Important Announcement about BKC-III - Please Read

[Ithoriel]

I haven't voted yet because I want a bit of time to consider the options.

My overall concern is to wind up with a solution that gives us a playable version of BKC but also leaves Pendraken still standing and able to move forward as a business ... as per my earlier, plagiarised, tag line, "nice people, cool toys!"

Have to say my main beef is with the armylists and with the lack of guidance on points values for both field defences and for scenarios. I'm sufficiently used to tinkering with rules to deal with most of the rest.

At the moment I'm tempted to suggest an errata pdf and an armylist one. But I'll sleep on that for a night or two.

[cardophillipo]

Like everyone else has said, fair play Leon for holding your hands up.  I also agree with the sentiment that the last thing any of us want is to cause any more problems for Pendraken so for now I have voted for the Army list PDF option and I will quite happily buy a new improved edition once it is all sorted. We must support our hobby in every way we can. Like others BKC is the one of the three I play the least, mainly CWC and anything that can be learnt from BKC can only be a positive for CWC ans FWC.

If we can help in any way just say the word 

Cheers

Richard P

[FierceKitty]

Not a personal stakeholder in this one, but respect for being so open about it, bro'.

[williamb]

First, thank you for posting this Leon.  At the moment I can't really respond to the poll as both errata for rules errors, typos, etc... is needed, but also revised army lists.   I mainly use army lists for the stats and don't run points based games.  Obviously a printed army list book would be nice, but a pdf would also work.

[Nick the Lemming]

Not a personal stakeholder in this one, but respect for being so open about it, bro'.

Same here. I'd go for the pdf army list myself - less hassle and wasted money for Pendraken, who've been pretty good about this so far, and the people playing BKC get proper army lists out of it. My vote would be for a hybrid - second printing to incorporate the proper army lists, but pdf for those affected right now who have the first printing.

[Itinerant Hobbyist]

Sitting here looking at my book (just arrived today). Wondering if you could fix the disccrepencies/errors. whatever in the rules. And also fix the Russian, German, US, and British  Lists for a rerelease of the books. Then, as the other lists are fixed, simply release them as Too Fat Lardies does as free PDFs. It would drastically cut the size of the print version.

While I loved that BKC came with all the lists, this may be a compromise. 

[fsn]

I have no dog in this fight, so won't be voting.

However, I would say that I hope the purchasers of BLT will be as considerate as possible, and not call for the expensive options. I also hope that this hiccup does not detract from the reputation of Pendraken.

Hopefully, when the 2nd Edition comes out, all these minor niggles* will have disappeared, and the BLT III Ausf A will become as the British Guiana 1c magenta postage stamp - much prized for its minor imperfections.



*Yes they are minor. It's a set of wargames rules, not the constiution for a new democracy. If you don't like a bit - change it. If you're favourite (and little used) vehicle isn't included - add it. If you know that a PzIV should be armour class delta instead of armour class epsilon, then you can work out that a Crusader AA should be armour class Beta.

[Rolf Steiner]

Hi Leon et al

Happy with whichever route you go down just as long as various issues are addressed.

Of course I would love a new free 'fixed' version of the set but I expect that would be sometime in future and would likely be preceded by PDF fixes in interim anyhow

Cheers

[Kiwidave]

Rules haven't arrived yet, so I can't make a massive/intelligent contribution, but I'm leaning towards a combination of 1 and 2 (voted 2).

My copy of BKC II has all the errata written into it, as I'm not too worried about scribbling on rules, but if the list os going to be a long one, then a new book would be nice in the long term.

[Hastati]

I'd also like to thank Leon for his post.  A lot of companies would just walk away saying nothing about the issues (hmm, I'm thinking of one game in particular).  I think the easiest thing is to release a set of errata and revised lists in PDF.  These revisions can then be incorporated into new print runs and the PDF at Wargame Vault.

[Dr Dave]

Leon, thank you for your candid views and honesty.

I've not voted yet, but I think it's a 2 or a 4.

2 - I can cope with scribbles and a new set of lists that I'll print as I need them.

4 - as a product BKCIII will really stand out if it's sold as a book, plus a downloadable book of corrections and clarifications, or anything similar. I think longer term option 4 will have to be the route otherwise BKCIII will die and potentially take the series with it.

[slugbalancer]

Thanks Leon for the honest & frank staement, it will get better.  I picked my copy up at Salute and had no intention of jumping straight into playing it.  I realised that there would be problems, there always are.  I can wait for the corrections.  My lead pile awaits application of paint.

[weredoomed2003]

Firstly I would like to thank Leon and the Pendraken team for their honesty and openess- many manufacturers would have just issued a 'we'll publish errata soon' notice and left it at that.  I think the wealth of opinions and comment comes from a genuine love of BKC2 and an expectation for BKC3.  I agree completely with the comments from Pendraken that some changes are bona fide changes and not errors.  I myself like the indirect fire change to hit on a 6, still undecided on the FO/FAC point but that's something we work out within our gaming group, try it, work out a house rule etc.  The main point is that the rule change is set out correctly.  
But, the army lists and the other contradictions/omissions throughout the rulebook are very significant and will take a lot of work to fix.  I've tried to look at this from different perspectives to make my decision on how to vote.  The army lists account for 97 pages out of 175 (55%) of the rule book.  To issue a corrected version means over half the rulebook is wasted publication.  From the other comments clearly many other sections need significant rewrites; opportunity fire, scenarios, engineering and field defences to name just 4.  I also considered this from a product viewpoint - I myself could not go on marketing and selling a product where over half the content has to replaced with a second version via pdf because its wrong.  I don' t want to speak for others but I would be happy to volunteer to sense check further drafts or lists - I am as puzzled as many are that obvious errors and omissions are so common in the lists. Perhaps it's the wealth of knowledge in the WW2 wargaming community that make these stand out as glaring errors?  
For me there comes a cut off point between a document that requires errata to correct a few typos, mistakes and omissions but that is essentially a correct document and one that isn't.  
Unfortunately for these reasons I came down on the side of a redraft and reprint of the whole rulebook.  I know others will disgree and I respect their views as much as I hope they do mine.
Finally I would add my support to the Pendraken team to get this right and to continue to make the commander series the most popular ruleset for the periods they cover.  These things just happen sometimes...

[barbarian]

First, I realise I should have been involved into the process of testing : But I was away from gaming for personal reasons, and lazy, hoping some good people would have done the work for me.

I'll speak of my personal experience : BKCII was my entry point into WWII gaming. It has a lot to offer but mainly, for me it was that all the lists were concentrated into one book. And with the limitations, I could somehow build a "plausible" force, without having to check actual ORBATs. It was a huge help for a beginner.

Second thing I liked was : one double page for movement, one for combat, one for arty...

After playing it for a while but mainly with new players, the rules had flaws (personal opinions) : Units really hard to suppress (I always had the view that suppression should be the first throw and not the second, but maybe my view is biased by 1 on 1 interpretation, when in reality it is a lot harder to suppress a platoon as a whole as opposed to one tank or one squad taking fire), the hidden rules were a bit of a mess, actually doing something with the Soviets Mid-war was really hard, the scenarii were interesting once you could actually understand them, in general the games were too long, couldn't understand the assault rules...

My expectations for BKCIII were a somehow more simple game.

To summarise, I had pleasure going through the lists, thinking, "My next buy will be 6 T-70, or 3 KV-1..." and doing scenery (or buying some of the resin scenery from Pendraken) more than actually playing the game.

To explain a bit of what I like, I much prefer Kings of war than any other Fantasy rule now. Every lists available, some kind of a streamlined game. I feel Warlords games (Hail caesar, Black Powder but not Bolt Action) are doing this well (strangely enough, due to the influence of Priestley /sarcasm) : Historical wargaming streamlined for a general audience.

In my view, BKCIII should really aim for simplicity and elegancy to follow the top-down approach inherited from Warmaster. BKC series should be the antithesis of other systems and the player should really be able to focus on Commanders decisions : in the end it should go down to " Should I order these to move ? To fire ? Maybe it is a risky to try to get 3 move orders to cross this field of terrain..."

Again, my fault for not getting involved into it when I could have give feedbacks.

[old smokie]

Thanks for the frank and honest statement Leon

I voted for Option 2 - New PDF Army Lists, easier to modify/update as required.

If your planing another print run of BKC 3,  I would print the rules with all the corrections etc but without the army lists, keep the army lists as a free download PDF and maybe offer the new rule book at cost to people who bought the original just an idea, that would hopefully keep your costs to a minimum. There maybe should have been a "starter scenario" in the book with two small forces listed that beginners could purchase to get them started, just my two cents.

People who have spotted mistakes etc should email you the page number and what the error is then you could collate all of the information in one place which would make it easier to correct again just my two cents.