Does GW update Warhammer 40K TOO MUCH? 

If I paint more kabalite warriors I get to bring more dark lances! With enough dark lances I think I might be able to win a game of ~12th edition 40K. ;-)

Would have helped if GW had properly play tested 40k in the first place, so the original rules felt remotely balanced and clear. It's taken them a year to even get near to that point

The rules aren't too complex, the method of delivering rules is too complex. There are too many rules documents that all affect each other. We need patch notes, not FAQ's with pages and pages of actual rules modifications for edge cases in the unclear rules writing.

I am a lawyer by trade and what you would class as a casual player due to time. I have played from 2E to 10E, with a hatred for 8E that I played only one game. With tabletop gaming, I am with a friend, referred to by our group as the rules lawyers, as we knew the rules to so many games, and could open the rule book to the pages required. With 10E I have to admit that I actually struggled with the rules and the changes that are implemented and this is not due to the amount of changes, but the layout of the rules, or lack thereof. Rules are all over the shop, with parts for the same interaction spread over 15 pages in 3 or 4 documents. I picked up Old World, having played WHFB and the rules being a mix of old fantasy battles, 6E and some new rules, in and evening I had the rules almost down. The issue with 40k is the layout of the rules, and the lack of cohesion, and by the time you have found all the rules for the interaction, you find out that part 2 is now updated, and next time part 4 is updated and part 2 is back to the original rules etc. GW need to to make a new big rule book, everything in one document, with a traditional layout, even if it if just a simple free PDF.

I know I’ll get hate for this but I see 40K as a honeypot to draw all the sweaty meta-chasers away from Age of Sigmar. For this, I am grateful it exists.

It isn't a problem as a casual player for me to play the most up to date version of the game or whatever but the problem is when you have one understanding of the rules and your opponent has another and that's going to determine whether you actually got to charge/attack/whatever. It just makes it annoying.

I think its hard for people to think of 40k gamers as "casual" since the buy in for any miniature wargame is incredibly high. I think GW wants to do a 3 year cycle because they know the new editions are good jumping on points for new players or old players wanting to jump back in and that equals profit for them. I haven't played 40k in a while and I walked into my store and asked about codex and rule book to start playing again and the employee had to explain their new rules delivery system.

I think editions should last 5 or 6 years. the 3 year cycle is so fast, hell it takes some people a year to get their army to the table so they're basically running on a 2 year cycle!

Necromunda is seeing a huge influx of players. The game is complex, but all of the rules, stats, and equipmemt are universal for all gangs and models. Annnnd the rules basically havent changed since 2017.

The problem aren't the rules, it's that GW had the opportunity to deliver a "living" system with one updatable source for rules allowing everything to be kept tight and concise and easy to find and understand... But instead they decided that the simple way wasn't for them,. Simplified not simple has never been more true than the delivery of 40k by GW.

How did we find ourselves in situation where Horus heresy designed for old grognards is simpler than mainstream 40k that was supposed to be "streamlined" past 7ed lol😂

As someone that played X-Wing TMG before trying 40k... it's simply a poorly designed game. You can say it with a lot or say it with a little. Besides the lore and the minis, everything about the actual game is a dumpster fire. Weird because, in comparison, Spearhead AOS is a wonderful game that I want to play more of. I'm amazed that people throw precious days of their lives away on sitting through the miserable slog of a 2k game. Feel like they literally could start from the ground up and design a better system. Trying to learn to play 40k feels like a court ordered punishment.

Real talk, how does one get into 40k rules now? I was so excited and into the rules at the release of the edition, played a few games, then life happened. Now I want to give it another go a year later, but there is some all enconpassing FAQ that seems to redline the whole rule book... But where is the clean version of the rules without the redlines? How does one leaen the rules from scratch now? Would really appreciate a recommendation, keep up the great work and videos man!

Definitely a fan of minimizing the ruleset for casual games. Been running a Crusade with a friend since the start of the year. We trim the non-core rules and emphasize the narrative to make it more enjoyable. Feels like too many players don’t take creative license to make the game fun for them when it’s at home with friends.

I agree the 3 year cycle sucks, they finally got the game working really well in 9th at about the 2.5 year mark, so for me there was 6 months of great games that i really enjoyed then 10th came out as a mess. Not to mention the poor guard players barely got to use their codex and it was gone, what a waste of trees.

Honestly I’m now of mindset that every vehicle should be on big black base type.

When you need to print off the terrain rules before the battle, you might have bloating issue

40k is like WoW, if you play it there is no room in your life for other games. The amount models of you need to paint is astronomical, they acquisition process is super expensive and you need to do hours of homework whenever you want to show them off. And the fact it is will not change because, as you say, it is a shareholder thing.

I honestly don't understand how 40k can be played as a competitive game. The rules are not written in a way that would make a competitive game possible as there are too many ambiguous outcomes that are not resolved by the rules as written and instead rely on intuitive play.

As a casual player, it’s hard to play older rules because they get removed from the app. I’d happily just play index as per the launch of 10.

This is why Mordheim is the best GW game because they havnt changed the rules in decades.

Tf tournament players arent great at rules either... thx to live streaming its pretty obvious followed by the stream host checking chat like "listen guys their human and letting us live stream there game". 40k is a mess as a comp game.

bro, i was reading some first edition supplements last night, that's complexity, a lot of random outcomes, a lot of charts and weird ass effects like tractor beams, portal guns, quakeguns, trains, linked beam tanks, rolling to see what units become death company, force fields reflecting attacks with a scatter dice, and a lot, a lot, and i mean a really lot of weird stuff. nowadays : i forgor that unit can rerolls hits in that detachment, there are like 4 pivot values... and they fixed a rule a week ago! ugh, this game is too complex :(

As someone who is just getting into Warhammer 40k through painting miniatures and the lore, I have no idea where to start to learn how to actually play. I looked at the core book, but there seems to be other rule books, etc. It's confusing enough that I think I might just stick to painting.

it is not the complexity. it is the constant change. 7th, 9th were complex, but it was fine. now the rules change too fast. and then, which version do you play? the books? the printed papers? the wahapedia, the app? its a nightmare

the universal rules from 4th 5th and so on was so easy to remember but now tons of units have the exact same rule with a different name swift feet, fast walk, speed dash, blah blah.. I could pretty much play a hole game with a few glances at my codex plus you almost knew all the rules for armies you didn't even own, it was that simple. good times.

Simplified, not simple

Yeah, I was just saying in another video today, I'm done with rules updates. I'm super casual and I like playing fluffy lists. From what I've been able to gather following the rules updates, they're mostly to address things that can be taken advantage of in competitive settings, which is the whole point of competitive, so that's fine, but trying to keep track of it is just plain BS. Especially when I never even run into the problems they are fixing anyways. I'm honestly even done with the munitorum field manual. I'm just gonna use the points in the back of the books for most of my games as I'm usually just playing with my kids anyways, constantly trying to see if I'm using the most up to date points list is just aggravating and by the time I'm done adding Battle Honors, the models / units are not what they started at points to power wise anyway. If life calms down enough for me to start going to the FLGS and play others, I'll look up the points, make a list from that, and warn the folks before we agree to play that I'm a fluffy list player, and I'll probably get a bunch of stuff wrong. They are more than free to correct me on it and I'll always do my best to play the right way, but otherwise, I'm probably not going to have much of a chance of winning anyways, so don't worry too much 😝. To be honest, I think GW has gone a little too hard in the paint focusing on competitive this edition. I think the competitive scene is amazing and really great for the game, but it feels like they've kind of forgotten about the story telling side of the hobby, aside from an occasional campaign book. At the end of the day they need to either put a lot more time into play testing before they come out with rules and books, so that when they are released they only need an FAQ or two in order to clarify things. Or realize that this game has far too many things going on for it to really be competitively balanced. There's no way they can release a new edition every 3 years and not have it be the complete shit show that 10th has been up until this point with the current size of the company. I haven't played 40k for very long. I only started in 2021, but to be honest, the state of the game and the community feels really bad right now. I think the game is in a decent spot as far as balance is concerned, but I haven't heard anyone singing the games praises. Nobody likes the current situation with the mix of digital rules and codexes. Everyone hates the current prices. The Imperial Agents codex and what happened with the Deathwatch hasn't engendered any good will that I've seen, and Captain Underpants... I mean Inquisitor Coteaz wasn't exactly a hit either. GW can't seem to make enough product to keep people happy and I'm gonna lose my shit if I don't get that new Sacresanct model that comes with the Daemonbreaker book going up for pre-order this weekend 😋(Ok, not really, but I will be really bummed if I don't get one). All in all, I'm going to change my approach to the game, because the way GW is currently running it isn't fun for me. I hope it's a blast for everyone else and I'm glad it's a tabletop game so that I can just play it the way I have the most fun with it. I think if more players approached it that way, they'd have more fun too. So, if you're casual like me, just don't worry about the updates, play the game in a way that's fun for you.

the problem is not excessive rules complexity, but rather overcomplicating and overloading the ruleset over time to pander the small competitive subset of the player base. GW is trying to chase competing objective of casual vs competitive. Bringing out a separate well-tested & balanced ruleset with limited amount of factions and constant updates would be a better competitive solution without negative cross-impact on the casual playerbase.

40k was originally designed as a small unit tactical combat. meaning 1 or 2 squads of 10 troops plus 1 vehicle or support equipment. that's it, nothing more. by expanding into significantly larger forces, balance goes out the window. additionally, the IGYG format removes any sense of balance, once initiative has been determined. as far as the overall rules being too complex, 10 versions of the game speaks for itself. knowing that players are expecting version 11 in the next two years, means GW still doesn't know how to make a game that matches the quality of their models.

It's GW's business practices that are making the game harder than it needs to be. For example their codexes. They are never as up to date as the rules online from their site. Those are not always the same as on their payed for app either. If I am new to 40K, I'm already confused there are 3 different places to look for my rules, and I don't even know if there are any changes, let alone where I can find them and which source is the most up to date one. Then they make that even more complex by bringing out the army specific rules in waves instead of in one go. Then you need to buy the physical book to get the key code to access the same data in the payed for app. To play the game you will either need the objective cards, or a 3rd party app that provides the objectives, or the rule book that includes the objectives in it. Again, 3 different places to go too, never knowing which one is the most up to date. Then, to make matters even worse, they bring out extra rules you can only get in their monthly limited magazine, the white dwarf. And if you really want to go full on insane, they also bring out chapter approved addons, like pariah nexus. Which is sold out the moment it comes out... When 8th started, it had zero of these issues.

There's very little games out there that have the rules complexity of Warhammer - or many other wargames, honestly. The rule changes layered on top are a huge issue for casual players. Most people ~want~ to play the "proper" rules, but it's hard to discern. Honestly, this problem with updating rules and needing to FAQ extensively arises from the 3 year edition cycle. We should be spending 7 years in an edition.

Is it me or does Goober look like Grima Wormtongue in his prime !

Additional thoughts - it feels like the game is being treated like a computer game with its attitude to patch repairs and content, Mikey you even refer to it as "dlc"! In the low tech world of tabletop adventuring with dice it just makes it clunky and disjointed.

your question at about 3.30, the issue is that if you rock up for a game and discover you are playing with different versions of the rules so you kinda have to say they you will play by the most recent version or at least have a discussion before the game (like the day before) so you are both starting the game with the same ruleset. So if like me you play lots of different game systems when you fancy a game of 40K you feel like you need a day to get back up to date and double check everything. Every game feels like a new edition!

Just being honest here. I haven't played since 4th. I have kept up with the rules but they have got more and more complicated. maybe I am old. lol

Luckily my partner and I both enjoy gaming, so we play just how you described D&D players; whatever is in the book is how we play. We even play older editions if we haven’t got the newer rules and that’s just as fun because ultimately it’s about fun time and enjoying each other’s company.

The simple solution is to move from d6 to d10 or d12. The reason why there are no many rules is because they are needed to make units feel unique. The logic being that a d6 is too restrictive. Strategems were needed to help differentiate units. Take rolls to hit: 1+ doesn't exist 2+ elite/primarchs 3+ good shots - E.g marines 4+ average e.g humans 5+ bad e.g orks 6+ really bad So, if you take out the fact almost no units hit on 1s or 6s, it only leaves you 4 values to use, and even then, most units will congregate in the 3+ or 4+ to hit. And if the game wants flavour and you want your 4+ units to feel different to my 4+ units, they needed to overlay other rules/strats to give flavour. If you use a d10, you get so much more variety 1+ nobody 2+ primarch 3+ elite marines 4+ marines 5+ elite humans 6+ normal humans 7+ elite ork 8+ normal ork 9+ grot 10+ basically nobody

I think one of the facts overlooked by a lot of people is the time perception of rules and rule changes. Brent in the video even said that he only plays once or twice a year, but didn't mention how often his friends/gaming group play. I'm also one of those people who plays infrequently due to Life however most everyone in my gaming group plays once or twice a month, and are regularly playing the game. There have been several times I've rocked up to the table and have to spend time reading up on rules changes because they are new to ME who hasn't played in 3 months, however my opponent has already gotten several games under their belt with the changes. While yes, my opponents are typically understanding, I do know that it drags the game out because they have to spend time essentially explaining the rules to me. If this happens every time you go to play, then those people who play regularly are less likely to play with you, because of the perception that you don't know the rules. Its not fun to have to explain the rules over and over to someone, even if you know the reason is because of GW's terrible rules errata system. And you cant make the argument to just "play by the previous rules" because again, the person on the other side of the table has already been playing with the new ruleset for several games or months at that point. It would essentially be the same situation but in reverse.

As someone who plays in a competitive club and some casual games with other friends, the difference is vast. I used to play weekly before taking a break. Keeping up with the rules felt difficult. This has been even worse in 10th where there are now multiple documents to keep track of that are not just rulebook, codex, errata. Even many of the competitive players are tired of it. The casual players feel overwhelmed because there is so much. Even if you say "ok lets stick to the 2 books" the game can quickly become unplayable either because the codex/index isn't balanced, or as happens more often, the codex and rulebook are actually incomplete without the 3 documents you have to get from Warcom because GW didn't release anything correctly. This is why the game is too complex. It has nothing to do with how often you play, or how much you have to remember, and how many rules should be a USR and still aren't despite GWs promise they would be. These do add an issue. The real and largest issue with the game is the sheer number of documents you have to keep track of and their contradictory statements.

as a casual player who wants to play competitively i can 100 percent agree with alot of his points. the game doesnt feel like its competitive because the game itself isnt a sound complete game with all the rule changes so often and the mess that is overlapping rules. i think competitive 40k should either be a different version of the game or should just be a fixed thing with occasional updates to keep the rules themselves sound and understandable. casual play should then be a separate rule set or similar but be a 10th lite version where the rules are less re rolls and overlap, terrain and cover is simpler and the order of alot of combat is explained easier. would make it more accessible and easier for pick up games like goobertown hobbies is playing.

40k is the simplest it's ever been. The hundreds of RU-vid videos complaining about how "overly complex and difficult" the rules were in 9'th, is what led us to this current disaster of an edition. We lost warlord traits, psychic, unit customization, ppm, interesting detachments, terrain rules, all flavor has been removed from the game, etc etc and it's still NOT SIMPLE ENOUGH??? Remember when the game properly represented the lore? When the Avatar was immune to meltas and flamers, because he was made of molten lava? When possessed transports could sometimes eat one of the models inside? Nowadays the game is simply throwing dice at each other. My super special rule, showcasing my unique faction ability? Re-roll hits* (conditional) All in the name of "balance" for the 1000 or so people who play competitively. The issue right now isn't even rules, it's how incompetent GW is at organizing them + the game's biggest problem: the turn structure.

Cominc from the reddit post, I think over there I am in the minority that agrees with you. I am mainly a MESBG player and I'm befuddled by how unneccessarily complex 40k is on game elements that should be straightforward.

I am a casual gamer now but used to be a competitive player. I barely keep up with the rules changes now, unless they are major and really do make the game better. I usually just use the codex and data cards I bought when 10th came out. They work, it’s just not current. Same with old editions. No one says we HAVE to use all the new stuff.

I watched Goober town's video, one of his main complaints is that he doesn't want to use tactics and hide his units because the big Warhammer World dioramas don't do that.

At my wargames club most of the 40K players are casual 40K players cos we play so many wargames rules/ RPGs / boardgames. We now play Bolter-Action 40K...9th edition codex books as written...bolt action dice out the bag for activations. Each unit moves and shoots or fights. Solves a lot of problems. Like a whole army shooting and wiping out the other side. And the boredom of waiting 30 minutes til its your turn. No CP/ no strats/ no warlord traits/ no relics. its fast and fun. We will stick with this until 40K changes from the IGO/UGO activations system from the Eighties.

I agree that if you don’t play often you don’t need to keep up, my most recent game was of 7th ed and that’s mostly because my opponent doesn’t want to continually buy and learn new rules every time they play.

I have the books and cards. Idgaf about the updates. Casual all the way.

Dude, I played 40k from 1st to 5th Edition. I have the 10th Ed rules but I just can't bring myself to play it. Currently I have Armies for Necromunda, Legions Imperialis & Age of Darkness (ie Horus Heresy). I can't see going back to 40k unless I find a casual friend who wants to play some narrative battles (this assumes I finish painting either my Space Wolves, Tau or Necron). Cheers.

I actually think the problem is 40k isn't complicated enough. They have tried to simplify the core rules so much that they have had to write a mountain of additional special rules for all he different troop types to make them seem different from each other. If they wrote a decent and detailed set of core rules with some more depth to them (vehicle rules! Psychic Rules!, Proper Morale!) then they would need less special rules in the army lists and less chance of unforeseen consequence. Games like The Old World and Adeptus Titanicus may be more complicated, but the foundation of the game applies to almost everything the same (you dont need to worry about which enemy units can also run and charge etc) that you have a good understanding of how things work, with slight differences between the armies, all working within the same framework. Modern 40k is all about exceptions to the core rules, which makes the game harder to learn and remember.

He's definitely right! In order to play a game you need to download the update core rules, the errata, the field manual, and the indexes. Now there's mission rules! Do the Pariah mission rules for battle-line apply to Leviathan games? You figure it out eventually, but its a real barrier and at some point you throw in the towel. On top of that I think Goobertown made a mistake I made when I first started, in picking an army you like but does NOT fit your preferred playstyle. Dark Elves out of cover are just a bad time. He would have had much more success (if not fun) with a more aggressive/tough army if he knew cover mechanics were not how he wanted to engage with the game when he started. But going into it with your first army you can never be sure!

Losing initiative stats and armour values is the day 40k lost its complexity, how the game is now is extremely basic.

I do like the direction 10th edition is going. it just feels like it wasnt baked in the oven enough. Like the didnt hit the mark of "simple yet complex".

The problem is GW failed to learn that good games sell models. Every few editions are the same. Crap game poor sales. Good game sales boom.

The big problem is that for the first four or five editions, 40k's primary audience was narrative players. With each new edition now, the company panders more and more to comeptitive players. So you've got a group of guys who go to the hobby store to game maybe twice a year who need to be kept safe from the giys who play there multiple times per week, but no real mechanism to do this. It could be fixed at a store level by having a monthly casual night, a narrative campaign or something like that. Slow grow leagues *sound* like a solution but more often than not its just a competitive dude starting a fifth army and soaking up the prize pool lmao The era of narrative 40k is long gone, and narrative players (like myself) need to come to terms with that and try to network to find the few of us that remain for the occasional beer and pretzels game.

I think what some of these people are really looking for is a video game where they can jump in and go - a big part of Warhammer is the hobby and setting and I think most people who aren’t going to tournaments would benefit from looking at it that way.

While I agree that 40k is a difficult game to play "casually", the comparisons to Magic and RPGs don't really work for me. Magic, the rules are written on the cards themselves. RPGs have a game master role. 40k doesn't have either of these things.

I am a casual player and enjoy 40K. It’s not that complex. Move inches, roll to hit, roll to wound. Take ten minutes to look up your rules beforehand… I play maybe once every month or two and have a print out of my stuff. It’s not hard. It’s easier than trying to learn every game these smaller companies keep pumping out that goobertown wants to push.

The fact GW resets it's ruleset every time instead of refining it further is exactly why this happens again and again and again. The game is not complex, GW is just making rules to sell you models and have no stake in the actual GAME. They NEVER HAVE. If you want complex but STATIC rules, try BattleTech.

I've been to play casual, and tried to play a role from the rule book and the guy opposite is like no that's changed, it's in a FAQ. Trying to find people who just want to roll some dice is really tricky.

That's why I think AoS 4th edition splitting the rules into Core, Advanced and Spearhead is actually a good idea. As a casual player myself it is much easier to just use the Core rules and have a blast with Spearhead from time to time without detracting from anyone that actually wants to go and play full 4th edition or tournament rules. I have Jade and Fire Book and that's what I'm going to use from now on until they release another one of these. I think that's my current problem with 40k at the moment, there's no way you can play a fun and quick game without absorbing ALL of it and that is simply too much. Also, Spearhead made me realise that the problem with 40k is not actually the amount of time you spend playing it but actually a pacing problem. In 40k you have so many useless mechanical steps that don't have any player interaction or decision making that makes the game feel really slooooow and dragging along. That if you don't count the fact that half of the the game you're sitting there doing absolutely nothing (because you barely have anything to do) and even worst... Having to watch your opponent going through the same boring mechanical steps you went through during your turn. So I wish Combat Patrol was actually more like Spearhead tbh

Just make the rules free and in an auto updatable free source. They should jsut make their money off the minis

I gave up on 40k and never got into AoS because of FAQ's and constant rule changes, tournaments and competitive have ruined the game. I miss playing narrative campaigns and just playing the game for fun, now it's just using meta army builds to win.

If rules are not clear for both competitive players and casual players alike, than rules are writen like shit. Simple as. It's not a rocket science to write a good rules. Hundreds of games manage to do to that before, there is no excuse for a billion dollar company to fuck it up so bad.

Delete most unit specific rules bring back universals, fully (and for the love of god make Twin-Linked hit roll again not wound roll). Remove rerolls outside of specific rules like Twin-Linked and let the dice be important in the dice game again rather than stacking mods/rerolls to ignore what the dice dictate. Remove stratagems as they're always boom or bust, Annoying gotchas and/or horrid overlapping interactions which get FAQ'd constantly. Bring back wargear to replace all that guff. Downsize all army model counts to field a full army, 40k is insane for a 2k army now. Simple but effective rulesets don't need monthly updates. They just work. Look at Bolt Action, that's having it's first new edition in 12 years.

It's not just a conversation with the dicebox you also have to make sure your opponent doesn't think you are randomly cheating. But yeah the rules are too hard to keep track of. It's not necessarily too much change, though that can be part of it. But it's not centralised and actually updated and there's too many exceptions. Measuring and visibility is a fucking mess. To the hull to the base walkers and non walkers through ruins into ruins partially off the board it's all a mess.

Ditched 10th, dusted off the 2nd edition model, loving gaming like its the 90s again with all the rules and army lists in one skinny little book.

The secondary mission packs are too complex and bog the game down with analysis paralysis while the codex’s lack depth and feel anemic.

It is a lot, and it’s not readily available. The keywords are helping, it’s very hard for me to find pick up games with players, because of the time commitment compared to more accessible parts of the hobby like painting or modeling on your own.

My friends and I play with some rules don’t matter like pivot is cost no movement for every model.

its not has bad as it was for 2ed rouge trader rules. that was worst then now. in how you had to make sure how you set the model up. then how you move them just to be able to shot something. and making sure other models can not shot back.

Played for 35 YEARS and this is nothing new with this game.

I only play casually with a buddy, and nowadays my least favourite part of 40k has been the pre-game ritual of "check my index/patch notes and points list are up to date, and amend my army list". It would be great if we could just stop and use the points/updates we have, but he also plays pickup games at our local store against people who _are_ using the latest notes, so I don't want to hold him back.

There should be no "causal players" and "tournament players." It should just be "warhammer players." The game should be simple and work the same way for everyone. A causal player should be able to jump into a tournament and place without being instantly dq'd for not "pivoting" correct. THIS ISN'T THAT HARD TO GET RIGHT GAMES WORKSHOP! TONS OF OTHER WARGAMES DO IT JUST FINE! WARGAMES HAVE BEEN AROUND FOREVER TAKE FREAKING NOTES AND PICK THE BEST RULES YOU HACKS! You do not need to constantly rebalance the game... holy crap. Please dear god I can't freaking keep up with these stupid rules. It's literally impossible to play this game correctly... you could get it right one session and get it completely wrong the next using the same books because GW publishes dataslates like windows updates.

Everything Digital. Release all the rules, Codex´s everything at the same time. Then update that said rules 2 times a year in one big FAQ/dataslate at one place, the only place you have too look to see the changes that has been made. Digital rules will make sure you are running the latest.

this video title doesn't remember 4th ed tyranids :^ )

He should try Battletech. It has been the same pretty much since the 80's

Return to pre-8th edition 40K. Complexity with a purpose.

Yes 1000000% main reason I stopped playing. To play even twice a week the rules would change…, I don’t have time to keep up with it.

I feel the DnD comparison isn't valid. DnD is made by a company that makes money off of books and rules. GW is a company that makes money off of models and people need to be incentives to pick the models. This requires more units. More units are more balance issues because you need to interest the people to buy them. Also, when you play DnD, since it's a co-op game usually, the "this rule is stupid, lets not play like this" is a lot easier to accept since usually no party is harmed. 40k is basically: very bloated in units driven by the competitive scene requires a lot of models to start

Play Old World or Horus Heresy. The rules aren't complex in 40k. Sure the rules are bad, but that doesn't mean complexity

I am a new player of 40k... I have rulebook of Leviathan but i dont have any clue how to start. What can be the best journey to be in touch with last faqs?

GW rule presentation is just kinda awful. The rules need a cheat sheet page listing what every keyword does, and a phase by phase flowchart of what to expect/do in every phase, along with simple explanation of each action. That I would consider the bare minimum. Keep this on a PDF that you can download which stays updated with any errata, with said errata being highlighted. Just this simple document that would take a few days tops to write down would make the game so much more approachable

rules arent complex, printing old rule books and then needing a buncha other stuff is. why cant GW have a 10.1 rule book every 6 months instead of printing landfill books

I'm just hoping that they release the rules like they did for AOS 4.0 and when they update they just update the pdf and everyone wins, hopefully. They can still sell the books and that is great, that is where hobby and lore hides, lots of people will grab one, but for someone like me being able to grab the pdf and just play one and done helps the player.

HH is easier to learn at this point than 10th

Completely agree that you don’t needvto play the most up to date rules, playing an older ruleset, you can fully paint your army, and you don't need to worry about having to change it due to points costs, models not being supported anymore, legends etc. . or other changes. . . I went back a while to find the best version, it was 1993 😂

Rules are rather too simple there are just bad implemented and wrote badly.

AoS gets shit on all the time, but has none of these issues.

I'm a very casual player, 3-5 games a year with one friend, my biggest complaints about wh40k is more about GW than the game; 1. Army cost, i can't justify $500-1k+ on a game i occasionally play. (i personality 3d printed a proxy army, using a combination of free and paid for files, plus a few months of patreon and materials my 2000pt tau army cost is around $150, if i want to increase that to 3000pts i already own the fire so materials comes out to air $1-3 per unit. (added benefit i think most tau proxies look better than official models) 2. I think the changes from 9th to 10th oversimplified the game as a whole too much, taking away a lot of nuance from the factions, and the customization. Then they overcomplicated things trying to balance it out again. 3. The cycle of oops this one thing is broken and way too OP let's make a game wide rule chsnge/addition to fix it, oops that broke things for everyone else, let's change those rules to keep them playable, oops that broke something else, let's rewrite the rules for the newly affected thing... Oops..... (bonus points for "hey you know that model you spent a lot of time and money on? It's legends now, you can do whatever you want with it in a casual peasant games but keep it away from any real 40k game) TL; DR, I don't like GW, they claim to be a game company when it seems like they don't care about their own game or players, it's obvious they only want you to buy more WAY overpriced plastic models. (most larger, high-end, high detail articulating posable Gundam models cost less than a riptide)

Its one of the reasons why I dont play much or try and get involved in clubs. Its just to much to try and track all the rule changes so that I am upto speed to play with regular players. Its way to hard to track down where all the changes happen

The game isnt too complex, there is very much a player attitude issue of not wanting to get better and blaming the game. I've seen it multiple times where a casual player gets tabled and instead of thinking how they could have played better it's the game sucks and is too complex.

I’ll stick with one page rules… and get double the games in.

The frequency of updates since 7th has made even competitive regular players struggle to keep up, I missed one points change as it was just a tiny line of text in an faq, had to drop an entire Armiger from my army to play on the day, which was a really important rear objective holding model 😢

Like imagine you want to play a poker and everyone on the table would understand the rules little bit differently. Doesn't matter if it is a casual or competitive game. The game is ruined.

I blame stratagems and every unit having an ability. Makes the game Almost impossible to balance. The removal of org charts hasn’t helped either.

40k has always been a very complex game but it suffers mainly from videogamification balance at the expense of any shred of narrative feel (looking at you beyblade tanks shooting everything out of an antenna) 3rd-5th ed was a great balance imho And the way the 40k team offloads the effort of compiling their 5+ rules documents into a coherent ruleset is downright lazy and disrespectful ( perfectly highlighted by the fact they only recently figured out that they should change the colors of the rules instead of giant paragraphs of red text...)

"Is it that big of a deal?" Yes.

The game is exceptionally complex (by any comparison of other TT “war game” standards out there right now). The issue is systemic within GW and it requires constant revision and re-writing and patching and fixing and re-releasing etc etc on and on in perpetuity. The game is absolutely not suitable for “casual players” (or more accurately, “new casual players”).

Remembwr though. 10th is streamlined and wont be book heavy. They fixed everything