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Haven't played fantasy in four editions but always see eighth mentioned as a disaster. WhAt makes it the worst edition yet in some people's opinions and what rumors for upcoming ninth are promising?

Its all very subjective but for what its worth:

I think its one of the best editions - I still don't like some aspects - movement and tbh the higher levels magic seems to be very overpowered.

It did bring in good things like presmeausring and killing the front rank did not mean the rest of a unit just stood and watched....

Hopefully 9th Ed will have toned down higher level magic significantly, better objective based scenarios, allies and fortifications...

It must stink to play dwarves then if magic is so op

Don;t know - don;lt play them!

I know our Dwarf player is not happy about it sometimes - when you have spells that just win the game - especially when cast with IF so nothing he can do - but everyone gets that quite often sadly.

Dwarfs do have very deadly war machines - Runed up stonethrowers are pretty horrible

People whining about 8th.

DukeRustfield wrote:
People whining about 8th.

qft.

I think 8th has a few flaws, but compared to my only other tabletop wargaming experience (5th Ed 40k), I think it's absolutely fantastic. The balance, the equalize, any army having a shot to win. It's great.

Of course, when I jumped into 8th I had a lot of expendable money. Now that I don't, I realize and understand how some could complain 8th Ed is clearly designed for big armies (i.e. spend lots of money). That I don't like for sure.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its all very subjective but for what its worth:

I think its one of the best editions - I still don't like some aspects - movement and tbh the higher levels magic seems to be very overpowered.

It did bring in good things like presmeausring and killing the front rank did not mean the rest of a unit just stood and watched....

Hopefully 9th Ed will have toned down higher level magic significantly, better objective based scenarios, allies and fortifications...

no thank you, 40k player

A purple sun dwelling below in a pit of shades.

I also think 8th edition as a game is overall better than previous editions. Things I like:

-fighting with more ranks, and step up
-pre-measuring
-books tend to be better balanced
-Blood and Glory
-cleaner charges

things I don't like

-all or nothing victory points
-Watch Tower

Some people gripe about the magic phase but maybe a year after the edition launched till now I can't think of a time I lost to one of the uber spells.

The thing I like the most if that my regiments feel less like wound counters on a movement tray and more like a fighting block that gets to swing and attack.

Things I hate
- fighting with more ranks and step up (but necessary if characters are powerful like VC)
- pre-measuring
- "teleport" charges without wheeling
- no half-strength VP
- big magic

Things I like
- quite balanced
- nice scene of gamers

I really don't like 8th Edition, but It's not completely horrible once you're used to it ... Hope they will fix (in my view) the game in 9th

Clarence wrote:

things I don't like

-all or nothing victory points
-Watch Tower

They should simply go back to the age-old "units under 50% starting strength give-up 50% VP's"
Since there's no more spam-casting ad nausium of the Undead raise spells, you're not really giving them much of an advantage like they used to have back in the day... (and with step-up, their characters can't solo your entire front rank, so you can hit those main blocks of skellies and the like good and hard in return!)

Watch Tower scenario is simply dumb... either fix the rules for buildings or else drop the scenario as it's damn near impossible to shift any kind of a deathstar out of the tower.

Clarence wrote:
Some people gripe about the magic phase but maybe a year after the edition launched till now I can't think of a time I lost to one of the uber spells.

The thing I like the most if that my regiments feel less like wound counters on a movement tray and more like a fighting block that gets to swing and attack.

The magic phase troubles depend entirely on what army you play... If you're an Elf or play the likes of WoC for example, you only tend to care about Final Trans or (potentially) Dwellers raping your army.
If on the other hand you play say, Undead of either flavour, Ogres, Orcs, Lizzies, Dwarfs, Nurgle Daemons... well, enjoy those initiative test-or-die spells on your measly I2 or so!

Dr. Cheesesteak wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
People whining about 8th.

qft.

I think 8th has a few flaws, but compared to my only other tabletop wargaming experience (5th Ed 40k), I think it's absolutely fantastic. The balance, the equalize, any army having a shot to win. It's great.

Of course, when I jumped into 8th I had a lot of expendable money. Now that I don't, I realize and understand how some could complain 8th Ed is clearly designed for big armies (i.e. spend lots of money). That I don't like for sure.

Yeah, people will always complain about anything, as long as there's at least one flaw - however small - to be picked upon.

But yes, I really enjoy 8th Edition Fantasy. I'm still looking forward to Ninth, because change is fresh and, hopefully, it will bring good things too (as long as too much stuff doesn't get nerfed I'm fine )

I think Fantasy as a whole is designed for big armies with lots of models. True, 8th Edition doesn't favour armies that spend most of their points on, say, a few monsters, but, as the inherent flaw of Fantasy in general, I think you'll always need to amass a large army (and hence a large budget) to get the most out of the game.

Mr Morden wrote:
Hopefully 9th Ed will have toned down higher level magic significantly, better objective based scenarios, allies and fortifications...

Agree and disagree (but as Dr Cheesteak said, these suggestions are very 40k-y)

- I think Magic needs to be reworked as a whole, the system isn't great. It still needs to remain fairly powerful though.
- I'm not sure about "objective" based missions, like those in 40k, but I do think the rulebook scenarios need to be varied up a lot more. Blood or Glory is different, but can be a pain, and the same goes for Watchtower and that has stupid victory conditions too. Dawn Attack is the only other decent variation - it forces you to change your strategy around a potentially bad deployment you've been forced into. I have a few ideas of other scenarios, but I don't think this post is the best place to mention them.
- There's no point me trying to come to a conclusion about allies. It's practically a given in 9th edition, looking at how successful 40k allies have been for GW. I think it will work fairly well in Fantasy though, there's very clear-cut sides so there'll be no "Wtf, Space Marines are Battle Brothers with Tau!" moments. As long as it doesn't break the competitive scene too much. Non-allied 40k armies are a precious and welcome rarity in competitive 40k.
- Fortifications? No. Most definitely not. At least not with the current building rules. You want to avoid stuff like a Lizardmen player taking a Watchtower to bunker his saurus in. That's a horrible combination to be given without fighting for, and completely out of place.

8th does favour big blocks which is unfair to some armies, as well as blatantly being all about selling more models. I dislike the big spells, they need toning down. I'd prefer them to be wounds rather than removing models I think. I'd also like to make cavalry a bit more effective.

Primarily though I'd like to give big monsters more survivabillity versus cannons. These things have the potential to be beautiful centrepieces in a players army but tend to get shot off the board rather quickly, I feel this is a shame.

You can't fundamentally throw out big spells without taking out one of the major counters to some armies. Mega elite blocks are dangerous to use because they are primary target #1 for such spells. If the only choice vs. 750pt blocks are to die to them, ignore them, pray to redirect them, or use your own 750pt block on them, that limits your options and dumbs down the game. It looks like those old medieval historical battles I see with 8923489235 pikemen staring off at each other (which is accurate, but not amazingly interesting).

The BRB has to maneuver in relation to the army books. You can do stuff like step up and change movement and charge rules, but Lizardman book is out and isn't going to be rewritten anytime soon. Saurus are Saurus. If 9th removed magic completely (or you took it out now from 8th) some armies would become vastly more powerful (Ogres, WoC, DoC) some would become completely unplayable (VC, TK) and some in between.

Overall the worst thing to happen in 8th is one word.....steadfast

from a competitive point of view the worst thing was awarding no points for a unit that isnt killed to the man....even if its fleeing when the game is over, you still get nothing as long as ONE single guy is alive....TERRIBLE change.

I really like Steadfast, actually. If I paint a whole regiment of infanty, I'd rather not get them easily broken by 5 knights, thank you.

And it seems to me that most cavalry are doing fine in 8th (Empire knights, Silver Helms, Brets...) not to mention the ever popular Monstrous Cav. In fact, as the year roll on I'm seeing less and less deep steadfast blocks and more fighty units.

And again, losing the game to one big spell doesn't happen often in the group that I play with. Generally speaking,

A) Your opponent needs access to the lore.
B) They need to roll that spell.
C) They need enough power dice/hit the casting value.
D) You don't scroll it.
E) Your army is well designed and can absorb losing one unit.

Clarence wrote:
I really like Steadfast, actually. If I paint a whole regiment of infanty, I'd rather not get them easily broken by 5 knights, thank you.

And it seems to me that most cavalry are doing fine in 8th (Empire knights, Silver Helms, Brets...) not to mention the ever popular Monstrous Cav. In fact, as the year roll on I'm seeing less and less deep steadfast blocks and more fighty units.

And again, losing the game to one big spell doesn't happen often in the group that I play with. Generally speaking,

A) Your opponent needs access to the lore.
B) They need to roll that spell.
C) They need enough power dice/hit the casting value.
D) You don't scroll it.
E) Your army is well designed and can absorb losing one unit.

Happens alot in our gaming environment - usually with Irristable Force - which is what most people tend to roll for anyway with the big spells - so there is zero way to do anything about it..........Not seen any issues with anyone getting the right spell in the games here but it has gone down the competative army list route tbh.

one recent example I observed was a first turn IF spell taking out a Slann and most of his unit with Dwellers (I think) leaves a very big whole to climb out of......

Clarence wrote:
I really like Steadfast, actually. If I paint a whole regiment of infanty, I'd rather not get them easily broken by 5 knights, thank you.

And it seems to me that most cavalry are doing fine in 8th (Empire knights, Silver Helms, Brets...) not to mention the ever popular Monstrous Cav. In fact, as the year roll on I'm seeing less and less deep steadfast blocks and more fighty units.

And again, losing the game to one big spell doesn't happen often in the group that I play with. Generally speaking,

A) Your opponent needs access to the lore.
B) They need to roll that spell.
C) They need enough power dice/hit the casting value.
D) You don't scroll it.
E) Your army is well designed and can absorb losing one unit.

On the same vein, when 30 mindrazored corsairs go into the flank of a bus of clanrats, kill 1 model under the necessary amount to break steadfast, then the rule becomes stupid.

It should be done in a way that makes you consider the positioning. Not be like, oh I have a million ranks, I can get hit in the flank and hold.

I think it should be reworked to: You don't get it at all if hit in the rear, and you get put on -1 LD if hit in the flank.

Or, if you lose over a quarter of your unit in a single round, you lose steadfast automatically.


As for what makes 8th bad? Rulebook and Army book wording. Sure, magic is powerful. But if you have paid attention to any fluff from any edition, you will know it's meant to be. And it's random. People moan and gripe about the super spells, but try and reliably cast one on a double 1 magic phase. The pool generation mechanic is inherently opposed to making people able to rely on magic to win games a viable strategy. And a balanced list will be able to operate if it loses a single unit to that spell.

Very unfriendly to new players . Normal sized games start around 2000 points .And that makes even high cost armies like chaos very big . Smaller games are ruled by powerful deathstars and uber armies which some armies don't have access to or theirs are weaker , which offten ends with them having 1 way of building a list and even then you can be easily tabled by IF sun .

Tower scenario is stupid , I don't know what GW was thinking when they wrote it . And on a more local level the older HE army book more or less killed WFB here after the first 5 tournaments had 3 out of 3 HE armies in top 4 each one with teclis. Some people hoped that new players would emarge after a new codex , but that didn't happen because of the high entry cost. Old players on the other hand switched systems or have armies like WE or bretonians , which they couldn't sell, and don't want to play even 1000pts games.

Not enough monsters and large center piece models. This is because of cannons and warmachines. Its to hard of a counter and frankly a huge problem. Im sure GW knows this because all those big centerpiece models are not selling. I know I wont play again untill cannons come down to earth vs monsters.

Table wrote:
Not enough monsters and large center piece models. This is because of cannons and warmachines. Its to hard of a counter and frankly a huge problem. Im sure GW knows this because all those big centerpiece models are not selling. I know I wont play again untill cannons come down to earth vs monsters.

Monsters with a ward save are worth it, occasionally even a requirement. (HE birdies, DP's & Greaters)
And if you know there's 0 'Flaming Attacks' cannons, then any monster with a good regen save is also viable. (Abomb, Hydra)

Still, unless GW decides to make cannons fire with regular BS or some type of similar mechanic, (maybe even a set to-hit roll ala TK shooting?), they'll continue to be disgustingly accurate laser cannon equivalents.

Orock wrote:
Haven't played fantasy in four editions but always see eighth mentioned as a disaster. WhAt makes it the worst edition yet in some people's opinions and what rumors for upcoming ninth are promising?

Having owned and played to some extent all editions since the mid 80's I think 8th is the best thus far. Not perfect of course, but gives me the feeling of... well a fantasy battle more than the others.

A few spells need to be toned down.

Cannon and monster issues can be solved by making sure you have reasonable scenery and some walls about the battlefield. Mounted Monster issues can be solved by scenery, and house ruling that the cannon ball either hits the monster (1-4) or the rider (5-6).

Too much dangerous terrain.

 snurl wrote:
Too much dangerous terrain.

To me, it feels like terrain doesn't make enough of a difference like it used to. :(

Steadfast rule needs to be worded better so its not so ridiculous and get rid of spells like "Dwellers Below" that can basically give you an instant win against certain armies, that ruined 8th edition at my FLGS.

It isn't perfect but i like it more than 6th and 7th. The changes 8th brought got me into fantasy in a big way. If the big spells for magic got toned down it would be my only major gripe.

First off, GW doesnt really hide behind the pretense of balance anymore, other than to offer new models that are even better than the ones you already own! In a very British way, they leave it up to the players to engage in gentlemanly combat and not abuse the vast grey areas of rules at the expense of the overall fun of the experience. However, a SIZABLE portion of the gamer population is more interested in winning the game than the opponents experience during it.

All or Nothing victory points really tilted the scale too far to the "deathstar" end of the unit size spectrum, when it was already trending that way with improved charge, steadfast, and step up rules.

This was supposed to be counter acted by improved warmachines and magic, and to an extent it was. However, those attacks also got much better vs monsters and lone characters...driving most generals into units, which you then want to be large enough to not give up all the points you've got in it, so you get another rank or two of guys. Then you realize that at this point if you lose that unit you lose the game, so you might as well make sure that you never lose the unit by adding another rank or two, and maybe a BSB. And since at this point the opponents only hope is an irresistible 6th spell, you might as well put an extra rank or two to absorb that... And since there arnt any scenarios that fault you for this tactic, there is a very strong argument for this sort of escalation from a purely tactical, playing within the rules, deal with it, sort of view.

The problem is that it is a terrible bore to simulate battles that involve that type of army composition, in the same way that its a bore to play against pure gunlines on the back edge of their deployment, or the super magic heavy demon lists of the last edition.

It comes down to "does your gimmick work, or not?"

And after hours of assembling, painting, transporting, and setting up, many players yearn for something more than that to determine the outcome of their games.

My biggest complaint is that maneuver and flanking does exactly squat in this edition, yet another factor that favors the Deathstar builds. With Steadfast as it is there's no need to guard your flanks, so there's no need to take units to guard your flanks, so you can throw everything into that totally tactically unsound single unit... and suddenly it no longer looks like a battleline; it's just one big brick and a pair of ubercheap throwaway units.

Get two 'armies' like that on the field and it doesn't look like a battlefield so much as it does a demolition derby - the biggest, toughest car wins. And who cares about a piddling little thing like skill....

I think the basic ruleset for 8th is fine. All it needs is tweaks. People are saying that 8th is not doing very well, but I am not sure they are factoring in the fact that GW has been going more hog wild on smaller box sets with each army making pricing more difficult.

Magic - certain lores need to be toned down - others need to be buffed.
Cannons - When basic cannons got upgraded to do the same damage as the Empire's Great Cannons, this really threw a nutshot to monsters making them the ultimate counter to quite a bit on the field. I am not sure if the newer cannons (Ironblaster, Brass Cannon, etc.) are counted now as Great Cannons, but this needs to be looked at.
Steadfast - I like having large units of infantry being harder to break, but it does silly for them not to have to worry about getting hit in the flanks.
Skirmishers/Light Cav - Can we bring back 360 arcs please? It makes no sense for them to only be able to look forward.
March Blocking - I will be honest, I think this should be a lot stricter then just a Ld check. It makes Fast Cav much more useful.

Oh and can we please bring back Pistols in close combat. I will love somebody forever and ever for that one.

IMO, I am more worried with 9th if it is true that things are being more 'streamlined' (aka gutted).

Had my first few games in this edition and I must say that magic realy is OP. Sure cannons are accurate and can snipe stuff , but when your opponent has 6 turns to cast a army wiping spell , which you can stop only 2 times with scrolls , then even if it he doesn't get IP it still is in favor on magic heavy and I heavy armies.

Canons and broken magic is really the only complaints I have.

Spell 6 is too powerful in most lores although it is surprisingly spell 5 in the Lore of Shadow, although I wouldn't want to discount Mindrazor as a crazy good spell.

As was stated, canons just obliterate high cost centerpiece models. I am building my WoC army with lots of 'centerpiece' models, including a FW Merwyrm Chimera, FW Khorne DP, and a Slaughterbrute... even considered finding points for a carmine dragon bottom giant top Shaggoth... but I know that it's too much money for not enough survivability... but oh well. I know those units are hard as nails to crack without a cannon. DPs can be especially rough.

Overall I think it's a great game though, loved it since it was released and will hopefully not be saddened by 9th Edition rumors of allies and forts.