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Greetings! Well I stopped playing 40k recently and well was thinking about starting fantasy. As with all war games can't decide on army's. I am torn between WoC, Empire and beastmen. I only plan on playing at 1000pts since I don't want another 3000k plus mistake like 40k. I like the look of all 3 armies and would like to build a decent take all comers list. I like the though of ranged mixed with close combat and siege weapons! I looked at various websites and still can't choose.

eh, at 1000 points you're prolly not gonna have much fun with WOC. Empire's awesome units are similarly limited until at least 1500. Beastmen having no good rares means that they'd be the best option for "just" a 1000 points.

Fantasy is usually played, and is best balanced, at around 2500 pts.

Of the three, Beastmen would be the best for the super low point level, but you are not going to have a balanced game.

1000 pts is fine for learning the game but for actually playing it you'll want to be at minimum 2000 pts.

Empire is going to be the most forgiving and flexible. The likely hood of being able to use what ever you spend your first 1000 points on in your eventual 3000 pt army is pretty strong.

WoC and Beastmen are very HtH lists while Empire is the Jack of all trades master of none sort of list.

Basically if you want to actually shoot stuff... you're playing empire out of those three.

Cheers

WoC are very one-dimensional and Beastmen have a very outdated and weak army book, thus I can only recommend the Empire.

Most of all: buy your army at ebay. Extremely cheap, you'll save a LOT of money. My 3000 pts Goblin army came at a total of 90€ plus the stuff I needed for scratch-builts, thus in total, I paid about 120€ for 3000 pts of Goblins...which is an extremely low price for ~300 models.

I have no plans for going passed 1000 ever honestly. If the standard is 2500 I don't think I will play fantasy. I have only ever seen it played twice here. Where I play is going to try a escalation league for it so if it even takes off here.

40k is more suited to lower point games, Fantasy is a bigger game in general.

If you want a game that's cheaper to get into you might try Warmachine. Or you can shop around online for deals, you can easily get GW products for 30-40% off retail price.

Cheap is really not the issue I just want to drop 1000+ into a army again. I sold 3/4 of my 40k army and play at 1000pts and have fun. And war machine is dead here.

If you are absolutely dead set against ever going past 1k points I dont think fantasy is a really good choice for you. This is not some kind of elitist position it is just based on my experience.

I dont think the game scales down well to 1k points, indeed I really do not like playing at less than 2.5k and just never play leass than 2k.

Yeah, 1000 points is the absolute minimum where playing makes sense and even at 1000, the balance is off in a lot of matchups. Standard size for WHFB is 2400-2600 and if you don't intend to go any higher than 1000, WHFB is the wrong game for you.

Oh well thanks guys! I'll try and find something else.

No prob

Have you tried looking at Kings of War by Mantic Games yet? It's similar to WHFB but a LOT cheaper and the rules are free and written by former GW employees. Plus: pretty much every army from WHFB can be played in KoW

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Kings-of-War.html

As others have pointed out, Warmachine / Hordes is interesting, Flames of War is another good and fairly cheap but semi-popular tabletop I could recommend.

Heard a lot of good things about Infinity but, I, personally, consider their models trash visual-wise.

Only thing people play here is 40k as far as tabletop wargames goes. I see all those models for sell but no one plays them. I have never seen war machine played here. Oh well lol just have to find something else.

 Sigvatr wrote:
No prob

Have you tried looking at Kings of War by Mantic Games yet? It's similar to WHFB but a LOT cheaper and the rules are free and written by former GW employees. Plus: pretty much every army from WHFB can be played in KoW

http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Kings-of-War.html

As others have pointed out, Warmachine / Hordes is interesting, Flames of War is another good and fairly cheap but semi-popular tabletop I could recommend.

Heard a lot of good things about Infinity but, I, personally, consider their models trash visual-wise.

i wish there was more options here honestly but 40k seems to be the most popular here. I have seen warmachine played here once and only once, i was intrested in that but could not find anywhere that is played. Dust warfare is played here by 2 people, i have never seen flames of war played here. I will give that other game a look but from what i seen, they are in the UK and i doubt anyone here plays that where i am at. But thank you and good looking out, I am thinking its 40k or well no table top wargaming.

I feel you OP. I have thousands of points of Orks, and literally every week or so I find another horrible travesty of a rule (ie, S9 D3 Large Blast barrage weapons that can hit any precise point on the map they want, LoS be damned ~ what the feth GW?) in the 40k rulebook that makes me want to drop this gak.

Try KoW. Honestly, the models are just decorative, you can play it with squares of cardboard and it won't impact the mechanics at all. The game is a bit shallow (no fluff, jack all magic, etc) because its quite recent, but the mechanics are solid as rock, can be learned in minutes, and extremely fast while losing none of the important strategic depth.

As for you Fantasy guys, I'm considering either selling my boys and buying into Fantasy, or converting them into Fantasy Orcs. But right now I'm still a bit wary... I've only played a few games of Fantasy and found nothing wrong with it, but I could make as OP called a "3000 point mistake" by buying an army and then finding out that theres some ancient Manticore/Helldrake equivalent tearing up the field and fething the game up for the rest of us.

Can you honestly tell me thats not the case here? I see it called "Hordes and Monsters" edition, is that the latest broken meta by GW for this game or is it not really an issue?

Well it certainly isn't the Monster's Edition.

Most people whining about Fantasy are either 6th and 7th edition power gamers that are annoyed their armies are no longer dominating the meta OR they are annoyed at having to actually make a decent sized army. People that think having 30 guys on the board is a decent sized game.


The only real problems is that Magic can be a little too powerful, but this is spread across the different armies and isn't one particular book's domain. Another issue is that BS based shooting is a little too weak, the only shooting worth having is cannons or other warmachines really. Monsters are a little too weak as well, cannons are the kiss of death and they have little way of dealing with large blocks of infantry.

Aside from that, the game is very balanced, especially compared to 40k.

Thank god for that. I don't mind the magic at all, from what I've seen, the Winds of Magic mechanic is quite good. Cheers for clearing it up ~ I hate to be yet another guy bitching about 40k but gotta know for sure if its worth getting into another of GWs products.

Point me towards what can fling out str 9 D3 Barrage large blasts on an accurate point in 40k.

The closest I can come up with is a full battery of Basilisks, but you're almost always better of splitting the battery to fire at many targets.

Manticore fires a barrage D3 S10 (not S9, my mistake) AP4 large blasts.

Can't run from it because it has enormous range. Can't hide from it because it laughs at Line of Sight as much as it laughs at game balance. And like all barrage weapons, you can nominate an exact spot for the shell to hit and it can smack multiple vehicles or snipe off characters.

For just 160 points the other guy gets to pick a unit every round and simply take it off the board. Whats an Ork to do against that kind of bogus firepower, except set up his Manticore killers and pray that he happens to roll first turn rather than the other guy.

It can and will scatter, spreading out troops reduces casualties, look out sir for characters, only 4 shoots, can die rather easily.

If you complain that blasts kill hordes, well that's really your problem, space your things out and you'll be pretty fine.

Hard to space people out when they got more pie plates then god dropping the pain! One of my last games was vs a IG list as he called it "Rain of Pain". He had Master of Ord, I think 6 field art. and cannons that did pie plates. (I don't know the IG dex at all so names escape me.) Turn one I had to call it since he crushed 2/3 of my army with pie plates and blasts.

I wish there was more wargaming here honestly, I may just call it and sell/donate my paint to someone since well 1000pt fantasy seems like a lost cause

I do thank you all for your thoughts and idea!

I didn't say anything about hordes. My issue is with the pin-point precision of the Manticore. I can do nothing at all to mitigate the damage, even hiding behind cover does nothing, all I can do is hope that he rolls a miss on one of his three shots. There's no strategy whatsoever in that.

@Lynx

That guy sounds like a real scumbag. I just walk away from players like that and I've never looked back.

40k can be fun if you play it in a non-competitive environment, played against a wall of HH Marines today and had a blast!

It's just IG that excels in doing so and it's the second-least favorite matchup there is right after flyer-spam because it's a boring match for both sides and is entirely decided by luck.

I'd focus on playing with friends etc. that don't play IG and bring balanced, fair lists if you're in for the fun alone. And don't go to tournaments, the amount of TFG there is "too damn high"

Its not just IG most people here used to play fun semi competitive list. Now everyone is min maxing spamming fliers and such. I like to be competitive but I don't like the BUY this to win that comes with 40k now and days. But that's my *crying* about that subject and venting a little. I feel I owe you all for being my therapist.

Does anyone play small army fantasy? Before walking out of 40k I did the "only have 1000pts" and got people to play smaller games. I enjoyed it a lot and some others did as well but like all 40k its 1850-2000.

Fantasy can be played at 1000 pts, but this usually results in problems for some armies as the game is balanced around 2k+ and doesn't really scale down that well. It certainly is playable though.

well I will see if I can find any fantasy players around this area. I have seen it played once and well that was it but another store is doing a escalation league starting at 200pts going to 1k that is what had me hoping.

Starting at 200 pts is pretty much impossible

Yeah, it is not even mathematically possible for TK to play 200pts legally. Nor most armies, I suspect.

I'd echo others; 1k is interesting, but not all that much fun from my experience. Aim at 2k if you want a small level. This is not a skirmish game of 13 guys scrambling over rubble, it is a mass battle wargame. Thus the game, rules, and models are all designed for large quantities. If you don't want lots of guys, then unfortunately it is the wrong game for you.

I was going to take Lizardmen to a local 1000 tournament, but then I realized I can't take a Slann at all at that level and was like "feth this"

So pretty much it screws some armies over.

Indeed. Thats why Fantasy really shouldn't be played below 2000 pts. 1500 is manageable, but that's more a level where you learn the basic mechanics, not play a balanced game at.