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The things that kill it for me:

At first glance the formations etc are very cool, but after doing a lot of reading and playing other games I find that Warhammer Fantasies concept of formations and formation fighting are not very believable. I prefer the smaller scale ancients games for formation fighting.

Magic is can be fun but the process is a pain. For me as a Lizardmen player I have a lot of magic potential. But generating spells, then magic and yadda yadda actually makes me hate that phase. I would rather each mage have a limit of spell dice a turn (factored by profile and gear etc) and can cast magic of certain groups provided he have the magic dice for it. It becomes a not very fun part of what could be a phase of cool strategy.

So many models. Wouldnt be a problem but since the formation fighting is bad, each model is actually needed. You cant have a fixed base formation like in other games I have played. Instead, annoyingly, your models fight to the death unless on the rare occasion they happen to flee the board. Its stupid and just makes you have rank after rank of models numbering in the 100s depending on the faction.

Another one that bothers me about most GW games is leaders and heroes are 99% of the time only good for their killing value. In real life we have leaders who roamed the battle fields giving orders and inspiring troops to do their jobs. In GW fantasy lands, leaders dont actually lead. They have minor buffs to leader ship, but they arent normally seen actually leading a army. This bothers me greatly. Especially when I hear that their old small scale games used to rely on commanders giving orders etc.

The boards are plain. Because of how formations work and you end up with HUGE blocks everywhere, the board has to be open and flat a lot of the time to allow these huge blocks to be placed.

I guess the scale is an issue too. I think lord of the rings has pretty good formation fighting for its scale. Of course if the game gets huge then there is a problem but I think fantasy could learn from that game.

I think its all just a bit wrong. Its hard to start and is nothing like formations found in history.

From my experience it started around '08 when they started repackaging all the 20 man boxs as 10 man boxes, then the subsequence price raises that then happened to thows boxes. Vet's stopped building new armies, and new players were getting priced out of starting the game.

Then when 8th ed hit, many vet's just couldn't afford to update their armies for the new system and army books. So they dropped the game altogether.


6th ed and the quick turn around of 7th ed 40k has started putting the same pressures onto the 40k player base that 8th did to fantasy.



I will say thow, that the newer big kits in fantesy and 40k have been a huge bone to getting new blood into thows games, and getting vets to start new armies. Being able to take a single big monster that takes up most of your armie's points so you have less models to paint and buy has been really appealing to alot of people.

If it wasn't for stuff like the imperial knights, i feel like 7th would of been a much bigger flop.


This is just from my own personal experiences.

Joyboozer wrote:
It was supposed to be a game of mass battles, not mass pricing.

This is pretty much it in a nutshell.

I haven't played the fantasy version since the First Edition.

Simply no one in the USA wanted to play it, and I wasn't about to lug 300lbs of miniatures back-and-forth to England every time I went.

And, when it was finally exposed to historical miniatures, and studied all of the "why's" that existed with massed battles, WFB (and WAB) just seemed to be far too abstracted, and seemed too much like skirmish games pretending to be massed battles.

And every time I would return to check on WFB, it seemed like they had ventured further and further from the "massed" part of the "battles."

I mean... Look at the most popular tournament historical ancient's rules for the 80's/90's/00's: WRG's Ancient's Rules (perhaps the most complex and detailed rules outside of ICE), and DBM/MM.

Those WRG rules are nothing now, in terms of complexity and number of rules (and pages of rules) compared to WFB.

And they even produced Fantasy Combat versions of those rules that can handle any monster or force put on the table for WFB.

This subject comes down to a combination of prejudice for both WFB players, and for the players of other rules sets, and no small amount of subjective preference.

Also, WFB left behind the Dark Ages/Medieval genre, and are really closer to the Renaissance than to Ancients/Dark Ages genres, which is what a lot of people think of with Fantasy.

GW does do a wonderful job of providing background for their world, to provide its own form of genre... So... Based upon that, it is going to find a continued following for a while yet.

But as many others have noted... It has left behind its "massed" portion.

MB

I liked the fact the GW's setting resembled a real Renaisance/Early Modern setting; it set them apart from the legions of WOW or Final Fantasy wannabe settings with giant 20 feet long swords and a half elf witch clerics doing back flips while shoot fireballs from their toes

I liked how they once focused more on the human struggle of the setting.

Now its just a game about putting giant overpriced monster models on a table....

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
One more thought...

Was reconning Storm of Chaos WHF's jump the shark moment?

After getting all kinds of fan involvement and promising all sorts of cool evolutions of the timeline...

GW dropped it like a sack of Skaven poo.

Of course they did the same thing with both Armageddon and Black Crusade but it wasn't quite as blatant.

I definitely think it was, and always will be, a thing to do and had a big part to play.

ATXMILEY wrote:
I liked the fact the GW's setting resembled a real Renaisance/Early Modern setting; it set them apart from the legions of WOW or Final Fantasy wannabe settings with giant 20 feet long swords and a half elf witch clerics doing back flips while shoot fireballs from their toes

I liked how they once focused more on the human struggle of the setting.

Now its just a game about putting giant overpriced monster models on a table....

I will admit it set them apart, and that it is an original that melds Moorcock and Tolkien genres.

But I think they have tried to be a little too creative, and it began to be a little too unrecognizable from 40K.

But.... I would lump GW's WFB, and WOW into the same genre, with FF being a very different thing (although post FF 9, they began to veer sharply in the direction of WOW in their worlds, and away from the previous hard-ish Sci-Fi that was FF 7 - 9).

But all three do use incredibly exaggerated motifs as a part of their design elements.

MB

It's just a price issue, something GW never understands.

The world and factions are fine, the rules and gameplay is better than 40k. However it's insanely expensive to play, and faced with fantasy and the more popular/unique 40k the general public will usually go for 40k.

.....And way too many skulls.

8th edition major changes and general homogenization, as well as unit bloat really killed Fantasy.

It used to be, back during the 6th or 7th ed. books, that not every army had access to monsters. Empire didn't, outside of Ogre mercenaries, and many armies simply didn't have access to things. Chaos didn't have cannons outside of the Hellcannon, High Elves only had access to Dragons and Griffons, without these new Phoenixes and Flying Chariots. Empire didn't have access to units like Demigryph Knights. Dwarves still don't have access to monsters, but armies such as Bretonnians seem so woefully lacking compared to the menagerie of options new books can take.

Power Creep is also another major factor. The biggest change I remember was the High Elf Army Book back in 2007. While Daemons of Chaos were probably the army everyone associates with cheese, always strikes first for an entire army seemed a radical departure from the rules most were familiar with. Now, an army needs 2-3 army wide special rules as well as individual special rules, all of which can vary greatly in power.

The changes 8th brought in are definitely a major issue with Fantasy. Magic was pretty broken initially, and the "test or die" spells can still wreak a ton of havoc. Spells like Purple Sun can destroy Ogres while Elves and Warriors of Chaos walk away unscathed.

Army size was probably the major killer, though. This hobby is expensive, no matter how you slice it, and with 40 being the new 20-25 I'm not surprised it drove many people away. The amount of time spent assembling, painting and working out the army on its own seems ludicrous if you're not sure you will like the game, much less have opponents you enjoy playing with.

Ultimately, I'm a bit sad to see Fantasy go this way. 40k, at least at the very core of it's lore, it still somewhat remotely similar to what it was. With this new change, and the removal of the Old World and a shift to an even grimmer and more dramatic tone, I don't necessarily know that Warhammer Fantasy is in my future.

I think the biggest problem for WHFB is the price of entry. You need a LOT of models on the table for a functional army at 2000 points. Some armies are given to hordes and with GW selling boxes of five for $30 that really prices most people out of the game entirely. The cynical, pure greed moves like what they did with the Orcs hammered a whole lot of nails in the coffin.

Warhammer fantasy-what went wrong?

Prices went nuts. GW always did have higher-than-everyone-else prices, but what they want now is just ridiculous. The game has been losing players because of this for a few years now, the paperboy can't afford it anymore, and there you have it.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
One more thought...

Was retconning Storm of Chaos WHF's jump the shark moment?

After getting all kinds of fan involvement and promising all sorts of cool evolutions of the timeline...

GW dropped it like a sack of Skaven poo.

Of course they did the same thing with both Armageddon and Black Crusade but it wasn't quite as blatant.

It may not have been the moment when the game jumped the shark - but it was certainly a prime example of why playtesting and balancing is important before releasing the product on an unsuspecting populace.

They were expecting Chaos to roll out and lay waste, and instead they got....

'Dude, you just stepped on a pile of chaos and squished it...'

Then they decide... Chaos lays waste anyway, 'cause... REASONS!!!1!

Got a bunch of people ticked off.

Sorry GW, you may have wanted the mighty tide of CHAOS, but what you got was creamed Khorne.

The fact that GW has admitted in the past, publicly, on the pages of White Dwarf, that they don't listen to playtesters... and admitted, in public, on their financial report, that they don't study the market....

I think that I have a good idea as to why Fantasy is failing.

The Auld Grump - who does not believe that the new edition will help.

*EDIT* A Rusty & Co. strip that sums up the problem with Storm of Chaos....

Not to sound too much like a grognard (although I certainly fit the bill), I've played WHFB literally since v1... I played regularly up through v6 and then slowly started to taper off. v7 (or was it v8, I forget) lost me... For lots of reasons, to be honest.

The only thing that'd keep me playing GW games is the network effect of good people to play against/with.

I guess, setting aside any of the issues with GW's recent policies and focusing on the rules, the primary issue I have with WHFB/40K is that the core of the current GW rules are, in essence, the exact same mechanics (UGO/IGO, move/shoot/assault, Roll to hit/wound/save on a d6, 2d6 LD test for morale) that Don Featherstone first laid out in his books on wargaming back in the '60's

But there's a great deal of creativity out there now. It's a lot like having some friends over for a boardgame night and then have someone suggest we play Monopoly when there's Takenoko, 7 Wonders, Catan, or any number of other great games out there that have a much better play experience. Sure Monopoly can be fun with the right group, but 99% of the time I'd rather play a *better* game with that same group!

The core GW rules, to me, feel a heck of a lot like playing Monopoly with a bunch of stuff "tacked on". But there's so many rules sets out there with, for want of a better term, more "modern" mechanics.

I absolutely love how Flames of War handles the levels of training of a unit (Green, Regular, Veterans) separate from their morale. Veteran units know the in's and out's of combat, and in FoW that's far better represented than just giving them a +1LD, an extra attack (perhaps), and better weapons options. Better still, you can create the (very historical) examples of Veteran units that just don't want to be fighting anymore...

I love how Malifaux has introduced a deck/hand management function in a miniatures game, but even more than that has created a VP system that leads to a much more interesting game than "line them up and try to kill the other side". Not to mention the ability to build a list after you know what you are trying to accomplish!

KoW has a clean system that takes "old" UGO/IGO and D6's and creates a new game that really can scale up in size without crashing in time-to-play. KoW, in particular, reminds me of how much of a breath of fresh air De Bellis Antiquitatus and De Bellis Multitudius were after years of the ever- increasingly creaking WRG Ancients rules... Not that DBA/DBM were the be-all and end-all for ancients but they *absolutely* saved ancients gaming with my old gaming group and we had some really, really fun campaigns using DBA that would not have been possible with a more cumbersome set of rules.

And there are, of course, a ton more options out there.

I'm normally a relative fan of random movement since players typically have too much control over their units, but v8 (yes?) just went too far with the random charges IMHO. I've seen far too many games turn solely on who rolls better for charge range...

I don't like the "evaporating" units as a mechanic anymore. Came around a lot on that. Used to think historicals with their wound markers were weird, but now I'm not at all a fan of the "movement tray with 6 models left on it" any more. It just ruins the aesthetic, not to mention not feeling at all "realistic" (and fully realizing that's something of a oxymoron) when you've read enough about ancient and medieval battles. Units just don't evaporate like that... And it leads to very silly late in game situations.

GW has never had a really workable magic system and Storm of Magic, for me, just proved it.

And the final nail in the coffin, for me, has been the trend towards "super models" (with super prices, natch) driving things. I have no interest in a game with Nagash on one side and some other super character on the other. but even before the current End Times stuff, that trend was well on its way and clear (albeit more on the 40K side).

<shrug>

Really, the last things GW had going for them in my mind are/were the models and the background. Well, that and the network effect, of course... From my perspective, I'm seeing a lot of slippage from GW on the models front vis a vis their competitors (and compared to what they'd been doing recently to boot!) And, at least wrt WHFB, they seem to be throwing the entire background out lock, stock, and barrel to create something new. So, in the end, that really puts GW (to my mind) almost completely in to the, "I'd play their games because the people I enjoy gaming with play their games" camp and nothing more.

Anyway, just rambling a bit with my crusty old grognard hat on... I'll stop now.

Valete,

JohnS

Another factor is competition from Kings of War.

The model range doesn't have the variety or quality of GW, but the rules are superior to 8th edition, and far better for large mass battle games with the abstraction of units as a single model in game terms. You can play a game twice the size in half the time.

People often just use their Warhammer armies to play KoW at this point, a trend that will continue if GW is planning to "squat" some of their armies.

10 years ago there wasn't really much in the way of popular competing rulesets and miniature lines, nowadays there is.

Also, AoW, Shieldwolf, WGF and various historical companies as competition on the miniatures side of things.

The overall feel of the fluff and story has become stale. It's almost become a parody of itself with the huge End Times characters. I am definitely nostalgic for the "way it was." There was a dark humor and irony in the previous edition's narrative.

At the end of the day, GW is the reason that Fantasy is a total failure.

Much the same, almost exactly to a T, they have used the business failure handbook to bloat themselves into a state of ignorance and believing their own hype to think that they are too big to fail.
Much the same as the banks, car companies, and other larger then economicly fiesable to continue, they have overextended themselves in every negative way possible that everyone else but them can set their watch by the obligatory price hike to now unacceptable proportions.
Retconning the game will be the last nail in the coffin.

No longer is it about gamers. It's all about the companies big wigs and their overpaid bank accounts on every one else's back.

They are too stupid to see what everyone else is eating GWs lunch over. Stupid business practices and near criminal levels of ineptitude.

I rather like the diversity of models added to the Armies. Allows for multiple themes and adds exciting new units to one's army. Otherwise, the lists tend to fall back into min/max's netlists.

I have to chime in on the competition front- I think I really agree with that. It could just be that my interest was waning anyway, but I switched to Hordes for a while as my main game. That was pretty much switching one tightly regulated property for another, albeit a better organised and written one.

But KoW made me get all my old Fantasy stuff out of the boxes and start making lists and so on again. All those free rules, a clean elegant ruleset, and easy enough to introduce new people to...

I still haven't gotten my plans off the ground, but once KoW planted the idea of using my stuff in other systems in my head, I pretty much only collect with multiple systems in mind. I think I will not be fooled into thinking I "have" to abide by the particular demands of whatever gaming company I am buying rules or models from again. I really can't fathom that I ever was.

We have seen a perfect storm for GW's core games, of a dramatic deterioration in the quality of the rules, an emphasis on new units instead of improving core ones model-wise, and the ever increasing prices. Fantasy has been the smaller of the two for quite some time now, coupled with the sheer weight of troops you need for an army and yeah, the entire thing became so unwieldy it's died a death.

GW have continued to push the outer barriers of their 'price elasticity' for a very long time. I think the elastic snapped.

I often use this metaphor, but Warhammer rapidly evolved into a Michael Bay movie, all flash and bang with no subtlety.

I can never find it, but I remember a 1000 point battle report in White Dwarf between Dwarfs and Bretonnians that had a fantastic narrative style. It was small scale, intimate with a relatively low model count and it pretty much guided my approach to Warhammer ever since.

Unfortunately, GW guided the game in the other direction and while you can of course do what you want with the rules, you can't always persuade your opponents into doing the same thing.

 snurl wrote:
Warhammer fantasy-what went wrong?

Prices went nuts.

The price certainly didn't help but that's probably not even half the real story as Fantasy has always been expensive, the cost of entry is idiotically high however. Personally I think that what really killed it off is the horrifically horrible mess that is 8th, a turgid and bloated ruleset if ever there was one. In addition to that the direction that the game has taken is a definite negative for me; Fantasy has always had elements of 'fantastic' fantasy but recently it has all been turned up to 11 much to the detriment to the fabric of the game itself (exactly the same thing has occurred with 40k).

If the rumours about the fluff massacre that 9th supposedly brings are accurate then Fantasy will almost certainly be doomed, well more doomed than it is now.

Yeah, at some point the line between "grim" or "mid range" fantasy shifted into crazy high fantasy. The Old World always had high fantasy elements, to be sure, but it was clear that those were weird. Wizards were powerful, but they were also feared and were always dablling with powers that could destroy them. Some armies were always more inherently magical (undead, daemones), but the focus was always on the poor bastards hacking each other in the scrum.

Look at the Empire. In 6th, they lost some of the goofier elements from 5th (war alter, war wagon, halfings, ogres), and were more or less a renaissance army, built around halbreds, handgunners, gothic cavalry, and a few artillery pieces. Sure, they had oddball stuff like pegasi and flaggellants and even the helblaster, but the army looked and played like a real world that was grappling with the insanity creeping into the world.

Now? You have knights riding wingless griffons flanking a magical war machine and popemobile. That's not grappling with insanity, that's taking it out for a nice seafood dinner.

 Flashman wrote:
I often use this metaphor, but Warhammer rapidly evolved into a Michael Bay movie, all flash and bang with no subtlety.

I can never find it, but I remember a 1000 point battle report in White Dwarf between Dwarfs and Bretonnians that had a fantastic narrative style. It was small scale, intimate with a relatively low model count and it pretty much guided my approach to Warhammer ever since.

Unfortunately, GW guided the game in the other direction and while you can of course do what you want with the rules, you can't always persuade your opponents into doing the same thing.

It was the battle of Grimdal's Tomb or something similar I believe (at least, I think that is what you refer to). The dwarves had to send a small party into the tomb to battle some skeletons and retrieve a warhammer whilst the main body of the force outside had to fend off the Bretonnians. It was an awesome report as I remember.

 filbert wrote:

 Flashman wrote:
I often use this metaphor, but Warhammer rapidly evolved into a Michael Bay movie, all flash and bang with no subtlety.

I can never find it, but I remember a 1000 point battle report in White Dwarf between Dwarfs and Bretonnians that had a fantastic narrative style. It was small scale, intimate with a relatively low model count and it pretty much guided my approach to Warhammer ever since.

Unfortunately, GW guided the game in the other direction and while you can of course do what you want with the rules, you can't always persuade your opponents into doing the same thing.

It was the battle of Grimdal's Tomb or something similar I believe (at least, I think that is what you refer to). The dwarves had to send a small party into the tomb to battle some skeletons and retrieve a warhammer whilst the main body of the force outside had to fend off the Bretonnians. It was an awesome report as I remember.

Spot on - that was the one. Found it now, time for a good read

http://s1205.photobucket.com/user/BrianBBergh/library/The%20Battle%20of%20Grimdals%20Tomb?sort=9&page=1

I'll sum it up in one word. COST.

The cost of entry into the Warhamer Game System is the single biggest factor in why I don't play anymore (or any GW Game). I sold all my Warhammer armies off, Tomb Kings and Skaven. I like doing big armies, I like doing unique armies that wrap around a background and are themed off it. Now, it's buy a big monster, same monster everyone has, and add a few grunts to it. For me to do a new Warhammer army to the standard and size I'd like, I'm probably dropping around £1000.

For that money, I could buy so much more from other games systems, which is what I've done. My last GW army was Orks 6 years ago and I spent around £1000 on it. Took me 3 years to complete it, and it's sat on a shelf ever since. No one in my local Games Club plays Warhamer or 40k anymore due to a) the cost, b) GW policy c) rules creep.

GW are no longer interested or encourage people to 'Hobby'. All they are interested in is how to make more £££ to satisfy the shareholders. This to me (and my games club) is not appealing and it's why we don't play or invest in Warhamer or 40k. It costs too much for what you get.

What drove me from Warhammer to 40k... circa 1996 or so... was that Warhammer was becoming Herohammer. We had our "generals" on Dragons, that cost half the points of our armies, and they smashed into each other. Sometimes, a warmachine or two would happen to get through the 3 saving throws that said character had [Black Amulet: Rebound a wound on a 4+. EVERY character had one.]

So I moved to 2nd edition 40k. A lascannon, on a grunt, could wipe out my opponent's general. Yes, he had to fail his Terminator Armour save [8- on 2d6] and maybe a 5+ invul... but I could easily kill him in one shot from my grunts. Sweet mother of the Emperor, every model meant something! It wasn't just 2 models smashing into each other in the middle of the board while everyone else waited to live or die based on the outcome of those two models.

...

...

...

A Knight you say? Trip-Tides? What's a Wraith Knight? How come half my army does nothing to them again? Why does Super Beast of Infinite destruction shrug off my Lascannon on a 3+? Why do I need to do 6HP to it? What use are these Lascannons if I can't kill you in 2 turns before you Stomp my army to death, even 1/4 games?

The scope has changed for these games. No matter how many 5 point Guardsmen you have, 70 Guardsmen are still going to get Stomped. Litteral words from the rules. Even 50 of them are going to get wiped before 5 Lascannons burn through half the HP of a Knight... just irritating.

-

 Flashman wrote:
I often use this metaphor, but Warhammer rapidly evolved into a Michael Bay movie, all flash and bang with no subtlety.

I can never find it, but I remember a 1000 point battle report in White Dwarf between Dwarfs and Bretonnians that had a fantastic narrative style. It was small scale, intimate with a relatively low model count and it pretty much guided my approach to Warhammer ever since.

Unfortunately, GW guided the game in the other direction and while you can of course do what you want with the rules, you can't always persuade your opponents into doing the same thing.

I don't think anyone here has put the problem in a frame that illustrates so clearly what the problem as, as comparing it to a Michael Bay movie.

That pretty much nailed it: all style, no substance.

MB

 Polonius wrote:
Yeah, at some point the line between "grim" or "mid range" fantasy shifted into crazy high fantasy. The Old World always had high fantasy elements, to be sure, but it was clear that those were weird. Wizards were powerful, but they were also feared and were always dablling with powers that could destroy them. Some armies were always more inherently magical (undead, daemones), but the focus was always on the poor bastards hacking each other in the scrum.

Look at the Empire. In 6th, they lost some of the goofier elements from 5th (war alter, war wagon, halfings, ogres), and were more or less a renaissance army, built around halbreds, handgunners, gothic cavalry, and a few artillery pieces. Sure, they had oddball stuff like pegasi and flaggellants and even the helblaster, but the army looked and played like a real world that was grappling with the insanity creeping into the world.

Now? You have knights riding wingless griffons flanking a magical war machine and popemobile. That's not grappling with insanity, that's taking it out for a nice seafood dinner.

I agree but many of their fans seem to want everything as stupid and over the top as possible. personally i hate it.

But is it dumb to cater to the fans that like that sort of thing?

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


Sorry GW, you may have wanted the mighty tide of CHAOS, but what you got was creamed Khorne.

The Auld Grump - who does not believe that the new edition will help.

Exalt +1

I think if GW wants to come full circle to a narrative driven game, you have to drop the pretense of massive battles, massive costs, and even random rules. A tight, well balanced game allows for things to play out versus someone having the one turn they roll bad for charges, have their dice pool fail them, and their wizard blow themselves up. So their army goes from a threat to sitting ducks.

Other games just don't let this happen. You create stories through scenarios, terrain, and army restrictions. Creating "narrative" through random this and random that just leads to frustration as the narrative gamers will dislike having a wizard learn a different spell every battle (or your warlord in 40k being mildly brain damaged and forgetting what he was good at) and competitive gamers absolutely want none of that. The games just become so much skewed into negating dice that it becomes Super Combo - Hammer. A game designed for this, like Warmachine, can handle that and thrive. The random schlock that is a GW ruleset implodes under such weight and makes for a bad time without severe hand waiving by one or both players.

I'd rather have a game outcome dictated by the tactics of the players with weighted averages of dice rolls as the final decision, not whatever reverse nonsense we have now.