The 6th ed Leak

So that's another 10 British infantry finished.

And I bought some brass wire, and have strung ten barbed wire bases.

Pictures to follow.

Anywho...

For the past week or so the interwebz have been buzzing with the news of the leaked 6th ed rules. I say leaked, because there is a rumour that the file is a fake. GW has apparently issued a statement that the rules are fake, and seemingly they are writing to all independent suppliers to this effect.

I haven't seen the rules, but by all accounts they are very good. Indeed people have begun playing with them and report that they are fast play and fun.

And it is this point, while twiddling my Poirot moustaches, that leads me to think the claims of the rules being fake are false.

If you had the time and creativity to create this set of rules, why would you just give them away? Especially when long defunct and bad games cost thousands to buy the IP. Yes, it is true that writing wargames rules is never going to make anything like the money that producing figures does, but it still makes no sense to just give the rules away.

Ok, there are issues with these rules being directly copied from GW Trademarks, which would prevent them being commercially exploited. But it would take much to change them.

Which brings me to the alternative explanation, that this file was created by a group of 40K players, and represents a series of houserules, that have been developed across the lifetime of 5th edition.

The problem with this explanation is that if you were so dissatified with a game that you resort to rewriting them, and effectively doubling the length of the rules, why wouldn't you just play something else? Also it seems strange that this was going on without anyone noticing, or being drawn into the project. For instance Killzone is a variation of 40k, and that underwent fairly widespread community playtesting to ensure balance. Yet we are expected to believe that this small group did a similar thing, going so far as to issue the related document in the 'leak' which FAQ's all armies in order that they conform with the proposed rules.

Obviously time will tell if these were a playtesting version of the official rules.

However, of more interest to me is that this seems to confirm what I have long suspected, that this is just the latest example of GW using the internet rather cleverly for marketing purposes.

Oh, and something else that makes me suspect these are legit is that when I did go in search of the file two of the links I followed, ended with the message 'this file does not exist'. Anyone who has ever tried to get anything removed from the internet knows that the task is pretty thankless unless you have access to a lawyer or can prove copywrite infringement - always assuming that you were not in control of the file in the first place.

But as I say, we shall wait and see.

peace:)