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Please keep it to an actual item (empire state troops) or rule (eternal hatred) rather than posting things like ZOMG THE WHOLE OGRE BOOK WTF (I chose those examples randomly btw). I'll post five. Feel free to feed back on why you think the items I've chosen belong on the list or don't, or to supply a list of your own. Also welcome are opinions on fixes.

1) The Dwellers Below. Things that eat lord-level characters or expensive monsters with no saves of any kind allowed are generally mean, but this one also crunches about half your unit or so.
2) Hellpit abominations. 235 points wouldn't be bad for something with this kind of (massive) close-combat damage output, if that was all it had. However, it gets ridiculous when you pile on all of its special rules. 3d6 pursuit. Stubborn 8 in case it ever manages to lose. You can't flee from it. It regenerates. It's initiative 4, higher than its nearest comparison (hydra). And if you kill it, it coughs up a bunch of rats that tie up whatever managed to kill it for another combat round, or else it actually comes back to life. Ought to cost about 400 points, or have 2 or 3 of these extra items stripped away and then it would be ok. Alternatively, could take a long step toward being balanced if the storm banner were FAQ'd out of the book.
3) Empire priests, particularly their free DD. A 2200 point empire list at a tournament level will routinely cough up 4 free DD or more, making it very difficult for anybody not named Mazdamundi or Teclis to get any spells off at all. They should get to channel (maybe on a 4+ or 5+) but not just get a free die, and arch lectors are the only viable lord choice due to coming up with 2.
4) Powerscroll. Guarantee-able IF means that one crucial spell isn't the gamble it always used to be. In combination with powerful spells like the aforementioned dwellers, it is a game-changer beyond what any 35-point item should be able to do.
5) The building rules. Anything inside is Stubborn, reduces available combat rounds by half, can only fight 10 units at a time, and buildings can only be destroyed by one army at the moment (absent house rules). Not just imbalanced, but silly and fun-killing.

Thoughts?

1) Its bad but its not game breaking fun crushing bad
2. HPAs are soft enough and i think hydras are far worse
3) Never played against a priest but they dont sound that good
4) I will give you this one, powerscroll is awesome
5) you have a one in 6 chance of rolling watchtower and honestly its not that bad, it is balanced (due to some armys adept storming skills) and i have fun always in watchtower missions

Ralin Givens wrote:1) Its bad but its not game breaking fun crushing bad
2. HPAs are soft enough and i think hydras are far worse
3) Never played against a priest but they dont sound that good
4) I will give you this one, powerscroll is awesome
5) you have a one in 6 chance of rolling watchtower and honestly its not that bad, it is balanced (due to some armys adept storming skills) and i have fun always in watchtower missions

1. Yes it is. You probably just don't think so because someone hasn't taken an uber caster against you and cast it every magic phase. Point-sink WoC lord and Vampire Count lords just die to this, with the unit they're in. And the lord was probably 400 points by itself. You really think getting off one spell should mean a 400-500 point swing in a game?

2. They're both pretty bad. I'll give you this.

3. If you haven't played against one, then you have no idea. They're bad. It's like Empire can take Rune Priests.

4. Powerscroll is only broken because the spells you use it to cast are broken.

5. Going inside buildings is always going to screw with the game. It's a nice concept, but me and my friends don't play with buildings you can go inside. If we roll up watchtower, we reroll.

Hmmm. From looking at games and only playing a couple:
1. The Steadfast rule as it stands. Not saying it should go completely, but it seems to rule all list design these days. Especially if combined with the BSB re-roll.
2. Irresistable force working regardless of whether you hit the casting value or not.
3. Am I allowed to say unit killing top level spells? If not I'll just pick Purple Sun as my example of a particularly bad one.
4. The disparity in magic items between books (if that's allowed), particularly with the new trend towards there being only a few expensive and dubiously useful items in each book.
5. Hmmmmm. Finding it hard to pick another. Guess I'll go with the terrain rules which can massively favour one side over they other.

I would second UberhAxTHC that Power Scroll is only powerful because certain spells are too powerful (Dwellers Below mainly). Giving Characters a look out sir against Dwellers would certainly balance things out.

I also agree with Ralin Givens that War Hydra's are probably more broken than Hell Pit Abominations. They survive more, have a Breath Weapon and cost 60 points less. Hell Pit Abominations are pretty bad as well though.

Teclis is something to add to the list as well (and that is coming from a High Elves player). This is partially due to certain spells being too powerful (Dwellers Below). His points cost is just not high enough for what he does though. Only 115 points more than a Book of Hoeth Mage, and for that price he gets Loremaster, +D3 Power and Dispel Dice, Scroll of Hoeth and the crown of miscast immunity.

Another broken thing about the current rules is the reliability of Cannons and Stone Throwers. Not having to guess range from the Warmachine (instead just measuring and placing it within range exactly where you want it) has just made it too easy to hit targets with them. Easy fixes would be increasing the points cost in accordance to their improved reliability, or (in the case of cannons) introduce variability in the line of the shot to decrease reliability.

In response to yours;

1) Dwellers is pretty sick! It does have a high casting cost and short range though. I think they could balance the Dwellers, Final Transmutation, ect ect if they would just allow look out sirs for characters. I think the game needs spells like this because if there were none death stars would rule. Any opponent that takes points deniel lists or death stars hate these and they should. These mass spells help deal with that treat. They should allow Look out Sirs though..

2) I hate hell pits... not because their broken just because of that when you kill them that chart. I hate that thing. When I spend 800 points worth of resources from my army to kill it it annoys me when it gets back up with 6 wounds. I don't mind the hydra or the hell pit. I do dislike the death throws rule thing for the HBA though.

3) Warrior priests do not bother me one bit. Their good but as far as characters go they're pretty sub par. They aren't bad and have their place but hardly over powered.

4) I've never had to deal with a powerscroll... shrug

5) I don't mind building rules but I HATE the watchtower scenario. This can be solved by replacing the 'watchtower' with a hill or forest or something. That simple swap fixes everything with this scenario.


There isn't anything I really consider broken but I do wish they would tweak some stuff.

littleboyblues wrote:1) Dwellers is pretty sick! It does have a high casting cost and short range though. I think they could balance the Dwellers, Final Transmutation, ect ect if they would just allow look out sirs for characters. I think the game needs spells like this because if there were none death stars would rule. Any opponent that takes points deniel lists or death stars hate these and they should. These mass spells help deal with that treat. They should allow Look out Sirs though..

I don't get this. Not the allowing Look Out Sirs, the idea that you should have spells that can kill a deathstar unit in one turn. You shouldn't. If someone has invested a significant portion of points into a deathstar, you should be expected to have to invest a significant portion of your forces to deal with it. Just expecting that you can cripple it in one turn via a single spell like Dwellers Below doesn't make sense - your shouldn't be able to. A large, expensive unit should require a significant response to deal with.

-Loki- wrote:If someone has invested a significant portion of points into a deathstar, you should be expected to have to invest a significant portion of your forces to deal with it.

That is exactly how WH doesn't work. Things have hard counters. Cannons are hard counters to monsters. Mega spells are hard counters to deathstars. Tarpits are sorta hard counters to elite troops. Scouts and fliers and deployers are hard counters to war machines. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you should be fully prepared to have someone take a hammer and bash your basket to goo.

But what's broken?

-Monsters. They kinda suck for points.
-Magic. Yeah, it's broad, but I think a lot of stuff is wrong with it. It's too easy to ignore miscasts. It's potentially super powerful. Too many SCs from previous editions with crazy rules that fudge up things in this edition.
-Not enough hot womenz.

DukeRustfield wrote:
-Not enough hot womenz.

I believe the Dark Elf Womenz have this covered, more exposed breasteses then any other models in the range .

So, you tell me that the mega powerful spells are hard counters to death stars then say the mega powerful spells are something that is wrong with Fantasy?

There's no reason for a spell to be able to swing the game 400-500 points the opposite direction with a single cast. It's just stupid.

-Loki-; You Imply that one dwellers will crack a death star. A hundred man unit of what ever will only loose half (1/3 if Str 4) a unit per successful Dwellers. So the first one will hurt bad and they will get exponentially less useful per successful casting. I run a MMU army as my all comers and tournament army. As a reward for not running 1500 point unit I hardly care about dwellers. If I didn't have final transmutation on my lvl 4 my army would have absolutely no counter to a unit of that size with that many characters in it.

Warhammer is about knowing how to out wit your opponent in deployment and with what tools your army brings to the table to deal with their tools. Dwellers is almost useless on a unit of 20 archers and if you get a weak magic phase you may not even be able to cast it.

With out spells like that there is absolutely no reason for me to not take a 1800 point warriors of chaos unit mark of tzeentch and a nasty lord general and bsb and 2 chaos spawn and never loose a game. I won't always win but it would be stupid hard for me to loose.

Casket of Souls

What about it? o.0

0.o? z_z

You think the Casket is broken? Why? o.0

I'm surprised Dwellers is the one being singled out here, i'll plonk my Lizardmen down on the table and the toughest decision you've got is whether to kill my Slann+TG with Purple Sun or with Pit of Shades.

Dwellers isn't the only powerful spell, and I don't like having to face a counter to my whole army as opposed to a 400-500pt unit (even though losing my Slann + TG would mean losing about 800pts alone).

Avatar 720 wrote:I'm surprised Dwellers is the one being singled out here, i'll plonk my Lizardmen down on the table and the toughest decision you've got is whether to kill my Slann+TG with Purple Sun or with Pit of Shades.

Dwellers isn't the only powerful spell, and I don't like having to face a counter to my whole army as opposed to a 400-500pt unit (even though losing my Slann + TG would mean losing about 800pts alone).

Yes, however Slann have some protection against this, it's harder to get off the spells when the slann negates 6's. Final Transmutation is a less effective, but still effective tool to counter this.

Hellpits are hilariously easily countered by a 10 point banner, so I dont really see how they are OP.

I feel that the unit killing magic spells are the most unbalanced thing about WH right now. Miscasts are still not punishing enough to counteract the fact that you can obliterate anywhere from 200-800points of models in one go. The only balance to magic right now is the dice limitation per turn, but even that has work arounds...(looking at you High Elves / Vampire counts!)

High Elves being able to always strike first and then re-roll failed hits on anything that isn't a Lord, an Elf Elite or Slaaneshi, more or less? And Sea Guard and Swordmasters while we're at it, yeah, you can tell I'm a Druchii general, can't you?

Big spells: don't waste your dispell dice so rapidly, HPA? Easy to kill, I agree Hydras are a little tougher though HPA puts out a lot of damage. Nothing flaming attacks or spells can't solve.

Broken things: No real order...

1. High Elves in general. If nothing else the players can be annoying (ZOMG TECLIS IS GOING TO OWN YOU'RE FACE)
2. Power Scroll
3. Flamers/other demon units. Face it, they are good.
4. Great Players. Man, even when some people take a crappy army they can just roll people...
5. I ran out of ideas. I really don't see many things as really broken because there are so many things around certain units/items/spells/situations.

GoldenKaos wrote:High Elves being able to always strike first and then re-roll failed hits on anything that isn't a Lord, an Elf Elite or Slaaneshi, more or less? And Sea Guard and Swordmasters while we're at it, yeah, you can tell I'm a Druchii general, can't you?

If you are DE and complain about HE then you must be crazy...

Only thing I see "broken" in 8th ed is:

1 - Terrain rules that get in the way more than make the game interesting. It gets old after a few games where you have to flip the BRB for every piece of terrain.
2 - TLOS that makes a canonball shot more accurate and lethal than any form of shooting.
3 - underpriced template warmachines.

Otherwise it's fine.

You know what? This may not be the intention, but this thread makes it seems like there a very few geniunely broken things in WFB. For a prodigal looking to return like myself, this looks pretty good.

Ichiyo1821 wrote:1 - Terrain rules that get in the way more than make the game interesting. It gets old after a few games where you have to flip the BRB for every piece of terrain.

I'm going to single this out as exceptionally true. I feel like if you rolled for "mysterious" terrain at the start of a game, it would make a lot more sense and terrain a lot less dangerous than it is now.

At the very least, you'd know that lake you're hiding behind is boiling lava before you go running into it. That forest that is filled with giant hallucinogenic mushrooms doesn't suddenly sprout them when the first foot hits the soil.

htj wrote:You know what? This may not be the intention, but this thread makes it seems like there a very few geniunely broken things in WFB. For a prodigal looking to return like myself, this looks pretty good.

HTJ, for my part I am VERY pleased with the direction of fantasy, and I think you should definitely come back. The same could be said for everybody in the club where I play, and most of the others I've talked to. As is being pointed out here, there are a few flaws in my view, but in general the game took a massive step forward between 7th and 8th. Come home, prodigal, come home

Fozzricks Folding Fortress.

The rules for buildings are slowed broken, and now I'm allowed to build a tower to take with my army?

It's one of the few things in the book that can be modeled for advantage.

I can have a 5 foot tall building with spokes that cover the whole table, and then I can load it with 120 archers who have poison, and pick an unit and make it dissappear once a turn. Is it dick? Yes! But it's explicitly allowable in the rules. 100 point items let me auto-win the game.. hooray...





Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also wanted to touch on the "deathstar" argument when it comes to "committing points to defeat it"

As in, the: "I've committted 800 points to beat my opponents 800 point unit." Deathstars exist, because the difference in unit ability is non-linear.

If you compare 800 points of chaos warriors, to 800 points of goblins, If you run that unit heads up, the battle-doesn't come like 50/50 over time, even if you split that 800 points of golbins up, and put one unit in the front, one unit on the flank, and one unit on the rear, you still don't win over time. Chaos' combat ability is far too superior to be made up.

There's also the foot-print issue to be thought about. Just because you can commit your entire army to beating the unit, you can't commit it all at the same time, because the footprint of the deathstar is smaller than your total frontage of the army.. This artificially limits your killing power in a pretty serious way.

Last edition, infantry models had a points ceiling, because no-matter how awesome the unit was, a simple rank-breaker in the flank was usually enough to run that death-star off and run it down. This edition, that rank-breaker in the flank still has to survive multiple turns of attrition to run the unit off, and the likelyhood is that instead steadfast + BSB re-rolls = dead rank breaker. So the true value of chaos warriors is actually probably quite deflated at this point.

This is why certain spells that can game-change exist. Purple sun, Dwellers, Pit... Because they offset (in the most atrocious of ways) the way the Deathstar can behave.. they are a balance to the death-star. Because you could commit your entire army to a 1000 point death-star in a 3k army, and still come up on the losing end....

Ragnar4 wrote:Fozzricks Folding Fortress.

The rules for buildings are slowed broken, and now I'm allowed to build a tower to take with my army?

It's one of the few things in the book that can be modeled for advantage.

I can have a 5 foot tall building with spokes that cover the whole table, and then I can load it with 120 archers who have poison, and pick an unit and make it dissappear once a turn. Is it dick? Yes! But it's explicitly allowable in the rules. 100 point items let me auto-win the game.. hooray...

I don't have my BRB on my, but I don't think that's actually true. The BRB says it follows the rules of a watchtower. GW has a specific watchtower model. It's only 3 levels. You can shoot 15 guys out of it. Anything hanging off of the building is just aesthetics. You can't block people from getting to you or make some ridiculously tall building.

The exact rule suggests you can use the watchtower, or any suitable scratch built building.

It suggests the watch-tower is a good place to start, but it does not in any way, shape, or form, restrict the dimension of the tower.

What is the exact wording? Because I would say that a scratch built building would still follow the rules as if it were a watchtower.

The feathers on my finecast empire general!

Malleus wrote:

htj wrote:You know what? This may not be the intention, but this thread makes it seems like there a very few geniunely broken things in WFB. For a prodigal looking to return like myself, this looks pretty good.

HTJ, for my part I am VERY pleased with the direction of fantasy, and I think you should definitely come back. The same could be said for everybody in the club where I play, and most of the others I've talked to. As is being pointed out here, there are a few flaws in my view, but in general the game took a massive step forward between 7th and 8th. Come home, prodigal, come home

I'm coming! I just need to settle on one army!