Current Army Book Format

[troglodytesrus]

I bought the new High Elves armybook yesterday (my first experience with current-gen armybooks) and after reading through it I must admit I'm disappointed with its content, purely as a book.

Ignoring all rules and army list stuff aside. If I compare it with the previous version of the book I feel like I've been almost ripped off. I love the hardback and the full cover illustrations (always annoyed me having greyscale images knowing they existed somewhere at GW HQ in full colour) but the fluff section and layout are lacking IMO.

The fluff section seems slightly condensed regarding the Phoenix Kings history and misses out on the expanded stories of Tyrion/Teclic, Alith Anar and Eltharion. Admitedly we get some new interesting bits of background and some newly mentioned battles but I would have expected these in addition to the pre-existing stories, not instead of.

Also, the way the background of the units is presented disappoints me. Units being grouped by theme or location means you get a page which covers both, for example, white lions of Chrace and the lion chariot each with a half-done paragraph of fluff. I by far prefered the old style of an entire page per unit. As a direct result this book actually has fewer drawings of the units compared to the previous, and is shorter! That is certainly something I was expecting.

Basically overall I feel a bit miffed that I payed a lot more for the book compared to the last, only to receive a condensed version of the book I already had...

Anyone else feeling similar about new-style army books?

[Kirsten]

yeah similar really. I have or have read pretty much every army book released for the last fifteen years, so I know there is not going to be much in the way of new material for me these days with each release. But it does feel a bit short. the 5th edition high elf book had so much more in, as did the 6th, for a fraction of the price.

[eldargal]

Eh, the whole Finubar chapter was mostly new or if not new much more detailed and there was a fair bit more extra stuff spread throughout. The unit entries are a bit on the short side though. Wonder if we will start to see WFB supplements?

[Wildeybeast]

I only have the Empire book, but I was very happy with it. Without advancing the timeline, there isn't really anything excitingly new they can add to impress as a long time gamer. That certainly didn't suffer from units being condensed and there were some new tidbits in there to satisfy me.

[Kirsten]

I was disappointed they removed most of the awesome names from the new empire book, the various 'von meinkopf's...' were hilarious.

the warriors of chaos book has been the worst so far in fluff terms. love the rules, but the background is just the old stuff, slimmed down, with the new characters added in a way that seems really forced, as though they are trying to advertise them in the army book.

[Chris*ta]

I love the hardback and the full cover illustrations (always annoyed me having greyscale images knowing they existed somewhere at GW HQ in full colour) but the fluff section and layout are lacking IMO.

I was under the impression the black and white pictures were done in black and white. Anyone know for sure?

I may be somewhat off-topic here ...

[okeyigiveup]

hm...I would look at the changes in another way.

Since things doesn't follow the old way, we now have no reason to throw away the old books as the new ones come out.
If you combine the fluffs of two books instead of comparing them, you will find more texture in the settings, and you can see the races in a bigger & better picture. What I really expect in the future would be more details in culture, landmarks or landscapes, and the relationships with other races.

Changing or adding story to the exsisting famous ones may caused lots of problems as it would probably involve other races' fluff, so I think stories would be added only when there new(or older) names coming or old names fading.