And why is it your favorite? A friend of mine and I are interested in large scale fantasy battles and would like to try Warhammer.
From what I understand:
1-2ed is them hammering out the rules concerning a large amount of minis.
3rd edition edition places high importance on maneuvering with complex movement rules
4-5th edition have extremely powerful heroes which outweigh the importance of army units
6th edition nerfed heroes
7-8th edition placed a great deal of importance on battlefield magic
I enjoy the idea of tactical maneuvering of mass troops being important because in my mind it helps set this type of army-level game apart from skirmish games, so 3rd edition sounds most appealing to me.
What was your favorite, anon?
>>44635898
3rd was current when I started, and I've played every edition since. Though I don't think 8th is that bad if you've got a good gaming group (that won't force an arms race of min/maxing), my all-time favorite is 6th. I feel that GW made change for change's sake (and to push edition sales) even though they had very little to improve on.
>>44636096
What makes 6th your favorite?
>>44635898
I play it unironically, have fun, and it's my favorite edition. Bring on the hate.
>>44636270
Warhammer was actually a wargame about planning and positioning but without the clunkiness of 3rd. Heroes were good but not god-like - their most valuable role should be keeping the army on the field, not single-handedly punching everyone in the face. The armies had support and relative balance (though exceptions exist). It feels like it was the last edition where the designers were allowed to make balance a priority.
>>44636380
I'm not even mad, I just don't believe you.
The best edition of WFB is Kings of War.
>>44636380
I agree
>>44636465
I have read through the Kings of War rulebook and it also looks like good fun, but I'm drawn to Warhammer's equipment and spell customization options for the players' units as I believe that it would make them feel more personal to their commander. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'd like to think that I can make a regiment of orcs that plays differently from my friend's regiment of orcs (or whatever race we're playing).
>>44636380
I have read the rules, but I am looking for a mass combat game, while Sigmar seems to be centered around skirmish battles.
>>44635898
In 6th you could feel the point creep moving you toward more units but it managed to balance out the heroes and only really forced armies to increase by about 1/3. At this time a lot of cheep and versatile miniatures box sets became available. Most importantly a lot of the equipment variation and unit designations emphasized core units that built solid and strong armies. You could really play to your armies strengths in 6th edition and the forces fit their fluff archetypes very pleasingly.
Some armies lost the multicultural feel like empire and choas (no dwarven spearmen in your empire army or musket armed choas cultists). but more armies came into their own and some of the old ones like High Elves just became beautiful.
In 6th magic got cleaned up wonderfully, they gave you simple siege and skirmish rules to play around with and the figs were just cheep enough that you could buy them cheaply wholesale. It was the glory days for Warhammer fantasy.
Lets not forget how the tactics became amazing too. Fast Calvary came into its own. Small units of fast troops were scoring flanks and making breakthroughs. Handguns were spiting volleys at close range that made demons sweet. And the battlefield terrain had rules that made dynamic and interesting battles. It was quick and easy to build competitive, well balanced armies, and the ratios of troops to characters felt realistic and brought a customized character to your forces.
6th edition I miss you so....
>>44635898
6th, 3rd and Armies of Arcana.
6th fixed pretty much all the bullshit of 4th and 5th editions, made fielding armies of troops a good idea rather than suicidal, made balanced armies kinda workable and basically made for a more fun game. 7th whilst supposedly being an iterative improvement, failed to fix a bunch of its problems and added a fuckton of its own with very inconsistently made army books that fucked with the core rules.
3rd was freedom in rules form. Tons of extra detail if wanted, though rapidly clunky, but very characterful. Heroes were not all-powerful, though games did need moderation, possibly in the form of a GM, in order to make them balanced as it simply was not made for the kind of pick-up-and-play games of 6th onwards.
AoA is 3rd's design philosophy continued by entirely different people, refined into a large battle game more akin to 6th edition, without the clunky bits of 3rd (though still keeping the design-your-own systems) yet still encouraging use of monsters and weirdness. Very balanced magic system too.
To try and give an example, say you've got time and forces for a small game, and wanted to make an army out of stone golems, human swordsmen and some wizards as that's all you've got around.
6th would tell you to play Empire and count the golems as Dogs of War Ogres, and your army will probably suck unless you've got the optimal amount of swordsmen to stack up rank bonuses for combat resolution.
AoA would let you have exactly what you have as an army and it's probably not going to suck unless you come up against an even more weirdly specifically rigged force.
3rd would let you have exactly that and will encourage you to name your wizards and give a reason as to why that's your force (not that it affects anything on the table, that's just how it approaches games) and what your beef with the enemy is.
Can someone direct me to a 6th pdf? I cant find a magnet link that is being seeded.
>>44636402
Believe it.
>>44636740
That's true. I generally play it with smaller amounts of models but my brother and I are planning a larger game this weekend, about 150 models for my dwarfs, and he's doing orcs so it's going to be about double. We will see how well it works on larger games.
>>44635898
3rd the right mix between rules and variety.
>>44636859
What's a good points total for 6e, for a series of friendly matches? You say it increased armies by 1/3, but from what? 1500? 2000?
>>44636883https://mega.nz/#F!pFgm0RKR!J06C1gVYcjzNGsF8YNLsjQ!QMgEkZxC
Here's some, but some books are missing
>>44637472Thank you!
Thank you for the responses, anons. I will be reading over 6th and 3rd this weekend.
>>44636859
Are those Bretonnians with cannon and crossbows, fighting Chaos Dwarfs?
>>44635898
For me it's 5th. Yes, yes, I know herohammer and all...
It just had the right flavour to me. I really enjoyed the artstyle and humour.
I really enjoyed 6th too just not as much. It's probably the best mechanically.
I like to think of 7th as a tighter 6th edition. At least until the powercreep hit.
The latter half of it with certain armybooks being filled with special rules and being ridiculously undercosted ended up spoiling everything.
>>44636380
While I agree that is fun, AoS is essentially a skirmish game, it's pointless to compare it with any edition of WFB
>>44635898
8th, 3rd and 6th, in that order. Still playing all of them
>>44638870
What is the one thing you like the most about each of those editions?
9th Age
ye, I'm a newfag, started in 8th, and 9th Age is everything I coulda hoped for. familiar 8th with strands of sheer awesomeness from fabled 6th
>>44636859
I fucking love the idea and execution of the flat painted background
might even do something like that for my own battlefields
>>44639063
3rd is mainly nostalgia, that's when I started I admit, but looking back comparing it to newer editions, I love the movement phase in it, and the general feel of freedom, but it wasn't 'really' a wargame
6th was the birth of modern warhammer imo. also skirmishers, units came into their own rights, and lovely army books all around. I remember the balance was pretty good as well, the last edition where all the army books were done before the switch and it shows
8th in my mind finished what 6th started. The army books got a bit too much streamlined to my taste but in exchange we got a pretty good unit variety, probably the highest of every edition. Also, I loved the dynamics of the magic phase. You can argue about spell balance not being perfect, but the underlying system was really good, it is the first time that the magic phase was actually exciting. Also, the magical terrain. Overall, 8th made the game more narrative and dramatic, which is fine by me
If they have made a mix of 6th (the art) and 8th (the science) for 9th, that would have been perfect. Instead we got AoS, oh well, guess all good things come to an end, they have to appeal to another generation and win the video games crowd
>>44639195
>If they have made a mix of 6th (the art) and 8th (the science) for 9th, that would have been perfect. Instead we got AoS, oh well, guess all good things come to an end, they have to appeal to another generation and win the video games crowd
9the Age, mate. all the flavour and customization from 6th, with unit variety and (a bit more balanced) magic from 8th
>>44639252
I was surprised at the high quality of the Tomb Kings army book they recently released.
>>44639252
nah, it isn't. I got discouraged after reading they 'houserules' from their preview, but then again the basic rulebook was cool, I was actually excited that they nailed it. All of that shattered when it came to the army books tho. They don't even feel like warhammer at all, and seems like every one wanted to have his own bit in it. Thus they are a mess without any direction, and generally soulless. It might be a good tournament game, but definitely nothing like I am looking for. Guess that's what happens when people who were never designing games try to crowd-design something
This guy: http://warhammerarmiesproject.blogspot.hu/ does ten times the job the 9th age guys are doing
>>44635898
6th edition, my friends and I still play it. Except we used any book from 6th, 7th or 8th and added the monstrous infantry/ calvary rule.
>>44639421
what version are you referring to though? they change rapidly and radically.
current (0.11) is awesome. as Wood Elf player I'm happy with return of Kindreds for elves, Aspects for forest spirits. Can make a proper forest spirit army now too, with (limited) shooting, customization and even bsb.
>>44639421
that's my issue with them as well. what they are doing just isn't warhammer, and I want to play warhammer. like >>44639378, they are not Tomb Kings
>>44639378
if you think that's high quality, check out these:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Redi9cZJ5iVTFFbVVEUFpUc2c/view?pref=2&pli=1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Redi9cZJ5iNC1lV1dvcnhvTFk/view?pref=2&pli=1
and that's the work of one guy, who does the warhammer armies project. if anyone he should be simply put in charge of 9th, maybe with some editors who streamline a bit his books. he is using the old world tho, so the 9th age guys can't monetize it with models later, so that's a no-go I guess
>>44639486
meh, never was impressed with his books.
>>44636714
You should looke into the new book then, it has more rules for customizating your army over different games.
>>44639486
holy shit this guy is legit, the ninth age book looks like a bad joke compared to this
>>44635898
Sixth ed, easily.
>>44639657
>https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Redi9cZJ5iNC1lV1dvcnhvTFk/view?pref=2&pli=1
Sixth ed was the golden age.
>>44639421
>>44639461
how are they not Warhammer, apart from fluff?
(legitemately asking, newfag here)
>>44639486
Those are very damn impressive as well. Gorgeous.
I think what really impressed me with 9th Age Tomb Kings was that they actually commissioned their own art for it rather than borrowing GW art.
>>44639922
diff guy, but that's it. warhammer IS the fluff, if you take that away no point in playing the game. I did not play high elves to have +1 on hit, I played them because of motherfucking Nagarythe, Eataine, and Chrace
6th edition is the most balanced, mature and the edition which most favours 20-strong blocks of troops.
>>44635898
1st and 2nd
because it was a light new system that hadnt been ruined by sperglords yet.
the community really did ruin GW games. they used to be fun.
Herohammer best hammer
>tfw mounting a tooled up general on on an Emperor White Dragon
>Any unit hit by the breath weapon is "frozen to the spot".
>Frozen units hit on 6+
>A unit remains frozen for 1 turn after being hit. After that, you need to roll to see if it thaws, for a regular dragon it thaws on 2+, great dragon 3+ and emperor dragon 4+.
>Frozen models take 1 wound on a roll of 6+, with no armour save.
>>44640290
exactly. and all them editions, 9th Age, all the stuff - they are just abstract numbers, nothing more. fluff is in the models, the story you created for your army, all that kinda stuff. system is just numbers.
I had basically same army, fluff-wise, in 8th, KoW, now in 9th.
9th allows me to represent that fluff even better than 8th with all them options they added, so it's even better. I don't see how it's Warhammer.
>>44635898
7th edition using 6th edition army books is the best IMHO.
7th edition is like refined 6th rule-wise, but damn the army books created such a power creep.
>>44638173
Herohammer wasn't bad, really, but 6th edition really nailed the "fantasy wargame" thing.
>>44636859
>3rd would let you have exactly that and will encourage you to name your wizards
I always give names to my heroes and regiments, whatever the ruleset anyway.
I'd totally try 3rd edition, hell I'd even GM 3rd.
>>44635898
>I enjoy the idea of tactical maneuvering of mass troops being important because in my mind it helps set this type of army-level game apart from skirmish games,
Have you considered any other games? Warhammer has its roots in skirmish gaming and it shows even in the later editions
>>44641235
It really depends. Kings of War would be really good for massive (500+ minis on the table, something WHFB doesn't do well) because it's really streamlined and army lists help the port from WHFB to it. Warhammer rulesets (especially 6th and 7th) are pretty good for mid-sized forces (100-150 minis on the table).
>>44639971
>I think what really impressed me with 9th Age Tomb Kings was that they actually commissioned their own art for it rather than borrowing GW art.
This 2bh. And it does look half decent for the most part as well.
>>44637390
Bump. I'm thinking of doing a post Storm of Chaos friendly tourney, and I'd like suggestions on reasonable army sizes.
I started in ravening hordes/sixth edition and it is in that edition I have played the most by far. I like a lot of the changes in the later rules, especially the new magic system as 6th could devolve into a mad scramble for power/dispel dice and the armies with extra dice like skaven or dark/high elves were strong and a bit boring. What I disliked in 7:th and 8:th was the power creep with monstrous cavalry, T5, regen and 1+ saves all over the place which made medium sized infantry units obsolete and armies center around a few gimmick units and death stars. I also find the flying chariots to be triggering.
>>44638164
Fighting skaven, anon.
>>44641235
OP here. I know of KoW, but that's the only dedicated mass battle fantasy system I am aware of that isn't a spinoff of a historical system.
>>44639486
Never was that curious about the side armies projects, but I didn't know he was doing the conventional armies too, got to give him that, it's a very pleasurable sight, work of art and heart.
Probably you are informed and can answer me faster than what my googlefu would allow, do you know if he's planning his own edition or sticking to a FAQ&errata'd 8th? I've seen a list of units he would plan to insert in the armybooks, is there a specific criteria he's following, stuff like only things mentioned in the fluff, or does he put his own or other additions depending on how he sees them fitting in the fluff? To which canon is he sticking too?
>>44642515
can't really answer you, I ran into the guy when I wanted to make a skaven fandex for 8th. googled 'skaven fandex', because I was interested in what art they used, and got this book. I was like what the fuck, this guy is a god
he seems to be wanting to put everything that ever was in the rpg/tabletop into the books, which is a bit too much for me. but the quality and works he puts into it is is simply outstanding
I guess you can ask him on his blog, he seems to be pretty open for questions/suggestions: warhammerarmiesproject.blogspot.com
>>44643015
thanks
It still baffles me somewhat to see people champion 8th edition. When it came out there was a huge drop-off in the player base, if not immediately, certainly within the first year. With a large amount of resentment over the direction the game was taking as people saw that it wasn't fixing the problems of 7th so much as launching off in a direction that didn't really give people what they wanted as a game. Tournaments and campaigns (locally at least) just died from apathy (and a bunch of the players had been sustaining enthusiasm for the game since the late '80s/early '90s), the players moved on to historicals and the like instead.
And it's not like /tg/ was free of big ol' arguments about it, but they died out pretty fast because the side that got fed up with the game just stopped playing, rather than bitterly continuing to play and try and tease out some strands of fun as happens with a lot of older 40k players.
>>44637390
2000 points is optimal for 6th.
Drop to 1850 or something like that if you want to avoid the obligatory Lord level character choice.
>>44644109
>It still baffles me somewhat to see people champion 8th edition. When it came out there was a huge drop-off in the player base, if not immediately, certainly within the first year. With a large amount of resentment over the direction the game was taking as people saw that it wasn't fixing the problems of 7th so much as launching off in a direction that didn't really give people what they wanted as a game. Tournaments and campaigns (locally at least) just died from apathy (and a bunch of the players had been sustaining enthusiasm for the game since the late '80s/early '90s), the players moved on to historicals and the like instead.
Yeah. Exactly. 8th introduced random charge distances. That was the beginning of the end. Jockeying for position no longer mattered, if you rolled better than the other guy, you got your charge off. This turned a lot of people, myself included, off the game completely.
>this edition right here
>pic related.
But seriously Generals Compendium has to be the best book my group and I ever stumbled upon for WHFB. We've incorporated such massive amounts of ideas and played through all the editions with this book as a blueprint for campaigns, and sieges
8th edition had some excellent ideas, including random charge distances, which was necessary for things like stand and shot. It did unfortunately lose some very important parts like the effects of flanking, probably the most important thing in the old game and its tactical maneuvering. Prior editions was all about the maneuvering and the possibility of getting flanking charges and surrounds and more so with lapping round rules (which was clunky and something I don't miss).
WHFB never found its final stable form. The last editions had many good ideas and came with many interesting changes (mechanicly) but they needed work to make it that tactical game of position and leadership (morale) again.
Seems like the general consensus is 6th edition.
>>44644511
The Generals Compendium was indeed great. It showed what WHFB was always intended to be. That the game was all about your personal ideas and not just sticking to published material. That stats and point costs are just suggestions for you to play around with and change as you (as a group) feel like.
>>44644970
>random charge distances, which was necessary
no
>>44645080
It was. Premeasuring, which was a great change, and the decline of stand and shoots (and shooting in general) viability, made random charge a much needed change.
>>44645080
it pretty much was. like without that you will just never charge with certain armies when one has 3" and the other 6" standard move. even 4" and 6" were shit tier
>>44645328
And that, good points. It was a much need change. It was just that they removed a lot of other things in the process (viability and effects of flanking and morale) which ruined all of it (not bringing up individual changes in army books, units effectivness vs each other and math-hammer in general).
The problem wasn't random distance charges in and of itself, it's that it was added with a slew of other systems that had additional randomness layered on, in a game that really didn't handle it very well.
To compare with the historical game of similar ilk (and same designers) Hail Caesar, there things like movement and the like are randomised by the central premise of the game being around the uncertainty of command; you give orders and they may or may not be completely followed within the turn. Units are also allowed a limited amount of action without directly ordering them. But why it works there is because the game is focused on it.
Warhammer's 8th edition threw in the additional randomness on top of a game where command is down to the player, not dice rolls, where precision control was the norm and was a major part of getting good at the game (whether this was intentional by the designers or not). Throwing in random charge distances just added yet another complication to play (in a game already burdened with a ton of complications), and kept the problem of not being able to know if a unit will make it into contact despite being allowed to pre-measure (a mechanism that should have always been in place for the sake of fairness if nothing else).
It wasn't a fatal mistake, it's just poor games design and indicated a lack of coherent direction in design.
>>44645328
And it killed everything that was based on movement and manoeuvring, turning the game into a "rush to the middle, then roll dice of attrition" game. A lot like AoS now, incidentally.
Giving better movement options to the dwarves would have been way more interesting.
>>44645587
I don't completely agree. I would rather balem them for robbing the game of usefull effects and mechanics for handling flanks. There was no need to flank, it offered you little to nothing. That along with added width for units and other changes made charging head on the only viable option. It was not random charge movement that did it, it was everything else.
>>44645585
I don't see what added randomness you might be talking about.
Just like with combat (to hit, to wound, saves), morale (Ld-tests, which is one of most important things in the game and I love that they added more importance to it making Ld more important to unit maneuvers) as well as war machines and magic, adding a "you know your chances and will you take them" to charge just oppened up some very important elements in the game.
Sure the game always suffered from "side A moves then side B moves repeat" and the fairly limited number of turns on top of that (even more so as the unit counts grew).
Random charge movement along with Ld-tests for unit movement actions made the game fun and playable despite its lack of tactical depth (flanking and its moral effects, which would have been the number one counter to wide massive units and made lighter faster smaller units far more viable and usefull tacticly).
The terrain movement changes also conmpletely messed up alot of the tactical elements of the game.
It should have been more focus on unit types vs unit types, their tactical values, terrains effects relative to unit types... That's how you bring tactics back into the game. The rest is just math-hammering it out (values, costs, whatever).
>>44647326
>cont.
Sure you can change HOW the charge movement is randomized (narrowing and limiting the curve/spread and so on).
You can come up with beter charge reaction mechanics.
You can play around with initiative more.
You can do alot of things like that but unless you do then you still need to have that random charge in one way or another or a lot of important elements in the game will just be of no use and you'll lose out on a lot of tactical elements in the game.
Can charge be handled differently? Sure, but the work to make things work in an interesting manner becomes a lot harder.
>>44639486
What edition is he making these books for? 8th? I ask because "update 9th" is in his to-do list.
I have a general question.
How do you guys pose your models with regards to adding/dropping heroes to units?
For example, say I buy a unit of black orcs. I model them and label them under their bases so they line up nice and neat when formed up.
I also have a Black Orc warboss on foot with them I like to use. I model the unit with HIM being in the unit in mind.
Later, I buy an Orc Shaman. Now there's no way to fit him in the unit without models being pushed over.
See what I'm getting at? Do you guys just model your regiments to work together and then force hero models in later? How's it work?
>>44648453
He wanted to finish 8th with the three missing books. now he'll be doing his 9th and then redoing all the army books for it
>>44647484
You don't Need random charge distances at all.
The game worked fine without them for the best part of 30 years. It was both fun and playable.
And you can still add in all those things as well to improve the system. But they didn't. And we got a lumpy game of randomly moving blobs with fuck all tactical depth.
>>44648615
I tended not to have this problem so much due to playing with far slimmer, less weapon-flailing model using armies. Maybe take a trick from other games and model a bunch of people together on a single base (though for warhammer, have a bunch of the unit as individuals for removal), and if you expect to have to detach the wizard, have something like a set L-shape of troops that fit around them.
Mostly though you just kinda have to deal with it, unfortunately.
>>44649064
>now he'll be doing his 9th
You mean he's making HIS OWN ORIGINAL version of 9th by himself? By Sigmar!
>>44649216
>You don't Need random charge distances at all.
>The game worked fine without them for the best part of 30 years. It was both fun and playable.
Life was fine without elecricity for hundred thousand years. Go throw your computer out of your window now
>>44649279
the guy's quite the fanatic. I mean I thought I'm not sane with my 13 armies, but the dude got three times as much
>>44649216
It didn't work fine. People just accepted how it worked. People have a tendency to do that with games, even if they actually encourage you to experiment with and change the mechanics.
>>44649445
And yet 8th edition was the one that was abandoned and then killed.
And it's a point of contention with many, many players. So clearly people didn't just accept that's how it worked, and jumped ship.
>>44649889
The random charge remains with the game and really it had little to do with what makes WHFB what it was. It was the disregard of the tactical elements (which have been mentioned) that changed the game, not the random charge (which only helped the mechanics of the game).
Incredible price hikes and removing the tactical elements from the gameplay, and way to blatant favoring of new pricy units and huge units, is what killed the interest of the game.
To blame it on random charge distances is not only stupid (given how the game is all about being random) it only shows what little insight who ever do that has in the actual play of the game and its mechanics (over the different editions).
>>44647326
I'd go as far as saying that the last thing WHFB needed was more random rolls, especially for an already busy as fuck movement phase. Add the special rules creep, the changes to morale and the magic phase and you had a very slow game, where every kind of thinking was phased out in favour of rolling dice.
WHFB had a fanbase decades older than its younger but bigger brother. In that fanbase I had maybe one fellow player that kept harping on about the random charge, the rest actually got it, they understood what was going to be lacking in the 8th edition - tactical options (flanking, lighter and faster units having a role other then just war machine harassment, the effects of terrain on movement and possitioning and how it had different effects on different types of units, the rock-paper-scissors and pros vs cons of gear, mounts and unittypes.. all that which 8th edition more or less just did away with along with the prior mentioned things).
8th had some great ideas, some really great ones, but it completely removed the essence of the gameplay from the game - the tactical options (most of them).
>>44650743
Flanking was even moreso useless when you could lose one turn of your unit doing fuck all on a bad roll. Random charge didn't help with tactics more elaborate than "rushing on the middle".
>>44650727
To be honest the random charge movement changed the game in a very minor way compared to the other changes which all more or less removed all tactical options.
Random charge movement was a necessity and added very little but needed randomness.
The game is about being random (giving it a nice bell curve with a possibility of crazy awesome rolls for insane acts of courage and bravery) and hey, failling a charge roll actually cuts down on play time, and making a good charge roll means you've accomplished more then you would have done in prior editions! Win win. Still, it's stupid to cling to the issue when there's much more important issues that's not even arguably wrong but all out catastrophical for the gameplay (which killed the game) - the lack (removal) of the tactical options.
Another thing is how you executed your turn order. That's a huge issue that remains with all the GW games, specially as they only keep growing in units/points values.
Oh well, it's all moot as random charge is such an easy thing to ignore if you don't want to play with it, just agree with your opponent to not use random charge distances. Another case of why it clearly was not why the edition failed.
>>44651037
>To be honest the random charge movement changed the game in a very minor way compared to the other changes which all more or less removed all tactical options.
I'd say if they had added random charge in 7th it would have been awful. In 8th it distracted you from the boring battle by adding some event.
>>44650883
Feel that's more an issue about how the game chose to handle its turns. A bad roll is a bad roll no matter what in WHFB and all the GW games, be it Ld, Hit, Wound, Save, Magic, Movement or anything else.
>>44651133
I don't agree. It would have been a gamble like everything else in the game. Also it validates charge reactions.
>>44651224
Movement wasn't a roll before 8th edition. It was the only phase where the player had a real control on his minis and the exceptions to that were rare (frenzy and terror, respectively)
>>44651276
>a gamble like everything else in the game.
But that's the thing, movement has never been a gamble in Warhammer. It was the only thing that wasn't one.
6'th edition.
>>44635898
Kings of War with Warhammer fluff.
WHFB has never really been much good, there just hasn't been any better competition.
>>44653547
I think it's because people are committed to the idea of it doesn't take place in WHFB if you don't use the official WHFB system.
>>44636817
6th edition had the best iteration of Beastmen, my army, so I have to give it props. The 8th edition one was only salvageable thanks to Legion of Chaos, and even then people only bought them to fill out their chaos armes with bricks of two hand weapon wielding Mark of Khorne Gors.
It feels really bad when your favorite army is merely a cherry picking dump ground for others.
Am I the only one that liked 4th and 5th emphasis on Herohammer? Maybe I'm weird, I tend to prefer more personal skirmish games like Mordheim, but I love the idea of having big characters with a backdrop of huge armies clashing. Its extremely satisfying to mulch whole units with your lone character.. or watch that character get shut down by combined arms rank and file, and the look of utter despair on your opponents face when their favorite finally falls.
>>44649437
Dayum.
The amount of unpainted models annoys me, but I guess I can't blame him much when there's so many...
>>44656151
Well, you're not alone but you are few in number.
The rest of us kinda got fed up with how it was basically pointless to even bother assembling and painting up regular infantry (the supposed core of the game) because they'd die to everything and the game would be decided in who spammed more high-power spells and if someone managed to use the obligatory heart of woe and black gem of gnar items effectively. because when shit was broken in those editions, it was 'my entire army flies high and is thus invulnerable for all but the last turn then lands and gets just enough points to win' tier broken.
Epic battles between superpowered individuals is great when you don't have to spend dozens of hours on the goons they smash.
>>44658628
Yeah, when you have to compensate for meta bullshit it kinda ruins the prospect of even playing with an army at all. Might as well go skirmish instead.
>>44636380
>dead game
>>44658628
Yes. The problem was that heroes should have amplify the units they where in, add bonuses and abilities to the units and not just be an individual line of beter stats. If you want unit vs unit combat you have to make the characters amplify that aspect of the game play, and they rarely (though some times) did.
Hero mounted on a big monster? That has to have a thought through purpos with in the concept of the game play (unit combat and hero challanges), just not be a slightly beter statline point sink and a big target for artillery and spells.
You can see examples of this in the few WHFB computer games - Heroes actually making differences to the units and the units driving the combat. We'll see it in total war as well.
>>44635898
8th (9th now). Premeasuring, random charge range, huge fucking blocks of infantry for a mega sluggathon game (I love my games with massive amounts of models), terrain that does stuff, none of this 'kill the front rank' bullshit. Without premeasuring in the rules I would never again play any other version of warhammer.
>>44636380
I just don't think AoS is going to last very long. Some of the models are absolutely incredible though.
>>44656103
I play Beasts in 8th and have had a great time with them because it's like a punch in the face. They are my main love army, so I can accept that they are not top tier and my group of friends just play, we don't do tournaments. I do enjoy the herdstone charm / swarm of shitty mages to dominate the magic phase, but not having ANY shooting hurts. a 35 block of bestigors though-- man they rock.
>>44638669
>pointless
Quite.
>>44635898
6th
rules were solid
came with plenty of variation (skirmish, siege, several campaign supplements)
movement was important
being able to gauge distances was important
units were important
magic wasn't clunky and terrible
very little random elements
everyone got an army book
army books were reasonably well balanced
It was a perfect transition from 5th. Nothing but improvements.
This is the problem with 8th, it changed things in ways that utterly divided the community.
And the idiotic choice to make the game favour huge units along with higher prices for basic infantry killed it.
It should have stayed elite 10-20, core 20-30 for most troops like it was in sixth.
>>44664728
Right. They should have had way way cheap deals on infantry. Rules though-- I've played since 3rd and I love 8th the most and the big units: http://mraaktagon.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/50beasts.jpg so tasty.
Hypothetically if I wanted to make a linear infantry tactics based army in fantasy which empire army would I use?
purely an academic question
Sixth for the reasons other guys said, proper mass fantasy battle game without being excessive. You had rules for both skirmishes ans sieges. And the more idiotic/over the top models were not really around yet.
>>44664620
>army books were reasonably well balanced
Dark Elves were so bad that they got an errata changing rules, unit profiles and point costs.
Dwarfs were so bad that they got another Army Book.
>>44666037
>things that needed it would actually get errata
>>44666058
After DE they said that they won't do anything like that again.
>>44666037
What was wrong with them?
can somebody tell me what unit this is?
he also wields a Bow on his back.
i got 15 of them.
>>44666209
Just really bad and weak.
>>44666265
Old High Elf Shadow warrior. 4th or 5th edition.
>>44666079
didn't really need it after the DE, desu
shame about 7th and later tho
>>44635898
For me it's 3rd>8th>rest.
6th is overrated as hell.
>>44636859
>AoA
ma nigga
>>44661832
>Yes. The problem was that heroes should have amplify the units they where in, add bonuses and abilities to the units and not just be an individual line of better stats
WARMASTER
Big warhammer battles done pretty right. Same way that EPIC was always the better game for big battles in 40k.
Regiment battles with individually based 28mm miniatures is just a not-great concept when it comes down to it. 6th was as close as the game got to nailing it into something good though because it hit the sweet-spot after the small games of earlier and the bloat that came later.
>>44667064
Thanks anon.
>>44668216
Never played it. How did it play compared to WHFB?
>>44669624
Entirely different given that it was trying for much larger battles. Well, technically much larger battles, in model count it's kinda similar to bloated games of warhammer, but it handles it really well. Image related here is a fairly typical size of army.
The focus of the game was more on commanding an army than tweaking gear and army lists, manoeuvre was even more important as combats lasted until they were done (all resolved within a single turn) and casualties would often force a unit back in disorder rather than simple tick of bases of models (though that occurred too, it just took more effort to destroy units, especially with shooting).
It got some needed tweaking in the historicals version, I have no idea if that ever got passed back to it in living rulebook form. But there's at least a few companies out there doing appropriate miniatures still, so it's about as easy to get into as Epic these days.
>>44670157
Sounds like Kings of War borrowed some elements from it.
>>44670730
Probably did given the intention to have a game that can handle large battles quickly. The Hail Caesar/Black Powder/Pike&Shotte series also drew heavily on it, as did the Blitzkrieg/Cold War/Future War Commander series directly re-purpose it into tank-era games.
It has had a good legacy at least.
>>44671061
So basically when GW has a good game system the consumer base doesn't give a fuck?
>>44671376
As much as I agree that epic and warmaster are better games and make so much more sense for the scales GW seem to be going for, 28 mm models are just so much nicer to paint. That's probably why people didn't take to them as well.
>>44671376
GW never really pushed the Specialist Games.
They had quite a few good rule sets that came and went.
>>44671488
Mordheim, Necromunda and GorkaMorka produced some of the best, most characterful sculpts for Warhammer, Imperial Guard and Orks respectively.
GW just wants to sell more minis than a dozen or so per player.
>>44671531
I also read that they had problems with the predictions of the sales with the translated specialist games. So they would end up losing money on some of them.
>>44671488
EPIC was for a goodmany years effectively the 3rd core game with how many players and how much support it had. Blood Bowl also got a comparable ton of attention for many years. The old specialist games, whilst not pulling in the kind of money that the main games did, were certainly not suffering from a lack of interest. That is until the early '00s.
Warmaster unfortunately came at the time of shrinkage of the specialist games stuff and got fuck all support because of that. Used to be that things like Epic and Blood bowl would feature heavily in white dwarf and get a lot of attention, this was all cut back. And Epic fucked it's used base with the 3rd edition (not a bad game, just really badly misjudged) and it's follow-up game (arguably the best system GW ever made in Epic: Armageddon) was just horribly under-supported like Warmaster.
It's not that people didn't take to them or that they were not profitable, it's that the GW guys high up didn't see them as bringing in enough money so they got fucked from above and were doomed to fail (or at least GW's definition of fail). Part of that whole problem Priestly complained about with the design studio getting taken over by the suits.
I started around 5th but didn't really start playing until 6th or 7th.
6th was probably my favorite because it was fairly well balanced. 7th relied to much on cavalry supremacy for my liking.
Call me weird but I enjoyed 8th. I run a pike and shotte styled Empire army and the massive infantry blocs played well in my favor.
>>44644970
>WHFB never found its final stable form
Ya it did, I was called 6th edition.
>>44666265
HOLY SHIT I WANT THOSE!
>>44667125
don't even
>>44668216
Everyone always said Warmaster was a better game than Warhammer.
>>44635898
6e was good.
7e had great core rules, but the army books were incredibly inconsistent and fucked balance to hell and back. I'd go with 7e, assuming the army books were done competently.
>>44677184
Play 7E and use 6E army books.
>>44671531
You see I never got this "GW wants to sell more than a dozen minis" argument. Every game of all the specialist systems I played your warbands eventually became really large. In a couple of gaming circles I played in we started experimenting with insurgent networks and warbands. Still small skirmish gaming but where we scaled it up to 2 or 3 units. It didn't seem like it would be that hard for GW to scale these games up into the the range of 36 models and a few rickety vehicles. It felt like something you could do really easy with an expansion box.
Then your Necormunda militia/mercenary/cult insurgency could be an auxiliary to your Guard army, fodder for your Chaos Marines, Or combine a couple of these irregular groups to make self styled bandit army or some kind of space pirates. Sure they would be squishy, but they would be cheep point costs and GW could sell mountains of them. The whole idea would be hugely customizable and it wouldn't unbalance the game because the basis of all these irregular factions would always be jobber level dudes. None of them would ever get to the level of power armor or Lemon Russes.
The idea is even easier through the lenses of Gorka Morka. Hell it would just look like your average Ork army.
I can see the counter argument where people have to keep track of every leg wound or equipment variation. But it just seems like a point/currency system could eventually purchase your unit some kind of elite status that would be reflected in the squads stats, moral, and equipment. The original gang would buy/recruit new squads of jobbers that maybe didn't have as much autonomy if you scaled it down to a skirmish level or acted as sentries. When you scaled thing back up to play with the big boys you would maybe have one auxiliary command unit that was your original gang and a couple of jobber units that marines could eat for breakfast. The mere role playing aspect of it would push people to expand their collections.
>>44677903
GW on several occasions would produce too many or not enough non english versions of those games and therefore end up losing money on them. So instead of doing proper research the sales department or something decided that only the wargames made the money. The only reason GW picked up LOTR at all was that Rick Priestly convinced them to do it so some other company wouldn't cash in on it instead.
Around 2000 GW had become a company run by cynical people.
>>44677903
>You see I never got this "GW wants to sell more than a dozen minis" argument.
Just look at GWs ranges. 40k introduced superheavies like the baneblade and stompas, then added fliers and titans.
GW hopes to sell 'epic' levels of minis in 28mm. And for the time being that seems to work for 40k since the fanbase is huge.
Then you have to see that the same development leads to WHFBs demise. Adding ever bigger minimum requirements on units, adding horde rules, the whole markething bullshit surround big 'centerpiece' models and the like. While at the same time releasing kits with less content for more money.
Simple example: old skeletons and cadians both used to come in 20 models per box at 30 bucks. These days you pay 20 bucks per 10 models, that is a 150% price increase while GW is using the rules to entice you to buy more models.
They made the mistake to make the entry barrier for WHFB too high while making the game unattractive for the grogs apparently.
AoS is the same thing. They try to market it as a skirmisher where you can play with as little minis as you want, while writing rules for formations with dozens of models.
And the prices for AoS are ridiculous, even for GW.
>>44666209
DE base troops were to expensive and their magic was bad.
Best thing to do was take lots of Dark Riders, use your 18" moves to get somewhere sticky. Removed marching from your enemies units while you shot them to death with repeating crossbows.
They still had good monsters though, Hydras and Manticore mounts in particular, and cold one chariots were super strong.
>>44679899
These guys left GW before it imploded. I've always wondered how pic related would have played and how close it was to 1e and 2e, but I can't find anything more than a summary of the rules online.
>>44677410
This is what I'm currently doing. Does anyone have thoughts on particularly weak/strong books in 6th and 7th that I should use? I know 6th Ed Dark Elves were notoriously awful and am using the 7th Ed book instead.
>>44684235
I guess the Tomb Kings book was a bit weaker than the Vampire Counts book.
>>44684235
7th DE will be an issue, basically will destroy everything unless you use 7th demons too, but then you just recreate the broken 7th
>>44685535
Seems like a playerbase tweek is in order then?
