Hey ya'll just getting back into the hobby and was looking online to pick up some models and it seems people are selling 2000 point armies for like $100 (craigslist/eBay)... These are brand new assembled unpainted models. Yet I see oop metal models selling for $10 a piece. Did Age of Sigmar or whatever its called kill fantasy for good? I am very sad to see the decline of fantasy.

WHFB will be alive as long as people play it. But it's OOP.

valhallanguitar wrote:
Hey ya'll just getting back into the hobby and was looking online to pick up some models and it seems people are selling 2000 point armies for like $100 (craigslist/eBay)... These are brand new assembled unpainted models.

Links or it didn't happen . Srsly if you see that kind of price and you are atleast a little interested in GW's models for painting/collecting/converting buying is a no-brainer.

 CoreCommander wrote:

valhallanguitar wrote:
Hey ya'll just getting back into the hobby and was looking online to pick up some models and it seems people are selling 2000 point armies for like $100 (craigslist/eBay)... These are brand new assembled unpainted models.

Links or it didn't happen . Srsly if you see that kind of price and you are atleast a little interested in GW's models for painting/collecting/converting buying is a no-brainer.

I did a little digging on Craigslist myself when I read that. I found something in the town next to mine for $200 which is pretty insane:

"Bundle contains:
2 sets of the High Elf side from the Island of Blood starter set
20 spearmen
6 bolt throwers with crew
24 bowmen (including command)
20 additional bowmen
8 dragon knights with command
10 silver helms with command
11 shadow warriors
16 sword masters with command
Teclis
Caradryan
High Elf army books from last 2 editions
Previous edition Warhammer Fantasy mini rule book
Previous edition magic cards (High Elf and main book)
Templates
Dice
Storage cases as shown
Massive box of bits (enough to build at least a dozen spearmen, bowmen, silver helms, and several OOP maiden guard)"

I don't play High Elves, don't have much interest in playing them, but I'm thinking of spending $200 and selling the stuff for profit on eBay.

I know where I am there were people selling their armies for $100 - $200 just to be rid of them and others were swooping in to profiteer off of it.

pretty much sums it up, WHFB is dead. AoS and GW killed it, there are folks like me who are ditching our armies because we wont go to AoS and want to get rid of models for an unsupported game.

Absolutely crazy, Im picking up an assembled empire army which is

20 mounted knights,
plastic battle wizard on 2 headed griffon
Carl Franz
steam engine
(some weird warmachine with a wizard on it plastic kit)
a handful of characters
20 great swords
40 of the boxed set warriors
rule book and some more I didnt even notice

(I also dont know all the names of the models haha)

Anyways dude wants $100 for everything... mind blowingly low. Ill post back tonight after I pick up the models to let you know the condition but everything looked nicely assembled and cleaned.

On another note I am planning on playing 5th/6th edition with my freinds. No reason why I have to play current rules haha.

valhallanguitar wrote:
Absolutely crazy, Im picking up an assembled empire army which is

20 mounted knights,
plastic battle wizard on 2 headed griffon
Carl Franz
steam engine
(some weird warmachine with a wizard on it plastic kit)
a handful of characters
20 great swords
40 of the boxed set warriors
rule book and some more I didnt even notice

(I also dont know all the names of the models haha)

Anyways dude wants $100 for everything... mind blowingly low. Ill post back tonight after I pick up the models to let you know the condition but everything looked nicely assembled and cleaned.

On another note I am planning on playing 5th/6th edition with my freinds. No reason why I have to play current rules haha.

keep looking too, you will likely find more and better deals as well. Khornegrats on your new empire

alright so everything I got is

(*edit* these are all assembled, but no paint or primer, all bare plastic/resin"

Steam Tank
Carl Franz on griffon
Amber battle wizard on griffon
Luminark of Hysh
10x great swords
20x mounted knights
40x state troops
20x state hand gunners
3x battle wizards
Empire general and standard banner bearer
Great cannon
Hellblaster volley gun
resin warrior priest
resin witch hunter
Empire master engineer
Hardback empire book
all the bits that were clipped from sprues in a plastic bag.

I calculated this at over $700, and I got it for $100. Dude said all his friends quit after AoS

There is no time like now to pick up fantasy minis ! But I don't think I have ever seen people selling army's so cheep before. No just fantsy but 40k also.

Stores also in the last year or so selling of stock has gotten cheep.

I don't get all the rage quitting. The rules are still there (I have an 8th ed hard back sat on my bookshelf, and it still opens and has the rules in it!) The Army books still have the rules, points and stats in. They're still selling the vast majority of the ranges (RIP Tomb Kings).

Why not just carry on playing WHFB?

I didn't have a strop and bin my 360 when they announced Xbox One. The 360 still worked just fine. I got a PS4 eventually, but that's neither here nor there.

There's no reason why anyone wanting to play and can find an opponent can't still play. Not supported but also no need to buy anything. Hell, get some super deals on Ebay

 monders wrote:
I don't get all the rage quitting. The rules are still there (I have an 8th ed hard back sat on my bookshelf, and it still opens and has the rules in it!) The Army books still have the rules, points and stats in. They're still selling the vast majority of the ranges (RIP Tomb Kings).

Why not just carry on playing WHFB?

I didn't have a strop and bin my 360 when they announced Xbox One. The 360 still worked just fine. I got a PS4 eventually, but that's neither here nor there.

Because its not supported!!!!! Whatever that actually means in the long run?

When it is supported - many complaints about the new stuff rules.

Who knows?

Unsupported games get stale you're never getting new rules or units, you're never going to get fixes for broken stuff.

What's more you can't attract new players if they can't easily buy their own stuff it's offputting.

So while the rules still exist stagnation leads to entropy and after a few years your not playing anymore.

hobojebus wrote:
Unsupported games get stale you're never getting new rules or units, you're never going to get fixes for broken stuff.

What's more you can't attract new players if they can't easily buy their own stuff it's offputting.

So while the rules still exist stagnation leads to entropy and after a few years your not playing anymore.

This, and building up additional armies and or upgrading existing models becomes much more difficult.

 VeteranNoob wrote:
There's no reason why anyone wanting to play and can find an opponent can't still play. Not supported but also no need to buy anything. Hell, get some super deals on Ebay

Finding the opponent is the problem.

I havent been into a GW since AoS dropped. I want to play 30k but feel so betrayed by AoS that I dont even want to walk in and have my game store manager even ask me if I have any intrest in it.

I feel like AoS is akin to a sandcastle destroyed by the oncoming tide. All that remains are the washed up and muddy ruins of something that was beutifull and that took time to complete.

Kill me please.

Dama queen much?

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

 monders wrote:
I don't get all the rage quitting. The rules are still there (I have an 8th ed hard back sat on my bookshelf, and it still opens and has the rules in it!) The Army books still have the rules, points and stats in. They're still selling the vast majority of the ranges (RIP Tomb Kings).

Why not just carry on playing WHFB?

I didn't have a strop and bin my 360 when they announced Xbox One. The 360 still worked just fine. I got a PS4 eventually, but that's neither here nor there.

When a game stops being supported it tends to slowly die at local clubs. If you relied on playing at local stores then it dies pretty quickly. Many people just pre-empt the death and sell their armies off straight away.

Add to that WHFB was already dying in 8th, many people were hoping for something to bring it back to life, not kill it outright. I'm sure a lot of people getting rid of their armies were already unsatisfied with 8th.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 monders wrote:
I don't get all the rage quitting. The rules are still there (I have an 8th ed hard back sat on my bookshelf, and it still opens and has the rules in it!) The Army books still have the rules, points and stats in. They're still selling the vast majority of the ranges (RIP Tomb Kings).

Why not just carry on playing WHFB?

I didn't have a strop and bin my 360 when they announced Xbox One. The 360 still worked just fine. I got a PS4 eventually, but that's neither here nor there.

When a game stops being supported it tends to slowly die at local clubs. If you relied on playing at local stores then it dies pretty quickly. Many people just pre-empt the death and sell their armies off straight away.

Add to that WHFB was already dying in 8th, many people were hoping for something to bring it back to life, not kill it outright. I'm sure a lot of people getting rid of their armies were already unsatisfied with 8th.

Pretty much this, bloodbowl, epic, and the other specialist games are living proof of this.

40k 2nd ed, epic, bloodbowl are all still played at my club.

Alongside newer stuff (till no takers for AoS) though. 9th age and KoW are neck and neck, though.

Games have lifetimes, as well as production lifespans - I've seen many games come and go, regardless of where the companies went.

If people WANT to play it, they will find a way.

Build the table, they will come. :p

 argonak wrote:

 VeteranNoob wrote:
There's no reason why anyone wanting to play and can find an opponent can't still play. Not supported but also no need to buy anything. Hell, get some super deals on Ebay

Finding the opponent is the problem.

Not sure where you are in the US but there are resources to find players which might be a good start if you don't have a means at a FLGS or live too far from one. http://ageofsigmar.org/

 Nurgle wrote:

Pretty much this, bloodbowl, epic, and the other specialist games are living proof of this.

Naw, that's the ingrained GW attitude of 'support', AKA expecting the company to do everything, especially generating a constant stream of redone things that you have to buy. You bring up Specialist Games - people who don't cling to that mindset still play Epic. They don't need GW to splash hyperbolic ads across their site and mag every so often. There's at least one forum that focuses mainly on Epic. Heck, there are at least five small businesses that sprang up, ostensibly to provide proxies for Epic players. There's a market! And last I heard, Bloodbowl still had some pretty big tournaments going on.

I can see 8th ed withering away, but there are much better reasons for it than 'GW doesn't love it any more'. KoW was recommended over on your 'still feel depressed' topic, Nurgle. You could do worse, it's a good game, more appropriate for rank 'n' flank. But if you have your complete, viable armies and books, and local gamers with the same, who also miss 8th, play 8th. You really don't need GW to keep rehashing it, or people halfway across the country who you don't know and will never meet, to play it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 chromedog wrote:
40k 2nd ed, epic, bloodbowl are all still played at my club.

Alongside newer stuff (till no takers for AoS) though. 9th age and KoW are neck and neck, though.

Games have lifetimes, as well as production lifespans - I've seen many games come and go, regardless of where the companies went.

If people WANT to play it, they will find a way.

Build the table, they will come. :p

Aye, this! Especially the first two lines. No reason you can't keep things fresh by playing and rotating a few different games.

I've seen people say GW needed to shake things up with new editions because games got stale. I wonder if, in some small way, that was excarbated because it's all they played.

 monders wrote:
I don't get all the rage quitting. .... ....

It is still happening, though.

This is a good time to pick up some fantasy armies on the super cheap. As figures, they are usable with many different sets of rules.

Even AoS.

 chromedog wrote:
40k 2nd ed, epic, bloodbowl are all still played at my club.

Alongside newer stuff (till no takers for AoS) though. 9th age and KoW are neck and neck, though.

Games have lifetimes, as well as production lifespans - I've seen many games come and go, regardless of where the companies went.

If people WANT to play it, they will find a way.

Build the table, they will come. :p

Realistically a lot of people don't have clubs that foster playing older games. People might be willing to have a go, or play with an army you own, but beyond that it can be hard to find a game, after a while it can be hard to find models to expand your force, the rules are less readily available for new players.

It's nice you have such a great club. Realistically I've only seen a dozen or so games of Epic played in the past 2 decades or so since it died, and almost all of them have been with the same 2 armies that I personally own.

GW offers a one-stop shop where you buy an entire hobby lifestyle, including rules, figures, campaign books, terrain, modelling supplies and advice, even a venue and opponents for games, straight off the shelf, so to speak.

It seems to me that this becomes a weakness at the point that GW decide to can your game.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
40k 2nd ed, epic, bloodbowl are all still played at my club.

Alongside newer stuff (till no takers for AoS) though. 9th age and KoW are neck and neck, though.

Games have lifetimes, as well as production lifespans - I've seen many games come and go, regardless of where the companies went.

If people WANT to play it, they will find a way.

Build the table, they will come. :p

Realistically a lot of people don't have clubs that foster playing older games. People might be willing to have a go, or play with an army you own, but beyond that it can be hard to find a game, after a while it can be hard to find models to expand your force, the rules are less readily available for new players.

It's nice you have such a great club. Realistically I've only seen a dozen or so games of Epic played in the past 2 decades or so since it died, and almost all of them have been with the same 2 armies that I personally own.

On the contrary what we have at our club backs this up. Bloodbowl has been a focus here for along time, 2-4 leagues a year with big number tourneys as well.

Mordheim and Necromunda are regularly brought out of the cupboard.

I've probably seen half a dozen games of Epic since Christmas and more players are painting up forces so this will grow as well.

Warmaster has seen a big resurgence in the last year 2-3 games a week and we had our first open tourney in January with 16 players. This is run every 6 months in tandem with another groups tourney at the same interval, meaning a Warmaster tourney every 3 months in Southern England.

Now all of this isn't to say "oh what a great club" (that much is apparent surely ) but to underline that it is all down to certain individuals in our club that drive the system with their enthusiasm. Build it and they will come, its a cliché but holds much truth. That's not to say it's easy but continued perseverance and dedication does attract other players.

The big success with our Warmaster scene is down to one bloke at our club who seemingly will buy anything in 10mm and get it gaming. He's started a Podcast that promotes Warmaster, describes how to get into it or even where to print tokens if you want to try before buying and army, the many places that alternative forces can be bought and arrange a Tournament and found sponsors. He's really made the scene here, which we are very grateful for I might add.

Any community activity relies on people like this. If you want a scene you have to make it. Games are only dead if you give up on them and put it back on the shelf or Jebus forbid sell your models.

People selling armies for pennies/rage quitting seems so ridiculous to me. GW doesn't decide when I'm done with something, if it was fun last week it will be this week and so on. People, allot of Yanks I have to say (My apologies for the gross generalisation by the way), seem to quit when there is "no more support". Which talks to me of Collecting/purchasing more models rather than gaming. I'm more of the latter so its not a problem.

 notprop wrote:
Build it and they will come, its a cliché but holds much truth.

After significant monetary and time investment creating starters for half a dozen games and not having people catch on with it, I just go with whatever people seem to be most interested at the time.

I'm sure it's partly the locals' fault and partly mine because of the nature of my work sometimes I have to abandon wargaming for months at a time.... but the reality for some (if not most) people is that an OOP game is a dead game. I've had enough trouble trying to get people to consider rules that are supported but not available off the shelf.

On related news, a box of the recently discontinued plastic tomb guard hit something like 150€ on eBay. And this one goes for over 80$ with still one day to go.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Warhammer-Tomb-Kings-Tomb-Guard-NEW-NiB-GW-Fantasy-AoS-Age-of-Sigmar/262318771346?_trksid=p2047675.c100012.m1985&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131230161411%26meid%3D15388b378e1b4394a344310b779eccfe%26pid%3D100012%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D361484722676

Shows how dysfunctional this hobby of ours is.

warhammers not dead its just called kings of war now.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Build it and they will come, its a cliché but holds much truth.

After significant monetary and time investment creating starters for half a dozen games and not having people catch on with it, I just go with whatever people seem to be most interested at the time.

I'm sure it's partly the locals' fault and partly mine because of the nature of my work sometimes I have to abandon wargaming for months at a time.... but the reality for some (if not most) people is that an OOP game is a dead game. I've had enough trouble trying to get people to consider rules that are supported but not available off the shelf.

Yeah availability of time is a big factor I have found. Many of the chaps leading the charge seem to be always available for a game, club nights or not. Me I can't commit to a definite gaming night because of work never mind anything else.

As to availability, well free downloads like many of the old Speciaist Games make all such systems without barriers. The availability if the rules along with the full fluff and extra rules or expansions like say Necromunda gives you even more opportunity to hook people in. You have all the tools available to you. Of corse luck as a part of it and in our case plenty of people baabling on about how cool Epic/Mordheim/Necromunda was back in day helps. We get as many old players as new picking these games up.

You often seem down on GW, assuming your area is similar it might be a rather hard sell getting someone to pick up an old GW game. Still you only need one and hopefully your scene should grow from there.

Dead as a doornail where I am, 100% switch to Kings of War with about 2 dozen players at my local club.

Nobody plays, buys or likes AoS, it's a great game to introduce kids to wargaming but that's about it.

All warhammer models are compatible with KoW, so all the warhammer players simply shrugged their shoulders and used their armies to play KoW instead.

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

8th ed isn't supported. Not worth playing.

 Vermis wrote:
8th ed isn't supported. Not worth playing.

Of course. No game is worth playing unless its driven by the requirement to buy more new stuff. Unsupported = not worth playing.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

hobojebus wrote:
Who blew up the world?

At the mo I have six game books, four background books, a couple of art books, a few novels, and for some reason a stack of WD material going back over a decade, on me bookshelf. That's just the stuff I kept. It didn't all spontaneously combust last July.

hobojebus wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

Rome fell. A long long time ago. It's dead Jim.

Doesn't stop me enjoying any number of my historical fiction books (Simon scarrow, conn Igulden, etc etc) set in Rome, and following the stories of folks who have been and gone for millennia.

Gw nuked the old world. Ok, fine. So move on. Or else enjoy it for what it was - a setting you probably enjoyed immensely. And one that has a beginning, a middle, and now, an end. Like Rome, it fell. Doesn't mean you can't go back and enjoy the stories, or dig out your rulebooks and play games with your mates if they want to play as well. It's only 'gone' if you choose to let it go. Take charge of your own hobby. You decide what you want to do, and you decide what you want to play.

I'd better chuck my Napoleonics armies on the fire, apparently it's all over so they are no use any more. Just heard.

And there was me holding out for a new brigade of lizard riders or something to keep it supported.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hobojebus wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Jervis held a gun to my head and made me play Sigmarines!

So many exalted comments so little time!

You can't destroy good fiction and a fun game.

9th age, EFFL and the good ol' oldhammerers are proof of that.

More anecdata, but AoS and it's simple ruleset is what actually got me interested in wargaming in recent months. I'm even leaning toward the Sigmarines!

See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

That's pretty much how 9th age operates. Close to 6000 users already.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

Some people would far rather have a whinge than do something creative, or as in 9th ages case get involved in other more creative peoples projects.

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Blood Bowl is a different animal. Blood Bowl didn't require several hundreds of dollars and months if not years time investment to create an army. It is entirely feasible for a person to own not 2 but many Blood Bowl teams, all complete and ready to play. You can just take your box of Blood Bowl down to your local club with multiple teams and play some games with some randoms if you wanted to do that.

WHFB really isn't the same. For all the years playing WHFB I don't have what I'd consider a single "complete" WHFB army. I look at my Orcs and Goblins, probably my biggest army with a couple of hundred models and there's still several hundred dollars and a couple of hundred hours work to get it where I envisioned it. Those are big amounts of time and money to spend on something you aren't sure you're going to be able to find someone to play a game with you. Not to speak of my Bretonnians which I'm waiting to see if they get the chop completely.

Lot of GW White Knights in here.

When will we see the army book and miniatures?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Blood Bowl is a different animal. Blood Bowl didn't require several hundreds of dollars and months if not years time investment to create an army. It is entirely feasible for a person to own not 2 but many Blood Bowl teams, all complete and ready to play. You can just take your box of Blood Bowl down to your local club with multiple teams and play some games with some randoms if you wanted to do that.

I have 5 BB teams. 2 built around the old astrogranite pitch plastic teams with a few additions, a TK team and two teams bought more recently from manufacturers that weren't even around when GW kicked BB to the forgotten pile.

I have kept 3 warhammer armies (20.000-something points) the others I'm slowly seliing because I will never have time to get them to speed but a guy from my club has 11 of them. He's put countless hours even though he's the fastest painter I've ever met (and looking great to boot). We're talking over 100.000 points. Does anyone expected him, and others like him, to just rebase to rounds or move to KoW? Of course not, first we kept playing 8th, then jumped straight to 9th age.

Us, and many like us couldn't care less for officialdom or company support. And guess what, if you have a core of gamers with good looking armies the curious teenagers want to play with you, and want to build armies like yours. And now that rulebooks, armybooks, magic cards and whatnot you can spend all your allowance in minis. And not just official(tm) minis, but 2nd hand, cheap mantic, wargames factory or bones minis instead of paying the GW plastic crack tax.

jouso wrote:
I have kept 3 warhammer armies (20.000-something points) the others I'm slowly seliing because I will never have time to get them to speed but a guy from my club has 11 of them. He's put countless hours even though he's the fastest painter I've ever met (and looking great to boot). We're talking over 100.000 points. Does anyone expected him, and others like him, to just rebase to rounds or move to KoW? Of course not, first we kept playing 8th, then jumped straight to 9th age.

Yeah I'd say you guys are just a touch out of the ordinary.

For most people who have much more modest armies and modest gaming groups it's going to be a bigger blow than the people who have large groups and could basically open their own GW with the amount of stuff they've accumulated

In my region WHFB had problems for years and almsot nobody played it. So few complained when it went away,

Best comment i read here: GW did indeed not kill WHFB, players left it years ago so it starved to death.

The few that still kept their models and still want to play once and again, like me, choose WHFB 8th without the 6th spell and then there is Kings of War.

I never sell painted armies.
I will keep most of my (rather big) WHFB armies just as they are. I might move some Orcs & Goblins to my 40k armies with a big of converting. And i might put my 2 unpainted WHFB armies on round bases to play Age of Sigmar (not my game, but i played worse games).

I also kept all my BFG armies, Epic armies and Blood Bowl teams. We still play all of those games once and again.
And all of those might be back in a few years...

Might be the same for WHFB. Might even be a smart move of GW to bring it back after 5 years or so... :-)

ORicK wrote:
Best comment i read here: GW did indeed not kill WHFB, players left it years ago so it starved to death.

Erm, yeah, but they left it because of what GW did to it.

The biggest blow WHFB took around these parts was 8th edition.

Yes and no...

I play WHFB since 3rd edition and IMO 8th actually was the best one except for the way too powerfull "6th spells" and the price of the models (an army) for new players.

I doubt if the 8th would have been a problem at all without economic problems AND competitors like X-Wing and several skirmish games that cost less to play AND cost less effort (easy, pre-painted).

Where i live, and in the whole of the Netherlands really, also what i hear in Germany, wargaming as a whole gone down.
Many players i know quit everything, some choose 1 or 2 games to play (usually 40k, X-Wing or WoT), some quit alltogether.
People like easy-to-learn games and the creative aspect (modelling, painting) speaks to lesser and lesser people as well.

The numbers just in from last week were that woirldwide X-Wing is the best selling game, 40k 2nd, Star Wars Armada 3rd.

What X-Wing and SW Armada have in common is the SW franchise that everyone knows (even non-wargamers), the models are pre-painted and the games are VERY easy to learn.

I have and quite like X-Wing by the way.Played Armada too and had fun.
But i learned both in about 10-15 minutes; allthough that says nothing about the quality, it says something about the depth of a game.
But you need to invest time to learn it, get into it and, by playing and re-thinking, you can become good at it (where winning is something else then being a good player by the way).

As i see it WHFB took to much investment (time and money) at a time that people want to invest less of both.

I know a lot of people who think 8th is the "best" rules. My observation is it pissed off a lot of veterans and raised the bar of entry too high (not just price, but the sheer amount of time required to paint a large army).

Even without economic problems and competitors (if I recall correctly 8th came out about 2 years before X-wing) 8th wasn't a very appealing game to new comers and you need new comers to counter balance those leaving, and people are always leaving, but people left at a far higher rate on 8th's release.

You can say "yes and no", but I think 8th was one of the biggest nails in WHFB's coffin, even if a few people reckon it was the best for various subjective reasons.

That was the ÿes" part.

Yes, 8th also had the downside of the option of "huge units".
But i personally did not like and did not play that "tactic", because it was a no-brainer, not interesting or fun for both players. Multiple medium sized units were tactically more interesting. Especially in the hand of a good player.

And most players i know had multiple armies and most had armies with lots of infantry/models.
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.
And i know several people that put more money in X-Wing then you need to build a new WHFB army.

In this region quite some players switched to World of Tanks at first, some also started playing Dystopian Wars, but most quit those as well after a year.

8th also did have good wargaming concepts i personally had been waiting for since 3rd edition, which Warmaster has had forever. I would call this "the end of hero-hammer".
Probably not a smart move either indeed. The "Competetive gamers" liked it less. But the veteran gamers (most of them also knowing or playing Warmaster) i know actually liked this change.

Many players quit alltogether or quit both WHFB and 40k and only want to play smaller, easier games, like X-Wing and small skirmish games, that cost both less money and effort.

Age of Sigmar is simple and sells better. And it is definately not cheap.

ORicK wrote:
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.

Steadfast and random charge distances are the big ones I heard about from a lot of people.

And you can argue about how steadfast is good or bad and how random charge distances is good or bad, I don't really care, a lot of vets didn't like the changes.
.
And people are always going to be leaving a game, you NEED to appeal to newcomers or your game will slowly become unprofitable.

Yeah you have to feel sorry for GW store managers how are you supposed to sell £700 armies to new people?

So many other games are so much cheaper you can play three or four for the price of a single army.

That kind of money buys a decent gaming pc or both consoles and a bunch of games.

Bolt action £100 gets you a full army, same with mantic forces, you can do an x-wing fleet for less.

GW greed sunk wfb stop blaming the players they didn't make the game pay to win.

ORicK wrote:


And most players i know had multiple armies and most had armies with lots of infantry/models.
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.

I never quit WFB, in spite of selling off most of my armies and only keeping two. I just slowly stopped playing as 8th wasn't............fun. Used to think "I could have played something else in this time" so ended up doing just that. Couple of times the random rules made things get silly and ruined the game.

Played 5th edition a while back and that was great fun. Now playing same setting, same models different rules - non GW.

There are still people playing 6th and 7th edition WRG Ancients, even though that system stopped being developed in the early 1990s.

To be honest, unless you want continual changes within one rule system, it's better for a game to reach maturity and then stop.

I know it's arguable that WHFB had reached maturity, but that's the problem with GW. They aren't mainly interested in writing good rules, they want to sell lots of models and books without continually introducing new games, so they need to keep changing things in their existing games.

I completely agree that many did not like 8th.
Random charge range was quite different. But guessing a range was not fair either (is genetics more than practice) and secretely measuring tricks had nothing to do with quality wargaming.

Change is never good for many players. I play 40k since 1st and WHFB since 3rd/4th and there has not been an edition or codex/armybook without complaining.
But change was definately not good combined with the fact that the game had become WAY too expensive for newcomers.
A mistake by GW, but the sales were going down for some time before 8th, a reason why many switched from WHFB to 40k, where you could play with less models.

For me 8th was the best edition yet (except for spells nr. 6) and the first time that i thought that WHFB was finally becoming something i liked.
Because i like building and painting WHFB miniatures, but never liked the herohammer combined with "1st round of combat decides all" aspect in the game.
All a matter of taste off course.

The cost of a completely new WHFB army though, that became too steep even for me and that was the final nail in the coffin.

I completely agree with Kilkrazy: a game system should be able to reach maturity. Not perfection, but maturity.
If the models had cost half or less, maybe WHFB might still exist.

hobojebus wrote:GW greed sunk wfb stop blaming the players they didn't make the game pay to win.

That certainly wasn't the only reason, but I agree blaming the players is a bit silly in any case.

It's the developing company's job to make the game appealing to players, not the players' job to prop up a game with purchases they don't want to make.

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:I never quit WFB, in spite of selling off most of my armies and only keeping two. I just slowly stopped playing as 8th wasn't............fun. Used to think "I could have played something else in this time" so ended up doing just that. Couple of times the random rules made things get silly and ruined the game.

Played 5th edition a while back and that was great fun. Now playing same setting, same models different rules - non GW.

Yeah, you can spend all day arguing which edition is "best" and it's all subjective, but there's a huge swathe of people for whom 8th just ceased being fun.

A lot of what I enjoyed in previous editions was lost to me with the change to 8th.

I preferred non-random charge distance probably because most my armies made use of varying movement rates to play the game on my terms. For the most part I didn't get involved in the stand offs or guessing games that people describe because I tried to make use of different move rates and supporting troops as much as possible. Rarely did I play a game where 2 armies made up of 4" move troops had a stand off (which I often heard as a complaint necessitating the random charge distance). Win or lose I seemed to be very good at removing the option for letting troops just stand there doing nothing (for both me and my opponent)

For Fantasy to still exist it needed, IMO, 1. Cheaper models. 2. Better scaling to smaller point games so people can have fun games on their way to a larger army instead of feeling like they have a wall of models to get through before they can really participate.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
, you can spend all day arguing which edition is "best" and it's all subjective, but there's a huge swathe of people for whom 8th just ceased being fun.

A lot of what I enjoyed in previous editions was lost to me with the change to 8th.

I preferred non-random charge distance probably because most my armies made use of varying movement rates to play the game on my terms. For the most part I didn't get involved in the stand offs or guessing games that people describe because I tried to make use of different move rates and supporting troops as much as possible. did I play a game where 2 armies made up of 4" move troops had a stand off (which I often heard as a complaint necessitating the random charge distance)

And how does random charge distance remove that aspect? You just exchange a skill that has nothing to do with tactics (range guessing) for a risk assessment (so I put this unit exactly a 11'' charge away from your unit, etc) which in the end is what strategy games are about.

Also it was not just the 1/2 inch shuffle, it was also that range guessing was something that lent itself to rules abuse (declare impossible charges just to be able to measure, leaving parts of your body, templates, etc between units to allow for better measuring, etc. Every group and tournament had their share of that, and it was extremely unpleasant to watch (especially if you were on the receiving end).

Plus, I hear a lot of peole complaining about 8th edition magic being too powerful but if anything magic was even worse in 7th with their infinity power dice lists and, very especially, charging in the magic phase. A purple sun is tame by comparison.

Random charges made the game feel like it played itself. No point lining up or moving into a position for multiple charging as you just wang dice across the table and hope for a big score.

The "rule abuse" you describe..............well, get better friends who ain't prone to taking toy pew pew so seriously so as to cheat.

Random elements can be good, but not when they dictate the flow and movement of the game. 8th was all out of whack in lots of places. Change for change sake, a lot of it. Some good elements, but stopped clock twice a day and all that.

I liked the risk assessment part of random charges more so than i liked the static charge distances always succeeding.

Always succeeding was very boring to me after a while.

Also the games tended to play out the same over and over. Which is why I quit for a few years before. All my games seemed to be almost the same as each other with slight differences.

Granted the beginning of 8th was largely the same too. Giant unit slamming into giant unit in the center of the table belly slapping until one broke and ended the game.

Vermis, Fenrir et al: I see a lot of snideness toward people who want a supported game from you guys. I reckon that's a little unfair. It's great for you that you have the situation where you have a group that are willing to try out multiple games.

Personally, I have moved around a lot in the last six years and I don't have a group any more. Work and other commitments mean that it is just not possible for me to form a group time wise. It's not a lack of effort on my part - previously I was the sort to start wargaming clubs, organise tournaments and conventions, the whole lot. But right now I just don't have time to do that.

So if a game is not supported or the current edition sucks, it does reduce my chances of getting to play it significantly, which devalues my investment in the game. I think this a legitimate reason to decide that the stuff you have sitting around isn't worth the hassle any more (I mean, moving a large collection of minis regularly is expensive and disheartening when a lot of them break for example).

I think you are lacking a bit of empathy for people who are in a situation that isn't quite as good as yours, and it's somewhat similar to the "I'm alright Jack" attitude displayed by some AoS proponents about the annihilation of the easy PUG due to points being removed.

I like both you guys and enjoy reading your posts, so don't take that to hard. But I think it needs to be pointed out that not everyone is looking for the same things from games, and "support" is not something you need to scorn at. People who prefer games with support are not some breed of lesser gamers, and the hobby being more accessible is a good thing for all of us.

auticus wrote:


Also the games tended to play out the same over and over. Which is why I quit for a few years before. All my games seemed to be almost the same as each other with slight differences.

This is where scenario, scene building and a bit of pre game work "building the game" comes in. Just lining up opposite and moving across a sparse table is going to wear thin very quickly.

I don't find the concept of "unsupported/supported" to be anything of note. I just find the "Not supported any more?? ITS UNPLAYABLE BIN IT BIN IT NOW" attitude worthy of mockery. Especially when its supported with a "GW Forced Me To!" statement.

The hobby isn't reliant on being sold things. Which is partially what got WFB into the state it was in.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Random charges made the game feel like it played itself. No point lining up or moving into a position for multiple charging as you just wang dice across the table and hope for a big score.

If all charges had an equal chance of success you would have a point.

auticus wrote:Granted the beginning of 8th was largely the same too. Giant unit slamming into giant unit in the center of the table belly slapping until one broke and ended the game.

Which really lasted for the first 3 armybook releases or so. Then people (good players at least) realised those big unwieldy deathstars were only for point-denial and gimmick lists.

jouso wrote:

auticus wrote:Granted the beginning of 8th was largely the same too. Giant unit slamming into giant unit in the center of the table belly slapping until one broke and ended the game.

Which really lasted for the first 3 armybook releases or so. Then people (good players at least) realised those big unwieldy deathstars were only for point-denial and gimmick lists.

AoS is thought to have the same problem, good to know the cause and timeframe!

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Random charges made the game feel like it played itself. No point lining up or moving into a position for multiple charging as you just wang dice across the table and hope for a big score.

If all charges had an equal chance of success you would have a point.

And your own point is?

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Random charges made the game feel like it played itself. No point lining up or moving into a position for multiple charging as you just wang dice across the table and hope for a big score.

If all charges had an equal chance of success you would have a point.

And your own point is?

That random charges make for a more tactical game.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

auticus wrote:


Also the games tended to play out the same over and over. Which is why I quit for a few years before. All my games seemed to be almost the same as each other with slight differences.

This is where scenario, scene building and a bit of pre game work "building the game" comes in. Just lining up opposite and moving across a sparse table is going to wear thin very quickly.

I don't find the concept of "unsupported/supported" to be anything of note. I just find the "Not supported any more?? ITS UNPLAYABLE BIN IT BIN IT NOW" attitude worthy of mockery. Especially when its supported with a "GW Forced Me To!" statement.

The hobby isn't reliant on being sold things. Which is partially what got WFB into the state it was in.

I agree. Unfortunately getting people to deviate from battleline was virtually impossible because that was the standard, and people don't like to deviate from what is standard. This is one reason I am Pro_AOS... the scenarios. I also like games like Infinity for the same reason - a multitude of scenarios.

jouso wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
, you can spend all day arguing which edition is "best" and it's all subjective, but there's a huge swathe of people for whom 8th just ceased being fun.

A lot of what I enjoyed in previous editions was lost to me with the change to 8th.

I preferred non-random charge distance probably because most my armies made use of varying movement rates to play the game on my terms. For the most part I didn't get involved in the stand offs or guessing games that people describe because I tried to make use of different move rates and supporting troops as much as possible. did I play a game where 2 armies made up of 4" move troops had a stand off (which I often heard as a complaint necessitating the random charge distance)

And how does random charge distance remove that aspect? You just exchange a skill that has nothing to do with tactics (range guessing) for a risk assessment (so I put this unit exactly a 11'' charge away from your unit, etc) which in the end is what strategy games are about.

Also it was not just the 1/2 inch shuffle, it was also that range guessing was something that lent itself to rules abuse (declare impossible charges just to be able to measure, leaving parts of your body, templates, etc between units to allow for better measuring, etc. Every group and tournament had their share of that, and it was extremely unpleasant to watch (especially if you were on the receiving end).

I just never saw range guessing as a problem simply because most people knew the ranges. You could have allowed measuring and it wouldn't have changed much because most people I played with knew how far things were apart anyway. Deployment zones were a specified distance apart and you paid attention to how far away from that your opponent deployed and how far you deployed. So you knew how far things were apart from the beginning.

On the times you needed to guess something, why on earth were your groups leaving templates and parts of their body on the table? Models are mounted on bases that are either 20mm or 25mm, 25mm = 1". A 4 wide unit on 25mm bases = 4" wide and a 5 wide unit on 20mm bases = 4". If you can't "guess" a 4" move or 8" charge to within a half inch when you have 4 models lined up on 1" bases then you aren't doing a very good job. If you were guessing an 8" charge to a unit that was 7.8" away, then you were just taking a gamble.

Given that, the non-random charge distances turned it more in to a chess type situation.

I understand the idea of having a % chance of failure and success and weighing up the options, but for me, and I know many other people, charge distance was not somewhere we wanted the chance to randomly fail or succeed because being smart and tactical to get yourself in a 90% chance of success situation and failing, leaving your unit standing around holding their balls, or likewise when a flippant opponent succeeds on a 5% charge is not what many of us find enjoyable.

But anyway, we're going off on a tangent. As I said earlier we can argue the merits of 8th until we're blue in the face, enough people didn't like it to quit and it made the game even more unappealing to newcomers to the point it was a significant blow to WHFB's profitability.

That's the fact. As much as people may have enjoyed 8th, it was enough of a turkey that it sank the game and got it cancelled.

Range guessing was what made you feel that you "grew up" as a player. It was something you developed with time, especially with stuff like cannons etc.

They introduced with 8th rules that were bad for newcomers AND for veterans.

The "dumbing down" like random charges was disliked by many veterans (not all, a dwarf player friend of mine appreciated )

But in the meantime, they scaled up the size of the game with huge units. When I started, I could play efficently with 8 chaos warriors (2 ranks, ranks of 4 minis not 5!). 12 was a big unit. From 6th, 15-16 chaos warriors was my maximuum, a deathstar (albeit I was forced by the edition to play more cavalry than anything). Goblins or skaven were 20-25 models per unit back then. It was the extreme end of the spectrum. Many friends had elite elf units of 10-12 models just as support. You could have sold these as single plastic box back then, not so much in 8th.

How in heaven they thought that these two moves combined (ignore veterans and set the bar high for newcomers) would have resulted in something other than a disaster? They had to just FIX THE ARMY BOOKS so people played something different than Vampires demons and Dark elf. But no, the problem was that there were not big chariots and monsters, very difficult to carry in order to go to play somewhere.

But apparently is the players' fault

No-one forces the players to do anything.

I don't think, given the choice, that I will ever play a game with non-static charges ever again. That stuff killed me in 7th (not that I didn't know how to guess range, that it just always worked and made my games feel samey game in game out)

I guess I'm not a player looking for a chess translation in my wargaming

auticus wrote:
I don't think, given the choice, that I will ever play a game with non-static charges ever again. That stuff killed me in 7th (not that I didn't know how to guess range, that it just always worked and made my games feel samey game in game out)

I guess I'm not a player looking for a chess translation in my wargaming

I prefer the Warlord system, where the movement is set, but theres a chance of the unit not actually taking the command from HQ.

Keep in mind though, some random guy dumping a large amount of models for a weirdly low amount of money might mean he's selling you some stolen models (not necessarily ofc).

It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

I wouldn't exactly call 7th Edition a "small skirmish" game. Quite the opposite.

7th wasn't skirmish. But it certainly wasn't as good as 8th.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
7th wasn't skirmish. But it certainly wasn't as good as 8th.

To you, surely.

I wouldn't qualify any of the FB editions I got to play as "skirmish".

What killed it for me, was playing a very nicely painting Vampire Counts army against a High Elf army. His rule steadfast made loosing combat not a problem, while crumble tore me apart.

One time I assault some elves with a skeleton hoard and a badass vampire count by himself along with a few corpse carts. Because I lost a few to skeletons to crumble all my other stuff took the same amount of crumble even though they were different units. The unit I was attacking could not possible wound my Vampire Count, but the broke ass crumble rule killed him. I spent a long time constructing and painting this army. However after a few games like this, I gave up and sold my army. What a waste of time.

Wish I could offload this Tomb King army.

It wasn't just that WHFB ceased to be a supported game...it was that many people were well and truly sick of 8th edition by the time it was done.

By the time the End Times books started the metagame was a bit of a mess. The end-of-edition power creep was in full swing, and the HE and DE books were running roughshod over most other armies. Some players, with armies like Orcs or TK, had been struggling with gakky army books for half a decade. Other books had been shoehorned into a handful of competitive builds which got rather tiring after a while. If you wanted to try something new you were looking at $600+ to get into a new army (which many players still did).

So by the time AoS hit a lot of us were **REALLY** looking forward to the change. And then the change came, and nobody liked it, so...we were faced with the choice to look forward (at something we didn't like), look backward (at something we were sick of), or...quit. So we quit.

Of course there are still people playing and enjoying 8th Ed, and I don't fault them for that. But I, for one, am not really interested. I was pretty bored with it, and it needed to be shaken up. I'm watching 9th Age with some hope, but honestly not really liking the direction they're taking it.

I wouldn't qualify any of the FB editions I got to play as "skirmish".

You're right. I wouldn't either. I was speaking mostly of other games that have become popular in fantasy's place including AOS.

The whole scaling down thing was something I never understood. I had plenty of 500 point games that were really awesome because you had to make decisions when building your list that had much more of an opportunity cost than higher points levels. The games felt more intense. To me anyway.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

Errr, I play napoleonics 28mm with hundreds of models per side. WFB 8 was a football team in comparison and took longer to play!

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

9th age and KoW seem to be gaining a lot of attention. It isn't that people hate mass battle games. It's that they don't like mass battle with skirmish-esque rules.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

Errr, I play napoleonics 28mm with hundreds of models per side. WFB 8 was a football team in comparison and took longer to play!

When it comes to rank and file games, I'd hazard a guess and say most people like playing a big game with lots of models. The problem comes when you have to paint that huge number of models.

It'd be awesome to have a 10,000 model army. But the time it would take me and the money it would cost I could pretty much build myself a full scale working Spitfire

Da Boss: not all my gaming opportunities all fall into my lap, and I know something about how hard it can be to find a game or a venue. From being part of a group of vets cleared out of the local GW years ago, to LGSs closing down, to moving to kitchen table gaming, to waving new rulebooks and putting on demos, to having to make 100+ mile round trips, to making compromises on which games are played, I know something about it. Having gamers who like the same games is sometimes a happy accident; other times a little persuasion is needed; and sometimes you have to grin and bear it. (So... much... Malifaux...)

Some other people find it difficult to get a game in due to personal circumstances, like yourself, but most of the "oh noes - no support" responses I see seem to come from people who are terribly upset that they have less opportunity to buy another 4,000 points for their army; or that they might have to stick with one rulebook for more than four years; or that Schrödinger's 'new players' are more important than the gamers they might've hung around with for years; or some other vague paranoia drummed into them by GW that leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy - everyone peering suspiciously at everyone else and thinking "I'm going to dump my army before they do!" - or so it seems. So yeah, I get a little incredulous. I think it'd be interesting to have a poll or something to see just what most WFB gamers expect from the concept of 'support', and the lack of it. Maybe it'd turn out I'm wrong... but I wonder.

On the topic of scale and army size: thinking about it, we play a lot more skirmish games and board games since our focus shifted from GW. I imagine it's partly due to the fact that when you've got a variety or a cycle of regular games, it helps if you don't have to buy too much for each one. And it goes the other way too - not being driven to buy another few thousand points for WFB frees you up to build that variety of skirmish crews, if you have the opportunity.

Similar thoughts about mass battles - the longer I've been away from WFB, the more I think that any mass battle over 15mm is a waste of time and space. (I'm not all the way there: it might not be a waste of money, with 1/72 and 28mm plastics, but still...) Buy a few big, characterful 28mms for 1:1 skirmishes; buy lots of cheaper, smaller scale minis for the mass-of-bodies spectacle. Peter Berry's got some entertaining thoughts on the general subject that explain it nicely. And if you thought I was snidey...

https://www.baccus6mm.com/includes/index/i_want_you/i_want_you_text.inc.php
https://www.baccus6mm.com/includes/news/28mmmyth.inc.php
https://www.baccus6mm.com/howtoguides/HOWTOPaint6mmfigures/

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

Errr, I play napoleonics 28mm with hundreds of models per side. WFB 8 was a football team in comparison and took longer to play!

When it comes to rank and file games, I'd hazard a guess and say most people like playing a big game with lots of models. The problem comes when you have to paint that huge number of models.

It'd be awesome to have a 10,000 model army. But the time it would take me and the money it would cost I could pretty much build myself a full scale working Spitfire

For WFB models in measly boxes of ten at GW prices, it's too much money, far too much. Perry plastics come 40 to a box for £20. Two of those and a command blister breaks into three units or one brigade. Same with cavalry - often 14 models to a box, so a full unit and two of those to a brigade.

Had GW priced along those lines, WFB big games would be more attractive.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

Errr, I play napoleonics 28mm with hundreds of models per side. WFB 8 was a football team in comparison and took longer to play!

When it comes to rank and file games, I'd hazard a guess and say most people like playing a big game with lots of models. The problem comes when you have to paint that huge number of models.

It'd be awesome to have a 10,000 model army. But the time it would take me and the money it would cost I could pretty much build myself a full scale working Spitfire

Clubs put on big model count games by combining armies from lots of members' individual collections. This is especially easy in very popular periods like Napoleonics.

It doesn't make sense to own a huge army for yourself. Too much time and cost in building it, and not much opportunity to deploy it. There is also a problem with scale and space. Physically you need a massive table to fit that many figures on it. If you do a hall game, you have the risk of people walking all over the pieces.

6mm armies are an option. I have a very large 6mm Russian Napoleonic army, with enough 60mm square brigade size bases to fight a battle like Borodino. However the visual appeal is different to 28mm.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
It's sad to see all the people who hated 8th.

IMO 8th was the by far the best edition of the game.

All the reasons I love it were the reasons people didn't. It was huge and epic with tonnes of models.

It's sad that people only want small skirmish type games.

Errr, I play napoleonics 28mm with hundreds of models per side. WFB 8 was a football team in comparison and took longer to play!

When it comes to rank and file games, I'd hazard a guess and say most people like playing a big game with lots of models. The problem comes when you have to paint that huge number of models.

It'd be awesome to have a 10,000 model army. But the time it would take me and the money it would cost I could pretty much build myself a full scale working Spitfire

Clubs put on big model count games by combining armies from lots of members' individual collections. This is especially easy in very popular periods like Napoleonics.

It doesn't make sense to own a huge army for yourself. Too much time and cost in building it, and not much opportunity to deploy it. There is also a problem with scale and space. Physically you need a massive table to fit that many figures on it. If you do a hall game, you have the risk of people walking all over the pieces.

6mm armies are an option. I have a very large 6mm Russian Napoleonic army, with enough 60mm square brigade size bases to fight a battle like Borodino. However the visual appeal is different to 28mm.

15mm is the way to go for historicals. You can make a full ancient/medieval/napoleonic army for like 50 euro with the usual suspects (zvezda, victrix, etc.) and you can make out uniforms and such, but little more.

For fantasy it doesn't work just right. Ok, so those are high elves because they have a pointy hat, and those are, ehr, dwarves because they have axes, but then again they might be WoC.

Fantasy needs that kind of visual quality with bigger figs.

These guys are doing a 40.000 point per side battle. Fully painted, and you can follow their progress on their blog.

http://thegatesofkislev.blogspot.com.es/2016/01/la-batalla-battle.html

jouso wrote:
15mm is the way to go for historicals. You can make a full ancient/medieval/napoleonic army for like 50 euro with the usual suspects (zvezda, victrix, etc.) and you can make out uniforms and such, but little more.

For fantasy it doesn't work just right. Ok, so those are high elves because they have a pointy hat, and those are, ehr, dwarves because they have axes, but then again they might be WoC.

Fantasy needs that kind of visual quality with bigger figs.

These guys are doing a 40.000 point per side battle. Fully painted, and you can follow their progress on their blog.

http://thegatesofkislev.blogspot.com.es/2016/01/la-batalla-battle.html

I think 15mm is fine for Fantasy as long as the models are well made. I have WW2 Germans, British, US and Soviet troops in 15mm and they are all pretty distinctive even before you put paint on them.

Warmaster was 10mm and it was still possible to see the different unique units, though I'd prefer 15mm because the faces tend to look more real.

6mm to my eye is where they begin to lose their distinctiveness completely, so even though I did like Epic 40k I didn't really like the infantry at that scale.

I went with 28mm as I've got a tonne of terrain already made of it, covering multiple settings. No reason other than that.

jouso wrote:
For fantasy it doesn't work just right. Ok, so those are high elves because they have a pointy hat, and those are, ehr, dwarves because they have axes, but then again they might be WoC.

Fantasy needs that kind of visual quality with bigger figs.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Warmaster was 10mm and it was still possible to see the different unique units, though I'd prefer 15mm because the faces tend to look more real.

6mm to my eye is where they begin to lose their distinctiveness completely, so even though I did like Epic 40k I didn't really like the infantry at that scale.

With Ral Partha Europe' Demonworld, Khurasan, Splintered Light, Pendraken's new fantasy, Polar Fox Studio, Microworld etc, I don't know if 6-15mm fantasy has ever been as popular!

We just need a solid 10-15mm fantasy ruleset. Hail caesar as a framework can work pretty well.

auticus wrote:
We just need a solid 10-15mm fantasy ruleset. Hail caesar as a framework can work pretty well.

I always heard that Warmaster was a pretty decent rules set

Same engine.

auticus wrote:
We just need a solid 10-15mm fantasy ruleset. Hail caesar as a framework can work pretty well.

I think Pendraken's Warband rules is a pretty solid 10mm ruleset, although technically it's scale independent, like Hail Caesar.

I've been playing Kings of War, which I've kind of been losing interest in (probably because my League of Rhordia/Kingdoms of Men lists lose in the fantasy arms race with other factions), and I've been looking at the "Lord and Lands" ruleset, which I reviewed on my blog. It's been written for 6mm, mostly for Microworld's lines.

Warmaster was decent, Hail Caesar seems to be an evolution of Warmaster. Thats why I prefer it.

Kings of war could also work but to be honest, I can't really get into that game for a variety of reasons.

Hail Caesar framework would need the army lists created for the fantasy armies. There is a fan site with a fantasy alteration for Hail Caesar out there as well.

Try Hordes of the Things.

auticus wrote:
We just need a solid 10-15mm fantasy ruleset. Hail caesar as a framework can work pretty well.

I was wowed by Mayhem's unusual mechanics, and they turned out as interesting as I thought they were:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/679157.page

A little Warmaster, a little HOTT, a lot it's own thing. Figure and scale agnostic, but with measurements and things it's arguably better suited to 10-15mm. E.g. recommended base size for 10mm is 40mm square - which is handily two Warmaster bases pushed together - for 15mm is 50mm square, and for 28mm is 60mm square. Which gives you about nine infantry minis per unit... (Though if I ever bother with 28mm mass battles again, I'd go for 80mm square)

Second Infinite Array: I also have a copy of Lords and Lands here, which reads as pretty nifty, and I've been meaning to check out Warband. And you already know about Shadow Storm:

http://adyswargamesden.com/shadow-storm-aka-fantasy-hail-caesar-pdf/

And of course there should still be pdfs of Warmaster floating around. Most likely at the Specialist Arms forum.

My brother and I simply went back to 6th Edition. It had a ton of gaming material, a book for almost every army, Ravening Hordes lists for the two that didn't have books, and with a few exceptions was relatively still balanced. Add in the Power and Dispel Dice rules and the Insane Courage rule from 7th, and it's damn near perfect.


I'm also fortunate enough to have a forum available specifically for playing games in newer settings than Oldhammer:

www.classichammer.com

I also have a local shop that will let me host Classichammer nights since GW gaming is already pretty much dead.

I'm just using Kings of War rules and 15mm figures, with the aesthetics and fluff behind my battles being 100% in the Old World. I am only using figures that keep the old-school Warhammer "look".

And 15mm is perfectly good for fantasy. Many companies have tons of detail, and it's perfectly easy to tell Dark Elves, High Elves, and Wood Elves all apart, even moreso the different races. Definitely not "blobs".

Like for example, some Orcs and Goblins with a troll:



An empire knight:



Dark Elves:

I liked eighth edition a lot, but there were things I did dislike about it. For me the cost was more of a hinderence than a problem. For the most part I had enough miniatures from previous editions, and when I built my orc army I was able to pickup a lot of miniatures from ebay.

But for most people it was just a huge mountain to climb to get to the point where you could actually play in the standard pickup battles at the store.

And then actually *painting* all those miniatures took even longer. In most other wargames I play I try to get my army at least table ready, but I eventually gave up on my orcs and just slowly kept working them while trying to get games in when I could.

Aegis I think has the right idea, 8th edition might have made a lot more sense in 15mm.

The cost and time was always a stumbling block for me, too. Especially as I was painting armies for 40k already, though the cost back in the late 90's was not as bad as later years.

15mm is a fun way for me to love the setting, but with more accessible armies (especially as there is really no groups in my area, so to play with friends, I have to provide both armies).

As long as I can love the setting, it's not dead for me. I'm having an awesome time finding 15mm figs to match Warhammer units and then using them with Kings of War profiles.

 argonak wrote:
I liked eighth edition a lot, but there were things I did dislike about it. For me the cost was more of a hinderence than a problem. For the most part I had enough miniatures from previous editions, and when I built my orc army I was able to pickup a lot of miniatures from ebay.

But for most people it was just a huge mountain to climb to get to the point where you could actually play in the standard pickup battles at the store.

And then actually *painting* all those miniatures took even longer. In most other wargames I play I try to get my army at least table ready, but I eventually gave up on my orcs and just slowly kept working them while trying to get games in when I could.

Aegis I think has the right idea, 8th edition might have made a lot more sense in 15mm.

Agreed, WFB in 7/8th grew too big and was too expensive (time and money) for new players to get into and that eventually killed the game. 15mm would have been fine (though you miss out on some of the detail, especially on some of the 2000's models such as DoW and Brets). I heard people used Warmaster to play a version of travel WFB too.

The alternative would be to go back to 4th/5th/early 6th sized armies but with less of the overpowering herohammer options. The unit sizes then were considerably more realistic and on par with what 40k armies are today (40k armies then were much more skirmish based, similar to how Beyond the Gates of Antares is now).

However I don't think Warhammer is dead, if anything Total War Warhammer has shown that isn't the case. GW have left the door open for someone to take on the mantle of fantasy ranked battles. I don't think the current offerings quite have the same flavour as Warhammer, but then I'm more a casual player and I liked some of the wackiness in WFB which I think both KoW and 9th have moved away from to make a balanced game. I don't mind slight imbalances making armies unique as long as they weren't overpowering (O&G Animosity for example), but also providing a interesting ruleset (which is my personal gripe with AoS as a game).

In time I think something will come along that replaces Warhammer in all it's glory but we may just have to wait a few years.

I think a couple of things GW did really hurt Fantasy,

1) Reboxing, not too long ago you could pick up boxes of 20 Orc boyz for example, they then switched to 10 and charged nearly the same amount making the same unit twice as expensive in £££

2) Hoard rule, this one is the biggest killer in my view. It give massive units an advantage and awards people who spend lots of £££ on the above boxes to get a big unit.

If they had not bothered with the hoard rule people wouldn't feel the need to spend £100 on one unit and instead would run multiple smaller units making it cheaper to get into.

As a house rule we ignore the Hoard rule and all run the units as they come from the box (the exception is the boxes of 10 like wildwood rangers where we use 20 dudes) and for the most part it is perfectly balanced, cheap to get into (Just purchased a new 1800pts dark elf starter army for my wife for £109)

Is it dead? Not in my area, at our club every Friday night there has been at least 1 - 2 games of 8th edition going on with half a dozen people still arranging games. In the same token we have 2 AoS players who have played 2 games at the club since it came out with 1 other person taken it up.

Had GW not been giant dicks they would have supplied both round and square bases in the AoS boxes to allow people to play both systems still what erks me even more is that GW still sell square bases separately!!!

hobojebus wrote:
Unsupported games get stale you're never getting new rules or units, you're never going to get fixes for broken stuff.

What's more you can't attract new players if they can't easily buy their own stuff it's offputting.

So while the rules still exist stagnation leads to entropy and after a few years your not playing anymore.

Have you not seen the Ninth Age work? It's very well supported.

jouso wrote:
These guys are doing a 40.000 point per side battle. Fully painted, and you can follow their progress on their blog.

http://thegatesofkislev.blogspot.com.es/2016/01/la-batalla-battle.html

Wow, these guys are insane! I love this blog. It really motivates me to work on my own armies.

We all jumped to 9th AGE it is well done and they balanced it very well its not WFB 8th edition with different names they made a good game. It and KoW took over a lot of LGS's and AoS is dead at most of the stores I have been too down here in tampa there are less than 10 that play and most of the time you only see maybe 4 playing and not very often.

Not at all.