The response to the book has been mixed. Lots of players feel that they are being forced to pay for points updates and potential erratas which should have been free plus additions that they may not want nor need. Many others, myself included, see nothing wrong with this. It's a once a year release that expands upon 8th edition nicely even though some of it may not be of use to us. The cost could perhaps be lower but by now we should all be used to Games Workshops pricing policies.
The book opens up with the Open Play section. This is to me perhaps the weakest part of the whole book. It starts off with the new 8th edition rules for Apocalypse style games which certainly fit the open play format more than matched play. I've never been a fan of the Apocalypse format mainly because I'd rather play three or four games in a day than one giant one but it is a nice inclusion if you like the bigger free for all games.
The next section is a rather interesting one if underwhelming. Games Workshop have teased now and again about bringing make a mechanic for creating your own variations of vehicles in 40K. Chapter Approved 2017 gives us the first step in this by presenting rules for space marine and chaos marine armies to custom build their own land raiders. There are even several pre-constructed variants that you can use, although the chaos one is rather lackluster. Great for Open Play but I do have a grumble. Games Workshop could have provided a points cost for the variants that they give us, including the Terminus, for use in Matched Play. That was a disappointment to me.
The next chapter focuses on Narrative Play. It presents us with full rules and missions for Planetstrike (which was a popular format in my local club when the original planetstrike book first came out) and Stronghold Assault. As a player who likes lots of different missions to play over the usual capture objectives or kill point ones, this is for me a great addition to my collection. They then add the fortifications from the Imperial Index (I forget which book 1 or 2) but they fail to give points costs. The costs haven't changed from the Index book but their inclusion would have been nice for those players who didn't need to buy the Index book. I would guess that because normally you just get fortifications in a Stronghold Assault mission they didn't feel the need to include points.
Matched Play is where it is for me in this book. We have an update with some new rules for this format. Chapter Approved then gives us twelve new missions - six for Eternal War and six for Maelstrom of War. These are rather different to the ones we get in the rule book with some interesting new mechanics. These twelve missions and the ones for planetstrike and stronghold assault are more than worth the price of the book. Some may argue that but these expand your game and prevents them being the same old same old all the time.
The next section is about making your own objective markers. Feels like padding to add to the page count. Did we need this? No. Not really.
The next section was a much needed addition. For those codex armies that had not had a official release by the time of this books release, it gave them a warlord trait, a relic, special rule and a couple new stratagems. This was very much needed and I think has made those armies become just a little bit more competitive against the codex armies. My only grumble... Imperial Knights got a section but Renegade Knights didn't.
We then get the Appendix. Here we receive new rules for the death world terrain and the mechanicus terrain. Nothing special really but nice as an inclusion. We get two new battlezone's - Industrial and Empyric Storms. I'll review battlezone's at a later date as I want to go into them with a bit more detail. The Industrial one however, is a bit lame as it is based upon you actually having and using the Mechanicus terrain. The Empyric Storms are very similar to what came in the Rise of a Primarch book in early 2017 but Games Workshop have not released a deck of cards for them as yet though meaning you have to roll for it each time.
The last small section gives suggestions for a Ladder campaign and then updated points costs for Games Workshop and Forge World units. Some went up. Some dropped. Queue much debate which I try and avoid.
So... do I think this book is worth it? A resounding yes. There is a lot of stuff that you probably won't use but the addition of so many great new missions, updated points and updated army rules (for those not released at the time) I do think this book is worth the price and worth your time.
I will be very interested to see what they add in the 2018 book when it comes out in December. I'm hoping for more missions and perhaps escalation style rules such as Age of Sigmar got for war bands. I'm sure that Games Workshop will learn a lot from the response to this book and make the next one even better.
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