N26 Escher vs Enforcers. Brutes are unethical fun. Mellee is still way too swingy, first match the enforcers cleaned house (Escher rolled some very bad bottles). Rematch, the death Maiden mopped up the table with the enforcer captain (shield and pistol) the subjugator lieutenant (slgs assault) and the lawtomata (claw and rifle).
Now that I'm looking at the new models a bit closer. If they go with the usual named/advised builds in the starter box,
Both have a medicae/sirenger,
a shoulder arm tech thingy,
a heavy weapon,
a belt fed backpack ammo pouch weapon,
a double cqc/fist weapon,
a rifle,
a special weapon,
an iconic mellee weapon guy/gal.
If the balancing means there will be archetypes for each gangs that are relatively equal, this will be an interesting edition to say the least.
Soo, getting close to the new edition (hopefully), what are big changes you hope to see?
For me personally, there are two things; the more grimdark and the more rpg parts.
make the bodies cheap but the gear expensive. Make me feel like it's really a half starved bunch of hivescum scrounging together their chemfueled dream of greatness. Make juves (or their equivalent) cost like 25 credits, but a basic autopistol cost like a 100 and balance the tradepost and rarity around numbers that make it feel like every upgrade has a substantial cost and a questionable benefit.
The other one is to make some fun(ish) systems to individualise your gang members. Give them mechanical differences (preferably minor things) other than specialising them in their roles with xp and gear. Of course i can see the appeal of blank slate characters, but there could be aptitudes, addictions, interests, etc. A juve doesn't have to be freshly out of the orphanage with only high hopes and a healthy body.
I cleaned up the fresh housing project on the East edge of Luisville and started to finish up one of the smaller houses that only has the floors and wall frames. Checked in debug to find 3 of the walls were not part of the buildings, changed those, finsihed the build, put up the roof and checked in debug again and there were 3 new walls that were not connecting (not even the corner pieces, just random wall sections stopped being enclosing pieces for my interrior area).
Nothing else, just tought it odd that walls stopped being proper walls after building them up.
N17 rules came out, than N23 got us an updated book, all those house of books for almost everyone, but no delaque vehicle, no special snowflake specialist for every gang, no house of book for the small gangs.
I wouldn't mind a new edition, but in my mind the proper pacing would have been to announce that they are going to support the current edition until the end of 2026, release new books and rules that are missing, finish up with a big christmass faq and errata and start the new edition on a clean slate with a finished rule/book cycle where every gang has all their stuff.
I think this is one of those communities that would want to own all the books and models and bells and whistles they can get their hands on, so I don't think GW would have lost out on sales if they announce a new edition and discontinuation of the current prints a year ahead and play on the FOMO of getting the old stuff, instead of getting the new stuff.
Just my 2 cents.
As we have seen with the yet mostly unknown new edition's preview, 2 books will contain all the info to play with any existing gangs, whatever that means...
BUT; after the initial release would you prefer to have a "house of ..." style of book for every gang again, or to have larger publications like story/campaign books with their own additions to the gangs and periodic updates to the books in whatever format?