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Redbeard wrote:Another of the rules issues I have with Fantasy is how utterly shooting is nerfed. Consider that as early as 1350, missile fire was dominating battles like Crecy and Agincort, and that the Empire and Dwarves are a few hundred years more advanced than medieval Europe at that time. My experience in fantasy was that I'd get one shooting phase before the enemy cav could hit my lines.

This bugs me about Warhammer Ancients as well. How come late Medieval armies don’t just clean up, against everyone. In this regard Warhammer Ancients is even more fantastical than its fantasy cousin.

For the record; the Empire steam tank is not a tank it is a, steam powered, armoured car as it does not have tracks.

I realized my absolute hate of armies with metal special choices.

Freakin' $100 for 1 unit my @$%...

They're fixing this, but older armies with no plastic updates really make the S*** hit the fan.

Redbeard wrote:
Dude, it's a dragon not an Iraqi guardsmen. And he's not fighting the most technological army the world has ever seen, he's fighting a ranked-up group of night goblins - squirrels with sticks. Why is the dragon running from squirrels with sticks?

Err, because there are lots of them if we're talking about a fully ranked unit, and because they can hurt him (yes, it isn't very probable but it's possible)...

Redbeard wrote:To some extent, this issue exists in 40k too. (For that matter, why are people 40,000 years in the future waving axes around??), but at least it's explained with technology (guys with swords teleport in next to you, or get dropped off by their spaceship). There's no justifying how gimped basic ranged weapons are against cavalry in fantasy.

Crossbows or handguns vs expensive elf knights... I see your point, though. Imho it's pretty much because of game balance as it punishes gunlinearmies somewhat.

If they can hurt him, that's fine. Until they do, why should he fear them. I'm not opposed to a dragon losing combat to a ranked unit of squirrels with sticks if they put a wound on him. Until they do, though, he shouldn't lose combat, he should just think, hmm, more lunch.

I like to see it as an abstraction of the Gobbos swarming all over him and jabbing spears into his eyesockets, which isn't well represented with the base statlines.

I don't play Fantasy because it's not realistic.

That's the deal with fantasy, it's a bit more abstract than 40k... somehow I like that a lot... heh, it's a bit more "pretend" than 40k, but that's how I roll (:p). I think the troops blocks and the win-or-lose importance of good deployment are fitting for the period that was the inspiration: renaissance and ancient warfare, where leaving your formation was certain death. Either by the hands of the enemy or angry officers. In medieval battles, deployment was very decisive as there was little command and control. Troops had to be in the right position from the get-go, or they were destroyed. needless to say, pitched battles were actually a rare occurance, the exception rather than the rule.

Crecy and Agincourt, as previously mentioned, were won by deployment (position and terrain), not quite by the arrows! Though, they did help a lot with at least blunting the charge of the knights. Glorious knights have no buisiness charging at prepared positions or difficult ground. Neither of these battles were massacres due to missile fire, they were massacres because the losing side was screwed by the forces of nature, unfavorable ground, unsuitable opinions on the conduct of war and loss of command and control.

Some armies can in fact "blunt" attacks with shooting: armour piercing black powder weapons, crossbows, wood elf archers. The thing is, to settle the deal, you need to counter charge once the attack has been blunted and do it efficiently. True, enemy cavalry might reach you by turn 2, the trick is to make that turn 3 or misdirect them. That's how historical archer-heavy armies used to win. Terrain and deployment is as essential in WFB as in medieval warfare. yes, GW would help missle-heavy armies a lot by providing more options to "dig-in" with missle-troops.

Why I don't play fantasy:


[1] No Missions
[2] Shooting horribly underpowered
[3] To much painting for army sizes
[4] T3 Armies at a disadvantage
[5] No Tanks vehicles, game does not use the whole board.
[6] Lopsided games (either way) not fun:

I played a DE army, with a Black Dragon, some bolt throwers, and a smattering of infantry xbow and spear. Most of my games were complete lopsided landslides:

-Routed an entire Ork army with Terror by landing the dragon behind it turn 2, 4 units fell back including the black Orks and general and the remaining units failed animosity tests and fought eachother afterward, didn't even have one melee.

- Played versus a dwarf infantry army, with simple math I realized they couldnt reach me with 4 turns of 6 inch march moves. Never moved, shot them all game and won, NO MELEES.

- Completely destroyed in one turn by a beastman army when they ran on from my board edge and rear charged my whole army. Game over turn 2, NO SHOOTING.

- Completely tabled by a bretonian army, after 1 turn of shooting killing only 1 knight, then a multi charge from 8 units of knights wiped my entire line, the remaining units and the general fell back off table when they failed their morale role for destroyed friendly units nearby (which was a 3 man bolt thrower crew.)

- Destroyed a Vampire Count General on a flying monster with (6) bolt thrower fire turn one and didn't even play anymore game

- Played vs a Nurgle Demon army, all plague bearers and foot greater demons. 2 Units of harpys flew behind them every turn, they never marched moved and xbow fire and bolt throwers killed the whole army, NO MELEES

- Played a flattening loss vs empire in a game where a MISSFIRE on a volley gun fired 30 shots at my black dragon and killed it, 3 other cannons sniped all my characters turn 1 and 2, then the griffon banner nullified rank bonuses and I couldn't even fight back one huge block, completely pushed off the table, no enemy casualties.

I sold all my WHFB armies after these games and just gave up.

Well now, winning battles without any melees is very "Sun Tzu".

But not very much fun.

Total lack of any kind of variation in missions is my #1.. The game boxed itself into a corner with the whole regiment and rigid movement system..

#2 is the fact that you're spending 35$ for a box of guys and only the front 5 actually do a damn thing.. You might as well just use movement trays and imagination

#3 unbalanced unless you and your opponent set tons of rules before the game.. 40k can be unbalanced when you spam 3 of a certain unit yet you'll lose if you play against the counter.. in WFB the game is unbalanced if you take a SINGLE kind of unit and youre immune to most armies

#4 Psychology immune armies ruin half the fun of the game.. Its too big of a bonus when psychology matters so much

I don't play Fantasy because it never really brought any appeal. I never saw the sense of lining up one's troops shoulder to shoulder to either charge into each other's lines or to shoot at each other. It makes no sense to me. Do I enjoy fantasy novels, Tolkien, et al.? Indeed I do. It's not the setting, but just the fact that the way GW does it has never come across to me as anything more than mediocre.

Do I like the models? By all means, and I hope to incorporate them into a few modelling projects one day (honestly, I think that the WFB Ogres would make better Ogryn than Ogryn do, but that's not the point.), the system just never had any degree of appeal to me.

Although I play fantasy sometimes the reason 40k will always be my favourite is that the armies in 40k have good variation- in fluff and gameplay. If the 40k fluff doesn't suit you it's easy to bend it slightly such as saying "my armies comes from a planet where this happens... ect" and I just don't find it so easy to do this in fantasy.

I have recently tried get back into fantasy but I can't get intrested in any of the armies, I don't know what it is but it feels as if some style of army is missing.

Ruleswise I find 40k flows much better than fantasy although that isn't what puts me off.

I should probably say I do think that fantasy is a very good game it's just that 40k appeals to me more.

-I don't know many people in my area that play fantasy
-I prefer the Sci-Fi Fluff
-I already have many 40k models

But i'm sure fantasy would be a great game to play.

I used to play Fantasy, but got out of it mostly because of the other people who played it at my store. From what I hear they're all gone and it's a different, albeit smaller group who plays now, so maybe I should pick up the new Lizardman book, see how well I can convert my Southlands Skinks over, and give it a go again.

The Devourer wrote:Although I play fantasy sometimes the reason 40k will always be my favourite is that the armies in 40k have good variation- in fluff and gameplay. If the 40k fluff doesn't suit you it's easy to bend it slightly such as saying "my armies comes from a planet where this happens... ect" and I just don't find it so easy to do this in fantasy.

Fantasy used to be far more inspiring. Things got a lot more restricted if it concerns adapting an army to fit your style. 4th and 5th edition army books books offered a lot of inspiration for a different approach to armies, now it's all a bit generalised. You have to dig deep or been around in the game a long time to get any good ideas for alternative themes nowadays.

I used to run a skaven army, several editions back. Played the hell out of it for about three months, before all entertainment completely vanished. The reasons?

a) steeper learning curve + smaller pool of players = great difficulty in finding challenging opponents. Once you 'get' WFB, you utterly crush those who don't. YMMV, but I found that very, very few WFB players were any good at it. For whatever reason, it's always been much easier for me to find a decent opponent for 40k.

b) assembling and painting 70-100 multipart (but essentially identical) clanrats sucks. Skavenslaves are even worse.

c) the magic phase.

I play D&D, which is my fantasy genre fix.

CatPeeler wrote:I used to run a skaven army, several editions back. Played the hell out of it for about three months, before all entertainment completely vanished. The reasons?

a) steeper learning curve + smaller pool of players = great difficulty in finding challenging opponents. Once you 'get' WFB, you utterly crush those who don't. YMMV, but I found that very, very few WFB players were any good at it. For whatever reason, it's always been much easier for me to find a decent opponent for 40k.

I only understood it when I stopped playing it

I have tried and failed to play fantasy many times (and I am going to try one more time with skaven) the problem I get is games got boring and depending what or who your playing there arn't alot of fun special missions and stuff. In 40k depending on mission and set up I could tie or win a game with one unit left even though my opponent beat the crap out of me.

Fantasy though apeazes the side of me that loves to play Medival total war constantly that why I like playing it alittle too. THe probly I always really ran into was lack of interest in an army and finishing it. I may not have a full 40k army done but I do have it playable which I could never say for fantasy. hopefully with an upcoming escalation league that'll be fixed.

Who knows with a new rule book on the horizon maybe new missions and stuff with come out maybe sieges and stuff will be more used who knows.

I play fantasy, but I play 40k more. The simple reason is just that the models are cooler. I like playing either just as much, but since I'm more of a painter & modeler, I like 40k more

I have another reason, generally, from my experience, WHFB armies, in any venue, are significantly less likely to be completely painted vs 40k ones, even at tourneys.

WHFB boards and terrain rules are also less exciting, the WHFB board I see usually being a huge field, with a single house and a copse of trees.

my main reason is that most people I know collect 40k only. Plus, I think i prefer smashing tanks around a battlefield than a pony!

I don't want to go through the learning curve again while veteran players go for the easy win and don't help you learn how to play the game.

G

i don't play fantasy because people look at me funny when i whisper "pew pew" during the shooting phase...

i'm not a fan of medieval but with monsters, rarrgh! i prefer to move units with coherency and have each model worth something instead of a block that has to wheel in which only the guys in the front actually do something.

I have a painted 2500pt empire army that I've played a handful of times. I like the combat res system, and the psychology rules are neat, but the game simply isn't very fun.

First, the game is decided by army choices and deployment. Sure, there are a few decisions you make here and there, but 75% of a game is decided before turn one.

Second, the stuff is all incredibly unreliable. Great Cannons can wipe out a rank of knights in one turn, and blow up the next. Terror can do nothing, or win a game single handedly.

Finally, 28mm is a stupid scale for a wargame. Great for skirmish games (like 40k), but if I'm going to paint ranks of infantry, I'd rather paint 15mm guys.

Oh, if you like the idea of playing Fantasy, what with the blocks of unit formations and such, but don't want to learn another complicated rule set, then I'm going to plug Arcane Legions. Other than that, I don't want to derail this thread, so if you want to learn more check out the one in LOTR and other Fantasy games topic.

Fantasy used to be far more inspiring. Things got a lot more restricted if it concerns adapting an army to fit your style. 4th and 5th edition army books books offered a lot of inspiration for a different approach to armies, now it's all a bit generalised. You have to dig deep or been around in the game a long time to get any good ideas for alternative themes nowadays.

I have been looking for an alternate fantasy army for ages but after all my searching I just can't find anything that GW haven't blocked


I have just remebered, another reason I prefer 40k is a lot of fantasy is about making the other team flee when I much prefer to completely destroy them with shooting or in combat.

I would be interested to know how many of the people who dislike fantasy have played any historical Ancients/Mediaeval games and what they thought of it

I will just echo the previous sentiments:

1) The models are too generic and units lack internal varity

2) Paint and Model whole blocks of infantry, but the first rank is the only guys who do anything

3) Gameplay is restrictive and boring, most of your game is decided by set up

4) FOC chart pushes armies to be built at high points cost levels so it's hard to break into the game with just a few units.

5) FOC is also more restrictive to the "fun" units. I really like that Steam tank, or Dragon, but I have to paint what to field it!?!

6) Always been more of a Sci-Fi fan


40k feels more fluid to me, and unlike Warmachine, less dependant on combos. 40K armies tend to be more changable, I.E. you can have a great deal different useful army combinations from a single codex.

I would much rather play LotR or WotR before I would play fantasy.