BKC-III Decision Reached - Please Read!

[Leon]

The previous BKC poll has now ended and the result was quite clearly in favour of a full reprint with 50% of the vote.  A pdf of the army lists was 2nd choice with 37%.

As a business, this was the preferred choice for ourselves as well.  We've thought long and hard about it over this past week, crunching the numbers repeatedly, and weighing up some other options, but this is the best decision for the long-term reputation and viability of the whole BKC family of rules.  Had it been just the army lists with issues and the rules were fine, or the lists were spot on but there were some errors in the text, then I think we could have sorted that out with an errata sheet for people to refer to.  With both lists and text having issues, then the whole rulebook isn't up to standard and we couldn't continue to sell them to people knowing those problems were there.

It's been mentioned in one or two threads but we're extremely disappointed that there still hasn't been any input from our author.  As the first few queries started to come in, some insight into his thinking or some information on his research into the army lists might have helped ease some of the initial concerns and alleviate the eventual surge of negative feeling towards the new rules.  As some people have said, there are some good ideas in this new edition, some of which might need some fine-tuning, but it's not all bad.  Our job now is to make those new bits work properly with the old.

So, what happens next?

The immediate job is to get to work on revising BKC-III into the rulebook we were all hoping for.  The army lists will be our starting point, reverting those back to BKC-II and then tweaking and editing them where necessary based on previous BKC feedback.  Second will be the scenarios which will also largely revert to BKC-II, unless anything comes up from our new team that requires a change/tweak.  And then from there we'll go through the actual rules of the book, page by page, doing one of three things:

- Leaving as is.
- Clarifying/amending to make it work better/properly.
- Reverting back to BKC-II.

I've mentioned the new team already, so I'll explain a bit more on that.  First off I want to thank everyone who has emailed, callled or messaged us offering their help and support with this, your response was overwhelming and we can't thank you all enough.  There were so many offers that there were simply too many to bring in to a 'rewrite' group but we will still need your help at some point.  

We've got a core group of people from the original BKC playtesting and feedback team, plus a couple of other people who were recommended by them.  This group will help us work through the editing process and put together our 'BKC-3.1', as it were.  Along the way though we will need more feedback and information on all of the points that have been discussed on the Forum here, so that's where the wider community comes in.  Some of the discussions have got a bit sidelined or distracted as further points come up, so it would be good to try and make those threads more concise where we can.  So if there's something that doesn't work, or you think needs fixing, then start a new thread in this main BKC section, with a thread title naming the area of the rules you're going to address, so that could be Visibility, or Special Abilities, or Movement.  Once you've got the thread started, we need the following points:

- What is the issue?
- What would be the fix?
- What other areas of the rules would this fix impact on?
- What questions does this issue/fix raise?

Now it's obviously going to be more complicated than that once we get into the discussion of each point, but it gives a good starting point for us to refer to at each stage of the rewrite to see what potentially needs doing.  We can't guarantee that every point/fix will be implemented but every one will be looked at and assessed by the rewrite team.

What does that mean for people who bought the rules?

Everyone who has bought a set of the rules will get a revised set of the rules.  If you bought online then we'll ship you a new copy, if you bought through Wargame Vault then you'll receive an automatic update by email.  For those who bought at Salute (we've got the numbers and some of the names) you will need to send us your copy and we will swap it for a new one.  I know this is a bit of extra hassle, but it's the only way to ensure that we're sending copies to people who definitely bought them.  Once this is done, it's important that any old copies are thrown away/destroyed, as we don't want to end up with two versions circulating around the wargames community and causing arguments and confusion.

How long will this take?

We want to get this done as quickly as possible, so we're setting ourselves a timescale of 2-3 months to fix everything.  Working with the BKC-III file will be the quickest method as all of the formatting and design work is already done.  Reverting the army lists is time-consuming but not too difficult to do.  It'll be the rules themselves where time and care will need to be taken to ensure we do this properly.

We know that people have spent good money on BKC and we want you to have the rules you paid for quickly.  We also don't want to lose too much momentum for BKC and get everything back on track.

We'll keep everyone updated as we progress and we'll get this sorted for you all as soon as we can.  I personally want to thank everyone who contacted me with their support and encouragement, it provided a real lift over these past couple of weeks.

[williamb]

Leon,  thank you for taking the time and effort for this.

[old smokie]

seconded   

[mungosoton]

Hi Leon

I bought my copy at Salute so if I have read this correct all I need do is to send it back to yourselves, with just my name and address on a piece of paper and you will send new rules once done.

[Tarty]

This is how it's done folks...take note ! Top shelf response to the problem. Everything I've heard about Pendraken is right here on show.

[T-Square]

Good decision.  Now on to the hard work.  Wish you all the best in your efforts.

[paulr]

Very well done that man

[petercooman]

Good luck on the rewrite! Will have a crunch through the book this afternoon, and see what I can cone up with in terms of spotted issues.

Here's to hoping this one turns out well for pendraken!!!

Just a  minor question, will the rules seek a middle ground or will we revert more to bkc II ? Just a case of knowing what issues  we should bring up. No use working out the details on some things if the whole section is reverted back to bkcII

[Fenton]

Good luck with this Leon and take your time. I am positive a great  set of rules will appear when all is completed

[SteveTheWargamer]

Bravo! Customer service and responsiveness of the highest order I'd say..   

[toxicpixie]

Good luck all

[sediment]

Good news, thanks for the update and good luck with the revision/

Cheers, Andy

[Zbigniew]

Good decision. Good luck!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Hugs all. 

[slugbalancer]

Well done for coming to a speedy decision and probably the correct one.  I think naming them as BKC 3.1 may be an error as v3 is so badly tarnished.  Wouldn't it be good to skip straight to BKC4?