CWC II ETA?

[flamingpig0]

Can I suggest that you include a few lists in the book - mainly from the ability to provide a complete package in one book?

I get that having the majority of the army lists online makes a lot of sense - for a lot of reasons - but its a bit disappointing to get a nice new rule book and then not have any example army lists to use as reference whilst you are going through the rules.

I would agree with that

[Leon]

Yeah, we thought this might prove contentious...!  The problems with putting the lists in the book are multiple and some of them are quite a big issue:

Size/Weight - The bigger the book the higher the print costs and the more they cost to post out.  Currently I think a copy of BKC costs us about £11 to ship to the States so it's not far off 50% of the price of the book.  We're right on the weight boundary as well, so if the same book creeps over 750g the shipping costs suddenly jump to £20+.  With shipping costs going up sharply at the moment this is only going to get worse in coming years.  At the moment we're charging £8 postage for those customers so we lose £3 per BKC, but that could be a £12+ loss per book which isn't ideal.  We could charge more for the shipping but the sales would be reduced as a result, which isn't great either. 

Making the lists separate would reduce print costs by about 40% as well, allowing us to bring the price of the rulebook down.

Updates - As always, there'll be updates and errata for the army lists down the line.  With online lists we can update them whenever we like and folks can get the latest versions by clicking a button, rather than needing to go through and annotate a physical copy.  It also means that each list can be as comprehensive as we want without it affecting page counts and print costs.

Expansion - With online lists we can have extensive lists for multiple conflicts and theatres without any problems.  We could have 100 army lists if we want to without it resulting in a massive printed tome that won't fit through your letterbox.

The plan was for the lists to be available as simple pdf files for folks to download and print at home, or use on a tablet/computer instead.  We would also offer all army lists in a hardcopy version direct from us, for a nominal 30p-50p, where we'd print and supply them as we would any other order.  So you could buy the book and printed Vietnam lists for £20-ish and away you go.  If you decide to do the Arab-Israeli conflicts you could get those printed lists for less than £1.

We could put some lists in there but then the debate over which ones begins.  If it's Cold War Commander then the Cold War lists seems appropriate but we don't have figure ranges to support those yet.  We could put the Vietnam lists in there instead but then folks will ask why the Cold War lists aren't present... 

If this is going to be a massive issue for folks then we can discuss it by all means but having the rules + lists in one book is adding costs for everyone and we wanted to try and bring those down as much as possible.

This was also going to be the method for the next BKC printrun, which I was going to send off next month. 

[paulr]

By a few, I meant the main lists for one conflict. Not list for multiple conflicts.

I thought you did Fred, the challenge is of course which conflict and then how many lists you need....

I hope my comment didn't come across as snarky, it was intended to illustrate the challenge

I think separate lists is the best option but I am not really the target audience; I use another rule system for WWII & Moderns 

[sultanbev]

I'm all for keeping the lists separate from the rules, as everyone will have their favourite unit missed off their particular list, so having downloadable lists makes them easy to update.
It also makes the rules book lighter, which is always a bonus if you're going to and from club meets.

I always follow the mantra that rules are rules, data is data, and altering/updating the latter should not alter the former. If it does that's bad writing.

If your rules book has 100 lists in, but you'll only be using one particular one on that night, why carry the other 99? Also leaving out the lists means you can ensure you have enough space for all the rules you want to include.

I also think of the Cold War as split into broad decadal themes - 1956, 1967, 1973, 1985, 1989-90ish, but when you get into the nitty-gritty of organisations, even 1983 is different from 1985.

Maybe people aren't really asking for army lists in the book, but vehicle/gun/infantyr/aircraft stats, so you could have 3 lists of data, rather than organisational lists - NATO, Warpac/China, Non-aligned, each detailing all the relevant vehicles, infantry platoons, guns and planes. However each list would be huge! But still a lot less space than choosing a selection of theatre specific lists....

[Big Insect]

ONLINE or PRINTED ARMY LISTS

I think all the comments above illustrate some of the challenges that Leon & I have been working with around CWCII.

One of the advantage of the on-line lists is likely to be (subject to programming capability) an easy to use (and correct/update) online army list calculator resource, that links into the army lists.
This will allow quicker game prep and the ability for players to 'play-around' with formations etc. and then print them out.
Due to the way the new army lists have been developed, by cross-referencing a data-base of standard vehicle stats, printing off specific lists may be possible - but we need to check that out. But even if it was I'd suggest that that needs to be done on an individual basis.

I/we had considered putting a couple of lists in the rules book as examples.
However, as we have broken down the single NATO and Warsaw Pact lists, that were in CWC I, into their distinctive component parts in CWC II, having just a single NATO and Warsaw Pact list printed in CWC II (which would have been my original intention) is no longer possible. But I can look at this, as we will need something in the rules that explains how the army lists work and interface with the main body of the rules.

Normally, I'm all for having lists and rules in a single hard-copy document, but with CWC II, due to the volume of data involved, this is (as Leon has stated very eloquently) impractical for lots of reasons. With hindsight I wish we'd treated BKCIV in the same way.

I suppose there might be an option to set up a printed army list on a print-on demand basis (LuLu?) but that would be very much a future project and one we would need to consider very carefully, due to the on-going work/economics involved in maintaining it.

HISTORICAL SCOPE
As previously stated - my own preference is to keep the rules to a defined Cold War era timeframe.
So to me that starts with the end of WW2 and ends with the fall of the Berlin Wall & Soviet led communism (Nov.89) and possibly the collapse of the Soviet Union (Dec'91).

I view the 1st Gulf War (2 Aug 1990 – 28 Feb 1991) as a very separate/distinctive step in the evolution of modern warfare (primarily due to command & control) and one that needs its own separate supplement (at some point).
The challenge of extending the rules is primarily around the use of a single d:6 combat dice and the extent to which you can squeeze that mechanism to cope with a post-war T34/85 at one end of the time-frame and an Abrahams at the other!

As previously stated in this thread I also see the big steps in the evolution of armoured warfare (in this period) broken down into 3 large phases (whilst totally agreeing with Sultanbev on his 5 stages). The fact that these 3 stages coincide (broadly) with the development of British Main Battle Tanks (Centurion, Chieftain and Challenger) is coincidental. However, this sub-divisioning (is that a word?) is unlikely to play a major part in shaping the rules or lists, but just helps to orientate a brand new Cold War player to the shape of the era and the forces they may wish to create.

There are also (potentially) likely to be Supplements to cope with specific wars/campaigns (Southern Africa) and areas of potential conflict that are off the normal cold war map - such as South America (for example). After all, whilst there were some very real actual wars/conflicts with the period - this set of rule is primarily aimed at the potential conflict, that never thankfully happened, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, in Central and Western Europe.

Hopefully that is helpful

Mark

[Steve J]

The big selling point of the BKC/CWC/FWC sets was that the book was a one stop shop with everything in it you needed to play. But as outlined above there are issues with this model going forward.

In terms of the rules, I think you need to have a couple of lists in the book to help understand certain examples, weapon types etc that would make things more clear IMHO. I would suggest NATO and Warsaw Pact early - mid '80's.

[sultanbev]

Yes, I've done that in helping to write Divisions of Steel - one example within the rule book of how to use the army list, taking snapshots of parts of the army list to explain as you go along.

[Big Insect]

I'm also looking at representing the conversion of a real life OOB (mid-1980s Soviet MRR) to table top (if we can get hold of a decent quality image of an original Soviet OOB?) - by including an image of the MMR OOB and then a photo of the table-top formation - hopefully that might help players visualise the concept around conversation of OOBs.

As there is no single NATO list anymore (this can be built up using the various country lists) putting in a mid-'80's NATO list would be a challenge - but I am likely to use a West German list and a 1st Line Soviet force instead.

[paulr]

The MRR to the table top is a really good idea

Two good representative lists

[Prophaniti]

As a likely customer I can completely understand the need for army lists to be online.  From BKC I do like the lists in the book, so would agree with those that have suggested two lists.  Pick two opposing forces where the lists are contained and leave the crest for download.

[Leon]

I posted this reply to a Facebook query so probably best to put it here as well:

"The bad news is that CWC-2 won't be appearing in time for Salute, despite our best efforts. I've spent most of the past 6 weeks up until 1am/2am every night going through and checking/formatting/inserting pics but there just wasn't enough hours in the day to get it finished in time.

There is some good news in that I finished all of my formatting work and sent it over to the author last Friday to see if there's any final tweaks he wants to make. Once we've done that we can bounce it out to the proofreaders for final feedback.

While all that's going on I'll be formatting the lists and uploading those for people to start looking at.

Finally, I know a lot of people are waiting for this and there's a lot of frustration that it's taking so long. With moving to the new unit and all of the renovation work, then trying to get the shop sorted and fitted out, plus now the shows starting up again, every day is already crammed with priority work and it's been extremely difficult to find the time for the rules.

Some of you might have noticed that we've barely released anything for over 6 months now either, which is another casualty of the workload at Pendraken HQ. We're at the point now where we're having to get the staff in for extra days to focus purely on getting the unit/shop sorted out, as it's just too much work for me to keep doing on my evenings/weekends.

Anyway, apologies for the long reply. I'll update as soon as the rules have gone off to the proofreaders and we can get this sorted for you."

[paulr]

Look after yourself Leon, after all its only a game

Ducks behind parapets 

[flamingpig0]

We will enjoy it all the more when it does arrive.