I love the idea of the guides, but the more I've thought about it, the more they seem a little premature to me. Am I the only one who thought they should first finish the ruinous power cycle before printing them? That way we would have the sum-total of all the effects and creatures of all 4 chaos gods, all the "central" action cards, and all the major careers for at least the human setting: ranging from the religious, magic, combat, and social careers. It would seem to make a little more sense to me to have all that information compiled in three full volumes. Then, if they started on the other races (elves, dwarves, etc) they could publish a racial update book one to two years later that compile all their information as well.

Who knows though, maybe they have plans to do a reprint after it's all over.

For me, they're late.

They should have had this in motion before the powers expansions started. What I'm hoping for the future releases is we don't need full hardcovers from this point on. Instead, each product will provide the summary material in its books along the way. So the war/Khorne book will have pages that list out the cards and careers, etc included in the box without me having to rebuy the material down the road in a new compiled hardcover.

I see these intial books as more of a start point for this.

commoner said:

In some ways I agree, and in some I don't. Perhaps if you included the complete Ruinous Powers, + hedge magic stuff that is rumored to be in the upcoming expansion/adventure + some further necromancy stuff and then I'd consider that pretty complete.

I'm sure FFG hopes that fans/customers never consider the game "complete" as long as they hold the license and continue to produce product for it.

I do agree it won't be complete. But there are "core" elements to the game and most of those elements we will have by the time the ruinous power cycle ends. As follows:

1) corruption rules: Not in the original core set, added in WOM.

2) Disease: Added in SOF.

3) Magic Careers: Priests and Wizards up to rank 3.

I imagine in the future 2 ruinous power cycles we will see careers like knight and noble which are "essentials" to the genre of warhammer. We will also receive, I imagine a large amount of combat action cards. For the "social" box we will get whatever additional social careers that are as well "essential" as well as more social action cards and whatever negative effect Slaneesh (sp?) has to offer. So, while I agree it will never be complete (which is exciting), there are essential elements (careers/actions/chaos effects) that will be useful to all future race/genre expansions (such as knight, noble, priest, wizard, etc.). Since these elements are essential for the Warhammer experience that if the guides did include them they would contain everything in three volumes rather than what we are facing now: 3 volumes of 1/2 of all the essentials, 2 expansions with cards instead of charts and soft back books for the additional central rules, and careers smattered between hardbacks, careers sheets, etc.

That was my point. Why didn't they wait until all of it was out to be compiled.

I agree these hard-back version of rules-clarifications should have been in the core, but I'm glad we're getting them now.

Good Gaming,

Commoner

I too consider them late. I think they lost the initiative by not selling to the players AND gm right away. Oh well, I hope it all works out.

Jay H