FAQ me? FAQ you!

I'm still working my way through the new 8th edition rulebook. Already, Games Workshop has put out a revision to their FAQ's. I see this as a good thing. Does it mean that the book was poorly or vaguely written? I don't think so, at least not more so than usual. There will always be questions that come up, and the best thing that they can do it address them quickly instead of just leaving them out there for players to argue over. Many of us still have a bad taste in our mouth from disagreements over how War of the Ring was supposed to work and haven't touched the game since. A timely FAQ could have avoided much of that.

The Dark Elf FAQ update was sparse. Only one of the few changes they made has me scratching my head. The Manbane + Rending Stars combo may have been over powered. It may have been cheesy considering that the Assassin was BS 9 and didn't take up a hero slot. But it was one of the few sources of high strength attacks in the army, has a short range, Assassins are fragile, and everyone expected to see the combo if you had a unit of Shades and an Assassin so they could keep their monsters away from him.

Seeing a change to the ruling doesn't surprise me. Changing the rule so that the extra +1 to Strength is up to the current player seems like a poor choice. Mental muscle memory in Warhammer is a hard thing to fight. Games go much faster once you get used to what you have to consistently roll. Having a stat that will flip back and forth based on who's turn it is is just asking for confusion. Plus, I'm having trouble coming up with a fluff justification for why a poison's strength would oscillate from one player's turn to the next. The only time it will come up, that I can think of, is if the Assassin makes a Stand and Shoot reaction to a charge. If the combo needed to be fixed, why fix it like this?