Now this one has divided the community pretty solidly and it's easy to see why. A combination of 2 year turn around, not being too different from 6th Ed and coming out before a full round of codicies has been released has put people on the back foot right away and that is perfectly understandable.
Before you even open the book it has those things working against it. The rulebook is essentially the buy in price for 40k and we've been asked to pay it again in half the usual time. Worse the changes it has made are not that significant so it leaves the question "What was so important that it couldn't wait?"
The answer? Probably not enough to justify a full new edition. Now don't get me wrong, I'm loving 7th edition. It fixed some things that should have been fixed and didn't fix others but at it's core I find the game to be more fun than any edition since 2nd but I don't think we needed a new edition to get here.
It's here now though so what does it mean? Well it's going to affect you differently depending on what kind of gamer you and your social group are.
7th Edition seems to have taken the idea of "Here is all of 40k, if you don't like bits then don't use them" which it seems common to write off as poor writing on the part of the designers usually championed by "Why should we pay for a product then change it" and that's fine. I don't agree with the statement but that kind of system can cause problems.
For PUG games where the player rocks up no game arranged, doesn't really know the group his odds of getting a fun game have reduced. All of 40k could await him, his opponent could have 2 Transcendant C'Tan and then all Annihilation Barges in an orgy of unbound death or his opponent could be running his all footslogging Howling Banshee Jain Zar list or anything in between depending on the mindset of the folks he is about to play.
Where 7th edition begins to shine is where the players have gone that extra yard and made that transition from "I have come to play" to "We are going to play". Where conversation and social interaction has forged a group of like minded players who recognize some lists are stronger than others and that turning up with an army that will be far stronger or weaker than your opponent is pretty poor form.
Now these men are ready to play 40k...
Now, this is where the next common argument comes up:
"If the rules were better balanced you wouldn't need that conversation"
And to a degree this is true, it is however also to a degree false.
If 40k was built where every single unit was perfectly to the point balanced against against every other unit then it is true. I could bring 45 Swooping Hawks and you could bring 100 Guardsmen with 20 Heavy Bolters and somehow it'd come down to the best player, awesome.
Thing is what about when your opponent instead brings 5 Wraithknights...
A Heavy Bolter is worth very little against a Wraithknight, especially compared to a Lascannon say.
Against 20 Banshees however the Heavy Bolter is worth *more* than a Lascannon.
An even trickier balance question, now many points is being able to move 12" a turn worth? Your objectives may be the other side of the table or they might be in your deployment. Your opponent might be a charging tide of Fleshhounds or a AM gunline, that value varies hugely.
40k armies are so diverse that the mythical "perfect balance" just isn't possible. Even if you managed to balance the points against a theoretical "Average List" people could still bring extreme lists and throw the whole thing out of balance. The only way you can stop it is to remove extreme lists.
This is good for tournament play perhaps but reduces the options available which is bad for everyone else. An example is based on an army I myself love the idea of: Chaos Deathwing. Abaddon and nothing but squads of Terminators.
Now the army would be an extreme list (All 2+ save infantry) and would even be Unbound (A replacement for the word broken on many forums) but it would not be tourney winning list, it's very much a casual middle of the road at best list.
I think that'll do as an opening salvo, next time I'll talk some more about 7th edition in general, why Unbound is great (You heard me internet) and get into some of the changes and how it changed the game.
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