Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

General : So im a 40k player ( ) but two of my friends play Fantasy and from them i hear its much more complex than 40k
Background : And also , Whats the theme in fantasy (like in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war) ?
If you could answer them questions i would be very happy

Well, complex really wouldn't be the word I would use to describe the difference, and you're going to get people in here saying "40k is moar complecks!"

But it does involve a little more to some of the rules.

Like shooting for instance, there's actually negative modifiers to how you shoot. Movement is a little more on the strict side, even though 8th edition did a lot to simplify it.

The basics are the same, you can use the same to hit and to wound chart, the only difference is in fantasy anything can be wounded on a 6.

Fantasy tends to emphasize the combat phase and movement phase, usually if you can excel in those you'll be fine. (reason I didn't say magic, is this edition it mostly enhances your combat phase).

40k from my experience isn't exactly just point and click, but requires a level of target priority and knowing when, where, and what to send/shoot your troops at.

examples:
There's no way I'm sending in a unit of gretchin to fight a unit of assault termies as I'm just handing away a killpoint. (target selection)

In fantasy, I'll definitely send my unit of nightgoblins in to fight against a warriors of chaos unit to tie it up until I can flank with something more hitty. (movement and controlling combat phase)

As far as theme, I'm not witty enough to think of a single sentence to describe it.

It basically boils down to The Empire (realm of men) against Chaos, with a supporting cast of other various races. Even that is pretty bad as there is lots of subplots

Rivalry of the High Elves and Dark Elves and their struggles against eachother

Lizardmen vs Chaos

Empire vs just about everything

Wood Elves vs Beastmen

Skaven sneaking around basically causing fits for everyone

Orcs and their relentless need for war

etc....

It's not as cut and dry like 40k where it can be defined as The Imperium vs the rest (even though that has a lot of cool stuff to it).

Anyway, it can be boiled down to this:
40k = guns, tanks explosions, 8 foot tall super humans against the galaxy

Fantasy = swords, shields, bows, arrows, wizards

Hoped that helped somehow..

It did thanks so pretty much the Fantasy emporer aint dead? but the thing that makes the fluff interesting is that 40k is on the brink of disaster but we actually have a 50% chance of survival as the emporers golden throne can jump start him and he literaly Obliterates the warp with his eyes closed and one arm behind his back. Is it the same in fantasy?

No, in Fantasy, the Emperor is a normal human who is elected when the old one dies. If anyone's like that in fantasy, it's the venerable Lord Kroak, a lizardman slann mage-priest who died thousands of years ago destroying an army of hundreds of thousands of chaos daemons, including 12 bloodthirsters. Yet, his spirit still dwells in his mummified remains and he continues to fight.

Basically in fantasy there are no poster boyz (read marines) thus most armies get to be cool (except for the ones GW dosen't feel like it to support). On the fluff side no the army books do quite well in making the warhammer history look like an interwined saga rather than 40k where it's all a one sided view from the imperial standpoint. Gamewise it's very different with a more medieval feel with clashes of large formations of troops where planning is more important, rather than the more modern large scale skirmish style of 40k battles which has greater freedom of movement and is more tactical than strategic.

Honestly I think the best analogy for what the differences are is the following:

If 40k is starcraft with tons of races, fantasy is rome total war with magic.

You want to know what fantasy is compared to 40k.... awesome.



Ok more seriously I think greenbay has done a pretty good job of explaining things but I'll see what I can add.

When he says the movement is more restrictive he's right, but it makes sense since you have larger blocks of tightly formed models instead of loose formations of a few, it's just more difficult to move in tight ranks so it comes out differently, for instance having to spend movement to turn.

as for magic, shooting, combat... I don't know that much about 40K so I can't really compare.

But here's a bit of a summary of the background and setting as I understand it:

In the begining the world was a liveable but primordial rock, then the old ones came and terraformed it to resembel there own worl (so the shape/cultures are roughly similar to earth) the brought around the lizardmen to help them with their work of wiping out previous inhabitants and seeding the world with life, bringing around the humans elves and dwarves, then there was some sort of calamity where the intersteller gates at the poles collapsed, linking instead to the realm of chaos, bringing the dark gods and the daemons.

After this the world was plunged into chaos for around 5000 years, although I think the dwarves and elves were doing fairly ok for themselves during this time. then came the man with the golden hammer, sigmar the living god of the humans who united the many tribes into the empire and scared off the things like the beastmen that had been plagueing the humans, and now he is worshiped by the humans and all of their emporers are descendants of his (pretty sure)

The basic feel of the world now is the humans, beset on all sides by enemies, having basic black powder technology their still in the stage where they commonly use both guns and swords, they are forever surrounded by the beastmen in the forest who can at just about any time rise up and attack, but only manage to put aside killing eachother and small scall killing long enough to be a lasting threat every hundered years or more, at the same time they live in fear of things like chaos mutants and vampires in their midst as well as frequent incursions of barbarion chaos warriors from the north orcs from the... south I think, and occaisional undead armies from the vampires, of course don't think the humans are all nice innocent victems they're still the dirty rotten little things that humans always are, specifically as they have a large number of witch hunters, men sanctioned to do whatever it takes to kill mutants and witches and vampires and the like and so often wind up slaughtering many innocents in the process.

anyway, getting off on a bit of a tangent, anyway the elves are doing fairly well in this world, as always their numbers are fairly low but their culture is doing okay, thjey live on an island of grand cities and have powerfull magic. theres also the wood elves who have basically given up on the complex lives of trying to advance a civilization and just live a life of simple pleasure in the forest (as much as possible).

The Dwarves are sort of more on the down end of things, having lost their entire grand empire to the skaven and only managed to reclaim small amounts, while the skaven rule the underground and launch their scheming but rather bumbling machinations into effect.

Slightly wrong there blak, What happened with the old ones is they opened a portal into the warp so they could move around faster, the daemons inside did not like the intruders coming in and out, so they blasted threw into the realm. The High Elves collected their greatest mages to attempt to seal off the realm and stem the tide of chaos, with some secretive help from the slann, they are able to do it.

But, from the stemming warpstone that was injected into the world spawned the races of beastmen and skaven you mentioned that still plague the world.

All that stuff about the empire is accurate, with one little caveat of mentioning Sigmar was most famous for his triumphs against the Orcs and Goblins.

The elves are anything but doing ok, after the sundering they have been in constant warfare with eachother for the last 6000 years, with Malekith trying reclaim the pheonix throne.

That's about what I can add to your post, well done.


Anyway, that's fantasy in a nutshell...

To mimic what others have said where 40k is aliens, science and technology Fantasy is monsters, superstition and magic. It's like Star Wars vs The Lorsd of The Rings.

40k is ment to mimic the faster style of war from modern and future wars (say the future part from a guess as we aren't there yet) while Fantasy is the regimented, outflanking cavalry charges of the ancient world mixed in with monsters and magic.

Also the various factions of the Fantasy world are based off of real world equivilants (if not geograpically then by culture with a few cultural influences). They are (and I'll try to do these as accuratly as possible)

Bretonnians=French Knights
Dwarfs=Saxons
Empire=Germany
Warriors of Chaos=Evil vikings
Lizardmen=Aztec/Mayan
Ogre Kingdoms=Cavemen/Mongols/Huns (without horses)
Orcs&Goblins= The best I can say and from a source I can't seem to find is the Scotts.
Tomb Kings=Egypt
Vampire Counts=Romania/Transylvania
Wood Elves=Celts/Woads
Beastmen=Evil Germanic tribes
High Elves=Classic good elf
Dark Elves=Classic evil elf
Skaven=Aspects of all the other evil armies+Frankenstien+The Secret of Nimh

Now as has been said if you understand the basics of 40k (rolling dice for armor saves and such) then you know the basics for Fantasy. The differance is the IMHO Fantasy is more real in that is has more factors. For example where as in 40k a weapons strength can have 2 affects on the target. It can be strong enough to either completly negates an armor save or it isn't strong enough and so the target gets some kind of armor save. Well in Fantasy the Strength of the attack (most often the same as the attacker) can actually reduce the opponents armor save as the attacker just powers through it. You woulden't expect a giants attack to have the same problems going through armor as you would a normal human.

These type of factors are in almost every part of Fantasy and once you get the hang of them they aren't that hard to work with. I know when I started Fantasy from 40k the biggest change for me to get used to was movement. This is because not every unit (namely infantry) has the same movement rate of 6" as 40k infantry do. For instance Dwarves have a movement of 3" vs a Gors (normal Beastmen) movement of 5".

I think that Fantasy is more realistic in that it represents more factors that can happen on a battlefield. I also think it has more freedom in that the various storylines aren't as tied down as it is in 40& and honestly I prefer it over 40k though I play 40k more and have played it longer. If you decide to play I hope you enjoy it.

From what I see, the fluff in fantasy is less "grim dark" than 40k's fluff. Sure, the empire is beset by foul beasts, chaos warriors and demons but they're managing quite well and there is room for hope and gallant heroism.

All you need to know is that if you play Daemons, no-one will like you.

blak43 wrote:The Dwarves are sort of more on the down end of things, having lost their entire grand empire to the skaven and only managed to reclaim small amounts, while the skaven rule the underground and launch their scheming but rather bumbling machinations into effect.

If i know Dwarves and trust me i do... When they run out of beer.... All skaven will die!

Gwar! wrote:All you need to know is that if you play Daemons, no-one will like you.

That is a FACT...for 7th edition.

So far in 8th edition, daemons have been toned down. They weren't nerfed, as much as I think other armies brought to their level.

However, I play Dark Elves and I'm starting to get looks when I show up with two hydras...that new orc book needs to get here soon!

Sorry to hijack, but I too would like to know this:

What exactly did they do to "fix" Daemons?

Gwar! wrote:Sorry to hijack, but I too would like to know this:

What exactly did they do to "fix" Daemons?

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 outnumbers (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.

juraigamer wrote:Honestly I think the best analogy for what the differences are is the following:

If 40k is starcraft with tons of races, fantasy is rome total war with magic.

QFT, when I try and relate a strategy game to them I say 40k is like Dawn of War or Starcraft. Fantasy is like the total war games, groups of units that move in blocks and generally a lot of breaking and fleeing units.

Hargus56 wrote:

juraigamer wrote:Honestly I think the best analogy for what the differences are is the following:

If 40k is starcraft with tons of races, fantasy is rome total war with magic.

QFT, when I try and relate a strategy game to them I say 40k is like Dawn of War or Starcraft. Fantasy is like the total war games, groups of units that move in blocks and generally a lot of breaking and fleeing units.

8th literally plays like Rome Total War - take care in deploying troops... push them forward when the battle begins... hope for the best

Previous editions of WFB did use a more complex movement/combat system. One mistake could easily lead to a chain reaction which would cost you the game. 8th is much more like 40K - knowing which troops to match up is most of the game. No one battle will cost you the game - victories are much more incremental.

The smoothed out movement phase definitely makes things a lot easier. I don't think it was so much as dumbed it down, as it was clarified everything enough that people won't be scratching their heads 4 years later still wondering how movement is supposed to go...