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So, as the title says, my friend and I are trying to get back into WHFantasy and we have been doing little pitched battles to get back into fighting form.
We thought that we were playing in 7th edition with everything, except for our Wood Elves that dont have a 7th edition.
Then I notice that we are actually playing with a 6th edition main rulebook, but with 7th edition Orcs, Dark Elves, High Elves, Tomb Kings, and Lizardmen. So 5/6 of our armies are 7th edition, but our main rulebook is 6th edition. No problem, right?
We can just patch ourselves over to 7th edition. Well, according to the internet, it might actually be better to just rollback all our armies to 6th edition because 7th supposedly destroyed the game with unbalanced books? We aren't good enough players to have noticed or exploited broken things against each other yet.


We never played in any tournaments growing up and to be honest we kind of like how in the 7th edition army books there's a lot of characters weve been trying out each game and having fun with. A sticking point for us is that we have already started making up our little narrative for what could happen in the upcoming campaign based on these characters that we have been having fun with. From what I've gleaned on the internet most of you are probably throwing up right now since some rookie just admitted he didnt hate the 7th edition army books off the jump.


Is it really worth rolling all our other 5 armies back to 6th edition? Should we just play in 7th edition like we thought we were since we're apparently not good enough at the game to exploit broken comps yet? Does anyone think we should just say ignorance is bliss and continue playing our backwards 6th ed rules with 7th ed codexes?


FWIW, we liked the idea of just upgrading to the 7ed base rules before I saw all the 7th ed hate, especially in light of the fact that the Lizardmen have a specific magic rule in their 7th ed book that we realize now is moot if you play by the 6th ed base rules (wizards share power dice in Lizardmen 7th)



TL;DR we are noobs who accidentally ended up playing 6th ed base rules w 7th edition army codexes and now have read that 7th ed armies were awful. Is our best option going back in time to 6th ed army codexes? We do love the 6th ed base rules style and DO NOT like what we see with AoS (but have not given it a fair shot)

You're certainly not forced to do anything but the 7th edition books sure did ramp up the power of the armies. The two I'm most familiar with in your list are high elves and dark elves. High elves in 7th edition had 'always strike first' on everything in their army so they'll always be hitting you first even if you charge, which is a game-changing thing. They had no such thing in 6th edition. Dark elves in 7th gained 'hatred' on everything, letting them re-roll failed hits and making them a lot deadlier. The thing is that these power buffs didn't cost any extra points for the armies that got them. If anything they decreased in cost. I can't say much about orcs or lizardmen, though.

One simple thing to look at is the number of attacks on the unit profiles. In 6th edition it was very rare for any unit (even elites) to have more than one attack each, unless they used two weapons. Lizardmen saurus are one of the rare things that had two and it made them stand out from the crowd. In 7th, several units now have extra attacks, often with high WS and Strength. With the way casualties work, doubling the number of attacks coming in makes a huge difference.

The infamous power trio of 7th edition was vampire counts, dark elves and daemons. The other armies aren't remembered as much today but the 'ASF' of high elves can be a huge issue for many armies too.

I suggest you go with the 6th edition books, it'll be a more even playing field between the armies. Edit: Dark elves got an update during 6th edition to give them some needed advantages, I suggest you track them down if you're going to go with full 6th edition rules.

Thank you for your advice, we really appreciate the input.

We had no idea "Always Strikes First" superceded even the charge.

Grimgor Ironhide also has this rule I believe and we have been playing that HE and Grimgor always strike first EXCEPT for in the case of a charge.

We will try to find that dark elf extension you are talking about but TBH if we have inadvertently stumbled onto a house rule that fixes HE and our DE get to keep their Hero characters we might just stick to what we have been doing.

I feel really dumb for not just having us go straight 6e across the board from the beginning but at this point each of the 6 armies has won battles in our scrimmages.... its a tough call.

7th edition giant negatives:

* it was cavalry edition. Because he who charges strikes first, and no step up rule, people naturally gravitated toward the fast units. Infantry really suffered in 7th.

* the demon army list.

* the demon army list.

Thank you very much for your reply, much appreciated. We have been staying away from any chaos armies so demons shouldn't be an issue for us.


Can you elaborate on the "Step Up" rule?

Maybe we can adopt that regardless of playing 6th or 7th

Unless you have a nostalgia for it I would avoid 7th.

Frankly you should go with 6th or 8th as your go to, or one of the post Warhammer continuency rulesets. My favourite being 9th Age 1.1 but there are others. However to give you a definitive friendly answer I will need to ask several questions. As a flat answer will be tainted by our own biases.


1. How important is balance to you?
2. How important are heroes and monsters to you?
3. How important are units to you?
4. Do you want to play games with modest model counts or with large armies?
5. Do you want powerful magic or for magic to play only a secondary role?
6. Do you care if you face character, unit or spell combos that are very difficult to beat?
7. Do you want terrain to act like normal terrain or for everything to interact with the players in surprising and unusual ways.

Try and make definitive statement to the above, ambiguous input will lead to an ambiguous output.

Thank you a ton for the reply its appreciated.

1. I don't mean to not give the straightest possible answer here but honestly THIS is probably the main thing we don't know and are trying to find out on here. from what we can tell 6th is most balanced so that's why Im asking is balance worth rolling back all our codexes to 6th.

2. Very. We kind of fell in love with all the different monsters, definitely a big draw for us. Heroes we have come to like as we have played games with them.

3. I don't want to be ambiguous but I'm not sure what you mean here other than just the same thing as #4? We like how the orcs have a lot of different units to choose from, we have enjoyed running a bunch of different comps against each other with all 6 armies. I don't understand how the lizardmen, the army made up of reptiles that have specific breeding knowledge of reptiles, who have the ability to breed T rexes, cant run wyverns... unrelated but I guess it shows im amenable to more units but probably lack balancing knowledge

4. Our pitched battles have all been 1500-2500 points. We want a few of the campaign battles to be huge (possibly a 4k army vs two different armies at the same time for example) but most will be 2500 pts or less per side I think. our table is 6 feet by 4 feet

5. We like characters like teclis and malekith and azhag and whatever the lizardman lvl 4 guys name is (and they are all a part of the storyline of the campaign), we like magic but I think it being secondary isn't the worst thing

7. We definitely want the terrain to be as normal as possible. we already will have wood elves and lizardmen making terrain more difficult

The step up rule of 8th was that troops in the back ranks stepped up to fill in for the dead in the front rank. Meaning if you have a block of troops and you have a frontage of 5 models and I kill 5 models, five of your models behind step up and get their attacks.

In 7th edition you didn't have that so if I killed your 5 models, you had no attacks back.

Which meant if you charged you had a massive advantage and likely broke the opposing unit since you were almost guaranteed to win combat barring really bad dice.

This meant over the course of the first 6-8 months of 7th edition, players figured this out and started running all-cavalry or cavalry and chariots, or things that were just really fast since whoever charged first tended to win those combats.

Infantry largely disappeared.

Some people will contest that this isn't true, and I certainly cannot speak for the world, but it was very true at the competitive level all the way up to the GW Grand Tournaments.

It was one of the reasons for 8th edition bringing in step up as well as steadfast (to bring infantry back to the game)

That's actually really interesting because we have naturally evolved to running cavalry comps, even with orcs.

Why was that a problem in 7th but not 6th? We have been playing that way even in 6th.

I don't remember to be honest. That was a long time ago. It may be that towards the end of 6th that it had moved to all cavalry or mostly cavalry as well. Likely that was the case but that was a very long time ago and all I can remember is leaving the game for a couple of years in the middle of 7th after the demon list dropped because I got tired of cavalry-hammer.

I know my 6th edition tomb king list was mostly infantry because their cavalry was really cruddy and I didn't do bad with it so that may be what colors my thoughts since I was a tomb kings player during the end of 6th into the beginning of 7th before swapping back to chaos and vampire counts (all mounted cavalry armies of course lol)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If they had made spears proper anti-cavalry units, the all cavalry thing could have been prevented. They had pikes in dogs of war 5th edition, that should have been carried over IMO. If armies had anti-cavalry weapons it would have naturally enforced list balance.

I concur with Orlanth on the "post Warhammer continuency rulesets". My group only recently got into Warhammer Fantasy, after wanting to for a very long time and missing out on everything else while not liking AoS. After a lot of research and play testing we landed on the Warhammer Armies Project's Unofficial 9th Edition (WAP). It's a blend of 6th-8th with a lot of extra, and is a very "fluffy" ruleset. There are other rule sets, such as 9th Age. I honestly think that, based on your description of what you want, a really fluffly, fun-balanced (not tournament balanced) ruleset like WAP might serve you well. This would dodge all concerns about "the most balanced edition" and would let you use any unit that you find interesting.

And, really, at the end of the day you're pushing models around a table enjoying the aethetics, lore, and most importantly time with your group. Houserule all you want and don't let the rules get you hung up.

MattyFenby wrote:
That's actually really interesting because we have naturally evolved to running cavalry comps, even with orcs.

Why was that a problem in 7th but not 6th? We have been playing that way even in 6th.

Like I wrote before, the power of units was ramped up in 7th. Dark elf cold one knights gained hatred, so they hit much more reliably. High elf dragon princes now got 2 attacks each, doubling their output from 6th. Stuff like this made cavalry kill enough infantry models on the charge to typically break an infantry unit without any help from heroes or other units, creating "cavalry hammer".

Another often unseen change between editions is that 4 models were enough for a rank in 6th edition, but you needed 5 models in 7th. This meant that you needed more miniatures to get the most out of your ranks bonus (16 was a full block in 6th, you need 20 in 7th), making infantry more expensive while still very vulnerable to the juiced up cavalry.

The balance of 6th edition is based a lot on things having only 1 attack each and with no re-rolls (another typically very rare thing). This is what lets the infantry win through their combat resolution bonuses (ranks, banner, outnumbering) even when they take a charge from cavalry.

Also for 6 th Edition in your case, because the 6th Edition rulebook also contains great rules for sieges, very useful for campaigns!

MattyFenby wrote:
Thank you a ton for the reply its appreciated.

1. I don't mean to not give the straightest possible answer here but honestly THIS is probably the main thing we don't know and are trying to find out on here. from what we can tell 6th is most balanced so that's why Im asking is balance worth rolling back all our codexes to 6th.

6th is not balanced, that is the view from nostalgia goggles. 6th had many issues, however Ravening Hordes was mostly balanced, though that was due to it being so thin and bland that it was hard for any faction to pull ahead than due to intentional balancing measures. 6th had no fewer imbalance than other editions but was a more more modest game so the imbalances that it was riddled with didn't matter as much.
7th was grossly imbalanced, stupidly so, now GW have never been good at games balance but they screwed up more with 7th than with any other edition except 4th.
8th was similar to 6th in balance but there were gameplay elements that had more devastating effects and thus appears more imbalanced. 6th magic was unbalanced but with exception of Lore of Tzeentch and one or two spells most magic was fairly staid. 8th took away Green fire and toned down Flames of the Phoenix but included more very powerful spells across the lore of magic. In some ways this was more balanced but that was no consolation of one players wizard rolled a unit wiping spell and the other didnt.
Other elements also helped balance, random charge ranges gave slower armies a chance, however steadfast makes unit size more important than composition. There are many tos and fros between 6th and 8th, both are imbalanced between army books, but fewer are grossly unfair in doing so.

The main takeaway here is that if balance is your number 1 priority then you need to play a successor game, either 8.5, T9A or some such, fans did the legwork for balance GW never did. If balance is important but not critical play 6th or 8th according to measure.

MattyFenby wrote:
2. Very. We kind of fell in love with all the different monsters, definitely a big draw for us. Heroes we have come to like as we have played games with them.

Monsters are for the most part absent from the meta of later editions, some monsters as rare choices are an exception. However charcter choice monsters far less so due to cannon. No edition of warhammer mitigates this very well but some do a worse job than others. 8th will have the advantage of greater access to monsterous infantry and cavalry as this edition includes newer sculpts. Some of these units are available in 7th but very few in 6th or earlier. Also large blocks are a thing in 8th and they provide genuine cover against cannon.

If you want to play monsterhammer then you need an early edition, or need a successor ruleset. T9A doesnt do a reasonable job of balancing cannon, in fact making them more reliable at monster sniping, your best (least bad) ruleset for monster friendly armies is 8th, though the only real mitigation is self policing. If you have a limit on number of cannon fielded and only take bigger flying monsters every other game things can become fair.

MattyFenby wrote:

3. I don't want to be ambiguous but I'm not sure what you mean here other than just the same thing as #4?

Value of units means how important is having the game decided by blocks of soldiers rather than other things. Question 4 is about size of game. Your answer can lead in several directions.

MattyFenby wrote:

We like how the orcs have a lot of different units to choose from, we have enjoyed running a bunch of different comps against each other with all 6 armies. I don't understand how the lizardmen, the army made up of reptiles that have specific breeding knowledge of reptiles, who have the ability to breed T rexes, cant run wyverns... unrelated but I guess it shows im amenable to more units but probably lack balancing knowledge

Army preferences dont really help me much, but I take this to mean you wan to field a variety of soldier blocks yes? If so you want to take 6th or later ruleset. 5th and earlier were herohammer where units were largely superfluous. However 7th was a late peak in the return of unkillable heroes. 6th and 8th will give you a game a soldiers, other editions will have blocks of victims to hang around while characters fight it out. Though army choice influences this a lot. Undead have always had an element of herohammer in any edition, wheras Empire is unit heavy, unless you use special characters.

MattyFenby wrote:

4. Our pitched battles have all been 1500-2500 points. We want a few of the campaign battles to be huge (possibly a 4k army vs two different armies at the same time for example) but most will be 2500 pts or less per side I think. our table is 6 feet by 4 feet

6th will do for you at up to 2000pts after 2000pts you can do more with 8th, larger units etc.

MattyFenby wrote:

5. We like characters like teclis and malekith and azhag and whatever the lizardman lvl 4 guys name is (and they are all a part of the storyline of the campaign), we like magic but I think it being secondary isn't the worst thing

6th will priovide powerful magic for special characters 8th will provide powerful magic all round, except Dwarfs of course.

MattyFenby wrote:

7. We definitely want the terrain to be as normal as possible. we already will have wood elves and lizardmen making terrain more difficult

8th had weird terrain where you rolled a dice to see if the trees or hills bless you or eat you. In every other edition trees are trees and hills are hills and if they were not it was for good reason, such as Wood Elf schenanigans. Terrain tables are optional though, so if it is a deal breaker for 8th dont play this way, but 8th doesnt have mundane terrain effects other than LOS blocking.


I think from your answers you should look to buying or downloading 6th and 8th material. From your answers try 6th first, but if you collect both you want paint yourself into a corner. Note however that for Bretonnians 6th was the last army book, and with Skaven and IIRC beastmen 7th was the last army book.

Thank all of you guys so much for all of your replies and your thoughtful input.

I think what we are going with is this: We already play 6th edition base rules and my buddy's favorite army is Wood Elves, which we were going to play in 6th either way since they don't have a 7th.

With that and after reading a lot of the input, we are going to roll everybody back to 6th edition codexes BUT we are going to keep things from later eras that we like such as Lion Chariots for HE (just ripping off DE 6th edition Cold One Chariot Stats) and we are going to NOT let wizards pool power dice (except for Lizardmen)
We are going to continue playing that Always Strikes First DOES NOT supersede a charge's first strike, and we will definitely consider looking into some kind of rule or effect that allows pikemen or special spearmen to counter cavalry charges (imagining that braveheart scene as I write that)

This way, we're allowing ourselves all the fun of the characters and monsters we like in the Campaign, we're still compatible with everyone who plays Classichammer, and frankly its just the least daunting switch because we have already been playing by this base ruleset. The only bummer is things like the aforementioned Lions, and I'm sure we'll find other things, that we will have to use our best judgement to patch.


If this site, https://www.cargad.com/index.php/2019/03/26/warhammer-english-version-of-mdnr/ ever pumps out english versions of "new" 6th ed army lists we will use those, (or if someone knows of someplace something like this already exists) but until then we will use our judgment when patching something from 7th that didnt exist in 6th.


Right now we need to get our Wood Elves and our High Elves painted up and our Campaign Map finished up. In the fall we will be sure to share some pictures of the 6 finished armies, the map, and some battle reports.


We have a scrimmage coming up at the end of August, (were PUMPED because corona has shut down our season of scrimmages for a bit) 1500pts Lizardmen vs. Tomb Kings I believe, so that will be our first game using everything 6th edition across the board. We will let you guys know how it goes.

I will probably come running to you guys asking for Lizardmen 6th ed army list advice and then promptly piss everyone off by letting you know "yeah were actually gonna be giving my guy a wyvern to ride" or something insane like that that youll all hate

Looking forward to that! Are you tell ing us from what pool of models you can choose for Your 1500p army? Any special limitations you agreed on except the ones from the rulebook?

I will see about trying to upload a picture of our model inventory for Lizardmen and Tomb Kings. Should I make a new thread for that battle?

On the patching-to-6th edition front, I've tracked down the "Druchii Revisited" article from White Dwarf that gives the 6th ed DE their needed buffs and I've also noticed that a Dark Elf City Garrison variant exists in either the 2002 or 2003 annual extra book so those will be included in the campaign.

I'm waiting to hear back from Corey but pending his approval I'm going to say theres a 99% chance we are going to play HE Lion Chariots as identical to DE Cold One chariots with the exception of the crew's LD and weapons.


A very sincere thank you again to all of you guys for all your kind responses. Definitely regretting not getting back into this game sooner.

 Moscha wrote:
Also for 6 th Edition in your case, because the 6th Edition rulebook also contains great rules for sieges, very useful for campaigns!

Wasn’t it also 6th that had the General’s Compendium that had campaign rules in it? We used that book a lot, I highly recommend it. There was the campaign in the GC, and there was a Border Princes campaign at the same time, both map based, we had great fun with those.

I have fond memories of 6th, then i lost interest when they went to 7th. most players in my area switched over to kings of war for fantasy battles.

 Cruentus wrote:

 Moscha wrote:
Also for 6 th Edition in your case, because the 6th Edition rulebook also contains great rules for sieges, very useful for campaigns!

Wasn’t it also 6th that had the General’s Compendium that had campaign rules in it? We used that book a lot, I highly recommend it. There was the campaign in the GC, and there was a Border Princes campaign at the same time, both map based, we had great fun with those.

Google tells me thid was released in 2003, so yep, 6th edition.

Yeah we are going to be living in a 2005 time bubble excepting the aforementioned lions and such, and I have tracked down all the books you guys have suggested. These are packed with exactly what we need to pull this 6 Faction campaign off perfectly

Thank you all again for all your help

I will be starting a new thread for our next training scrimmage scheduled for the last Saturday in august. Ill post what models we each have available for Lizardmen and Tomb Kings and well get cooking trying to make 1500 point army lists to face each other with

It is not a bad place to be, it was a great time to be a player in both fantasy and 40K our group has gone back to playing 5th ed 40K rules using any 3rd-7th codex the individual players prefer and we are having a great time. i think you will as well.