This is The Wartrader, letting the information free…

This week Datasphere got some juicy previews - several spreads from the new N3 books.

Location, Location, Location

Or in this case, layout, layout, layout and structure, structure, structure. We've got a clear hierarchical layout of information, a clean look and multiple uses of colour coding - yellow boxout reminders, red boxouts of extra-important notes, colour logos for all the different tokens in the relevant places. Clear diagrams that again use colour-coding to distinguish between the sides - see the purple Daturazi and red Nomads on p48.

Navigation through the book is improved with colour-coded sidebar titles for the different rulebook sections (green for Basic Rules, purple for Characteristics and Skills) to find the right section quickly, then clear page numbers at the bottom to narrow down to the right page within the section. As much as I like the coloured page edges of the older books, white edges with a coloured sidebar title is much more suited to looking things up. This may actually be an Infinity rulebook where it's nearly as quick to look up a rule in the book as it is to look it up on the wiki.

My main gripe in terms of layout would be that all-caps Orbitron for some of the titles isn't the most readable of fonts.

Update: New page previews from Corvus Belli!

Clarifications

In just four pages we can see a bunch of 'loose' areas from N2 tightened up and clarified:

• The Order Pool and order expenditure is all explicitly open information that all players can see. For example placing an Impetuous Order by the model that generated it so that everyone's completely clear on which Impetuous moves haven't been performed yet.
• Separate and explicit phases of the turn for the spending of Impetuous Orders and then Regular/Irregular Orders. This used to be (paraphrasing) 'spend all your Impetuous Orders before the others, apart from exceptions like needing to spend normal Orders on Dogged models to keep them alive' rather than being distinct phases.
• A more explicit description of how 'off-table' troopers such as drop troopers and models in Hidden Deployment generate Orders and that this remains private information.
• Long Skills have been renamed to Entire Order Skills or Entire Orders, helping distinguish them a little more from Short Skills and Short Move Skills. It's a small change but another sign of CB tightening up the terminology of the game.

Changes

Now the meaty stuff. Some of this we already know from Operation Icestorm, Infinity Week and assorted seminars, but some is new:

• As per Icestorm, the Lieutenant's Order is specific to the LT, is open information and kept separate from the Order Pool and using it reveals who is the LT.

• Impetuous has been split into Impetuous (duh!) and Extreme Impetuous (wuh?) - the difference is how the trooper cancels his Impetuous Order. 'Basic' Impetuous troopers can cancel their Impetuous Order for free, making it completely optional. Extreme Impetuous troopers can only cancel their Impetuous Order by spending a Regular Order from the Order Pool - this is a substantial change from N2 as Irregular Impetuous Warbands etc. can no longer cancel their own Impetuous Orders! This means that a bunch of Morlocks, for example, in a second group of their own cannot cancel their Impetuous Orders and will advance towards the enemy instead of simply hanging around as semi-mobile Chain Rifle Mines covering your flanks and rear.

• Movement during the Impetuous Order. To add to the above, there are much stricter and clearer rules for how the trooper must move during the Impetuous move. A whole bunch of exceptions that were in N2 have been removed, for example the trooper can no longer avoid revealed Mines or routes that involve Jumping or Climbing. In addition, if the trooper moves a second time the second move follows the same 'gets as close to the enemy as possible' rules, meaning the death of the 'Impetuous Shuffle' where a trooper would move forwards with the first move and then back again with the second move.

• Also of note in the Impetuous move rules is that a Prone trooper gets to (indeed must) stand up for free at the start of the move - this is because standing up from Prone is now a free part of a Move skill instead of being a whole short move skill in itself, which is something that will speed up movement for all troops in the game. This is a big advantage compared to N2 where the only option for an Impetuous Order for a Prone trooper was to stand up and move forwards as fast as possible with no dodging, smoke grenades or firing allowed.

• Impetuous and Extreme Impetuous troops cannot benefit from Partial Cover. At all, not just during the Impetuous Order. This will make very little difference during the Impetuous Order as it was near-impossible for the trooper to stay in cover due to the direct route required, but it will make quite a difference during later Orders and during the reactive turn - this helps explain why we're seeing a larger discount for Impetuousness in N3.

So that's the changes visible in four pages. Four pages covering pretty fundamental parts of the game, but still…

Spetsnaz with Boarding Shotgun

Meanwhile, let's drool over this for a moment.

• Now let's look at this again from a rules point of view.

• Changes to the Shotgun range bands give +6 BS within 8" (so a base BS18 before Camo or ODD modifiers).

• Marksmanship 1 gives the Boarding Shotgun Shock ammo.

• Marksmanship 2 lets the Spetsnaz ignore the BS penalty for shooting a target in Partial Cover.

• Using blast mode instead of AP ammo mode makes the Boarding Shotgun an Impact Template Weapon which means it ignores the ARM bonus for targets in Partial Cover.

Suddenly, Impetuous troops not being able to claim Partial Cover benefits doesn't look like quite as nasty a downside when there are units that ignore it all anyway.

That's all for this week so I'll leave you looking at the rulebook page previews with a reminder that the N3 rulebook has about twice the number of rules pages as N2 and warn you that there's unlikely to be an Arachne in Infinity article next week as I hope to be too busy sending out N3 rulebooks to customers!