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OK so I made a similar thread in 40K discussions just to gauge some opinions there since because I game at home, I can use whatever ruleset I want rather than 'having' to use the latest rules, so I figured I would do the same for Fantasy too. It struck me that perhaps the 8th Ed rules aren't as universally popular as previous editions, so with that in mind, what is your favourite edition and why? Show your working where possible!

For me, my edition has to be 4th since that is the first edition I recall seeing - I saw the starter set with the cardboard bits ( was it a rock lobber or a chariot - I can't remember!) and a Griffon, I think it was but I have heard it said that the Fantasy 'hey day' as it were, was 3rd ed.

My favorite has to be 8th. Since well I have found myself enjoying it the most, so it was a easy choice

4th and 8th, with 8th taking first place because it made infantry useful.

8th is easily the most fun and balanced edition yet.

8th.

I caught the tail end of 7th when I started miniature war gaming but between the 2 I like 8th. If you aren't pushing around big blocks of troops you may as well be playing chess.

I voted 8th, but I did enjoy 6th back in the day.

I prefer 8th. It is really better than 7th, toning down fear, boosting infantry into the mainstay of your armies, loosening up the restrictions around specials and rares, allowing models to always fight (unless they're dead), and finally making magic oriented around powerful, yet unreliable game turning spells, and less about spamming one spell until your opponent runs out of dispel dice.

Sure, it has some problems. Cavalry was nerfed a bit hard, steadfast is a bit of a crutch at times, magic resistance doesn't work, random charges could probably go (if they kept the other changes), and some older stuff is very out of whack (woodelves at on end, Slann Mage Priest and Tecliss at the other), but overall it is a wonderful game.

8th all the way. Playing a game of 7th edition was close to torture for me.

_Tim?

Gotta go with 8th here too.

And to think, when it came out it was "WORSTEDITIONEVAR"

17th.

Am i doin it rite?

6th. Magic made more sense back then, and it was before power armies that ravaged 7th.

I've still never understood how a wizard doesn't know which spells he knows.

8th.

7th was torturous, played like 5 games and almost completely shelved Fantesy.

6th edition was my favourite. I haven't played a lot of 8th, to be fair, but I liked the core rules of 7th and 6th more. 7th was let down by poor army book design more than anything.

Interesting stuff, 8th seems to be more popular than internet hyperbole would have you believe (perhaps not surprising).

Out of those who mark 8th as their favourite, how many of you are new players and how many are veterans?

filbert wrote:Interesting stuff, 8th seems to be more popular than internet hyperbole would have you believe (perhaps not surprising).

Out of those who mark 8th as their favourite, how many of you are new players and how many are veterans?

Let that be lesson to you not to believe the interwebz

I have played on and off since @1994.

While I definitely do hold some nostalgia for the days of 5th and its Herohammerness, I have to say that I have far more fun in a much more gradually balanced setting with 8th. 7th was when I took a much needed sabbatical.

I voted 6th. It was one of the few times GW has revamped their ruleset while bringing all the books in line with the new system so quickly.

I liked how they put a limit on the number and power of characters and broke the units up into the core, special, rare system. Almost everything they changed was a welcome addition (except toughness 3 High Elf Characters :( )

I often wonder what led them to release such a poorly thought out series of army books in 7th.

The power creep was so staggering and the books ignored many of the core systems which balanced the phases of the game. That finding a logical reason for doing so is difficult.

I often wonder if they didn't throw everything out of balance on purpose to lessen backlash to such a drastic change to the ruleset.

I also find it interesting that so many fans of 8th extoll it based more on it's superiority to 7th than on any particular affinity for it's systems themselves.

I have some nostalgia for 6th. The books were balanced a little better and I enjoyed the elegant simplicity of the army books.

But I still like 8th though. GW's slosly bringing everyone up to speed. Just waiting on Wood Elves and Bretonnians, really.

I've been greatly enjoying 8th (well- until I had to take a real-life break over the summer). There seems to be more routes to success than there were in 7th.

I'll add to the nostalgia for 6th- it was a pretty exciting time when all the army books were reset to scratch. I don't think we'll ever see that again, though FAQing old books was not far off.

The thing about 6th was that every book was updated in a scant 4 years. That's almost 4 books a year.

Iirc back then the releases were more spread out as well. This year we had 2 armies released in the first 4 months and the third army won't be until Q4.

8th has been out for what? 2 years. There are a whipping 5 eighth edition books out. Only a third of the books have been updated.

Things like Storm of Magic and Blood in the Badlands shouldn't be released mid edition. The focus should be on army updates, and then when those are done, then supplements.

Although I beleive it could be made better, it's 8th all the way for me. That said, I didn't despise 7th as much as some people seem to do.

I still consider Beastmen a 8th edition, created at the very tail end of 7th you can tell it was built with 8th in mind, primal fury being a LD test and bringing to life BSB Ld rerolls.

Yeah, although its quite obvious they hadn't fully come up with 8th yet.

Not to mention the Beastmen book is nothing like the 8th edition books in layout(it still has the 3+ pages of magic items that older books have, not the 1 page we have now)


Beastmen have some flaws in their book. Namely overpriced infantry models. A good player can overcome that but its still a challange.

I voted 8th as well. I've been playing on and off since 4th ed (well a little of 3rd ed but not much). Honestly every other edition I played I basically got bored somewhere between six and twelve games in. Sometimes I kept playing for a while after that, other times I didn't.

8th ed is the first WHFB edition that really feels like a real game to me, where games throw up interesting tactical questions just about every turn, and those tactical options make a real difference in how the game is decided.

There's problems, for sure, but they don't ruin games too often.

I marked 8th, only ever played 8th and thought it was great fun. It really confused me when I saw so many people saying 'OMG 8TH KILLED FANTASY'

Unless the older editions came with strippers and kegs of Bugman's, I don't see it.

Been playing since 4th. Voted 8th.

6th was like a golden age for many of the reasons stated by others. 7th was fine until Daemons came out, then things went downhill. 6th was the best edition ever for tournament play because all of the books were so well balanced.

I have to say I was a holdout on 8th but I am worming up to it. It is nice to have infantry actually do its job instead of being speed bumps. Even the random charging is starting to grow on me. The magic is a little much at times, but that also depends on the opponent. I have found games very enjoyable when each side only has one or two wizards and neither person uses horde units.

It should be noted that 3rd was great though for the imagination. You could build any kind of unit you wanted. If you wanted a stone thrower with 10 crewmen go ahead. If you wanted a unit of Halfling with great weapons and pistols more power to you. It was really fun to see what people would come up with. The rule book gave you so many possibilities. You just had to keep in mind not to take anything seriously and to expect anything.

4th was dry in comparasin.

5th or hero-hammer was a root canal.

I voted for 8th if only because my Ogres now have their own size category and don't need to be 5 wide to get a rank bonus like they did in 7th.

Despite my usual ability to roll poorly for it I also like the new power dice generation method instead of it going off the number of wizards in the army.

7th, with the provision that all idiotically OTT army books produced during the life of that rule set be excluded and replaced with their previous editions. And that means everything produced by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, i.e., DoC, at the least.