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Hi. I'm thinking about getting into fantasy and was curious to hear what you all think are the best and worst armies...? and why?
Why do people keep saying Bretonians are bad, btw?

I think it is something to do with the way in which you have to select the army (although this may be borked in 8th)

There's a few bret players down my LGS, what I've gathered is that you HAVE to take certain units (think it is a unit of knights plus a certain lord/hero choice, forget the specifics), no ifs or buts, your army MUST include at least one of them. These units also happen to be relatively expensive, and so you have to sink a large number of points into a compulsory choice. This may not seem too bad a deal, having to take a expensive unit, and true in large games it doesnt make much of a difference, but at low-point games (1000-1500) it can have a crippling effect on your army selection (even at 1500 i think it worked out that your spending around 300pts on the compulsory choice).

Thats why as far as I'm aware.

Dark elves, beastmen and skaven are currently considered the very top atm, due to all the WAAC tourney lists people keep coming up with. Though expect dark elves to drop a little now that 8th only allows 1 save (a dark elf lord was able to have a 1+ armour, 2+ ward and regen save, now they only get to use one of those 3 saves) and is advantageous to massive blocks of infantry (something dark elves are not known for).

Just my 2 (insert currency here), doing a lot of reading of how army X is effected by new rule Y as I'm starting a clan scyre army for 8th!

Too early to make a call on if Dark Elves are being nerfed any at all.

A basic DE bowman:
- M5 moves faster than most infantry
- WS4 and re-roll misses 1st round > most all infantry
- BS4, can fire 2-shots with free -1 to enemy armor
- I5, now even if charged by enemies, automatically attacks first against half the stuff in game
- Ld 8

The whole 5x2 shooting instead of 10x1 is great. Hell, the power of a DE gunline doubled or tripled this edition... instead of 10x1, a unit can be 10x3 and get 60 shots a turn, get charged and shoot 60 shots at chargers, then 30 attacks before chargers get to attack.

DE Hydra looking amazing. Can get 25 S5 attacks with hatred in a single round of combat. Beat that for 175 points!

DE Cauldrons which can give an entire unit +1 attack or Killing Blow rock with mass-infantry-killing now. A horde of killing-blow spearmen could obliterate a non-Grail knights unit before they even get attacks. A horde of witch elves could put out like 51 Poisoned, Armor-piercing, Killing Blow attacks at I6 (killing before skaven or chaos knights get any attacks at all.) or just 61 poisoned, Armour-piercing attacks at I6 (for vaporizing stuff like clanrats, undead hordes, orc hordes, etc.)

DE magic users should remain quite useful. Rulebook charges 15 points for 1/6th of a dice a turn from Channeling stick. DE get +1 power dice every turn for 25 points. For 25 points, they can also take a Sacrificial dagger which could give them 2-4 power dice at the cost of some fodder. Quite a good value when it means your opponent has no hope of dispelling that last big spell which instantly kills a whole unit of chaos knights or 1/3rd of an entire horde unit turns into solid gold and dies or something. Power of Darkness or whatever updated special rules they give DE magic might make us godly at magic because DE might actually be reaching that 12 power dice per turn thing when other people are at 7.

DE magic items are still looking spectacular. A lord can use 2+ save + ward save + PoK and still be nearly unkillable. PoK isn't a ward save or regeneration. DE just discards wounds if he rolls equal or under strength of attacks (6 fails. So it's a 2+ ward save against S5 or higher attacks.)
Black dragon egg - for one turn he's T6 and can use breath weapon for 2d6 extra attacks at initiative-8 in addition to his normal attacks! One of most awesome items in game under new rules.

I expect to see quite a lot of people bringing large numbers of badly armoured squishy things in the new edition, which DE crossbows, elite combat troops, item-tooled-heroes, and crazy-monsters will be able to tear to shreds.

The play style of DE has certainly changed. And some units (Dark Riders / Harpies) might be going to the dumpster now, but we've yet to see indications DE won't keep Tier 1 status. Movement, shooting ability, combat ability, and magic ability. What else could an army have?

DE infantry weren't made weaker for their points cost. The armies I feel for are stuff like Vampire Counts. Skeletons and zombies paid a huge premium for getting the powerful Fear of last edition, but Fear in this edition is total garbage, so all VC troops cost too many points now.

Bell of Lost Souls recently posted their opinion on the new army rankings.
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/07/wfb-how-mighty-have-fallen.html

The reason brets have suffered from the new release is that their main tactic is hitting hard with small elite and breaking units in one turn. With infantry blocks being improved and the new rules making size count mmore brets just can't beat most units in one turn. After the first turn of combat they become a lot less dangerous. Add in the ability to attack back even if a rank was killed and purely elite armies just don't work. Unfortuantely for brettonians they can't do much else.

RanTheCid wrote:Bell of Lost Souls recently posted their opinion on the new army rankings.
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/07/wfb-how-mighty-have-fallen.html

For the most part i agree with that list.
Only thing i would change is move daemons to high tier, they are still really strong, just not the omg stupid broken.

Demons have changed how they are powerful, the tzeentch list is gone, i tried running it just to show someone and its terrible now. Slaanesh and Khorne will be the way to go. in 2500 points running Kairos followed by blocks of slaanesh and khorne is brutal, or in 2250 a keeper leading the pack is godly.

Zenkaron wrote:Demons have changed how they are powerful, the tzeentch list is gone, i tried running it just to show someone and its terrible now. Slaanesh and Khorne will be the way to go. in 2500 points running Kairos followed by blocks of slaanesh and khorne is brutal, or in 2250 a keeper leading the pack is godly.

Yup the all magic stupid list is gone. That doesnt mean a combat heavy list with a keeper or caster lord isnt going to be stupid!