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Been playing Fantasy since 1996, can safely say this edition has fixed almost every problem I had with the game in all previous editions. Though I must admit each new army book is showing worrying signs of power creep (IMO anyway).

'cept Dwarfs - Dwarfs play like Dwarfs always should have done, absolutely rock hard!

Sounds like the rules are fairly solid, how does it fare for game balance? I hear skaven and dark elves are a bit powerful

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
Sounds like the rules are fairly solid, how does it fare for game balance? I hear skaven and dark elves are a bit powerful

It's pretty balanced, all things considered. A few armies lag behind, but most armies can field a highly competitive list. If you're not going for highly competitive, there's a ton of options for most armies that are still solid.

Skaven and Dark Elves were two that were arguably ahead, and DE have since been reined back slightly with their new book (but are still great). Skaven still have an older book, so 2 point slaves with rerollable Ld10 in an edition that introduced Steadfast can be a little annoying.

I'd disagree with power creep. 7th was getting some power creep (VC, then DE, then... oh god... the 7th Daemons book), 8th is reining things in a little.

There is very little power creep compared to 40K.

TK and O&G were about here -
And then Ogres were here ^
Then WoC was also here ^ (not sure why people disagree)
Then Empire was here -
And VC was here - to ^
Then Doc was _
And HE and DE are - to ^

Creep means a slowly steadily increasing line of /

Yay, ascii graphing. But it hasn't been consistent. The only real standouts to me were a few builds in a few armies. Like HE banner vs. DoC. That's just a groin kick.

 Evertras wrote:

 ThunderFury 2575 wrote:
Sounds like the rules are fairly solid, how does it fare for game balance? I hear skaven and dark elves are a bit powerful

It's pretty balanced, all things considered. A few armies lag behind, but most armies can field a highly competitive list. If you're not going for highly competitive, there's a ton of options for most armies that are still solid.

Skaven and Dark Elves were two that were arguably ahead, and DE have since been reined back slightly with their new book (but are still great). Skaven still have an older book, so 2 point slaves with rerollable Ld10 in an edition that introduced Steadfast can be a little annoying.

I'd disagree with power creep. 7th was getting some power creep (VC, then DE, then... oh god... the 7th Daemons book), 8th is reining things in a little.

7th edition's power creep went;
High Elves (Nov '07 IIRC?)
VC's (March '08)
DoC (May '08 - and thus began THE summer of infamy)
DE's (Aug '08)
WoC (Nov '08)
Lizzies (Feb '09)
Skaven (Nov '09)

High Elves were the first to raise the bar due to 'super ASF' and because of how combat worked. VC's then trumped them with vampire powers and insane pts denial. DoC were pretty much unbeatable and basically caused the outright destruction of any semblance of external balance.

Dark Elves showed up and finally had enough dirty tricks to compete with Daemons.

WoC became the first army to field a true Deathstar with the double Warshrine + Festus + Chosen unit w/Favour of the Gods. Enjoy facing that 4+/4++/5+ regen unit of doom!

Lizzies then got super-slaans and their Cupped Balls of the Old Ones, and finally Skaven were just silly both in terms of their power level and the FAQ needed to sort them out!

By the end though, the true 'God Tier' armies were Dark Elves & Skaven and though DoC stayed really strong, the other two squeezed out more victories on the hard-core tournament scene and Dark Elves especially had some of the heaviest ETC restrictions.

 DukeRustfield wrote:
There is very little power creep compared to 40K.

TK and O&G were about here -
And then Ogres were here ^
Then WoC was also here ^ (not sure why people disagree)
Then Empire was here -
And VC was here - to ^
Then Doc was _
And HE and DE are - to ^

Creep means a slowly steadily increasing line of /

Yay, ascii graphing. But it hasn't been consistent. The only real standouts to me were a few builds in a few armies. Like HE banner vs. DoC. That's just a groin kick.

BotWD is awful to face as Daemons, but Alarielle Light Covens are much, much worse... that's about Fantasy's equivalent of having your testicles forcibly removed and set on fire while you watch.

I'd argue that High Elves are ahead of Dark Elves, simply because Dark Elves die like flies when you hit them. High Elves on the other hand get ward saves they can buff, alongside 2+ save units, Martial Prowess, Frosties and one of the game's most OTT special characters in the Everqueen. (she's really 'the new' Teclis)
Dark Elves are still potent, but they really are made of glass. High Elves have really become 'the resilient elves'.

WoC on the other hand are a kinda a bit of both really...
They're super popular, basically akin to Fantasy's version of Space Marines, thus you get all levels of skill involved with them. While numerous competitive events tend to see WoC in/near the top spots, you also tend to see a disproportionate number of WoC in the bottom spots too, suggesting that a lot of less skilled players take them because they're supposedly an easy army to beat face with.
So while their book is probably the most readily OTT from just a casual read through and their power lists are filthy-good, it also seems to attract a lot of players who aren't skilled enough to use those crutches properly.

The ruleset is ok, but it's completely undermined by one aspect of the game - Steadfast.

Steadfast is near impossible to get rid of, unless you have a point and click regiment destroying spell. They could have introduced the concept of using flanking and hammer and anvil tactics to counter it, but nope, that would have been hard.

So now you have spells like Purple Sun, Pit and Dwellers, which are more or less WHFB's versions of Titan Killer weapons. Except where D strength weapons kill everything equally, you have some armies being able to shrug off Purple Sun and Pit, since, for whatever reason, GW decided to make them target initiative, the most varied of stats. They aren't that hard to cast either - getting a 15+ isn't hard to get if you roll 6 dice. Even an expendable level 1 mage can pull it off.

So you have a game where, if you don't have access to these regiment destroying spells, you get murdered by hoards. If you play a low ini army and your opponent chooses Lore of Death and rolls Pit, your regiments get eaten in a couple of magic phases. That isn't really good balance.

I really like the warhammer rules though I know some people dont like the magic and large blocks of troops. Personally I think thats really cool and its one reason why I like fantasy and I still find that other units like monsters and cavalry are still useful you just cant build a full list of them.

Then again Ive never played another edition of fantasy so it may be the worst of the lot I just dont know haha

Experiment 626 wrote:

7th edition's power creep went;
High Elves (Nov '07 IIRC?)
VC's (March '08)
DoC (May '08 - and thus began THE summer of infamy)
DE's (Aug '08)
WoC (Nov '08)
Lizzies (Feb '09)
Skaven (Nov '09)

High Elves were the first to raise the bar due to 'super ASF' and because of how combat worked. VC's then trumped them with vampire powers and insane pts denial. DoC were pretty much unbeatable and basically caused the outright destruction of any semblance of external balance.

Dark Elves showed up and finally had enough dirty tricks to compete with Daemons.

WoC became the first army to field a true Deathstar with the double Warshrine + Festus + Chosen unit w/Favour of the Gods. Enjoy facing that 4+/4++/5+ regen unit of doom!

Lizzies then got super-slaans and their Cupped Balls of the Old Ones, and finally Skaven were just silly both in terms of their power level and the FAQ needed to sort them out!

By the end though, the true 'God Tier' armies were Dark Elves & Skaven and though DoC stayed really strong, the other two squeezed out more victories on the hard-core tournament scene and Dark Elves especially had some of the heaviest ETC restrictions.

Good to know, I actually took a break a bit after the 7th DoC book came out, so I was most just casually watching the others come by. I started with VC when their book came out, actually. Store owner steered me towards them, and I really enjoyed them for a while. The store owner also played DE at the time and was wrecking face with the older book, going to GTs and the like... I do remember that he basically went to god tier after the newer book came out, but again, I was more on the sidelines at the time.

So while their book is probably the most readily OTT from just a casual read through and their power lists are filthy-good, it also seems to attract a lot of players who aren't skilled enough to use those crutches properly.

Hey, I resemble that remark. :(