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Hello Fantasy Players.

I played in 5th and haven't played since, the most recent GW rules I have played are 4th edition WH40k. I'm still in the hobby, just mostly with historical homebrew now.

A friend of mine with some visual arts ability was expressing interest in getting into WHFB as Skaven with a starter box - the one with the two rat ogres and equivalent of three boxes of rats plus support bits. At least initially, I'd probably just be playing Night Goblins to give us a decent game at low points levels. If my friend also expands his force in the next six months or so I would probably grab a few boxes of Orcs, or if I get converty I might try out the Ravening Hordes Chaos Dwarf list.

I understand Orcs have a relatively recent army book that makes the basic Orc a fairly good buy. My questions are: how old are the other army books, what are the expected release dates for forthcoming books, and who seems likely to get an update after that? If I decided that I wanted to play something besides greenskins, I'd want an army on the opposite side of the release cycle, so I'd be able to have at least one batch of figures with which I could begin to build a competitive army, should I so choose.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

I answered this question on a different forum a couple weeks ago, so I can cut and paste:



All of the armies are 'playable' under the current rules. Vampires and Dark Elves will be done soon - there's been previews for both and GW officially has a 4-6 month preview window. Demons have already been confirmed as coming out next spring. I'd expect all of Demons, Vampire Counts and Dark Elves to be out by Christmas of next year.

Dwarves haven't got a 7th edition book yet. They received a very late 6th edition book after most the 7th ed. rules were finalized though, so they won't be redone for a longtime. Aside from Thorek being a bit overpowered, they're really very solid.

Hordes of Chaos and Beasts of Chaos haven't been revised in awhile. They're both OK, but there's not a lot of variety in the lists. I'd expect Chaos Warriors to get a slight points decrease and Chaos Knights to get a slight increase when they get redone.

Wood Elves were released late in 6th edition. Nonethless, their army book is uneven. I'm currently collecting a Wood Elf army. The main issue with Wood Elves is what's good (Treemen, Hail of Doom Arrow) is really, really good, and what sucks (most of the Kindreds) is really useless and overpriced. I'd expect significant changes to restore internal balance to the book when it gets revisited. I don't expect that to be for at least another couple years.

Tomb Kings are another late 6th ed. book. I don't expect them to get redone soon. There's a few questionable combos, but on the whole they're pretty balanced. They also had a new range of models for their core, which suggests a long gap between updates.

Bretonnians dominated the tourney scene awhile back with the 'Royal Air Force' flying pegasus knight armies. They won't be revisited soon, but when they do it's fair to expect Pegasus Knights will be brutally nerfed.

Skaven are another army that will see changes when it gets redone. The current army book by Alessio Cavatore is a power gamer's wet dream. As a result I'd expect them to be done sooner rather than late (but not before 2009). The current shooty army of death build will likely get weakened, but I don't expect the core of traditional Skaven armies to change a huge amount.

Ogre Kingdoms I haven't heard a great deal about recently. Like Tomb Kings, their entire range is new, so they likely won't get redone until GW has something new to add.

Lizardmen are a great list and are well supported. Their book has been out awhile though. They don't need any major changes that I can think of though. If they do get redone, I'd expect it to be mostly minor rebalancing.

Chaos Dwarves have received no love since 5th edition and are scrapping by on the 6th ed. Ravening Hordes supplement list. GW has stated that they aren't abandoning the army, but given that they need an entire new model range, new rules and likely new fluff and art as well, I wouldn't expect to see them till 2010 or later.


In general, heavy/elite infantry is currently weaker than the designers want and cavalry is a little too dominant. You'll continue to see the trend in Empire, High Elves, etc. continue. Heavy cavalry will be more and more a Special choice or trimmed back in hitting power, and elite infantry units will get additional rules and bonuses to help them survive against cavalry and hordes.

All the speculation here is best guesses and intuition, not any sort of inside source.

Thanks for filling me in, Asmodai (which makes me think, since when did they transfer you to 6th Company? )

Leaning mostly towards doing two blocks of Warriors plus one Blunderbuss with three big blocks of Goblins and some Marauders as "Wild Men of Dunland" - type guys counting as Hobgoblins, donating their shields to the Warriors to clarify everyone's allegiance. If I end up being the underdog against the big lists then so be it - plus I sort of like the idea of unleashing volleys of hot leaden death through the edges of my cheap units of expendable slaves... (you CAN shoot templates into combat, right?)

wight_widow wrote:(you CAN shoot templates into combat, right?)

My gaming group says "No". I wanted to "aim" my flame cannon a tad before an opponent's block who was in combat with some of my guys, so I wouldn't "Aim" on a meleed unit, but they kept saying that this was impossible, that I could only pick units as targets and not units that were in melee.
If someone can correct this, please do, as I don't mind shoving things like this in their face. :p

No aiming at units in combat
Except for scaven
This includes template weapons (and intentionally winging a unit in combat is pretty much an obvious abuse of the rules)