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First of, I'm basing this on people i have met at the table. I try to stay out of the 8th ed arguments on this board. Untill now that is! Mwhahahahahaha....*cough*.

I have noticed something odd about the bulk of peoples armies that complain the most about 8th ed, both prior and post 8th release. They always seem to be fielding the bulk of points in on mega unit. They then get all upset when a nasty spell like dwellers kills a bunch of that unit. Which seems to be the point of crazy spells this edition, to hit bigger units like a truck to make up for infantry blocks getting steadfast. I know I wont be touching that brick of white lions with all your'e characters in it with a big stick untill I have thinned them out a bit.

Am I the only one who thinks it's odd to whine about the counter to huge units killing your huge units?

Me, and about two thirds of the fantasy gamers in my area (About 20 people I think) seem to like 8th ed a damn sight more than we did previous editions (Hey, remember unit str? Remember how fun that was?), citing better overall balance as the main reason, with "It's just more fun" being a close second. It seems to be the people who ran very, very competetive lists in 7th that despise 8th ed. Not that 8th ed is free of cheese mongering, it's just harder to attain that fine gorganzola of cheese, and even when you do you can still get pasted by less mad lists.

Although, I will say this......DEY TOOK MAH OP SKARSNIK!

Meh, the haters have all kinds of excuses for hating 8th honestly, and the mega spells are simply one of them...
Granted I think the auto-kill spells are really stupid, especially that there's 2 'initiative test or die' spells when at least a 3rd of the armies in the game have I2 or worse! (Orcs, Ogres, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Dwarfs, Lizzies, Nurgle Daemons... think that's all of 'em?!) Makes it highly unfair for anyone who plays such an army as they now fear all 4 insta-kill spells, whereas armies like WoC & Elves of all flavours only fear one or two.
While you need counters to mega-bricks/Deathstars, I do think GW went about it in laziest way possible and that instead of auto-kill spells, they should have toned those spells down a bit and just made them work in a way similar to the big VC spell. (ie: the deeper your ranks the harder you get hit, or else make the mega spells hit harder the more models are in the unit.)

Another example a few of the local haters in my area keep citing for example is "movement is too simplified" due to new rules like pre-measuring & the WoTR type manouvering, and they also claim that there's no skill in charging anymore due to random charge distances.
Basically, they're just pissy that their M5 armies can finally be surprised and charged by M4 or M3. (and ditto for their cav units) These are the guys who would very smugly sit their higher movement unit 1/8" or so outside your unit's max charge range knowing that you couldn't do jack to counter them beyond get ready to take it in the face.

Of course, anyone who was running a min/maxed style 7th ed list that focused around abusing hard-hitting cavalry is also going to hate the new edition... How many times in 7th did we see stupid crap like 5 Chaos Knights + a pair of characters running roughshod over ENTIRE ARMIES?!
Or else someone who was running a Deathstar like the dreaded Chosenstar of doom probably didn't enjoy the change to how regen+wards can no longer be stacked...


Plenty of reasons for the haters to say "8th sucks", and that's before you even touch on the 40k fanboy who just thinks that Fantasy is mickey-mouse'hammer because of stupid reasons "X/Y/Z"...

Oh god, I had blocked what cav used to be like, thanks for reopening that psychological scar. Heres a harrowing memory for you, remember what fear was like in 6th ed? In combat with 50 zombies with 25 orc boys? Oh my, off you run.

I agree that magic could have been handled better, but short of what wyou suggested I can't see how.

As a relic of guess range times, I will say this; it sucked. Older players like myself could wield rock throwers with horrifying accuracy, and call charges well, while newer players struggled. It widened the gap, and alienating the new guys is not what wargaming needs. Oh, and the amount of "Just checking my great cannon is in range, better run a measure from my end of the board to yours past any major landmarks" that went on was insane.

Also, cavalry never ballsing up a charge was terrible, it meant that bretonnians (who I did, and still do, run a full cav list with) could hit you with an entire army in one turn, often thier first. Combined with no steadfast and silly combat res stacking, they were liable to break an army in a single turn. What did the non bret player do wrong? He moved his army forward in his first turn unaware of just how far 16inches is, the sucker.

Thing with 8th that sells it for me is that I'm seeing balanced army lists actually winning battles through, try not to feint, inteligent command. People are actually fielding armies comprised of units they like, not what's best, and due to way better internal army book balence, they arent penalised for this.

There are issues, but I basically agree.

The rules are set up in a RPS sort of way and people are prone to be upset that their rock is regularly beat by paper.

With a larger set of games or a regular group the game is great.

Mr Mugguffins wrote:
Oh god, I had blocked what cav used to be like, thanks for reopening that psychological scar. Heres a harrowing memory for you, remember what fear was like in 6th ed? In combat with 50 zombies with 25 orc boys? Oh my, off you run.

Yep, I do remember those days, as I was bouncing between Brets & Tzeentch Warriors who were shall we say, the unloved red-headed-step-child of Chaos back then...

At least VC's back then weren't so horrible, I always hated Fear-causers like Trolls & hitty units with a Fear-causing banner far more than most things the Undead could throw at you. (though the unit housing the Vampire itself was always pretty scary!)

Mr Mugguffins wrote:
As a relic of guess range times, I will say this; it sucked. Older players like myself could wield rock throwers with horrifying accuracy, and call charges well, while newer players struggled. It widened the gap, and alienating the new guys is not what wargaming needs. Oh, and the amount of "Just checking my great cannon is in range, better run a measure from my end of the board to yours past any major landmarks" that went on was insane.

Also, cavalry never ballsing up a charge was terrible, it meant that bretonnians (who I did, and still do, run a full cav list with) could hit you with an entire army in one turn, often thier first. Combined with no steadfast and silly combat res stacking, they were liable to break an army in a single turn. What did the non bret player do wrong? He moved his army forward in his first turn unaware of just how far 16inches is, the sucker.

Ah, most of the guys who fell into the 'donkeycave-goober' category had a little trick whereby they'd pre-measure their arm from wrist to elbow before showing up at the store/event and then they'd oh-so-casually lay their arm down across the table along the general line of fire they wanted with their guess range weapon, thus giving them a pretty damn good estimation for their 'guess'...

See, my Brets never really did that... But then I swear to Tzeentch that all my knights where instead carrying long rubber poles of 'auto-bounce'.
That and my Brets always somehow got their armour switch-up with their men-at-arms, as even a bunch of S3 arrows would drop my dudes as if they were under fire from a misfiring-all-barrels-at-once Hellblaster!

Mr Mugguffins wrote:
Thing with 8th that sells it for me is that I'm seeing balanced army lists actually winning battles through, try not to feint, inteligent command. People are actually fielding armies comprised of units they like, not what's best, and due to way better internal army book balence, they arent penalised for this.

For the most part yes, though TK's & DoC have some issues there with their internal balance... (looking at you Bloodlessletters & so-called-but-not-really Heavy Cav... among others...)
Undead & Daemonic Fast Cav is also a complete oxymoron that I dearly wish GW would fix! Seriously, either give what are basically "hold only" units a special rule to ignore that so they can function properly in their role, or else drop the whole Fast Cav bit and just give them Vanguard as an added special rule because right now they're not really "Fast Cav" at all! (admittedly the free reforms are nice and all, but Fast Cav's real advantage is being able to use Feigned Flight, which Undead & Daemons can't do!)

Of course the tournament scene hasn't changed at all. Most books are still rendered down to basically running one of 3-4 or so main builds with some slight alterations to taste... But I supposes even that's still better than 7th where I could almost instantly guess exactly what an opponent would be setting-up once I knew their army of choice?!
(oh, let's see, WoC... Tzeentch or Nurgle Chosenstar + Lv4 + BSB + Festus + double Shrines + min core in Marauder Cav and a helping of solo Spawns for chaffing and a Knight Bus for added pain. Yawn)

I do find that people who used Strategy X to great advantage and find that Strategy X no longer is foolproof tend to hate.

When the WoC marauder nerf came out do you remember how many posts said WoC are now the worst army in the game? I mean seriously said that.

On one hand, I get it. Painting takes a long time. Your time/money is now somewhat invalidated. Like having a 2500 count 8 track music collection right before cassettes came out. And then buying 2500 cassettes right before CDs came out.

Change is hard. I mean this whole scene is a bunch of people playing a decades old board game in the internet age. GW gamers fear change. I'm actually posting this using an IBM mainframe the size of a car with no graphical interface. I can't even see what I'm typing since I'm coding in binary01010101010111.

I agree almost completely.

Most of the haters are just miffed that their old tactics are no longer working and they have to buy a new army. But its their fault for running such unbalanced armies that only exploited a major shortcoming of the rules.

You should have been expecting your marauders to get hit with the Nerfbat. Now GW did overcompensate, but hey what else is new? I saw that coming a mile away.


The key to staying solid is a large and varied collection of models. At which point you won't be hurt by rule changes as much and won't need to buy as many models when the new book comes out. Just a couple things of the new shiny and away you go!

 Grey Templar wrote:
I agree almost completely.

Most of the haters are just miffed that their old tactics are no longer working and they have to buy a new army. But its their fault for running such unbalanced armies that only exploited a major shortcoming of the rules.

You should have been expecting your marauders to get hit with the Nerfbat. Now GW did overcompensate, but hey what else is new? I saw that coming a mile away.


The key to staying solid is a large and varied collection of models. At which point you won't be hurt by rule changes as much and won't need to buy as many models when the new book comes out. Just a couple things of the new shiny and away you go!

To a certain point... But there are occasions where GW really screws the pooch with some armies and just leaves them in a complete trash-heap of uncompetitive fecal matter.

Remember Dark Elves in 6th? As an army they were barely average back then and some of the rules didn't even match the models themselves! (looking at you Executions and your really heavy-looking Light Armour.lol.) Dark Elves were so behind everyone else that GW eventually released a WD errata to re-point a number of units and change some of their rules. (like giving those poor Executioners their heavy armour)
O&G's were even worse in 7th, to the point that even hardcore Greenskin players just got fed up and shelved their armies due to the brutal Animosity mechanic and general overcosting of pretty much everything in the book! (which is really saying something!)
And to an extent, TK's & DoC got that same treatment this edition with units being either clear 'winners' or else just leaving you scratching your head as to why they're even an option... (looking at you Skeleton Heavy Cav & Slaanesh Chariots!)

Although imho, TK "Heavy" Cav has always been done in a stupid fashion right from day 1, and should either just given the 3+ save, or else just do away with the waste-of-space unit and give the Fast Cav the option for spears and be done with it...


Having a large & varied collection is typically a good answer to how units will shift in power between editions, but sometimes the fault does lie directly with GW itself putting out a sub-par book that will then tend to 'lock' players into running maybe at most 50% of the options in their book. (and I'm not talking about Tournaments where EVERYONE boils down to 2-4 or so builds this edition...)
At which point, players have a decent right to be upset as it may likely mean that your entire army which was never really offensive before is now left floundering and full of weaksauce.

I made the claim, posted here, that Bloodletters were going to be nerfed. It was the easiest call ever. Flamers was an easy second. They were basically magic, warded, flaming leadbelchers with S5 for some odd reason.

Anyway don't want to derail this into another 626 gripe session. Just wanted to pat myself on the back I guessed some stuff.

Lizardmen I knew those SCs would come down in price. I knew Slann wouldn't get everything so good so free. The extra power die PER CAST was a gimme. Krox are a tiny bit cheaper and +1S. Making them pretty much the only non-monsters walking around with 7Strength. On that, I said no way, it will never happen. I suppose it really only matters vs. ginormous AS or Toughness.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Krox are a tiny bit cheaper and +1S. Making them pretty much the only non-monsters walking around with 7Strength. On that, I said no way, it will never happen. I suppose it really only matters vs. ginormous AS or Toughness.

Minotaurs with great weapons are S7. Of course, the rest of the Lizardmen book is >>>>> the rest of the Beastmen book.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I made the claim, posted here, that Bloodletters were going to be nerfed. It was the easiest call ever. Flamers was an easy second. They were basically magic, warded, flaming leadbelchers with S5 for some odd reason.

Anyway don't want to derail this into another 626 gripe session. Just wanted to pat myself on the back I guessed some stuff.

Lizardmen I knew those SCs would come down in price. I knew Slann wouldn't get everything so good so free. The extra power die PER CAST was a gimme. Krox are a tiny bit cheaper and +1S. Making them pretty much the only non-monsters walking around with 7Strength. On that, I said no way, it will never happen. I suppose it really only matters vs. ginormous AS or Toughness.

We all know that stuff is going to be nerfed/buffed in new books. The old "must-haves" will get toned down and units that likely never saw the table will get buffed so that those models sell...
But it does seem that all the way through 6th - 8th editions, at least one army gets a book that is simply a polished terd and leaves the army in a complete mess... Such as 6th Dark Elves & 7th O&G's.

I can bet a few things on upcoming Dark Elves too;
- no more Pendant Lords
- Sac Dagger if it stays will become garbage
- No more unlimited power dice magic phases
- Hydra goes up in pts to at least 210
- High Elf players will whine endlessly that DE's got a better update than they did that GW hates them!

 kirsanth wrote:
There are issues, but I basically agree.

The rules are set up in a RPS sort of way and people are prone to be upset that their rock is regularly beat by paper.

With a larger set of games or a regular group the game is great.

yep, qft

IMO from the games I have played 8th edition is less about competitive play and more about beer and pretzels gaming with your mates.

All the randomness makes it harder to play competitively which is what some people hate about it.

That and the newer books seem to be a lot more balanced than the older ones.

I personally like it as I am a casual player and never played 7th ed anyway.

And I had my first game against the new high elves last night with my ogres. Those pointy ears are horrible when used well!

Since I hated 8th I must be one of those "haters" with no valid points to make. Well, gonna make one anyhow. Cannons vs Large targets. To hard of a counter. Game got boring with no big gribblies running around and cav taking a hit. If i wanted to play rank and file hammer, well id play a real war game. Bring back the dragons I say.

That is one change I could get behind. Change the Large Target rule to include the following.

"In addition, models with the Large Target rule only suffer d3 wounds from cannons instead of D6."

I think you'd have to say halve multi wounds. Since you can get pie-plated as well and there are various forms of war machines besides cannons. But it also makes them a lot stronger.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I think you'd have to say halve multi wounds. Since you can get pie-plated as well and there are various forms of war machines besides cannons. But it also makes them a lot stronger.

Or maybe change cannons to require a to-hit roll instead of essentially being an auto-hitting laser beam of doom?!

I don't mind stone throwers so much, (aside from runed-up Dwarf ones because they really hurt!), since they have a bad habit of scattering enough to move the center hole off of your giant-arse & pts-heavy gribbly... And bolt throwers can outright miss half or more of the time.

But halving multiple wounds in general would be too strong. Then all weapons that cause multiple wounds would be nerfed too hard.

And the Stonehorn would have to be immune to multiple wounds period.

I know it's strong. But you can't just say cannon. Because a skull cannon isn't a cannon and an ironblaster isn't a cannon and warp ligntning cannon isn't a cannon. Only the BRB is a cannon. You could say everything that fires like a cannon, but there are some spells that do that and some war machines that don't. You could have a huge list of every model it includes that gets out of date.

Table wrote:
Since I hated 8th I must be one of those "haters" with no valid points to make. Well, gonna make one anyhow. Cannons vs Large targets. To hard of a counter. Game got boring with no big gribblies running around and cav taking a hit. If i wanted to play rank and file hammer, well id play a real war game. Bring back the dragons I say.

I will agree, cannons are amazing this edition. Too amazing. But the issue ISnt how hard they hit, that makes sense. It's the fact that they hit with near pinpoint accuracy pretty much every time they fire. No shots going hillariously wide.

The problem is that its tough to make a cannon deviation mechanic that isn't way too complicated.

You'd almost have to make a special deviation template just for cannons.

Not really. Have the aim point scatter 1d6". You'll still be able to hit units regularly, and even monsters tolerably well. But against single infantry models or skirmishers it will be pretty hopeless, which is as it should be.

 Grey Templar wrote:
The problem is that its tough to make a cannon deviation mechanic that isn't way too complicated.

You'd almost have to make a special deviation template just for cannons.

That hardly seems beyond the realm of possibility for gw

Mr Mugguffins wrote:

Table wrote:
Since I hated 8th I must be one of those "haters" with no valid points to make. Well, gonna make one anyhow. Cannons vs Large targets. To hard of a counter. Game got boring with no big gribblies running around and cav taking a hit. If i wanted to play rank and file hammer, well id play a real war game. Bring back the dragons I say.

I will agree, cannons are amazing this edition. Too amazing. But the issue ISnt how hard they hit, that makes sense. It's the fact that they hit with near pinpoint accuracy pretty much every time they fire. No shots going hillariously wide.

I think part of the problem is that they do hit monsters too hard... Characters at least get a Look out Sir! roll to protect them from how accurate cannons are, while you need to get lucky to bust through multiple ranks of monstrous units.
Unfortunately for monsters though, something that's meant to be the size of a freaking house or bigger has a 16% or 33% chance of auto-dying to a cannonball that gets through. (depending on how many wounds it has)

If Large Targets only suffered D3 wounds to cannons, it would at least force some focused firing to bring them down within a single shooting phase.
Maybe allow the full D6 wounds to occur though if you roll a 6 to-wound, if you want to represent the shot striking the gribbly in the head/vital organ and potentially doing catastrophic damage?