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Seeing what's been done to 6th edition 40k and my personal dislike and disdain for the improperly implemented Allies rules, I was wondering how GW could mess up the upcoming 9th edition Fantasy rules set for others. 40K has become quite stratified currently with how people want to play it. Do you opt for a standard 40k ( which has a wide variation in meaning right now) , do you want to play an all out apocalypse game, or a game using the newly introduced escalation rules where your opponent is going to beat your face in if he brings a titan and you have nothing to deal with it. Finally you throw in the whole Forgeworld fiasco question.

For me it would be Allies if it was in implemented as poorly as it was done in 40k. Allies can work but not how it is presently. Its led to all sorts of Cheese Combos usually because in 40k if you have an Allied character with a special rule most often that special rule grants the special rule to the WHOLE UNIT that it is in. ie a fearless character grants it to everybody, Stealth, shrouded, tank hunters the list goes on and on.

The whole Allies chart is a Whole different story with who can ally with who..

I really love the state fantasy is in right now. Please GW don't make it like 40K...

What do you have to say?

- Making every army require no strategy at all and just resort to only one way to play them.
- Removing what looks like a rather good balance between the armies.
- Putting a heavy emphasis on shooting instead of melee (ex. Black powder cannons firing overwatch).
- Making most of the good units available at forgeworld only.

Book reset.

Just going over-the-top. Making stuff more powerful. If anything I would like to see things get weaker. That way you can have more soft counters than hard counters. Like they way anything can kill anything else.

40K had such a crazy power creep. If all spells kind of morphed into buffs and hexes, it would put the emphasis back on troops who are just carriers for them. And find a way to curtail megastar units.

I'd like to see monsters get a bit better still. Like large target = immune to multi wounds. Or half. Or whatever.

More ability to play really small games without the universe falling apart. That will bring in new players. 250pt games. This hobby isn't cheap.

As duke said would love monsters to get better in terms if survivability. Would make combat lords a little more viable rather than the mandatory lvl 4 mage.
Test-or-die spells need to become less common. The answer to handling death stars and tarpit hordes/buses should involve more tactical nous in the form of flank/rear charges rather than 6 dicing spells and deleting units in one hit.
The point on smaller games is a really good one! Release rules for small skirmish type games and try and introduce more people into the game.
@thedarkavenger, when you say 'book reset' what are you referring to exactly?

alex87 wrote:
As duke said would love monsters to get better in terms if survivability. Would make combat lords a little more viable rather than the mandatory lvl 4 mage.
Test-or-die spells need to become less common. The answer to handling death stars and tarpit hordes/buses should involve more tactical nous in the form of flank/rear charges rather than 6 dicing spells and deleting units in one hit.
The point on smaller games is a really good one! Release rules for small skirmish type games and try and introduce more people into the game.
@thedarkavenger, when you say 'book reset' what are you referring to exactly?

I'm referring to them making all the existing army books invalid by completely changing the game. GW has done it in the past if memory serves.

I love the balance of the game right now, and actually love that big monsters and lords have to actually fear something in this edition of the game. So many previous versions of fantasy have been dubbed Herohammer for a reason, and it's nice to see more emphasis put on the footslogging soldiers. A shift back towards Hero/monsterhammer would ruin it for me.

Dumb allies mechanics would also ruin it for me. Rules similar to older editions allowing 25% taken in allies along the lines of forces of order and destruction would suit me. I hate seeing 40k lists where the supposed "main army" is outnumbered in points by the allied army. I've found some of the triumph and treachery rules requiring a captain and -1ld penalty to the allied army quite solid. It's also limited rare monster spam due to the captain tax.

If there are any improvements they could make, it's allowing rear and flank charges to deny steadfast. I also think cavalry could be balanced and more viable by simply giving them impact hits. If 4 ogres going 6" can get up to 12 impact hits when charging, a blob of knights with lances charging in at full speed should do some impact hits as well.

Overall though I hope GW realizes this version of the game is solid and they shouldn't have to do too much tweaking. I think they know this considering how good of a job they have done dialing back certain armies like DE, VC, and DoC. All still solid, but not 100% cheese.

 thedarkavenger wrote:

I'm referring to them making all the existing army books invalid by completely changing the game. GW has done it in the past if memory serves.

Happened exactly twice for WFB &40K. For WFB, the cognate of army books (Lost & Damned and Slaves to Darkness) went away with 4th Ed, and all the books were dropped with the transition to 6th. 40K had army lists invalidated for both 2nd and 3rd editions. I doubt they do that again for either game, since it would require work to be done on armies that aren't having a new model release any time soon.

1. No 6th edition styled "total re-boot" please. While I'd love to get rid of the one dysfunctional army book and see the two obnoxiously game-breaking HE options go, overall GW has done a stand-up job with the army books and external balance this edition.

There's absolutely no reason to go and torch O&G's, TK's, VC's, Ogres, DE's, Empire, Lizzies and even WoC & HE's overall. (plus we're likely to add WE's, Dwarfs, Skaven and maybe even Brets to that list before 9th hits)
Just do the proper thing and put Beastmen in the first 1-3 books of 9th, and lock Ward up and have someone competent write the god damn DoC book for once! Then make HE's & WoC the 3rd/4th new books to reign in the sheer silliness of Alarielle/BotWD & DP/Chimera shenanigans.


2. Keeping Initiative based 'test or die' mega spells, AND, allowing all wizards to roll up to 6 dice per casting attempt.
With roughly half the game's armies being low initiative, P.Sun & Pit are just an unfair kick in the groin since the likes of Elves & Warriors get to happily ignore those spells with their deathstars.
It's also infuriating at the moment to easily abuse the above by giving those mega spells to a Lv1 or Lv2 wizard who's only purpose is to 6-dice their casting attempts until they blow themselves up for a 'huge reward, no risk' style auto-win.

Instead, remove the initiative stat from those killer spells and use S/T/WS/Ld instead, and having the number of casting dice per spell attempt equal to 'Wizard Level + 2'


3. Lazy implementation of Allies.
We know allies are almost certainly a shoe-in, but (hopefully) GW will show some common sense for once and not turn it into an instant buffet table of ludicrous combos for every single WaaC'er to salivate over and turn the game into a version of 'Yu-Gi-Oh!hammer gone wild'.
Last thing we need to see are things like a HE BSB w/BotWD BFF'ing it up with a horde of Ironguts toting their own BSB w/Runemaw, all supported by a Frostheart & Bolters.

Allies should allow for cool themes and to bring the rich background of the game to life. (like a true Chaotic Host composed of Warriors, Beastmen and/or Daemons, or the infamous 'Army of Slyvania' with Zombies & Skeletons marching alongside State Troops, all led by their Von Carstien master)
They should not be a way to create the ultimate power-gaming combo of the most nonsensical tag-teams under the sun.

I actually don't like allies. I never liked the mercenary concept because it makes balance vastly different, lists just became TFG festivals where it's nothing but the cheesiest units from every army with no fluff. At least you can have a reason for an army to have all it's units: it's the army book. Why dwarfs have empire cannons and a hellblaster in addition to their own cannons is because [mumble mumble] friends and [mumble].

riburn3 wrote:
If there are any improvements they could make, it's allowing rear and flank charges to deny steadfast. I also think cavalry could be balanced and more viable by simply giving them impact hits. If 4 ogres going 6" can get up to 12 impact hits when charging, a blob of knights with lances charging in at full speed should do some impact hits as well.

Ogres are super expensive compared to most cavalry. It was easy to give MI/MC/MB Stomp and Monsters TStomp because they are expensive. I can't see giving the cavalry unit type Impact Hits because they cover too much. I could see giving them furious charge or similar.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Then make HE's & WoC the 3rd/4th new books to reign in the sheer silliness of Alarielle/BotWD & DP/Chimera shenanigans.

Not going to happen, and you know it.
Your problems with these gimmicks can and (hopefully) will be addressed at BRB level, not army book level.
Agree that making Beastmen an early release should be a priority, will be interesting to see who else gets a new army book soon and what the two starter set armies will be. Fair chance one could be Space Marines...

I don't think allies will be as bad in WHFB as they will be in 40k.

Most of the broken allies configurations in 40k are a result of a character transferring his ability to a unit, and there are a lot less of those in WHFB (and the ones I can think of - Alarielle + something with MoT, for example - will most probably not be able to ally). I think it does largely depend on how spells work too. TauDar is so nasty because, well, Guided Tau. I guess some armies, OnG spring to mind, will be able to make use of other magic lores, but I can't instantly see how this would break the game.

The continual persistence of 40k players stating that Warhammer Fantasy is a broken and failing edition. Play the damn game before commenting and ruining the game for perspective players before they can even get their foot in the door.

Abstract rules designed to sell more miniatures e.g. Horde.

I haven't posted in a while to these forums. I've been playing other games but have been considering a return to fantasy. I think allies would stop me dead in my tracks. I hated it in 40k, the loss of flavor that comes unique to an army. I know why they do it I just don't agree with it.

Allies, unless it was for armies for which it makes sense. (Which would just be Chaos, honestly... Give me my Hordes of Chaos...) The point of picking an army is to learn a force with a specific strategy and built-in weaknesses. By being able to include allies, it's both a cheap ploy to sell figures from outside factions and screws up balance.

Other than that, yeah, initiative based tests (make it toughness) and letting all wizards 6 dice stuff.

I miss double 1,1 miscasts, but that's just me.

 Cryonicleech wrote:

I miss double 1,1 miscasts, but that's just me.

Not just you. I really miss that dynamic of risk reward. Six dice felt desperate.

 Evertras wrote:

 Cryonicleech wrote:

I miss double 1,1 miscasts, but that's just me.

Not just you. I really miss that dynamic of risk reward. Six dice felt desperate.

Plus not many wizards could go above 5 at all with the "Wizard level +1 dice" limit which I also miss.

Not sure why they didn't keep it as I see a lot of people complain about the Level 1-2s 6 dicing with relatively no risk for the huge potential reward.

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Book reset.

That and stuff like making magic even more stupid. Basically OP and random as h*ll.

-What magic needs is a combo of 7th and 8th version of magic. I think the idea of 1d6 generated and the each wizard generates dice based on levels is better. Right now magic is just too freaking random. Make 6 dice throws infinitely more painful to suffer from. The 6 dice rolls are stupid middle finger moves sometimes that can't be stopped regardless of how good you are. Suffering a stupid IF and torching half a unit from a spell is just dumb esp. if it allows no saves and goes through magic resistance.

Another bad thing would be to ruin the movement tactics horribly in favor of stupid killy death units. Making steadfast even stupider would help to ruin the game and I'm a skaven player.

Make the book favor a few armies way too hard and at times certain types of armies as well (elite, horde, melee, ranged, magic, high movement or cavalry armies). Somehow I feel like a whole army of ASF also getting re-rolls to hit as long as they were at least as high initiative as an opponent was a bit much. Not sure how I feel about stomps though sometimes thunder-stomps were nice.

I already said I don't like allies but other people do. But if you could include characters I think it would be impossible to balance. Magic lists and magic items available to those armies alone would 100% break balance.

As someone mentioned O&G with full lore access or Skaven or Ogres.

Hargus56 wrote:
I haven't posted in a while to these forums. I've been playing other games but have been considering a return to fantasy. I think allies would stop me dead in my tracks. I hated it in 40k, the loss of flavor that comes unique to an army. I know why they do it I just don't agree with it.

I agree whole heartedly. I hate what is currently happening to 40K (i dont want to play my chaos vs your Dark Eldar/Eldar/Tau Formation with Allied Inquisitor....you get the idea). I feel like GW are trying to push this into fantasy with Battlescrolls....I hate this. Fortunately the group I play with pretty much 40k with three rules:

1) no Escalation
2) no Stronghold
3) no more than two Armies rep'd (so you can go Taudar, but your not getting an inquisitor and 3 servo skulls with it too)

The thing that annoys me about allies, and I mentioned this when 6th 40k hit as well, is that, yes, they do allow you to create "fluffy" battles (i.e. that battle where it's Tau + IG vs Nids) but the people who would want to do this don't need a rule telling them what to do. They'd be creative and work it out themselves. Having ally-free rules doesn't stop people having such battles, but it does mean that people who just want a straight game can do so. Allies work in an expansion, but not in the main rules.

changing the complexity of the rules, they are just right now.

And 90% of what is going to happen in 9th edition.

 sing your life wrote:
changing the complexity of the rules, they are just right now.

And 90% of what is going to happen in 9th edition.

No idea what this post means...
Like the idea of double 1 miscasts returning but I personally hope power/dispel dice generation doesn't go back to the way it was in 6th/7th. Naturally it should be scaled to allow for larger battles, but the idea of the winds of magic being random and somewhat fickle is thematic and feels accurate.

Dumbing down everything.

As for allies, I do hope they put a bit more forethought into them then they did with 40k. I think the T&T rules for mercs was a good start for trying to balance the allies you could put in your army.

Anything that makes it harder to field big monsters, you don't see enough dragons and giants on the tables for fear of death by cannon too easily as it is. I like the suggestion of large targets ignoring multiple wounds.

 thedarkavenger wrote:
Book reset.

This. I actually really like 8th edition, and don't want it to change, with an exception of an adjustment to the magic phase, because that seems to be the one area that 90% of players dislike. Personally, I think the magic phase is fine, though some of the spells are a bit OP.

Allies would be the single biggest turn off I think. My group is pretty opposed to them though, but we do venture out against randoms or tournaments every once and awhile.

Other rule tweaks we could get over, but Allies is a pretty large change.

Allied forces are allerdy in the book,
it's in the back next to scenarios.

(slightly different though)
(you can take 2 armies as one)
(as long as each is valid on it's own)
(minimunm core, no excesive rares, etc..)

 N810 wrote:
Allied forces are allerdy in the book,
it's in the back next to scenarios.

(slightly different though)
(you can take 2 armies as one)
(as long as each is valid on it's own)
(minimunm core, no excesive rares, etc..)

Yeah, but that's clearly meant for games with more than 2 players.

I just don't want allies to become the standard for a regular game between 2 people... like it has in 40k.