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Hey folks,

Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on playing 7th edition using 8th edition army books, does it work well or is it fraught with danger?

Trying to get back in to WHFB with mates, played a few games of 8th even though none of us really like it, a couple of guys are opposed to learning community made rules so have no interest in 9th, we all have access to the 7th ed rulebook, but not all the army books we need and there's a few units that didn't exist in 7th.

So what do you reckon? Would I be wasting my time trying to get my mates to play 7th with 8th army books? They're not really the sort of group who are open to having to work our way through modifying rules so I'd be hoping it'd be mostly plug and play.

I have not tried using 8th ed army books in 7th but the only problem I can think of would be Monstrous Cavalry. They were mostly under costed in 8th, but I imagine in 7th it would be more so.

Regardless, I would love to hear how things work out.

Monstrous Cav I don't think would be a huge problem, I think only 1 army among us uses Monstrous Cav and we can probably work around it if they look too undercosted.

Magic Items and the Magic phase are going to be the biggest issues.

Back in 7th there were a dozen generic magic items and every item had 8-10 items in every category, come 8th they swapped most of the items over to the core rulebook and dropped 80%-ish of the specific magic items. If you play 7th with the 8e army books there will be almost no magic items.

7th had smaller lower-cost spells and power dice scaling by wizard levels in your army, if you want to play with that core Magic phase you probably couldn't use the Lores in the core rulebooks and non-Lord/Hero Wizards could cause problems (given that they were the impetus for the creation of 8th in the first place...).

If you tell us what 8e units people are worried about not having in 7th we can probably tell you how to adapt them backwards.

I will admit I'm not entirely sure what other people have that doesn't have rules in 7th, personally though I am currently building an Arachnarok which I'd like to be able to use.

We have somewhat mixed feelings on magic items, I don't really mind either way but I know one guy who is happy not taking magic items at all, but I guess it depends on the army, I'm sure some rely more on them than others.

I guess it's a bit of an odd group. everyone's a bit different but collectively I think we've come to the conclusion that we're happy to fiddle with points values and scrap certain rules (like any or all magic items) to create a more balanced game, but don't like fiddling with individual rules because it gets hard to keep track of what's what.

For example we have played games completely ignoring magic and just compensating armies that rely on magic by letting them take more points. But try convincing someone to play with a community ruleset is a bridge too far

I think you might have a rough time.

Monsters, Monstrous Cavalry etc. are all made with 8th in mind. Because 8th edition had large units, step up, and steadfast, the average killing power of all units went up to compensate.

You don't have any of that with 7th edition, so as soon as a really good unit like skullcrushers touches your block of infantry they will disappear. You don't get to strike back, you will auto break and die.

One of the main reasons 8th is my favourite edition is because of rules like steadfast and step up. It made infantry viable again.

7th edition is purely about maxing out hero's in the front rank of a cavalry unit with high initiative and armour. Charge a unit, explode the front rank and run them down.

On the whole I think monsters would not be so bad because they lose Thunderstomp.

The only monsters that I can think of that being a problem would be the Hellpit Abomination (it was a problem in 7th anyway) and the Chimera from Warriors of Chaos, but only because it is special and can fly.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
I think you might have a rough time.

Monsters, Monstrous Cavalry etc. are all made with 8th in mind. Because 8th edition had large units, step up, and steadfast, the average killing power of all units went up to compensate.

You don't have any of that with 7th edition, so as soon as a really good unit like skullcrushers touches your block of infantry they will disappear. You don't get to strike back, you will auto break and die.

One of the main reasons 8th is my favourite edition is because of rules like steadfast and step up. It made infantry viable again.

7th edition is purely about maxing out hero's in the front rank of a cavalry unit with high initiative and armour. Charge a unit, explode the front rank and run them down.

Yes and no? Steadfast may have made infantry viable but it also turned the game into a movement-less deathstar grind where victory was determined by whose dice spiked in the Magic phase first.

I am looking at 7th through a bit of a nostalgia filter here; I played High Elves, so lacking Step Up wasn't an issue for me and fixed power dice made my army work consistently instead of losing games because I rolled a '3' for power dice in a crucial turn.

Considering this in more detail I think my actual recommendation would depend on what armies are being played, as to whether 7th, 8th, or a hybrid of both is going to work better.

One thing you overlook when considering 7th is that you can fight in two combats a turn depending on the order you resolve combats and if you can pursue into a combat that hasn't gone off yet. Flanking cavalry do this very well, and fear causing units do it even better.

Also, bear in mind that random charges, the great white hope of WFB that apparently was missing from everyone's life whether they knew it or not, didn't exist in that edition.

And to add further insult to injury for the players that care about this sort of thing. Steadfast and step up also didn't exist. I guess you could houserule them in, but if you're bringing in everything that you like from 8th, why not just play 8th?

Random charges and steadfast are the 2 main reasons we don't want to play 8th.

We didn't play too many games of 8th before getting utterly sick of games being determined by good or bad rolls on the random charge.

And for the most part I think most of the guys in the group prefer more moderately sized units than the huge ones that seemed to dominate 8th.

Probably best to change 8th.

Some sample rule changes.

Steadfast - Each rank you outnumber the opponent by mitigates leadership modifiers by 1 to a maximum of the units standard leadership.

Pressed charge - A unit that fails its charge may press on and add a further d6 movement. If it completes the charge with the added movement it will engage but doesnt get the benefits of charging having been exhausted. If a pressed charge is countercharged as a reaction both units retain the benefits of charging.

Countercharge - This is a charge reaction. Frenzied troops can countercharge even though they normally cannot react to charges. The enemy charge is automatically successful if it was in valid charge range, move the countercharging unit forward to make the distance. If a unit countercharges it gets all the added benefits of having charged itself, but only if the opponent failed to complete the charge.

This should fix things for you.

Adding more rules to the lengthy rules will probably just slow them down more. It's why I went retro rather than trying to fix 8th.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Random charges and steadfast are the 2 main reasons we don't want to play 8th.

We didn't play too many games of 8th before getting utterly sick of games being determined by good or bad rolls on the random charge.

And for the most part I think most of the guys in the group prefer more moderately sized units than the huge ones that seemed to dominate 8th.

I found that Fear in 7th was far more annoying in it's ability to stop a charge than random charges during 8th and I was totally against random charges when I first read about them.
I found that bad charges usually just averaged out over a game, and I grew to love that moment where the charge roll was made or failed.

I agree with choosing 7th over 8th if you would prefer a smaller type of game though. IMO the biggest sin of 8th was a lack of scalability.

Yeah I don't think you'll convince us that random charges are good Last game I just felt bad after half my mate's Ogres failed charges on my goblin units, completely breaking up his front line and making it trivial for me to get the advantage.

 Orlanth wrote:
Steadfast - Each rank you outnumber the opponent by mitigates leadership modifiers by 1 to a maximum of the units standard leadership.

I actually had a similar idea. My mates probably won't like the idea of doing more maths but I thought something like that would be a good middle ground.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah I don't think you'll convince us that random charges are good Last game I just felt bad after half my mate's Ogres failed charges on my goblin units, completely breaking up his front line and making it trivial for me to get the advantage.

Fair enough, if the Ogres charge was against a unit of Goblin Archers then the stand n shoot is like salt in the wound.

I'd recommend as a group getting a hold of the 7th army books(which shouldn't be to hard as I've gotten a few 6th books for like $10 each) and porting the new units over.

I'm lucky that i don't care for units added after 6th so can go back and play that. >.>

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Hey folks,

Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on playing 7th edition using 8th edition army books, does it work well or is it fraught with danger?

Trying to get back in to WHFB with mates, played a few games of 8th even though none of us really like it, a couple of guys are opposed to learning community made rules so have no interest in 9th, we all have access to the 7th ed rulebook, but not all the army books we need and there's a few units that didn't exist in 7th.

So what do you reckon? Would I be wasting my time trying to get my mates to play 7th with 8th army books? They're not really the sort of group who are open to having to work our way through modifying rules so I'd be hoping it'd be mostly plug and play.

What you're proposing is an exercise on massive house ruling to get right (though if you're a small group then it's no big deal).

I'd honestly keep playing 7th and forget 8th edition existed. The beginning of 8th was marred by large unbalance brought by 7th edition books (some like Skaven lasting until the very end) so going the other way probably won't end well (I'm thinking stuff like the nurgle Daemon Prince would win whole battles by himself)

Just drop the problematic PD spam books and maybe fear autobreak and you'll be fine with 7th ed.