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We put our toe in the Fantasy waters soon after the latest edition came out----and haven't returned yet. Not due to the game mechanics, as we haven't played enough to even judge those, but simply due to 40k/lack of time. I was wondering though----now the edition has been out for awhile---what are people's thoughts? My initial impressions after a few games;

Magic seemed pretty strong if you just tossed a lot of dice at a big spell.
Combat seemed more decisive and things actually died.
40mm Creatures seemed a lot better.
Shooting seemed stronger with LOS/pre-measure.

I am also curious what the Fantasy Dakkies have to say.

I haven't played any other tabletop game since the new edition came out. I love the changes made to the game, though it did make me like my high elves less, the game as a whole is much more enjoyable. The one thing i see a lot of people complain about is the way terrain works now. I for one love it, terrain should matter, not just be something to frame your center of table combat or a place to sit your unmoving missle troops. My only gripe now is that my Tomb Kings can't be played as i have them, though with a new book on the way for them that should be fixed.

Everything in the new edition is bigger and faster. Its not uncommon to have combat resolution totals in the 15-20 range now. Magic - when it works - can be devastating. Flanks and Panic are now unimportant - no need to plan to protect either.

Over all, I find it hugely disappointing. The fine details have been removed - now the game is just a dice rolling machine.

I've made most of my criticisms known in the "Just Curious About Fantasy Players" thread but my main beefs are:

Artillery too powerful due to a combination of lack randomness from no guess ranges, almost no line of sight restrictions and no partials. Templates (including cannons and their infinitely small line template) hitting both monster and rider is ridiculous.

Too many ways to use leadership to get around bad strategy like ignoring march blocking, moving to face flankers with immediate reforming, swift reform during movement.

Negative psychology (stupidly, fear, terror, frenzy) is mostly meaningless with access to lots of high unmodified leadership and re-rollable everything from BSBs.

Magic spells are way too powerful and often decide the game and are too easy to cast. Being able to cast through your own units with no negatives is another huge issue.

Breaking units is too hard and results in meat grinders in the middle of the table. Steadfast is overpowering.

Terrain rules are clunky, typically don't influence the game at all (unless you are cavalry or something) and take an annoying amount of time to set up.

Scenarios are mostly awful.

ASF is still a problem and giving rerolls on top of it is stupid.

Way too slow on army book releases. We should have at least two out by now. The army balance (which was the main problem in 7th edition) is still an issue and some books are even more unplayable.

I do like the magic system, it's just the spells that ruin it. I also like the idea of harder to break units since it used to be way too easy to just smash through huge mobs but they went too far. Likewise terrain was too crippling before stopping marching and halving movement (meaning most units were moving 2" through it taking them out of the game) but now treating the entire board as mostly open both (except for large buildings) for movement and line of sight is boring.

Overall my feeling (and the people I played Fantasy with) is it really isn't worth it to put down a lot of money to play a game that often times will be determined by large amounts of random chance. That sort of thing is fine with board games and stuff like that but when you have to put a lot of effort and money into an army you want to feel like it's you winning the game and not just luck that your enemy's head exploded or you got that crazy spell off or half your knights died running through a forest.

RanTheCid wrote:Everything in the new edition is bigger and faster. Its not uncommon to have combat resolution totals in the 15-20 range now. Magic - when it works - can be devastating. Flanks and Panic are now unimportant - no need to plan to protect either.

Over all, I find it hugely disappointing. The fine details have been removed - now the game is just a dice rolling machine.

I agree with this.

Fantasy is a mixed bag for me.

I think some things are unacceptable, only having 1 army book out so far, while some rules are just annoying (steadfast, uber spells, laser sighted cannons). The games still take about 2.5 hours to play which is another factor I consider when deciding what game to play. Everything is else I'm fine with.

While some of the smaller details are gone, its a more balanced game currently. Even bad armies with a good generals can still win.

I enjoy it more than 40k but not as much as Warmachiene/Hordes.

Personally I like 8th. But I liked 7th too.

The game is faster yes. I like this. The terrain is....annoying to do but I approve of the idea. Just not stuff such as sinister statue that shoots at your guys. Fine a river that drowns your dudes is acceptable. It means you either risk the river or try to get over a bridge which is likely slower.

I am an Empire player and my cannons are too much. I would have been happy with the guess range left on cannons.

Magic has improved with the max of 12 dice but some of the spell (dwellers below and purple sun) are stupid. Only a handful of spells mind you.

Overall I would say an improvement but not a huge one.

I haven't enjoyed a GW game this much since the days of 2nd Edition 40k / Necromunda.

Missile fire seems a little underpowered and the giant magic nukes/smartbomb stone throwers can be a bit of a pain, yeah.

Then again, not having a single terror causing model make your entire army run off the board is a nice switch.

personally, I love it, however the BS weapons are a little underpowered(Except Flamers)

Warmachines are under costed.

Chairots seem meh. despite looking cool.

I think psychology is under powered unless you really gear your force to use it.

I think the game moves faster and as long as you set terrain up with no more than two or so items that really affect the game it's cool.

8th seem to play faster than 7th due to the lack of march blocking and things start dying faster in CC. The game still takes longer, but most of the times are spent in combat rather than light units running around.

The monstrous infantry/cavalry thing was pretty good, makes all those options competitive.

Though they really didnt need to take away 90% utility of light cav and skirmishers...

I guess I'm the odd man out here, but I love 8th edition fantasy. I think it's way more enjoyable than 5th edition 40K. I also feel it was written better.

The magic phase can be powerful, but it can also be very weak. There are ways to mitigate that as well. I don't mind dwellers below or purple sun because they are the counter for hordes. If you don't want to get your hordes destroyed by those spells, don't take them. I think that everything in 8th has a counter. That's why I like it. If you didn't have those powerful spells, hordes would rule the game.

Magic can also augment your troops to survive gunlines better (life). I haven't had too much experience against pure gun lines, but I usually do have trouble with Dwarf gun lines/combat unit armies.

I don't mind the level of randomness in 8th ed. According to Carl con Clauseitz, arguably one of the greatest military minds of our time, Chance plays an enormous part in war. You just have to plan for the unexpected and be flexible and adapt.

Tough to say. Better give it another decade.

Magic is too wacky and the release schedule is too slow, that's my biggest complaints. I think they made a lot of improvement, but let the "big 'splodey" factor get in the way a bit too much.

Casper wrote:Fantasy is a mixed bag for me.

I think some things are unacceptable, only having 1 army book out so far, while some rules are just annoying (steadfast, uber spells, laser sighted cannons). The games still take about 2.5 hours to play which is another factor I consider when deciding what game to play. Everything is else I'm fine with.

While some of the smaller details are gone, its a more balanced game currently. Even bad armies with a good generals can still win.

I enjoy it more than 40k but not as much as Warmachiene/Hordes.

Apparently you havent played with tomb kings at all. They nerfed fear and terrror so bad(apparently men dont fear death anymore, the old rules were fluffy!). They pretty much made charges useless for most models as combats fight at intiative order and then they are steadfast if they outnumber you. lol come on man did the writer of this addition have it out for the undead or what?

Minus khalida the only way tomb kings win is if the person you are playing doesnt know what they are doing. I cant wait for the new army book so I dont feel like a complete tool running a special character in most of my list.

Love the new edition and the tears from those who do not sustain me ;p But yeah I agree with most points but the thing is this is not a new thing with GW and all of their players know it. Sit on the sidelines for an edition or take up a new game, perhaps Warmachine/Hordes or 40k? I left 5th edition 40k to hop back into fantasy and although I have a few gripes I ask myself "is it enough to prevent me from enjoying myself?". The answer is no, so I shall not complain about it, and will keep building and pumping my army out in search of victory/nachos!

Hmm, it seems many are repeating the fears I had in our short foray. Specifically how crazy magic can be at times.

Fantasy always seemed to be a gentleman's game between friends----where you felt you needed to apologize for bringing certain lists/units---and I was hoping that had changed.

The biggest issue with WFB is GW's apparent lack of direction and "care" for it. They made blocks more useful, but then made blast weapons slaughter them.. They made cavalry charge insanely far on average but they cant break ranks at all. Flanking is easier but it doesnt matter due to how steadfast works

I agree with the above poster that it feels more of a dice rolling machine now cause so many of the rules simply dont matter at all.. I havent even picked up my lizards in months because its *too* easy with them.. Dont even need strategy, just line up.. cast some spells, shoot some salamanders and win. My skaven are fun still, but even then I ignore most of the important rules in the game due to steadfast

Many armies are unplayable. However, these concerns really arent much different than in 7th when you had Demons, Dark elves and VCs filling every spot in the top 10 at tournaments.. I expected a bit more I suppose

But the main issue is the release schedule as others have said.. Its totally UNACCEPTABLE to have 1 book out a year after the release, that crushed the desire for many to play in my area

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:I guess I'm the odd man out here, but I love 8th edition fantasy. I think it's way more enjoyable than 5th edition 40K. I also feel it was written better.

The magic phase can be powerful, but it can also be very weak. There are ways to mitigate that as well. I don't mind dwellers below or purple sun because they are the counter for hordes. If you don't want to get your hordes destroyed by those spells, don't take them. I think that everything in 8th has a counter. That's why I like it. If you didn't have those powerful spells, hordes would rule the game.

Magic can also augment your troops to survive gunlines better (life). I haven't had too much experience against pure gun lines, but I usually do have trouble with Dwarf gun lines/combat unit armies.

I don't mind the level of randomness in 8th ed. According to Carl con Clauseitz, arguably one of the greatest military minds of our time, Chance plays an enormous part in war. You just have to plan for the unexpected and be flexible and adapt.

I absolutely LOVE 8th ed (note: i started with 5th ed in 1998, and have played competitively until 6th ed, got disgusted with 7th and lied low) and I completely agree with Darkangelhopeful. We play the games here with the full rules (we use the random terrain table, all magic items allowed), and we will soon be having a league in which even SC will be allowed (although with a points cap for SC).

It just is much more bloody, and therefore fun. Having a blast with it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tomb King wrote:

Casper wrote:Fantasy is a mixed bag for me.

I think some things are unacceptable, only having 1 army book out so far, while some rules are just annoying (steadfast, uber spells, laser sighted cannons). The games still take about 2.5 hours to play which is another factor I consider when deciding what game to play. Everything is else I'm fine with.

While some of the smaller details are gone, its a more balanced game currently. Even bad armies with a good generals can still win.

I enjoy it more than 40k but not as much as Warmachiene/Hordes.

Apparently you havent played with tomb kings at all. They nerfed fear and terrror so bad(apparently men dont fear death anymore, the old rules were fluffy!). They pretty much made charges useless for most models as combats fight at intiative order and then they are steadfast if they outnumber you. lol come on man did the writer of this addition have it out for the undead or what?

Minus khalida the only way tomb kings win is if the person you are playing doesnt know what they are doing. I cant wait for the new army book so I dont feel like a complete tool running a special character in most of my list.

I too am hoping for the new book, not because I will play TK but simply because the sooner they come out with books for 8th ed the better...I hope wood elves are next since they REALLY need a revamp..


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kirasu wrote:The biggest issue with WFB is GW's apparent lack of direction and "care" for it. They made blocks more useful, but then made blast weapons slaughter them.. They made cavalry charge insanely far on average but they cant break ranks at all. Flanking is easier but it doesnt matter due to how steadfast works

I agree with the above poster that it feels more of a dice rolling machine now cause so many of the rules simply dont matter at all.. I havent even picked up my lizards in months because its *too* easy with them.. Dont even need strategy, just line up.. cast some spells, shoot some salamanders and win. My skaven are fun still, but even then I ignore most of the important rules in the game due to steadfast

Many armies are unplayable. However, these concerns really arent much different than in 7th when you had Demons, Dark elves and VCs filling every spot in the top 10 at tournaments.. I expected a bit more I suppose

But the main issue is the release schedule as others have said.. Its totally UNACCEPTABLE to have 1 book out a year after the release, that crushed the desire for many to play in my area

Many armies are unplayable??? On the contrary, with the balancing out of "power levels" most got completely playable, even competitively. There is no "autolose" army out there...even wood elves and ogres can win (although it is an uphill climb). If you look at other threads (and there are many of them) on 8th ed whfb army tiers, you will find a LOT of argument and opinions on who is king of the hill, and this says a lot on the balance of 8th (at least at this point in time..I have read the new O and G book and I am happy to say that it is NOT overpowered, and that it looks like a really fun army to play)....

I have 2 problems with 8th ed.

1: The 6th spells are just plain ridiculous (as everyone points out). Honestly do the guys who wrote them even try them out to see how lame they are?

2: Cannons and Template warmachines hitting rider and mount for monsters. 7th ed had it right with one or the other. Now you barely ever see monsters unless they are HPAs or Hydras as they get smashed by warmachine spam. The LOS also makes warmachines even more powerful.


Everything else I can live with/enjoy

However 2 problems in a whole new ruleset is pretty damned awesome. Even if those problems ruin more games than not.

I, overall, love 8th edition.

biggest reason being that my ogres can actually win games now.



the main problem i have,

Magic. the 6th spells are too powerful while the miscast table is too light. I would have been fine with uber spells of doom if the miscast table had some chance of stopping the spell going off. not the "I throw 12 dice at this spell and auto win and don't care if my Wizard blows up. the spell still happens"

it would have been better if there was like a 50% chance of the miscast stopping the spell from going off.

and IF should still require the dice to meet the casting value.

that said, i love the flat 2d6 for casting dice maxed at 12. it gives my ogres a chance to actually get some spells off and stop enemy spells.



things i love

1) Monsterous ranks

2) Stomp

3) Step up

4) Random charge

5) Common magic items

6) 2d6 magic

I like that it made combat dwarves viable too, and O&G look a bit more reliable.
But massive blocks on infantry aren't that exciting either.
And the big spells are pretty damn lame. Possible game wrecker.

I'm really not impressed very much about this edition. It certainly balanced LOLPOWERDICE armies, but it seems to be degenerating into a giant 40-man-unit fight.
What was OP in 7th? Superunits, heavy cavalry, magic.
Now look. Superunits are the way to go, cavalry is downright useless and magic is still a gamebreaker. Instead of 20 Flickering Fires, it's a Purple Sun or Dwellers' curbstomping half your army.
The game is becoming where only big units are useful, and that means only the hordes are really worth playing.
Shooting also has almost zero restrictions and thus is even worse than last edition.

Stubborn is Broken. I've suggested a few rules to try to get it to be breakable, other than simply beating your opponent in the head.

I think as we see new army lists come out, we're going to see a whole new type of brutality, or a whole new type of super high armor saves (Tomb Kings standard units are rumored to have access to a 3+ armor save)

The problem is: Steadfast makes the armies that relied on high movement, high first round active res combats completely worthless.

Let's take a look at the potential of the TK book. As an avid TK player since the moment they came out, (ten years now?) the typical Khemri philosophy was to win by just enough, auto-break and run your opponent off. That's what I want. I want extremely filmsy units that if I use perfectly, I win, and if I mis-calculate, even by a few inches, I lose and get wrecked.

If they want the TK's to be the type of army they are in this current edition, they either need to allow Khemri to break steadfast through flanking (I'm fine with this) make Chariots exceedingly cheaper (I'll bet the d3 impact str 4 3 wound chariot would only be 20-25ppm) or bring the light chariot inline with the goblin chariot. (str5 and d6 impact hits). While the idea of 4d6 str5 impact hits makes me drool, that's not what I want, but I'll bet money the latter is the way chariots are going to trend. Perhaps they'll make d6 str4 impact hits for around 30 points?

So now, we have a buckets of dice variant of Warhammer. Relying on lots of troops. What this has done, though, is put the power back in the hands of melee centric armies. If you can't put up in the melee round, you may as well pack it in.

Several tactics were also lost through rules minutea, a lot of players relied on unit sacrifices to create flank charges. (toss a unit of light cav out there, so that your opponent has no choice but to charge them and angle them so that when they do: They present a meaty flank to another unit that is close to the flank, but angling inward) Now the unit can charge those light cav, WTFPWN them ,and then use the victory re-form to face the unit that was going to eat their face.

The Tactical sacrifice was the highest level of maneuvers in 7th, now it's not even worth it. The Tactical sacrifice was THE reason to bring light cav in 7th, now it's the feigned flee... and the feigned flee is meh.. at best.

Designers hoped that a more punishing mis-cast system would balance a magic system that can change games in a heartbeat. Designers need to stop using hope and wishes as design philosophies.

After all of these complaints, I don't have any problems with 8th as a friendly game between a couple of guys drinking a few beers and eating pretzels. (because if I want to play a friendly game, I can play any army that I want.. if Khemri doesn't do it for me, I can switch armies and mothball the Kings until may)

But for tournament play? Eff that. Tournaments should be 7th with all 7th books allowed (except daemons) until ALL of the books are released for armies. 7th was just about perfectly balanced for tourneys. 8th is a big giant FU to the Tourney community.

7th was perfectly balanced for tourneys only with comp and a ton of restrictions..and hell eff to that...I hate the concept of comp...

8th does still need restrictions (for example, no SC's..banning the power scroll) but if you look at the environment now most armies have a decent chance of winning....and that makes it more tourney worthy than bloody 7th....at least you do not have to ban an entire army (ie daemons) in 8th...

As long as tourneys exist, comp will exist, same with Tourney Restrictions. 8th made no changes to Comp.

I kind of enjoy the push toward more "unit-focus" that 8th Edition was geared for, and in certain ways, the GW staff was definitely successful at that. I suppose it helps that I tend to avoid tournament environments, though.

While I enjoy the game at a casual level, I do agree with a lot of the gripes that Waaagh_Gonads, Ragnar4 and others have made, namely:

Movement
As Ragnar4 points out, tactical sacrifices are significantly diminished in utility. The fact that most people can take a Ld test to avoid being march-blocked, redirect, or what have you has made a lot of the 'utiliity' units like fast cav and flyers a bit worse than they were before. This wouldn't have been so bad, but the addition of BSB re-rolls for every LD test significantly reduces their utility. The fact that terrain now hardly seems to matter for anything nowadays is also fairly silly.

Magic
Like everyone else said, the 6th spells just tend to be a bit too over the top. The miscast table is a bit worse, but the magic phase really ends up having the potential to overly affect the outcome of the game.

Given the restriction in PDs in every magic phase, ALL PD-producing magic items are strongly under-priced.

Shooting
TLOS and increased cover makes BS-based shooting worse overall (and units with shooting weapons were already priced up from 7th ed) and made indirect shooting significantly better when it didn't really need much boosting.

Close Combat
The single biggest issue in this edition is Steadfast, in my opinion. The reason for its inclusion in this edition is sound enough, imo: give infantry a boost against the heavy-cavalry that was running around everywhere in 7th Edition and running rough-shod through everything. However, at a practical level, as Ragnar4 said, it "makes the armies that relied on high movement, high first round active res combats completely worthless". While I still think that Flanking still has its purposes, steadfast severely reduces the advantages of it.


Having said all this, I do think most of the ideas added to 8th Edition are an overall step in the right direction for the game as a whole. I just think they opted for a lot of heavy-handed rules changes to fix things that could've benefited from a more pointed touch.


Still, a lot will also depend on how the rest of the 8th Edition Army Books look.

Whenever they come out...

Magic is fine as it stands, at least until they tone down the stubborn deathstar issue. There needs to be an answer when some buttmuch shows up with two blocks of 100 guys.

Movement is still tactical, but not in the same way. Its a lot more like Bloodbowl, in the sense that its all about risk management. 7th was more like chess since everything was quantitatively known.

All shooting is overpowered right now, but war machines are the biggest issue. Until the other books get the same treatment as Orks, expect to see the same TFGs showing up with their 6 war machine armies hiding behind a bunch of steadfast troops in the corner.

I think people got rose colored glasses.

Gun lines used to be unstoppable. They'd have 23489 cannons facing you. You'd never reach combat against some of those things. Measure only affected people who were myopic or hadn't seen a ruler, or phone or any other such item you could easily mentally calculate.

The infinite magic dice of 7 was also terrible. For all the OPness of certain magics, you have to go out of your way to use it, and if you roll terrible on the winds and he rolls great, you just wasted 600 points on a magestar casting magic missile.

Terror was terror-ible. Go back and look at the posts even in this forum where every other question was, how do I resist Terror/Fear? You don't. You run away.

Stomp and Thunderstomp I think were two of the most brilliant things I'd seen. They made Ogres a viable race pretty much that easy.

And BRB magic items helped the older books.

And that's one thing, there's no race now that's just FAIL. You WILL lose. Look at all the battles posted now. People pull off all kinds of weirdness.

I'm totally missing the Blood Bowl analogy Phazael, I play a TON of Bloodbowl, and I just don't see the correlation between GFI and random charge distances.