Drastic changes in the way GW puts out its FAQs

No, I don't really want to talk about the recent FAQ of the 40K rulebook here. I just want to say that it is pretty good and answered a lot of questions even though there are still some problematic situations that are not resolved yet. It took them two and a half years after the release of the rulebook but at least they did it. Better late than ever I suppose.

My main topic is this. I was really surprised with the recent update of the various Fantasy FAQs. First of all, if you remember, all the Fantasy Army books had an updated FAQ a few months back to coincide with the new rulebook coming out at the time. This was absolutely necessary since a few clarifications had to be made for each army in order to bring it up to date with the new rule-set.

Now, after a few months of the first FAQ updates, GW went on and made even more updates for some of the books. This is unheard of (updating FAQs so quickly), at least for the last 7-8 years that I've been in the hobby as an adult (with Internet). This is a very positive move and brings a lot of hope to people that have old army books plus it shows that GW will give better and continuous support to their products.

The thing that struck me more though was an addition to the Orc army book:

"Page 41 – Waaagh!

Change the second paragraph to ‘In addition, all friendly units

have the Always Strikes First special rule, and can re-roll any

failed To Hit rolls in the Close Combat phase of that turn.’"

This is quite amazing for a few reasons. First it really changes how orcs play and perform on the battlefield. Imagine if something similar happened to their 40K cousins. When a Waaagh!!! was declared in addition to just getting fleet, all ork units would get Always Strike First and also re-roll failed To Hit rolls in Close Combat. That would make a tremendous difference and it would improve them a lot as an army.

Please, correct me if I am wrong but the last time I remember such a dramatic change to an army (without a new codex coming out) was when Dark Elves were improved via some errata in White Dwarf. And even then it was kind of a big deal, being published in GWs own official magazine and generally there was a lot of fuss about it. Now, they just went and did it very stealthily but the result is the same.

So what does this all mean? Is this a one off or is GW going to continue this line of conduct? I sure hope for the latter. This way customers will have more faith in GW product support and small changes like this can have a huge impact in how an army plays. I hope GW keeps this up.