Looking at the stat cards for the upcoming gorillas and heavy rangers, I noticed that the gloves and punches have range C. Has this been explained anywhere, or is it probably going to be included in Operation SeeLowe?

It would seem C stands for Close Combat. But is that any different from a Knife with range 1? My guess is that they've now decided to categorize with a C all the weapons that can only be used in close combat, and thus allow the target to retaliate with its close combat weapons. Not all range 1 weapons fall into the close combat rules (shotguns, flamethrowers), so I think they're doing this to prevent confusion. But then are they going to retcon the current Knife, Knife & Grenade and even perhaps the Kampfzange to range C?

i had brought this up a while back, if i remember right, the concensus was it seems they will reclassify knife and grenade to C as well, maybe to show which weapons are simultaneous.

It would seem so, given that the Stefan card shows a knife with range C:

But what do you think about the Luther's Kampfzange? Should it be C as well? It would be cool to see a pack of gorillas punching a Luther as it tries to crush them with his claw. Basically all "melee" weapons should be C.

yeah, i agree. Luthers should be C as well. it was a good idea to reclassify melee now before too many expansions were out

I had assumed C was the inital classification for hand weapons, but they decided to go with 1 for all close range weapons later, since cards printed for units after the Stefan figure have come out still show a 1.