The whole internet (in the eyes of wargamers), is full of comments, thoughts, and discussions about a supposed leak of a playtest copy of the 6th edition of Warhammer 40,000. You can make you own mind up by having a look at a nice summary from Frontline Gaming of the rules (or even try and find the PDF on various torrent sites).
I'll let you make your mind up about it but I thought I would post my thoughts and views about the leak and the rules.
The Rules
I haven't seen the PDF of the rules, so I'm going off the summary and I can say that I think that these are FAKE. It's very difficult to piece together the summary as a ruleset as you are taking quickly written sentences and weaving them into a framework that works as a ruleset for a miniature game you have been playing for years, but these seem fake to me. I'll have a proper look at the PDF at some point but this reminds me of the Fake Blood Angel Codex from a couple of years ago, which seemed quite plausible until you got to the Vampire Bat Riders.
I will say that there seems to be some interesting ideas here but I would expect to see something more in the vein of the change from 7th to 8th edition fantasy, than what is being proposed here.
The Leak
As I'm fairly sure that these rules are Fake, and could be to do the following....
- This leak is to try and show up any playtesters who have been wispering things about up coming releases. As per my blog entry last week about the Hobbit Game, this may be an exercise by GW to show that they have control over their playtesters.
- It's a piece of work by somebody new to Games Development who were asked what changes they would do to 40K. This would then be discussed by the rest of Games Development and management to see what ideas they could use or if the person who wrote it was suitable for their job.
- This is a promotional exercise to see what people think about some of the changes. However I think this may be unlikely as the game is scheduled for a summer release (or so we assume) and it seems a bit late to be testing the water about rule changes. Especially when we didn't get the same treatment with Warhammer Fantasy.
- Its a hoax by somebody who has put a lot of time and effort into seeing how far they can get it to go