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Not with percentages though, NOT this way.

I like to have my Beastlord, BSB, AND Shaman, they take up more than 25% of my list I believe (barely, by maybe 25 points) because they're a big part of keeping it together.

I really hope a lot of these rumors ARE exactly that: rumors.

Everything Ive heard points to 50%.. we'll see in a few months

Kirbinator wrote:25% characters is pretty harsh if you are relying on a dragon-mounted character or EoG + Slaan to carry the weight of your army. I'm not sure about you guys, but while I do enjoy a large scary monster or three on the field, running up against the double Engine + Slaan Lizards isn't much fun and is grossly disproportionate. When going from a 1500 point game to a 2250 point game means adding one or two characters, it's pretty dumb and deserves a good looking at.

Hence I propose that the correct solution is to fix the book in question, not the game. Add a rule that you can only take one Engine of the Gods for every 2000 points of your army; fixed! No abusing small armies with it since you can't field it at 1500 points, and you get ONE at tournament play.

I don't think the problem is necessarily with the game - I think it's with the PLAYERS. I'm quite capable of playing a decent-sized game with blocks and a variety of troops - I do have an Empire army. But somewhere along the line the players took this uber-competitive mentality to win at all costs and stopped having fun. If you're not going to enjoy the game, why the hell are you playing?

OK, I'll throw my $0.02 in before this turns into the inevitable competitive vs casual flamewar...

Obviously, 'casual' players are less affected by these rule changes (and some may work in their favour as such players are less likely to have optimised character/monster heavy lists) but this is ALWAYS the case.

Every time GW changes its core rules it has a bigger effect on those who play competitively than those who don't but this is due largely to the practices of GW's design studio - it goes like this.

Current Rules
Codex creep from each successive dex/army book changes the metagame
Current Rules become unable to cope with the meta
Reboot to new rules to nerf the top-end of the meta and refocus the game to its original intent (generally lots of grunts is better than fewer hard-as models is the philosophy).

Rinse and repeat.

Why are people acting surprised and getting their knickers in a knot about it? Its not as if we haven't seen this before. In fantasy 5th-6th was a major transition away from herohammer, but the army books from 6th and 7th editions have pushed it back towards herohammer/monsterhammer.

Rather than fixing the army books, they redo the core rules again to push the focus back and guess what! over the course of the 8th and probably 9th editions successive idiots will write new books with exemptions, loopholes and a general power creep until we have to reboot again. This is simply the way that GW works.

Now, I know that people will be upset that their particular build/concept will be invalidated but that will not change the way GW operates. You either have to grit your teeth and live with it, play older rulesets outwith the 'official' circuit, or give up altogether.

Personally, I'm quite excited about these rumours but that is merely because my personal preference lies with the game being more about the units and less about the characters/monsters but I can fully understand why people who prefer the opposite approach will be upset.

In any event, we all know that not all of these rumours will turn out to be true and we will all get blindsided by stuff that's in the book that has never been rumoured. I'm just going to wait until release day and see whether the game has moved in a direction I like. If so I'll get back into it. If not, does anyone want any dwarfs...?

It still affects casual players, although not more than any other edition.

Casual A finds unit Casual B has trouble dealing with without making significant changes to list.

Casual B, being a casual player, doesn't spend the time/effort to figure out how to deal with it.

Casual B blames rules/armybook/new edition for Casual A's god-unit.

I think the problem is that casual players shouldn't really be expected to adapt. Competitive players really have no right to complain though: all a new edition does is shift the metagame (albeit by a huge amount). Wouldn't be the first time a competitive player had to adapt to a metagame. Unless, of course, something grossly unjust happens and an entire army gets invalidated, then it's a significant problem for everyone.

We have a response! Not a very revealing one though...

GW wrote:Hi there

I imagine as a gamer you will have many options to include in your cool skaven army and things like this will not be a problem. The 25% mark seems a little plucked out of the air and high lights the foolishness of rumors.

And that at the moment is all these are about the new rules, rumors. As we our selves have not yet seen the rules or have them we are unable to say or confirm/deny anything.

We are in the position of just having to wait and see like everyone else.

Sorry I could not be of more help.

Paul S

For those who didn't see it, my email read as follows...

Flashman wrote:Hello,

As you are no doubt aware, the announcement of Warhammer 8th Edition has led to frenzied internet speculation regarding the new rules. One of the more persistent rumours is that of a return to percentages for army selections (i.e. max 25% on characters, min 25% core, max 25% special etc).

I currently would like to round out my 2000 point Skaven army with a Screaming Bell, but the mooted 25% restriction on Characters would make its inclusion in my army list unworkable.

I'm fairly certain that GW would not want to restrict gamers in this manner. Could you confirm this rumour is nonsense, so that I can make my purchase in confidence

Regards

Was the guy who replied 12?

Quite apart from the grammatical and spelling errors, I'm sure flash was delighted to hear his Skaven army was 'cool'.

Basically it boiled down to 'buy it anyway', which is hardly unexpected but still disappointing.


P.S. - I have far more confidence that flashman's Skaven are cool than I have in GWs communication skills...

Flashman wrote:

I am becoming increasingly dubious about this rumour or at least the mooted % amount.
.

I agree the amount is still up in the air, I would say the % in general idea is pretty much 101% solid.

IMO of course.

Just a random thought - one of the rumours is that more terrain will be encouraged in WFB8.

Is it coincidence that this month's WD has the first teaser advert for WFB8 and a Standard Bearer article all about how cool GW's terrain is and how terrain can help shape the narrative of a battle?

Maybe its just me being cynical.





Again

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Was the guy who replied 12?

Quite apart from the grammatical and spelling errors, I'm sure flash was delighted to hear his Skaven army was 'cool'.

Basically it boiled down to 'buy it anyway', which is hardly unexpected but still disappointing.


P.S. - I have far more confidence that flashman's Skaven are cool than I have in GWs communication skills...

Yes, I was a bit stumped as to how Paul S (aged 12 and 3/4) was able to assign the cool factor to an army he has never seen. As it happens, it is pretty cool, but this is more reflective of Skaven in general rather than any painting and modelling on my part

"Cool" terrain will be allowed up to 10% of your army list. Place it wisely.

Coming back to characters and percentages. If this is implemented (and I think we need to be talking at a rate of 40-50% for it to work), will the other character limitations be dropped? (e.g. 0-4 heroes in 2000pts).

I've always thought that the limits on heroes have always served low numbered, elite armies quite well (Chaos, Lizardmen, High Elves etc), but in horde armies, those 4 heroes start to look pretty isolated!

Another sudden random thought is that higher percentages for characters don't kick in until you get to the higher points, preventing Heroes from dominating smaller games.

So maybe, something like this...

0-1000pts = 25% Heroes, No Lords
1000-2000pts = 50% Heroes, 1 Lord
2000-3000pts = 50% Heroes, 2 Lords

I think the initial reason for the limit was so that armies with cheaper heroes couldn't spam stuff like power or dispel dice. However if the new system has armies generating most of the dice per magic phase this shouldn't be an issue. I think percentages are much more overall balanced than havng a hard four character allowance because some armies have inherently better stuff.

Any ideal if percentages will be the same across all armies? As it is now, I believe Brettonians have a slightly different Lord/Hero allocation amount for a given number of points. I don't know offhand if any other armies vary.

ZF-

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Just a random thought - one of the rumours is that more terrain will be encouraged in WFB8.

Is it coincidence that this month's WD has the first teaser advert for WFB8 and a Standard Bearer article all about how cool GW's terrain is and how terrain can help shape the narrative of a battle?

Maybe its just me being cynical.


Again

I really like this rumor tbh. Our group plays with lots of terrain anyway (6+ pieces) so it wont make that much of a difference for us. I think it just adds another strategic element to the game.

Zad Fnark wrote:Any ideal if percentages will be the same across all armies? As it is now, I believe Brettonians have a slightly different Lord/Hero allocation amount for a given number of points. I don't know offhand if any other armies vary.

ZF-

The other notable is example High Elves, who get more Special and Rare options with a reduction in Core requirement to emphasise their elite nature.

I have no idea if this will extend to the percentages (if indeed percentages happen).

One option could be that both restrictions could remain in place.

So in a 2000pt Bretonnian army you could have 5 characters totalling no more than 500pts whilst other armies would have a max of 4 characters to the same pv?

Probably a bit far-fetched but you never know.

You are more than welcome to join us at Cynics Anonymous Calvin

Patronising statements about how cool stuff is is standard GWspeak

Hey by the way I am down with the kids too!

Just a thought.
Would the allownce of a greater percentage of characters allow for more diversity in the gaming?
If the maximum is 50% it does not mean that it is compulsary. As long as everyone with a particular army doesn't follow suit of course.

The thing thats getting me on the percentages thing, is that individual army codex's have been what determines how many of what you can take. So unless they say "ignore that" they will have to put a value for each army.

Manfred von Drakken wrote:I don't think the problem is necessarily with the game - I think it's with the PLAYERS. I'm quite capable of playing a decent-sized game with blocks and a variety of troops - I do have an Empire army. But somewhere along the line the players took this uber-competitive mentality to win at all costs and stopped having fun. If you're not going to enjoy the game, why the hell are you playing?

QFT x27!

25% in characters is a little to restrictive given the current points cost of each individual character at the current time. In general I like to filed, a combat lord, lvl2 wizard and a BSB. With a 25% points restriction that will make balancing out your characters very difficult. I could see 50% a definite reality but 35% seems more likely for them to pick if they do decide to go the percentage route.

I don't think GW wants to shoot them selves in the foot when it comes to selling kits such as the High Elf Lord on a Dragon, or the Screaming Bell/Plague Furnace kit. Look for something closer to 50% as it seems more realistic.

Back in Ye Olden Days of percentage based list construction it was army dependent. Bretonnians had a 75% cap on characters instead of the usual 50%. Other armies had greater or less depending on the style of army. If they bring back that sort of system I would hope they would take that into account since it's a big deal and books designed for a different system aren't just going to magically fall into place when they radically shift things around.

Ixquic wrote:Back in Ye Olden Days of percentage based list construction it was army dependent. Bretonnians had a 75% cap on characters instead of the usual 50%. Other armies had greater or less depending on the style of army. If they bring back that sort of system I would hope they would take that into account since it's a big deal and books designed for a different system aren't just going to magically fall into place when they radically shift things around.

Thank you! I was literally about to type this out. Assuming the same %s across all armies is a little unlikely considering how they alter the minimums and maximums now, and altered the %s back when they were used.

A character limit of 25% wouldn't affect my WoC too much. Lately I've stopped taking so many characters [though admittedly the limit would make my standard lord + BSB invalid, which kind of sucks] and just taken more and more basic troops, because I've found basic chaos warriors can, sometimes, actually win combat. Just make sure you roll well!

What it'll screw though is my VC. My armies, at any points level, end up being almost 50% vampires. It's not uber S7 red fury 1200 attacks that auto hit insanity, it's just vampires. Skeleton-summoning, magic-casting naked vampires. That's how I like to play. The army is "Vampire Counts" not "Undead Horde". The flavor and coolness of the army is in the vampires, not their minions. I'll be very disappointed if they limit characters to 25%.

What might be better, and I don't think anyone's thought about it much, is 25% per category of character. It's almost as though everyone's forgotten that there's two categories of characters! While they list off special, core, and rare they forget that it's separate hero and lord categories. Would things be so bad if it was limited to 25% lords and 25% heroes? In a 2000 point game that still allows a powerful lord or special character [though not on a dragon] and 2-3 weaker hero characters. That's....pretty much how it is now.

25% per character catagory seems to make more sense to me - though I know some people like to go all-hero with no lords, and that will hurt them a bit.

It's how it is with any update, some armies just get screwed in the rump.

Tomb Kings will get hit hard too, you need lots of characters to make the army work at all. Glad I sold mine

I don't see GW redoing every book all the sudden unless they treat it like 3rd ed for 40k where they had army lists for everything in the back of the book to hold you over till you got your new codex. Maybe that's why it's 500 pages?

They're not redoing any of the books. Unless you live in Spain.

Necros wrote:

Manfred von Drakken wrote:I don't think the problem is necessarily with the game - I think it's with the PLAYERS. I'm quite capable of playing a decent-sized game with blocks and a variety of troops - I do have an Empire army. But somewhere along the line the players took this uber-competitive mentality to win at all costs and stopped having fun. If you're not going to enjoy the game, why the hell are you playing?

QFT x27!

Yawn.

I had no idea fun and uber-competitive were mutually exclusive terms. Some people actually enjoy *gasp* taking 2 Engines and a Slann for a number of reasons, least of which being it's combat potential. It looks stinking cool!

I can understand the frustration with that setup though, since it has totally dominated the tournament scene...oh wait...

The correct solution is not to arbitrarily limit units you do not like. The correct solution is to adapt. Upon saying that, I concede that some armies are more difficult to adapt to. Daemons? Well, we're all SoL there. 2 Engines and Slann? Tough nut to crack, but quite doable. I'll be playing against daemons tonight. Not necessarily excited about, but I'm gonna do what I can.

The tournament scene dictates a lot of play outside of it. If there is a list that is very unbalanced, regular players will either figure it out themselves or read about it on the internet. I know some people think it's cool to paint up a themed force then lose 90% of their games but most people want to win at least some of the time and will take the best stuff the achieve that. It's the game designer's job to make sure that there is nothing so broken in their product so that you can just pick up an I win card and play it against most of your opponents. What happens is that these super lists start showing up outside tournies in regular pick up games, people get their own armies trounced since the game was lost before it started, the losers figure that if they want to win they need similar lists or quit and then you see the same armies in stores all the time. I am the only person at my local GW that still regularly plays Ogres or Orcs and one of like three that has a Wood Elf army. They's just no point to bring them out unless you don't care about winning or can control what type of army you are playing against. It's all well and good to say "play against like minded people" but those sorts are becoming more and more dissatisfied with the hobby. In my area they just stopped bothering since most of the time they couldn't find an army that wasn't some tournie test run and it just wasn't worth the time.

What I'm getting at is "blame the players, not the designers" is stupid. Players are always going to try and use the rules to win and the type of person that will tie his hand behind his own back is rare and the concept of what is "fair" is incredibly relative to the person you ask anyway. What needs to happen is the designer needs to make a tight rule set which both casual people can play and have fun with but isn't open to serious abuse. GW has given us the attitude for so long that sort of concept is impossible that people have started to believe it but that's a load of bull and just an excuse they use. I'm hoping that 8th edition is the system that accomplishes this and the fact that they are changing up some rules so massively is a sign to me that they at least are acknowledging the problems.

I agree that it is fun to win, but doing so over and over with a power gaming list can get boring (at least for me).

Thats why i picked up a skaven army and made a list that rolls over 8 artillery dice a turn! It doesnt win that often but by the end of the game me and my opponent plus anyone watching are usually in tears from laughing.

Flashman wrote:

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Was the guy who replied 12?

Quite apart from the grammatical and spelling errors, I'm sure flash was delighted to hear his Skaven army was 'cool'.

Basically it boiled down to 'buy it anyway', which is hardly unexpected but still disappointing.


P.S. - I have far more confidence that flashman's Skaven are cool than I have in GWs communication skills...

Yes, I was a bit stumped as to how Paul S (aged 12 and 3/4) was able to assign the cool factor to an army he has never seen. As it happens, it is pretty cool, but this is more reflective of Skaven in general rather than any painting and modelling on my part

If Paul S is Paul Sawyer, then at one time he was the editor of White Dwarf. Which explains the typo's