept that way. Also some of the kick-off events (including on the reference sheets) miss the Cheerleader and Assistant Coaches. This was added in a separate book (Death Zone Season 1) so while that Kick-off table is correct, the one in the rule book and reference sheets are not. Also the skills are simply wrong and limited to the original profiles of the player models included in the box. For example Sure hands is described to give re-roll on failed picking up the ball. But says nothing about protection against Strip Ball. Which results in a dumbed down rule book for demo games only. There were a good chance to make it right.

Just to prove my point, GW did exactly the same thing with Necromunda, and there were no copy-paste there from the previous edition.

Baxx wrote:Just to prove my point, GW did exactly the same thing with Necromunda, and there were no copy-paste there from the previous edition.

That's because its a completely different game now to what it was.
The good example is the previous edition of Necromunda, where they badly updated the rules from 2nd edition WH40k to take into account the lack of templates in whichever edition was prevalent at the time of the update.
The current update is a complete re-write (albeit I've not toothcombed the rules, so there's bound to be one or two similarities to the previous in there somewhere!)

mawph wrote: That's because its a completely different game now to what it was.
The good example is the previous edition of Necromunda, where they badly updated the rules from 2nd edition WH40k to take into account the lack of templates in whichever edition was prevalent at the time of the update.
The current update is a complete re-write (albeit I've not toothcombed the rules, so there's bound to be one or two similarities to the previous in there somewhere!)

And yet there are different skills in the rulebook and Gangwar 1, just like with Blood Bowl. Yet they kept the "Advanced" section which is what everyone will use as core rules except their very first demo game (if even then). And there's tons of other conflicts between the two books. Even more so than Blood Bowl.

Don't get me wrong, I love both these games, just that the layout is a complete mess (much of which has been fixed with the Almanac for blood bowl, just a pity we have to wait a year for it to be fixed for Necromunda).

I wonder if it would be better to have a separate pamphlet for intro rules, and then all of the rules together in the main rulebook.

Yes. Yes it would. Warhammer had this back in the day ('93ish).

While it was good for continuity to keep the rules the same, the rules could have been kept the same but with some formatting and wording changes to make things clearer.

nazgob wrote:I wonder if it would be better to have a separate pamphlet for intro rules, and then all of the rules together in the main rulebook.

Oh heck yes. The FFG model of learn to play book + rules reference is pretty much perfect and whenever I buy a non-FFG game that doesn't have that (like the Dark Souls BG) I wish it was industry standard. GW at least attempted it for Shadespire.

Yea, that's pretty standard for a lot of games and how Basic D&D came about back in the day. An easy to digest version until you learn how to play the basics.

I got the elves when they came out and really like the models.

The arms and heads being modular gives so many ways to add variety by reposing them and it would be simple to do even more poses with a few cuts or hand/limb swaps.

These elves are a bulkier than the older 40K and WHFB elven ranges as in keeping with other new BB plastics so kitbashing is harder. They are of a similar scale to the harlequins and their masks will fit the elf heads with only a small amount of trimming. I think the legs would fit too which would allow some really cool leaping poses for catchers and blitzers.

I could easily see these models being used to make high, dark or wood elf teams too. Just add some heads from shadow warriors, phoenix guard, white lions or dragon princes for high elves along with a shoulder pad or 2.
The dark elves would be a little trickier, maybe some spiked shoulder pads or legs from the dark eldar range along with limbs here and though the scale is a bit off.
Wood elves are harder still, the masks from the wild riders do fit and they could have lighter shoulder pads or bare heads but is less to distinguish them from normal pro elfs aside from painting in green and other natural colours.

As Some GW folks read these threads, here is my feedback.

-Almanac: Great to have all the extra content from WD together. I would have liked an in-app version where you can just purchase what you miss, though. For the next DZs, I might wait for the second almanac instead of buying a physical copy straight away.
- Pitches, dice, elves: all good.
- Team cards: I feel cheated. The orc pack only has 5(?) cards that actually have any interesting content in it (inducement cards). The rest are (imho) useless. Worth revisiting the concept to include only inducement cards

MacHurto wrote:Team cards: I feel cheated. The orc pack only has 5(?) cards that actually have any interesting content in it (inducement cards). The rest are (imho) useless. Worth revisiting the concept to include only inducement cards

I got the Human card back and am unlikely to get the others. Cards are fun but once you get to the point of having skills on several players a team sheet is better than a dozen character cards to move around in your off-field game area. Match sheets (with one per player) are also a lot easier. The player cards for use by new players are really good but the concept would be better if they just did a pack of player cards for several races all in one.

The Almanac is mostly reprints but I would still expecting a little work to tidy up some of the horrible bits from DZ1. The "Official League Rules" are still terrible with contradictions and no clear definition between Friendly and Competition matches (except in the FAQ on page 117). Teams of Legend has just been squished in there with inducements scattered about rather than being in the correct section. Also why was Igor changed to disallow Nurgle teams taking him?

The Elf figures are great but overall rather disappointed with the rest of this release.