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The Storm of Chaos is the last campaign I remember Games Workshop hosting for Warhammer Fantasy. I think it was around 6th edition. Basically people would get their games and report the outcome to the Storm of Chaos site and the game results aided in the progression of the side you were fighting for. Whether it be order, Chaos, or Grimgor Ironhide and his WAAAGH! getting in the way of both sides.

Unless I'm forgetful, I can't remember the last thing GW has done to really cater to the Fantasy community. It's all about 40K. Which is a shame because 8th edition Fantasy feels much more balanced and player friendly to those looking to get into it. Yet 40K is the most popular with the most Tournament attention. I only play Fantasy so I'm sure speaking with a bias, but am I wrong that Fantasy just doesn't get the much needed attention it deserves? Not just from GW, but Hobby Stores / clubs in general.

/Sad Panda

Discussed a lot on any internet forum. In short.

- WHFB 8th made a lot of veterans turn their backs at the game due to a lot of down-dumbing and the extremely high reliance on luck.

- Magic in 8th is completely broken.

- Steadfast is too strong and makes the game as beginner-unfriendly as possible as you need to buy tons of models to get a viable army. Playing WHFB is a lot more expensive than 40k.

- Did I mention broken magic?

WHFB 8th, essentially, is a good ruleset but needs restrictions to be taken seriously. You can have very fun games with vanilla games, but I would never ever play a competitive game with vanilla rules as those have huge, gaping flaws that ruin it.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Discussed a lot on any internet forum. In short.

- WHFB 8th made a lot of veterans turn their backs at the game due to a lot of down-dumbing and the extremely high reliance on luck.

- Magic in 8th is completely broken.

- Steadfast is too strong and makes the game as beginner-unfriendly as possible as you need to buy tons of models to get a viable army. Playing WHFB is a lot more expensive than 40k.

- Did I mention broken magic?

WHFB 8th, essentially, is a good ruleset but needs restrictions to be taken seriously. You can have very fun games with vanilla games, but I would never ever play a competitive game with vanilla rules as those have huge, gaping flaws that ruin it.

Sadly this is all 100% true. 8th edition just doesn't have the veteran support to facilitate such campaigns like 6th did. Which is truly a shame. We had Storm of Magic, but all that does is further break Magic and try to push sales of random models.

Just for the record: There was another worldwide campaign after Storm of Chaos: Nemesis Crown.
But yes, Warhammer Fantasy shrunk that much that GW must think twice before doing a new plastic kit, esp. for the ancient plastic standard units.

It really is a shame. I, personally, think that their pre-2013 models look pretty good and I love the versatility WHFB has to offer unlike its bigger brother 40k.

I don't have a solution to the price problem either - right now, beginners can hardly start without paying tons of money or go second hand. Having huge, extremely expensive models doesn't work either. And if you nerf big troopps too much, people just won't buy those either.

I'd start with a fix to Steadfast to make cavalry worth taking again and see where this could go.

What is the main concern with magic? The only thing that comes to mind off hand is a few spells that don't allow you to take any saves of any kind which I think is a bit extreme.

SoCxWarChief wrote:
What is the main concern with magic? The only thing that comes to mind off hand is a few spells that don't allow you to take any saves of any kind which I think is a bit extreme.

Most people consider the 6th spells insanely overpowered, and a lot of the time you see games hinge on "throw 6 dice to try to irresistable a 6th spell", which is kind of dumb.

There are also other problems with select lores in certain scenarios, but the above is probably 80% of the issue with magic.

 Sigvatr wrote:
It really is a shame. I, personally, think that their pre-2013 models look pretty good and I love the versatility WHFB has to offer unlike its bigger brother 40k.

I don't have a solution to the price problem either - right now, beginners can hardly start without paying tons of money or go second hand. Having huge, extremely expensive models doesn't work either. And if you nerf big troopps too much, people just won't buy those either.

I'd start with a fix to Steadfast to make cavalry worth taking again and see where this could go.

So long as they don't go back in the Opposite direction, where troops weren't worth taking because they were easily beaten because of no step-up and so easily broken and run down..

Or Return to Hero-Hammer

Or return to some of the other bad rulesets.

As others and me already said: WHFB 9th should be 8.5. Fix the few critical flaws in the BRB, kill Matt Ward and we're good to go.

If there's two things I would really like to see, those are:
- bring back the old charges, where you had to take the wheeling and such into account, no more "teleporting" into CC
- less random magic phases, steadier Magic Winds & rebalancing of some spells

As much as (some) people will hate me for it: anything that gets closer to ETC rulings is a very good step into the right direction. Those aren't perfect, ofc not, but they make 8th an enjoyable competitive experience.

I don't hate you for it ... but I puke on ETC rules :p
Way too obscure and complicated in their actual writing and add a layer of weirds rulings that are hard to make much sense of
I don't mind comping, but I hate the "you can't use your toys" comping, I prefer the "you get minuses for being nasty"

If 8th sucks so much, why don't people just keep playing 7th?

Oh I'm not complaining really, I'm just hoping for a few changes in the next edition
I didn't play 7th by the way ... nor 6th to be honest, played WAB between 5th and 8th

 Dakkamite wrote:
If 8th sucks so much, why don't people just keep playing 7th?

7th wasn't that much better. It wasn't as bad, but 6th was far more balanced than 7th or 8th.

I agree that 8.5 is really what we need.

Also, having not played very much in 8th edition mostly due to time, is it just me or are skirmishers a shadow of their former selves? Flanks? unit facing? WTF? Skirmishers losing those 2 things is a big hit. The entry for skirmishers in the BRB is almost bad enough to make me think "there is zero reason to take anything with this rule".

Skirmishers are worse than before, but they were too good, let me explain why
The skirmishers are nearly only "elite" units in the armybooks
The rules for skirmishers were very old and didn't change for a very long time
Those original rules were designed to represent "real" historical skirmishers, that is crap troops with crap equipment that would actually skirmish (throw javelins / use slings and shield the armies movements)

And they were too complicated to use for some of the 12 year-old that play WHFB I suppose

Skirmishers are absolutely terrible. I still can't get my head around GW removing their main feature, ye know, skirmishing, and replacing it with them now being an even bigger block than regular infantry.

...and Steadfast in combination with Skirmishers counting as having 0 ranks makes them face a SCR disadvantage of -3. Cool.

TanKoL wrote:
I don't hate you for it ... but I puke on ETC rules :p
Way too obscure and complicated in their actual writing and add a layer of weirds rulings that are hard to make much sense of
I don't mind comping, but I hate the "you can't use your toys" comping, I prefer the "you get minuses for being nasty"

The EU competitive players do and heavily appreciate it

But alas, different topic.

7th was busted. I think people are remembering with rose colored glasses. Infinite spell dice and no step up and terror-bombing everything. It reminded me of 40K in that you just find a few really crazy ass rules, stack them, and the enemy can't do anything.

I think saying next edition should be 8.5 is a great call. They could do it with a king size FAQ and set of army updates. Because unfortunately you can't just take out stuff like steadfast and 6th spells because it opens a huge can of worms where armies suddenly fall apart or have no counters. Point denial megastars was one of the worst things I saw in the game because it nearly invalidated every tactical aspect. One of the only reasons to not make a 1000pt gutstar is because it can be fed some infinite steadfast fodder and be worthless and/or get wiped off the map with a mega spell--those are probably the biggest fears, anyway. So 8th is a precarious balancing act made even harder by the fact some army books are older than the Bible. I think Bretonnian book was found with the dead sea scrolls.

Call me a fandork, but I think they did a really good job with 8th. All the army books have impressed me with the exception of DoC and to a lesser extent HE.

I've said it before, but I really like the fluff in 40K and I like the models a lot and they do indeed have a much larger player base. But every time I grab a codex or rule book, my brain tries to jump out of my skull. I just don't consider it remotely competitive. My personal opinion.

7th's biggest problems were in the army books. 8th really has done something amazing in that on release almost every army was fairly matched against each other. It took an edition with some of the most severe imbalances in a mainstream tabletop game I have seen and managed to make a workable metagame out of it.

And with the releases, they've managed to maintain a certain level of power more or less. I think that should absolutely be applauded.

I had a lot of hope for 8th, but I agree with those saying 8.5 which fixes Steadfast and crazy magic is needed. Just having flankers with two ranks strip steadfast would be enough I think, and some sort of change to miscasting is all that's needed to balance magic (make it miscast on a double 1 and the spell fails is the easiest fix that springs to mind).

Making flanking significant again would also boost the movement phase back into prominence.