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75hastings69 wrote:

Perhaps I've misunderstood some of the rumours but I believe the idea is changing the army book system entirely and redoing all the armies at once in 1-4 big books of lists.

Exactly. But AFAIK not as many as 4 books.

Harry wrote:The multiple books thing was something I heard early on.
I just have not heard since what was settled on.
I imagine this would have been decided quite early.
I have only been able to 'make it work' as two books.

(or one very big one but I put my back out lifting that so I had to go back to imagining two books. )

MiyamatoMusashi wrote:Details are non-existent as of yet. (It's a year away by the "normal" release cycle and what I've heard, but I'm fairly sure Harry thinks it's going to be the year after and he's normally much better informed than I am). Anyone claiming to know details is... probably wrong. Unless his name begins with "Ha", and even then...

Still, from what I have heard, and (given that I don't carry the same gravitas as H&H so no-one has any reason to pay attention to anything I say) from what those guys are saying, the changes can be summarised as follows:

Everything is changing. Rules, fluff, timeline, books. Everything. I guess except models.

Fluff? Timeline?

I seriously doubt it.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Fluff? Timeline?

I seriously doubt it.

Yeah, fluff and timeline changes are rumored for every new edition of WHFB and 40k it seems, and its never panned out.

They've just completely priced them-selves out of the market in regards to Fantasy. Unlike 40k, you can't just buy a box of models and have a whole "squad". You need 3-4 boxes of a $40 box to make a single unit.

I play both games, I'm the youngest fantasy gamer (at 24 years old) and am one of the olders 40k gamers in my local area. It seems like GW's targetting of the younger players (13+) has competely and utterly failed with fantasy due to the massive financial hurtle.

The only people that can still afford to play the game are older and generally already have all of the models they need.

Couple that with their refusal to update many of their outdated core troops (looking at you, High Elves) it's just a big disaster.

It's a shame too, since I really like 8th edition and still enjoy fantasy quite a bit. I just don't see how you can expect a teenager to fork over $600 USD for a playable army. They're completely and totally out to lunch.

Maybe they'll make the minimum number required for rank bonus 6 or 7 in 9th Edition.

 d-usa wrote:


I would probabably do the following changes though:

HE, WE, DE: They are all from a shared ancestry.
Empire/Bretonia/Dwarfs
O&G, Ogres, Skaven, Lizardmen.

Lizardmen are goodguys though

Lizardmen are NOT good. Seriously, they aren't. They do their own thing and are hardly understood by other races (as pointed out in The General's Compendium, where Lizardmen are described as "mysterious" and "not being trusted by other races". Not wanting to kill everything (Goblins, Skaven etc.) doesn't make you "good".

 Sigvatr wrote:
Not wanting to kill everything (Goblins, Skaven etc.) doesn't make you "good".

In WFB it does. Or do you think Empire gets the good badge because the Reiksguard spend their days helping old women across the street?

Empire is good because they actively oppose Chaos, the ultimate evil in WHFB. Lizardmen just "do their thing".

Which includes opposing Chaos in all its forms.

Okay, well, in any case they are not evil. At the WORST they are neutral, but I think they are atleast leaning towards good from neutral.

I have a sad suspicion that either their fluff would be retconned to support who they can ally with, or they would suffer the fate of tyranids in 40k and not get to ally with anyone.

Well, to be absolute honest, the nations of WFB range from "would not beat the crap out of you on a good day" to "would wear your intestines as a scarf". But that doesn't have the same ring as Good/Evil, does it?

Lizardmen got out into that slot not because of alignment. I put them there simply because they are "creatures".

Griever wrote:
They've just completely priced them-selves out of the market in regards to Fantasy. Unlike 40k, you can't just buy a box of models and have a whole "squad". You need 3-4 boxes of a $40 box to make a single unit.

I play both games, I'm the youngest fantasy gamer (at 24 years old) and am one of the olders 40k gamers in my local area. It seems like GW's targetting of the younger players (13+) has competely and utterly failed with fantasy due to the massive financial hurtle.

The only people that can still afford to play the game are older and generally already have all of the models they need.

Couple that with their refusal to update many of their outdated core troops (looking at you, High Elves) it's just a big disaster.

It's a shame too, since I really like 8th edition and still enjoy fantasy quite a bit. I just don't see how you can expect a teenager to fork over $600 USD for a playable army. They're completely and totally out to lunch.

The first point is really important as I just had a discussion about this yesterday. 40k is much easier to buy a box and play, and can ACTUALLY work at low points (WFB is incredibly bad at low points). I really have no idea how to get new people into WFB as it's completely absurd to tell them they need to spend 600$ to even play a game. The only cheap armies are HE/Skaven, but other than that you need spend 50$ to get 10 "elite" soldiers like Greatswords.

It's also very disconcerting that GW has no grasp on this fact as if they don't care if WFB dies.

I tend to agree that Lizzies tend to fit more in the Nuetral range, I think that group of 2 may get another one in their party and I can't see one of other current armies fitting in with the other nuterals:

Ogre "We'll do anything for money or food" Kingdoms
or
Tomb "Get off my lawn" Kings.

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Which includes opposing Chaos in all its forms.

They don't. Lizardmen do not have cities or entire armies defending the border of chaos, trying to push it back, they work their ways in the jungle and do not care at all for the "lesser" races. If the Empire asked for help, no LM would move his butt. They decide what to do themselves and do not care about what the other factions might think or do. They are pretty neutral / neutral good.

It's very nit-picky, but The General's Compendium has a very good allies list that goes with the armies' actuall fluff (unlike the 40k allies crap). I mean, GW will certainly screw all fluff over with the combined army books, but what do I care, neither will I buy those nor will I care for any fluff besides Goblins...and theirs will not change for sure.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Which includes opposing Chaos in all its forms.

They don't. Lizardmen do not have cities or entire armies defending the border of chaos, trying to push it back, they work their ways in the jungle and do not care at all for the "lesser" races. If the Empire asked for help, no LM would move his butt. They decide what to do themselves and do not care about what the other factions might think or do. They are pretty neutral / neutral good.

It's very nit-picky, but The General's Compendium has a very good allies list that goes with the armies' actuall fluff (unlike the 40k allies crap). I mean, GW will certainly screw all fluff over with the combined army books, but what do I care, neither will I buy those nor will I care for any fluff besides Goblins...and theirs will not change for sure.

Wouldn't it be fair to mention though, that the Empire only have cities and entire armies defending the border of chaos because they actually border it as opposed to the Lizardmen, who might also strongly oppose said faction but don't have the rabid hordes of chaos on their doorstep. They just put up with anthropomorphic rats instead!

 Sigvatr wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
Which includes opposing Chaos in all its forms.

They don't. Lizardmen do not have cities or entire armies defending the border of chaos, trying to push it back, they work their ways in the jungle and do not care at all for the "lesser" races. If the Empire asked for help, no LM would move his butt. They decide what to do themselves and do not care about what the other factions might think or do. They are pretty neutral / neutral good.

It's very nit-picky, but The General's Compendium has a very good allies list that goes with the armies' actuall fluff (unlike the 40k allies crap). I mean, GW will certainly screw all fluff over with the combined army books, but what do I care, neither will I buy those nor will I care for any fluff besides Goblins...and theirs will not change for sure.

You don't actually know what the fluff of the Lizardmen is, do you?

They are probably the only "good" faction there is in Warhammer, since all of their actions are entirely altruistic. None of their actions are selfishly motivated. When they act to preserve themselves, then because they have a duty to fulfill.

A great part of their existence is pretty much to combat Chaos in all forms. Do you know why the Empire has a shot at fighting Chaos? Because, in the end, the Lizards gave it to them. Starting with defending the world against Chaos incursions before humanity even properly EXISTED.

They don't decide what to do. They try go make sense of the will of the Great Old Ones and try to continue the Great Work. Which incidentally means they try to make the world a better place for the creations of the Old Ones.

Of course, this may include the sacking of a few cities and populations. But if you want a tree to thrive, you sometimes have to cut it.

Lizardmen are a wild card army. They follow their own path, and that path may include purging "good" races like humans or dwarves off the face of the planet, should they determine it was the will of the Old Ones. They wouldn't blink before they did it either.

As it stands, the interpreted will of the Old Ones has not included the removal of any "good" races to date, and generally conflicts with those races are because the good guys want to pillage all the gold from the LM cities.

Alas, the entire network of magic that the Slann maintained for millennia is designed to prevent chaos from seeping in more than it already does.

Nah, current Lizardmen fluff is that in order for the will of the Old Ones to be fulfilled, all the other races have to be put back where they were originally (whether they like it or not). Then the Slann can crack on with the grand plan

overtyrant wrote:
Funny you should say that about Avian he attacks any rumour mongers with little remorse, now he is onto Harry and Hastings he must be a GW mole lol!

Heh.

Note that unlike most rumourmongers, I don't think either H&H are making things up. Firstly I'm disagreeing with the notion that writing more army lists in the same amount of time will help balance, especially when the two previous attempts at making army lists compendiums failed to produce balanced lists. Secondly I'm worried that combining all army lists into one book will mean that the combined weight of the rulebook + army book will be too heavy for the target audience to lift.

A question to ponder: I wonder how much Mantic is doing to keep people playing WFB? Not buying necessarily, but I mean in terms of keeping things fresh, and interest, in the game. At my local club there is barely an army that doesn't include their core troops in some form - it's even lead to more Undead/Chaos Dwarf armies, and generally the only new armies appearing are ones using that company's units. As has been said, £300+ for a new force is not pocket change for most people.

And not just Mantic - Perry and Fireforged miniatures for Empire/Chaos for example. As has been said, when there are so many obvious stand-ins for the prohibitively expensive GW core troops (which are now almost universally aged sculpts, and in some cases starting to show their age) it make a large quantity of the WFB core range a very hard sell.

I can understand in that case the focus on 1 or 2 'big must have units' for each army book release (in fact it is a method being used for both 40k and WFB now) - make it a striking looking miniature, make its rules a must-have for that army, and you are guaranteeing sales. But, as has been said above, this does nothing to draw new customers into the game. Even if they have gone so far as to get the core book, an army book, they will at some point have to sit down with a calculator and a piece of paper. And then when they start looking around on the internet for deals (which I think it's a fair assumption to say that most people, even middle-aged parents of children, do these days) then it will be very easy for them to stumble onto a vastly cheaper alternative.

The other day I was speaking to a GW Manager (aren't they all managers?) about the different armies. He knows his fluff pretty much in and out, as in point to any unit on the shelf and he can tell you all the fluff ever written about them. He said they are classified as following:

Forces of Order: Empire, Dwarfs, HE, Brets, LM, WE.
Forces of Destruction: Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, OnG, DE, Beastmen, Skaven, VC, Beastmen.
Neutral: OK, TK.

Not to say that this is the official view GW takes, but who knows?

If other companies (Mantic, AOW, etc.) were smart (and they probably are), they would get cracking on pumping out alternatives. Interesting fact, one of the FLGS here has their fantasy nights listed as "Kings Of War Night". Sci-fi night is still listed as "40K Night".

aclive wrote:
The other day I was speaking to a GW Manager (aren't they all managers?) about the different armies. He knows his fluff pretty much in and out, as in point to any unit on the shelf and he can tell you all the fluff ever written about them. He said they are classified as following:

[...]

Not to say that this is the official view GW takes, but who knows?

That's taken straight out of the 8th ed rulebook (pages 136 and 137) so that's the official GW view, yeah.

... and it was also official in the latest global Warhammer Fantasy campaign.

aclive wrote:
The other day I was speaking to a GW Manager (aren't they all managers?) about the different armies. He knows his fluff pretty much in and out, as in point to any unit on the shelf and he can tell you all the fluff ever written about them. He said they are classified as following:

Forces of Order: Empire, Dwarfs, HE, Brets, LM, WE.
Forces of Destruction: Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, OnG, DE, Beastmen, Skaven, VC, Beastmen.
Neutral: OK, TK.

Beastmen are listed twice. Does this make them twice as evil?

 Phragonist wrote:

aclive wrote:
The other day I was speaking to a GW Manager (aren't they all managers?) about the different armies. He knows his fluff pretty much in and out, as in point to any unit on the shelf and he can tell you all the fluff ever written about them. He said they are classified as following:

Forces of Order: Empire, Dwarfs, HE, Brets, LM, WE.
Forces of Destruction: Chaos, Daemons of Chaos, OnG, DE, Beastmen, Skaven, VC, Beastmen.
Neutral: OK, TK.

Beastmen are listed twice. Does this make them twice as evil?

No, that's silly.
They are more evil, but not twice as evil.

They need to be listed twice in order to be on par with other armies.

I kinda like the idea of blending books, but at current, £30 for a single armies book isnt the cheapest.
So, bets on a book that contains 3-6 armies?
I rather not think about its price

Quite interesting stuff. GW moving towards a more unified rules production is a good thing. War of the Ring is an example of this approach and I think it is a great game.

However the cost of the core units is still ridiculous, and the army size needed for WFB means I haven't bought anything past the odd single model for about 2 years. In that time I've expanded my Trollbloods and Legion, bought some Red Box, bought an entire mantic undead army.