Here's the skinny, and it's not as bad as all that. Explain fully later.
Warfare- This is not going away- all new models are packed with a crad for warfare and a card for tactics 2.0. They have just released retroactive warfare card packs and tactics card packs for all factions old models, so if you are interested in playing ssu warfare, get the Warfare rulebook, get a SSU warfare card pack.
Warfare is my preferred game, there is quite a bit of tactical depth to the command/action/suppression/reaction mechanics and it really scratches that 28mm itch. I appreciate being able to use units right out of the box as my last pitch at making a 40k army, necrons, i was sick to death of spending four hours to assemble ten small or three large models which are essentially monopose. Dust figs are good, you can buy them in the store then frop them on the table, and paint nicely- I have just done head swaps on an allied forcee to make them aussies.
Tactics has just gotten a revised rulebook. I have not played the new edition yet, but i certainly enjoyed playing tactics back in the day. It id fast and bloody to play without ambiguity playing on a grid system for line of sight. Mantics deadzone appears to play a lot like tactics.|
Tactics Battlefield is in the same rulebook as tactics and essentially uses the same system as tactics, gives you a tape measure and removes the grid. The gameplay is an extension/modification of the board game, incorporating a few suppression elements from warfare, but expect it to be faster and bloodier rather than more 'realistic' (as walking tanks can be) than warfare.
So the rights to warfare have passed back to dust studio, but, they can't publish anything that devalues the current stock of books until they have sold out, as FFG still owns the stock. This eans that there will not be a revised edition of the core rulebook for Warfare for a while, and any expansion books fr warfare will be released as a free pdf by battlefront instead of for sale. They can create new content to extend warfare so long as it is free for the period until FFG has run the stock down.
Not the end of the world- still a great game, all units now have handy unit cards that have their full rules and special rules on them, and all new units come with such cards too.
You can use the online platoon building tool to make your warfare platoons-
http://dust.mainecoon.net/You can still buy the warfare core rulebook for $20 and the expansions 10 each as digital editions if you prefer (i do)
http://www.wargamevault.com/browse.php? ... from=&pto=One of those expansions had a neat campaign system, may have been hades.
You don't need any special templates to play warfare, but markers are good to denote suppression, damage etc. These are alright
http://www.litko.net/products/LITKO-tok ... 5RyhSgVdHUThere are official GF9 ones coming soon too.
So yeah- chuck out old tactics cards, either get the new warfare deck or get the rules expansions. There is a free stat sheet that has all of the units on it here
http://dust-devils.com/dee-dees-game-su ... re-supportJust download everything there and you will find what you need to play.