I'm not sure whether Soggycrow is being serious or not, and either way I don't agree with him... in general. But I'm quite dismayed by the news that the AP will require the Hedge overlays!
Given that Journal #4 is out of stock and out of print, there are going to be a fair number of people who are SOL as far as getting copies of these overlays, or at least, nicely printed copies. I probably have the .pdf Tactiques versions around here somewhere, and I know one or two of the people in my group got Journal #4, but that's it for me as far as these overlays go. Can we still play the scenarios that use them? Probably, with some effort, but that's not the point. The point is that there are ongoing problems with using any component that was only issued in limited print runs.
(And I don't mean "limited" as in "Sooner or later we will run out of core modules", I mean "limited" as in "We're only going to print enough of these for pre-orders plus x%".)
To me this is not an argument for restricting what the designers can use in their scenarios; rather, it is an argument for why the overlays should have been made available (again) in the AP itself. After all, it is the Normandy AP, and they are Normandy overlays! It might have made sense to include them even if there weren't any scenarios that called for them!
So, how many scenarios call for the Hedge overlays, anyway?
(It doesn't change the principles involved, mind you... but it can certainly change the aggravation level!)
John