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I play and love both 40k and Fantasy. I started with buying 40k, but my first experience with an actual group of gamers was fantasy. I generally associate fantasy with "The good times" simply because WHFB at my local shop was played by the "chill" players, IE the ones who are there to have fun and play fun games with each other, while the 40k crowd is those same fantasy players mixed with a lot of "If I win this game my manhood will increase in size." style players who go for a win at all costs, etc.

I really enjoy both games, and I think either one can be very enjoyable depending upon the environment and players in which the game is enjoyed. I think the recommendations to "try before you buy" are good, and I'm sure the local players wouldn't mind sitting down with you and another play and walking you through a match (I know I wouldn't! )

Both games have a lot of appeal based of the type of experience you want to have. While people complain about both games having balance issues, the problems tend to have solutions. A powerful land raider can get cracked by a melta or a powerful HQ gets shot by an instant kill (if they lack EW) or gets JotWW'd into oblivion and there goes a the huge point cost of those models down the drain.
Or an awesome Lord in fantasy can get cracked by a good spell, or kills himself AND his squad with his own miscasted spell, and there goes usually double the points that a 40k HQ would have down the drain...
Basically it's ALL about preference. Personally I hate vehicles in 40k, so that system is flawed already for me (as you take armor rating objects or you lose) But even with such a glaring problem for me I still enjoy the game.

Tl;dr: Both games are can be fun, try fantasy out, you might like it as much or more, or at least enough to make it worth buying.

micahaphone wrote:I personally don't play fantasy, but whenever I see it, it looks so boring. Giant squares of (in general) really crappy soldiers, mostly just there to tie up the enemy, a few giga/mega/whathaveyoutermforamazing special models (dragons, steam tanks, plague furnaces, ect.), a crazy good, unstoppable leader, and hidden surprises (fanatics in a goblin squad, ect.). If buying extra trays is nearly essential to move your troop blocks around, then I really don't want to bother.


Every fantasy player I have met has always said "It's a more tactical game than 40k", or something along those lines. All I see is "hide the super killy unit/character in blocks of infantry and unleash him at the right time".

And space wolves hiding their killy HQs inside large units of fenresian wolves is different how?

Ork units being nothing more than "power klaw delivery systems" is different how?

Sorry, but I found this post to touch a nerve...as this is what most 40k people say who've never played a game of fantasy in their lives, but feel they can speak for it.

You see "crappy soldiers" and I see "acurrately represented models" sorry if it's not a game with 9 foot tall super humans. (who by the way, have a worse stat line than some of these crappy soldiers you're making fun of).

I play both 40k and fantasy, love playing both. If I had to pick only 1 to play, it would be fantasy hands down if nothing more than variety, and actual thinking required during all phases of a game.

In 40k, out of all the codexes, a large portion of them are just copy-pasting the exact same thing (space marines) and adding a few small special rules, to me that's more "boring" as you face the exact same thing over, and over, and over. And the meta of mech lists makes it even more generic to always see vehicles in every list you play against (yes, I even run a mech ork list).

In fantasy, almost every army is unique as compared to the others, with only a couple being very similar (high elves vs dark elves). You can't simply list build for what the meta is, as there isn't such a cut and dry meta.

And warhammer has come a long way from 7th edition "herohammer" that you described (I'm assuming you haven't seen any 8th games, just 7th). My dark elves list has done better and better the more characters I remove from it. I am down to the bare bones, a general and a bsb. So far it's worked great relying on my "crappy troops" to take out the enemy.

I won't even get into the combat/shooting dynamics that fantasy has that 40k just ignores. (I still laugh when someone says they can shoot my trukk with their lascannon, even though it's 3 feet away with 4 buildings, 3-4 vehicles blocking the line except for a small spec, so they get TLOS and can hit on 3+...right)

Anyway, I'm not trying to be hostile, just wanting to give an argument for the other side...all in all I enjoy both, and as already stated one is more tactical (40k) while the other requires more strategy (fantasy). I just hate it when someone tries to discredit the other as "crappy or boring."

With reference to Warhammer being balanced, what happened to daemons hands down crushing all other lists?
Last I heard, if you didn't play Daemons, VC, or DE, you were pretty much screwed. I know a number of people who left the game over that.

Ketara wrote:With reference to Warhammer being balanced, what happened to daemons hands down crushing all other lists?
Last I heard, if you didn't play Daemons, VC, or DE, you were pretty much screwed. I know a number of people who left the game over that.

Capping the magic phase at 12 dice and changing how power dice are generated nerfed all three of those armies, mostly daemons and VC as their 20+ power dice lists went away.
With the generic magic lore being buffed, the daemon specific, vamp specific, and dark elf specific magic isn't as powerful (in comparison) so armies like bretonnia, empire and lizardmen can pack stronger magic.

I've actually already posted this elsewhere, so I'll copy paste what I said over there, it mostly goes over daemons, but applies to VC also:

Fear took a huge hit, you no longer need to test to charge/get charged by fear causing enemies. Also auto break from out number fear causing is gone

Steadfast made it so all those armies that outnumbered daemons, but still lost combat don't just run away.

Magic is capped at 12 dice per turn, so those crazy 22 power dice magic phases went by the way side.

Since they are usually the ones outnumbered (unless against a couple of armies) they don't really gain the bonus of steadfast.

the % system forces them to have to play 2500 point games to take a competitive Lord choice

The armies that daemons did the best against, received a lot of bonuses from steadfast (like skaven, orcs and goblins, any low leadership army).

That's really all I can think of right now, I'm sure I'll remember more tomorrow when it's not 4 am and I'm trying to figure out why I'm still awake.

All I know, is in 7th my record against daemons was at about a 15% chance of winning. This edition I've gone a total of 7-1 this edition against them. (granted, 7 of those 8 games were with a new army, dark elves, which I didn't play in 7th).

They are still a top competitor, just not THE dominant force they were.


PS - I'm sure others will weigh in on this.

As for Dark Elves, I never really saw their power builds in 7th, I play them now, but I didn't even own a model in 7th edition.

From what I can tell, step up and steadfast are the two big ones, they relied on nuking the front rank of whatever they were fighting, not taking anything in return, and breaking the unit from combat resolution. With step up now the fact the entire army is T3 and 5+ AS at best comes out as a huge weakness, as horde units of S3 infantry can even put a hurting on them.

Ketara wrote:With reference to Warhammer being balanced, what happened to daemons hands down crushing all other lists?
Last I heard, if you didn't play Daemons, VC, or DE, you were pretty much screwed. I know a number of people who left the game over that.

That was 7th edition. 8th has changed a lot that put those lists at the top (though I'm not sure about daemons). In particular, Vampire Counts lost the "auto-break on outnumbering win" effect from Fear, which makes it somewhat easier to deal with their zombie blocks. And the new casting rules affect their ability to spam the same spells over and over that had been abused in 7th edition.

Mr. Gold:

There's several reasons I gave up on Warhammer Fantasy. The first was that I was tired of collecting models that are essentially wound markers for a unit; blocks ain't my style for skirmish-scaled games. The second was that I don't like games with explicit rules for tactical advantages; the whole Combat Resolution, particularly stuff like the +1 for flank charges and the like. Thirdly, the game seems to work best with the bare minimum of scenery, which seems really important to miniatures games (at least to me).

Fortunately I found a better use for my fantasy models...

Nurglitch wrote:Mr. Gold:

There's several reasons I gave up on Warhammer Fantasy. The first was that I was tired of collecting models that are essentially wound markers for a unit; blocks ain't my style for skirmish-scaled games. .

So I assume you always assign successful wounds against your squads to ICs?

And honestly the combat resolution system works much better in Fantasy than 40k in my opinion. It makes more sense that people barreling down upon my flank would cause me to crap a brick and run than it does for me to go "Hey, he killed two guy and I only killed one out of a 10+ man sqaud... I'm clearly terrified."

lucasbuffalo:

Your assumption is incorrect. I assign wounds based on utility.

Furthermore a flank charge in 40k does have an effect, that of preventing regrouping. Most units can only Fall Back 2D6", so if you charge a flank, and the unit is forced to Fall Back, then they won't be able to Fall Back beyond the 6" within which an enemy unit cannot Regroup.

Which brings me back to my point: Flanking in 40k doesn't need a special bonus because doing so successfully is its own reward.

If you want to imagine that the falling back unit is crapping a brick because people are barreling down their flank, then preventing regrouping works just as well as assigning a bonus to a flank attack, and has the added benefit of not requiring extra rules.

Consider it like this: Suppose you have two games, with both games have two rules. Now, Game A may use each of its rules to achieve a game state, and Game B may use both rules to achieve one of four game states. All else being equal, Game B is better, because it allows players room to

Incidentally that's why I'm moving away from WFB linear bonuses like +x to y and more towards W40k non-linear bonuses like re-rolls, because they result in more elegant game rules that both beginners can enjoy learning (easy to learn) and veterans can enjoy developing (lots of learning about permutations in the rules). Games that develop as players learn about the permutations in the rules have greater depths of play, and that's why I prefer W40k to WFB: There's greater strategic and tactical depth than is apparent in the rules.

I think you have some excellent points, however I like feel of fantasy. While a 40k hero or troop may have a good level of customization within a given 5th ed. codex, I like the extreme level of customization in fantasy, it feels more like older codexes like SoB's current one. I just really enjoy customization and I think fantasy really lets that tailoring aspect play a larger role.

As for the "wound markers" comment, I'm really unclear what you're talking about it seems. Maybe a bit of elaboration?

lucasbuffalo:

The "wound markers" comment is about how, at least in earlier editions of WFB, models that weren't in the front ranks couldn't fight and basically got removed as the unit took wounds.

Some people might say the same thing about models in W40k, but at least those models can shoot, and in the 5th edition are likely to contribute more to combat than some abstract bonus. Plus there are tactics regarding the disposition of unit members that players can leverage, such as the lightbulb for minimizing the impact of a charge, gain cover, and so on.

I'm much more of a fantasy person over a sci-fi person...which is probably why I picked Daemons over marines or some other shoot 'em up team.

But I play 40k cuz the friends who introduced me to it play 40k...and its just not that fun if you're the only one. Sometimes I look with jealousy at the full plated armor and fantasy style of Warhammer FB, but then I realize I would be doing it all by my lonesome.

Nurglitch: Play elves, they almost always all get to swing

Nah, I think I'll use the time to play W40k. I actually like that game.

The way I see it, 40k is a small scale squad on squad sort of scenario.

Fantasy represents all out warfare, with the regiments representing something like a 1:50 scale or something. So that unit of 20 spearmen, is actually a regiment of 1000 strong, or something like that.

Mr.Church13 wrote:

Voodoo Boyz wrote:I'm finding Warmachine/Hordes MK2 to be far superior

We are planning to get it here in next year. Right now everybody is busy collecting GW stuff.
Btw how superior is Warmachine compare to GW's Warhammer series?

Warmachine (while very fun to play in it's own right) to me is just not as customizeable as the GW games (I play both 40k and Fantasy with a little blood bowl on the side). It felt like you can only play each faction one way to get a win. Even then there just never felt like there were enough options to begin with. Of course Mk2 may have changed this alltogether but I still like the option to play my Space Marines or Empire armies a dozen different ways then have to completely switch factions to go from fast CC force to Big Guns shooty force.

But that's just one guys OPINION. So just give me a minute to raise my flame sheild.

I really think it's hard to judge the system when it's still fairly new.

I still haven't seen an example on how it's still unbalanced, because of magic? Almost every army has access to the spells in the BRB, and the ones that don't (TK, OnG, ogres, skaven) have decent magic of their own. (Waaagh! can be a game breaker, TK shooting a million shots a turn, skaven is pretty solid, and ogres can buff like crazy!). It might have made the magic phase more imbalanced than other phases, but not on armies imho.

Yes, there's a couple stragglers, in the likes of wood elves/orcs and goblins/TK (hey, so does 40k! necrons, dark eldar (though they are getting a new book in about a week and a half). And rumor has it orcs are up early next year, followed by TK.

But the majority of armies can play well against each other.

How is the game less strategical? Because they removed guess ranges? I'll agree that's annoying. But the game is still very much difficult. Especially with the big spells, you can lose your general on turn 1 and have to dig yourself out of a ditch (like I've accomplished on more than one occasion).

But as I said at the beginning, it's too early to claim any sort of "tier" system until all possible strategies have been tried out, I think people haven't started cooling down on the horde rule until recently...


ANYWAY, back OT:

Both systems have their strong points, people may not like one system, but to call it inferior and run it through the ringer as a crappy game is just idiocy imho. With 8th edition out, both systems now have a nice rules set, it makes me excited to play both games!