The State of Warhammer Fantasy

So what do you fantasy players think about the current version of the game and the way the game seems to be going in terms of balance and fun?

Personally, just like most GW stuff right now, I can't say I like the trend of trying to make things more streamlined and easier to play. I like fantasy because of the tactical and strategic challenges it represents, but also because of the many armies available. But Fantasy as a whole, when compared to 40k suffers in it's variability and ability to allow the player to customize. Where as 40k has a whole war gear/ armoury section to kit out your characters, Fantasy hero's are limited to a small list of magic items, of which only 1 of each kind may be chosen. Same with the units. Yeah, you can get your troops some heavy armour here, or some spears there, but let's face it, not very customizable. So when I see GW trying to dumb the game down even more... that gets my blood a boiling

Case in point. In the last incarnation of the Empire army book you had the venerable Knights of the White Wolf, a unit of knights all equipped with warhammers instead of lances. They had there own great plastic sprue that came with the knight unit. They were a very flavorful aspect of the empire army that represented the city state of Middenheim. In the 7th edition army book they were removed from the army list. In an interview with Graham Mcneil, conducted by the Empire.net. Graham wrote that they were removed in order to streamline the list. Well, ok, but why include then mechanical horses and pigeon bombs for the still unwanted empire engineer? Did this streamline the list? Or maybe making flagellants available as a core choice, only if you take a warrior priest is an example of streamlining?

Is this what we have to look forward to? It appears so. Reading about the changes being made to the newest army book, The Vampire Counts, it appears that they are essentially doing away with the specific bloodline powers. Instead there will be a large pool of vampiric powers that you can grab for your bloodsucker. Well, ok, that makes them customizable, but so much less interesting. The great thing about the bloodline powers were that they forced you to accept a weakness in order to obtain the bloodline advantages. It reminds me an awful lot like the chaos codex, which seemed to loose it's pantheon of Gods in one horrible codex. Now since the book isn't out yet, I'll hold my judgment, but I'm certainly not going to be holding my breath.

Now, on the positive side, I must say that GW has been doing a good job with their new method of plastic casting. Some of the newer models have been absolutely outstanding. The empire pistoliers, flaggellants, high elf lion chariots and dragons, and the new Bloodknights and crypt ghouls are just a few that have caught my eye among others.

Anyway.. that's my 2 cents for now. What do you guys think?

Well the the future release of 5th edition it seems they have realized ...to a point that the games are being dummied down too much. the 5th edition seems to add more tactical options with forced march rule and whatnot. They did get rid of Gavin "dickhead" Thorpe, so thats a plus. He butchered the Chaos Codex.

GW is toning down the rules so much cause they want to tap the 10year and younger market, they want little kids to start buying their product and apparently they think the current rules are to complicated for them. Look at the Orcs, animosity went from roll a 1 for a unit and then roll again to see what happens, to just roll a die and on a 1 the bicker, bah, i liked it before when they had 6 options on the animosity table to roll on !

I like this game cause it makes you think, you cant just push a unit foward and make little gunfire sounds. i miss Hero Hammer, the fantasy world is all about big heroes killing 30 times their numbers with crazy magical weapons and awsone magic, heck, look at the felix and gotrek books, those 2 kill like whole armies by themselves.

I just hope they realize what they are doing and bring back the element of strategy to the game.

It's an interesting topic. I don't feel that there are many seasoned players remaining that like the road that GW is travelling these days. That has been one of the main reason, I have become such a fanatic of FoW. I too miss some the customization aspects of 40k and completely agree with the assessment that Fantasy doesnt have enough combat gear. It's funny how some of the best games that GW has ever made are the ones that they don't support anymore, ie Specialist Games. I love Necromunda and Bloodbowl. It seems obvious that those games aren't supported because only so much money can be made off of small skirmish sized games. Maybe for the interest of money, they justify re-packaging 40k and Fantasy until we end up with this crap by accident. If I had it my way we would go back to some of the better rules like over-watch!

I'm not sure I buy the whole "we want to attract the little kids" reason. Anyone who looks at the fantasy rulebook knows that the game is not for 11 year olds. It's a damn complicated game with a lot of rules. Also, I wouldn't have that much of a problem if they dumbed things down across the board, which is not the case. The chaos codex was completely dumbed down, but the ork codex was actually pretty chunky. Extra rules for ork vehicles damage, plenty of kustomization. If you are going to dumb the game down, at least be consistent.

The same can be said of Fantasy. Whereas the empire book was dumbed down, the high elves were basically left intact, with actually a few extra rules.

I think, as people have mentioned before. It's all about addressing what's selling and what's not. Core units are always needed, and will always sell, that's why they're almost always redone. Then they take some expensive metal box that no one uses because of the price and the fact that rules - wise they suck... They redo those units, both in the army book, and in the modeling theatre.

That's another trend. No longer are we seeing armies completely redone. In fantasy you have the wood elves, dwarves, and O+G that were basically redone from a modeling stand point. But the empire, high elves, and VC have gotten the shaft so far.