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It was suggested to me in another thread that I may want to run a closed gaming group with my sons rather than getting dragged into the (possible) madness that is coming soon, especially since my first, last, and only love has always been Bretonnians and my oldest son wants to play Lizard Men (younger son is too young yet, so I guess he'll get an army that hasn't gone OOP when the time comes, or he can inherit my friend's ancient Empire army that still sits in my parents' basement).

I only have experience with 5th and 6th Edition. I'm inclined towards 6th, but since I've never played 7th and 8th, I'd be interested to hear from others whether I'd be better off going with one of those and, if so, why? Thanks.

3rd is the common one, but Oldhammer is simply playing with what you think is best and in a way that you want to. I use 5th, when I do indulge.

5th edition is the same edition as Mordheim, Warhammer Ancient Battles and the Warhammer Skirmish supplement if you can find it. That gives you quite a lot of possibilities for different game types, so I'd go with that, myself.

Other than that, if you're familiar with 6th, that's as good a place as any to start. Also, since 6th, 7th and 8th are variations of each other, you can simply pick the best bits of each and combine them into the game you want. For instance, I'd be inclined to keep the random charge moves, but get rid of the horde rule and the other things that drive the game towards huge blocks of 50+ models in 8th edition. Oh, and get rid of Always Strikes First as a High-Elf-wide rule.

Sounds like 6th Edition with a houserule for random charge ranges might be the ticket.

I actually still have my copy of the skirmish supplement. I'm pretty sure they're based on 6th edition -- the cover artwork is certainly in keeping with 6th in any event. And if I recall, Mordheim was released only very shortly before 6th edition so I bet it can work with some tweaks.

Which gives me a good idea -- I should get a hold of Mordheim and we could start with Mordheim warbands then work our way up to skirmish, then bigger battles. Although, is there any legal way to get the Mordheim rules without getting gouged on eBay?

The ones I feel more comfortable with are 6th and 5th with some heavy houseruling (i.e. "amendments", geared towards placing heavy limits on herohammer tendencies and other, mostly logical fixes).

In any case, I'd encourage everybody going the Oldhammer way to experiment as much as they want. There's no such a thing as a "definitive" WHFB edition, all of them have their advantages and disadvantages. The ideal thing would actually be to pick the base of the one you like the most (in my case, 4th/5th) and make the changes you feel are needed.

I know nothing of 8th edition but I see it's getting lots of votes. What are the major differences between 8th and 6th?

5th was the age of Herohammer. 6th was great for balance between army books and well balanced magic. 8th has the best core rules for units, but some rather crazy army books. A big problem in 5th-7th was all someone had to do was kill the front rank and you couldn't attack back, thus making rank and file useless. 8th fixed this with "step up" but also added "Steadfast" which can get a little crazy at times. My friend and I have talked about playing 8th with 6th ed army books and spells but we haven't gotten around to it yet.

From what you describe, it sounds like the army books are most of the problem in 8th so using 6th (or 7th?) edition rule books with that ruleset would work. All my beloved Bretonnians have is a 6th book anyway! But I can acquire 6th or 7th edition army books for other armies appear to be available for decent prices online.

Check Amazon, I picked up 3 of the 6th ed books on there last year for $0.01 each. Great thing about used book dealers is the longer something sits around the more the cut the price

The high number of votes for 8th comes from the (I guess) people who actually play 8th edition and plan to stick to it if the rumors about 9th are true.

But as I see it, 8th is not Oldhammer. And it won't be next year.

"Oldhammer" is supposed to mean a return to old systems where less models were needed to play, there were less special rules and programmed obsolescence was way less evident (and painful). It could be said (and I would agree to a certain extent) that there's always been some programmed obsolescence in Warhammer - if you compare 4th with 5th edition, it's mostly the same, but 5th armybooks tend to be a bit more powerful than the 4th ones, that's why people playing 5th edition oldhammer tend to actually prefer 4th edition rulebooks. That said, late 6th edition was when the power creep truly became to manifest itself in full force (that skaven book) and in 7th all brakes were off, specially as the edition went on. Dark Elf or Vampire Counts books were already stretching the roof of the top tier, but Matt Ward's Chaos Daemons was so absurdly overpowered it basically broke the entire edition, leading to the 8th reboot.

The issue I mostly have with 8th is its nature as a system that aims to represent mass battles but retaining mechanics suited to skirmish games, and placing a ridiculous amount of special rules on top of it all. That's why I don't like it in the slightest, because the concept is terribly flawed.

A 2000 points game in 5th/6th edition is IMO the limit you can reach before the game system begins to crumble upon itself. Fantasy's rules system is simply not suited for anything bigger than dark ages style battles. If someone wants to play mass fantasy battles, there're much better systems out there, and even more suited scales (like 15mm).

 NWansbutter wrote:
I know nothing of 8th edition but I see it's getting lots of votes. What are the major differences between 8th and 6th?

8th has issues, no doubt (magic phase being easily munchkinable being one of them), but its largely regarded as one of the better editions of the game.

Some people think 8th Ed with End Times magic in play helps fix (if somewhat elongate) the worst of the magic phase (meaning intentionally trying to 6 dice irresistible level 6 spells). Some people will claim ET magic rules are horri-terribad and will regale you with these impossibly unlikely scenarios as if they were common place. My crew has found ET magic to be pretty damn balancing all things considered. Sure with a pool of 24 dice things can get crazy, but boy does it suck to go to cast Purple Sun or Dwellers and you roll a '1' on the dice you can throw at it.

Whichever side of the fence you fall on in that particular debate, one thing is certain: using ET magic rules elongates the magic phase. There's no denying that. There's more resources and more die rolling.




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 Korinov wrote:

.... and placing a ridiculous amount of special rules on top of it all. ....

I agree with pretty much everything you said for the most part except this. Warhammer has an average number of special rules. Warmachine / Hordes has a crazy number of special rules. Infinity has a high number of special rules. Dark Age has a lot of special rules.

The GW game systems really fall in the middle of the pack in terms of special rules. Sure it's not Kings of War levels of simplicity, but it can't hold a candle to some of the games (and many others) that I mention above.

If you can get a copy of the Ravening Hordes army book supplement that came out with 6th edition you will find some nicely balanced army lists with few special rules. When 6th edition came out we played a league using these and it was great fun. Then the army books came out one by one and the game fell apart due to power imbalance.

I personally like 8th. I know it has some issues but I think once you tweak a few things it works great.

We've tweaked it to say:

If you're disrupted you lose steadfast.

Old miscats rolls (Double 6's IF, Double 1's miscast & failure. Double 1's beats Double 6's) really cuts down on 6 dicing super spells.

Cannons are S10 d6W on the hit, but only S8 d3W on the bounce. Helps monsters not get insta-gibbed but the risk IS still there for a direct hit. Still hit both mount & rider.

Ward saves on the mount/rider extended to both provided the one giving it is still alive. So a dragon ridden by a price with armour of destiny has a 4+ ward, but loses it if the rider dies. This sees large monsters fielded more often without making them stupidly powerful.

I'm sure my copy of Ravening Hordes is still in my parents basement. However, Bretonnians were so unspeakably bad in that book that it is what chased me away from WHFB and into the arms of 40K because I was just getting mercilessly slaughtered every game and it wasn't even close.

Maybe that's because Empire had an army book immediately and my most frequent opponent played Empire so that made the Brets seem so horrible. Although even my other buddy with Chaos beat the snot out of me all the time. Whereas in 5th it was always pretty even battles between us. As I recall the Ravening Hordes Bretonnians they didn't have their prayers or any vows or anything that made them fun and cool so I'd want to use my 6th Ed. army book which I thought was great and balanced. If I do that then to be fair I need to let my sons have their army books.

What was the Lizardmen 6th edition army book like?

I seem to remember that the early 6th Empire book was fine once I had my own army book (briefly got back into WHFB when the Bret book came out but then got married shortly after and began my lengthy hiatus from the hobby).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Question about 8th: what is it that makes it "unplayable" below 2000 points?

Haight wrote:[I agree with pretty much everything you said for the most part except this. Warhammer has an average number of special rules. Warmachine / Hordes has a crazy number of special rules. Infinity has a high number of special rules. Dark Age has a lot of special rules.

The GW game systems really fall in the middle of the pack in terms of special rules. Sure it's not Kings of War levels of simplicity, but it can't hold a candle to some of the games (and many others) that I mention above.

Haven't played Warmachine so can't tell about that. Regarding WHFB just open a 4th/5th edition armybook and compare with the current one. If I remember correctly, the High Elves 4th edition armybook had like three special rules in the whole book (bar special characters), and it's usually regarded as the best High Elves armybook ever released by GW.

Now the average core unit has more than three special rules.

NWansbutter wrote:I'm sure my copy of Ravening Hordes is still in my parents basement. However, Bretonnians were so unspeakably bad in that book that it is what chased me away from WHFB and into the arms of 40K because I was just getting mercilessly slaughtered every game and it wasn't even close.

Ravening Hordes lists were pretty well balanced against each other. The issue with 6th was how overpowered the armybooks started to become towards the end of the edition period.

Speaking about Bretonnia, they packed quite a punch with their 6th armybook.

7th WITHOUT the idiotic Ward components.

 Korinov wrote:

Ravening Hordes lists were pretty well balanced against each other. The issue with 6th was how overpowered the armybooks started to become towards the end of the edition period.

Speaking about Bretonnia, they packed quite a punch with their 6th armybook.

I dug up Ravening Hordes from my parents' basement and had a quit read-through. Now that I see it, the armies do appear to be quite well balanced against one another. I guess the reason I found my Bretonnians to be so weak was because of my friend's Empire army book after all (believe they were the first or second book out in 6th) plus the fact that my army was almost all knights and I did not transition well over to lances no longer striking first on the charge.

Have you used Ravening Hordes with 8th? Or just 6th?

Plus no one has really given me a clear answer of what the major differences between 6th and 8th are.

I'm also wondering what it is about 8th that makes it not workeable below 2000 points?

8th edition had the step up rule, which was really a big plus in my opinion.

The variable charges made things interesting. I found 6th to be a lot of trying to be the most accurate at guessing the difference between 7.9" and 8.1". That tiny bit would mean the difference between going first in combat and not having to absorb very many return attacks. Variable charges and step up made this bit of fiddling about no longer the focus of the game.

If you go Ravening Hordes you have to go all Ravening Hordes. You can use the Dogs of War list published in the annual as well, but any army with its own book will include special rules/characters that will overpower the standard Ravening lists.

Your Ravening Bretonnians would be at a marked dis advantage to a book based Empire army.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:
I personally like 8th. I know it has some issues but I think once you tweak a few things it works great.

We've tweaked it to say:

Cannons are S10 d6W on the hit, but only S8 d3W on the bounce. Helps monsters not get insta-gibbed but the risk IS still there for a direct hit. Still hit both mount & rider.

Oh gak. Might steal that. That's clever.


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 Korinov wrote:

Haight wrote:[I agree with pretty much everything you said for the most part except this. Warhammer has an average number of special rules. Warmachine / Hordes has a crazy number of special rules. Infinity has a high number of special rules. Dark Age has a lot of special rules.

The GW game systems really fall in the middle of the pack in terms of special rules. Sure it's not Kings of War levels of simplicity, but it can't hold a candle to some of the games (and many others) that I mention above.

Haven't played Warmachine so can't tell about that. Regarding WHFB just open a 4th/5th edition armybook and compare with the current one. If I remember correctly, the High Elves 4th edition armybook had like three special rules in the whole book (bar special characters), and it's usually regarded as the best High Elves armybook ever released by GW.

Now the average core unit has more than three special rules.

Fair. I was just saying that in today's day and age, Warhammer is well into the bottom half of special rules in terms of games on the market. I think there's a movement back towards more ... simple isn't the right phrase... less bloated? ... rule systems, but the fact remains that there are games out there that are orders of magnitude more complex than Warhammer 8th. Complexity by itself is not bad, and can add depth. Complexity for it's own sake is just about always bad.

I can't comment on 4th: I didn't play, so i have not frame of reference. I played 7th and 8th, and only just barely 7th.

NWansbutter wrote:Have you used Ravening Hordes with 8th? Or just 6th?

I have barely played 8th. Got a few games and didn't like it in the slightest. Not to mention 8th almost, virtually, killed WHFB in my area.

I did use Ravening Hordes in 6th back in the day. In fact I kept using the Chaos Dwarfs list in 7th.

I'm also wondering what it is about 8th that makes it not workeable below 2000 points?

You mean "beyond" 2000 points?

This is merely my personal opinion, but really, I think WHFB has never really scaled well beyond the 2000 points mark. And with the latest editions it just got worse, as the succesive armybooks just made virtually all units cheaper and cheaper. Plus everything has special rules now, everything. Look at elves. The core, basic dark elf warriors now have Hatred (High Elves), Always Strike First and Murderous Prowess (re-roll to wound 1s in close combat). In 6th they just had the Hatred (High Elves) army-wide rule.

kenofyork wrote:The variable charges made things interesting. I found 6th to be a lot of trying to be the most accurate at guessing the difference between 7.9" and 8.1". That tiny bit would mean the difference between going first in combat and not having to absorb very many return attacks. Variable charges and step up made this bit of fiddling about no longer the focus of the game.

I actually appreciated the way non-random charges marked a difference between good players and average ones. The issue was that charges were too important, and many times a game would be decided on whether a charge was successful or not (I played frequently against Bretonnia). That I didn't like, and honestly if I were to write a fan-made adaptation of 6th, I would change that.

Still better than the current random nonsense. My dwarfs charge more distance than your light cavalry. WTF.

If you go Ravening Hordes you have to go all Ravening Hordes. You can use the Dogs of War list published in the annual as well, but any army with its own book will include special rules/characters that will overpower the standard Ravening lists.

Your Ravening Bretonnians would be at a marked dis advantage to a book based Empire army.

Truth to be told, some Ravening Hordes lists held their ground against the armybooks better than others. I remember my Chaos Dwarfs being pretty competitive, specially with the sweet Earthshaker cannon, dearest friend of all gunline armies

Haight wrote:Fair. I was just saying that in today's day and age, Warhammer is well into the bottom half of special rules in terms of games on the market. I think there's a movement back towards more ... simple isn't the right phrase... less bloated? ... rule systems, but the fact remains that there are games out there that are orders of magnitude more complex than Warhammer 8th. Complexity by itself is not bad, and can add depth. Complexity for it's own sake is just about always bad.

I can't comment on 4th: I didn't play, so i have not frame of reference. I played 7th and 8th, and only just barely 7th.

4th was quite similar to 5th. Big skirmishes/small battles. Still retaining some role-playing flavour (shields and heavy armor carried penalties to movement). It had some serious issues, as far as my taste goes:

1 - No limits on magic items, which turned the already powerful characters into rape trains with no brakes. The funniest part is, iirc, in the very rulebook the game designers advise to self-impose some limits (15pts for unit champions, 25pts for heroes and 50pts for commanders). Actually the fan-made amendments tend to follow that advice to the letter.
2 - Magic system. It got much better with 6th IMO.
3 - Some nasty stuff in 5th edition armybooks. There were a few pieces of artillery here and there that were a bit overpowered. Elven bolthrowers, dwarf organ gun, etc. That's why it's usually recommended to play with 4th ed. armybooks whenever possible.

There were also some silly things like Fly rules that basically got fixed by 6th.

Sorry, but saying that Warhammer 8th doesn't scale beyond 2000 points is just mince. The game works best, in terms of balance, at around 3000 points; I'd never recommend that level to a beginner, but I found it to be really good fun, and also a level at which inequalities like Tomb King overcosting and Skaven cheapo magic items become much less of an issue.

8th edition works fine below 2000 points, but it becomes very situational by army - some become much worse, especially armies built around supporting elements. However, I have played and enjoyed games of 1500 points, 1850 points, and the like. The big problem is 1000 points and below. At that level, the way that the game starts to have problems. For example: units are really designed in 8th to be of 20 or more models; but you can't afford that kind of unit very easily at 1000 points. This results, among other things, in single model units like powerful heroes, chariots and monsters totally dominating, as there is not enough rank and file to stop them. In addition, things like cannons and magic missiles become unusually powerful, suddenly able to remove 1/4th of the enemy army in one go if the dice are with you. So it isn't that you cannot play Warhammer 8th edition below 2000 points: it is just that the game isn't really built for it, and you'll likely not get a compelling Warhammer experience from it.

Ultimately, Warhammer is a game about regimental, mass combat. It doesn't work in a way that means smaller games are more accommodating to smaller units, and instead it just promotes having fewer units. Games below 1000 points, in the current rules set, are fun and entertaining, but are not the real point of the game, and you could easily have more fulfilling hobby experiences from other games better suited to that model count.

The 8th edition of Warhammer may be a game about regimental blocks of 20+ infantry models. It was designed as such to rip off players by forcing them to buy at least two boxes of each infantry unit to have a decently sized regiment.

But this was not always the case. Not that many years ago you didn't really need a small fortune to build an army.

And anyway, a mass battles game? Mass battles? Two armies of 100-120 models engaged in combat is a mass battle?

Warhammer has, since 4th edition, been about big skirmishes/dark ages small battles. Because, when it comes down to 28mm scale, you need an extremely huge gaming table to truly represent a real "mass battle" in the first place.

The current 8th edition is halfway between a skirmish game and a real mass batles game. Sadly it's neither of the two, and it carries the downsides of both (a level of micro-managing suited to skirmish games but here applied to a mass battles wannabe). That's why I consider it a mess, and really far from what Oldhammer is meant to be.

I think it's been long accepted that each miniature in WFB represents a cohort of arbitrary size, and not a single warrior. 10-20 men per infantry model would make sense, as that puts a 20 man infantry regiment at 200-400 men in practice, which seems about right.

IIRC Rick Priestley mentioned in an interview that the original idea was a 20:1 ratio when he and Richard Halliwell designed WFB. Who knows if that's still accepted by the current design team.

In terms of oldhammer, I have a soft spot for pre-demons 7th ed. I really like 7th, it was the army books that ruined the edition, in my opinion, not the core rules.

 Polonius wrote:
I think it's been long accepted that each miniature in WFB represents a cohort of arbitrary size, and not a single warrior. 10-20 men per infantry model would make sense, as that puts a 20 man infantry regiment at 200-400 men in practice, which seems about right.

Accepted by who?

If you want your regiment to represent a cohort of arbitrary size, you go the "regiment base" route like KoW (in example) does.

But WFB does not do that. Regiments are composed of individual models.

What is the general mounted on his dragon meant to represent then? 10-20 dragons?

Hmmm ... interesting reading all the thoughts here. I am now reconsidering 5th edition, perhaps with a house rule capping magic items. My fondest WFB memories are from 5th and I really enjoyed the size of battles. Even at 2000 pts there were a decent number of models on the table but nothing crazy.

Either that or 6th with Ravening Hordes. Saves me the expense and effort of trying to hunt down 6th edition army books anyway. I'll miss my Bretonnians' hero vows (my general always ran with Virtue of Knightly Temper and it's become part of his fluff) but think that would be the most fair.

I guess nothing stops us from focusing on 1000-1500 point battles.


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 Korinov wrote:

NWansbutter wrote:I'm also wondering what it is about 8th that makes it not workeable below 2000 points?

You mean "beyond" 2000 points?

This is merely my personal opinion, but really, I think WHFB has never really scaled well beyond the 2000 points mark. And with the latest editions it just got worse, as the succesive armybooks just made virtually all units cheaper and cheaper. Plus everything has special rules now, everything. Look at elves. The core, basic dark elf warriors now have Hatred (High Elves), Always Strike First and Murderous Prowess (re-roll to wound 1s in close combat). In 6th they just had the Hatred (High Elves) army-wide rule.

No, I meant under 2000 points because I often see people complaining that this is a problem with 8th edition, that it doesn't work below 2000 and this therefore "forces" people to play bigger and bigger battles with bigger and bigger armies (especially given the points reductions on troops).

 NWansbutter wrote:


No, I meant under 2000 points because I often see people complaining that this is a problem with 8th edition, that it doesn't work below 2000 and this therefore "forces" people to play bigger and bigger battles with bigger and bigger armies (especially given the points reductions on troops).

8th works fine under 2000 points. If you have a closed gaming group where no one is using hordes then standard size units of 10 and 20 models like you saw in 4th-7th work fine. In fact it makes for an enjoyable game because "step up" makes it so those infantry blocks actually do something in the battle. 8th becomes awkward when one side is using hordes and one side is not, same goes for magic heavy. A big problem in 4th-7th was if a cav unit charged infantry all it had to do was cause 6 wounds and there were no attacks back and the infantry lost combat. In the old days infantry rested all their hopes on the "magic 5" to combat res, 3 ranks + standard + out number. If they lost that they were usually toast.

However I will agree with many others, that the 8th ed army books are packed with way too many special rules. 6th or 7th ed army books seem to work great with 8th ed rule book.

 Korinov wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I think it's been long accepted that each miniature in WFB represents a cohort of arbitrary size, and not a single warrior. 10-20 men per infantry model would make sense, as that puts a 20 man infantry regiment at 200-400 men in practice, which seems about right.

Accepted by who?

If you want your regiment to represent a cohort of arbitrary size, you go the "regiment base" route like KoW (in example) does.

But WFB does not do that. Regiments are composed of individual models.

What is the general mounted on his dragon meant to represent then? 10-20 dragons?

I can dig up my Warhammer 3rd edition book, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of the earlier editions. Could be wrong.

As for individual heros, I think that was always seen as being a general and his retinue, which admittedly for dragons becomes a bit credibiilty straining. Still, given the scale issues of some of the earlier models, a single hero on Dragon looked better next to 20 basic infantry, rather than 400.

I'm also interested in oldehammer, as the idea of the new rules don't really intrigue me. Do most army books have a 4th/5th edition equivalent? I haven't played fantasy too long, but in 40k army books sometimes stayed across multiple rule editions.

Polonius wrote:I can dig up my Warhammer 3rd edition book, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned in one of the earlier editions. Could be wrong.

As for individual heros, I think that was always seen as being a general and his retinue, which admittedly for dragons becomes a bit credibiilty straining. Still, given the scale issues of some of the earlier models, a single hero on Dragon looked better next to 20 basic infantry, rather than 400.

I don't know about 3rd edition, Warhammer was mostly a skirmish game by then, I really doubt those small warbands with three-four units and a special character were meant to represent huge armies.

I can easily accept one of the developers may have said it at a certain point, it could have been his vision of the game, but to me it makes no sense. If I want to play a mass battle game I'll go for a regiment-based system where the regiment is actually meant to represent a full unit and acts accordingly.

Krungle wrote:I'm also interested in oldehammer, as the idea of the new rules don't really intrigue me. Do most army books have a 4th/5th edition equivalent? I haven't played fantasy too long, but in 40k army books sometimes stayed across multiple rule editions.

Yes. Although with some minor discrepancies. One would be Ogre Kingdoms (which were added to the game in late 6th edition). The other would be the Vampire Counts / Tomb Kings split, which happened (if I remember correctly) in late 5th edition with the first Vampire Counts armybook and a Tomb Kings list in a White Dwarf. Up until then there was the Undead armybook from 4th.