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Cannons not scattering at all. I wish my stuff in 40k was as accurate as cannons in WFB.

With the banshee and terrorgeist remember, that's all they're good for. neither one is any good in combat.

People like to fear the terrorgeist but it's WS3 S5 T6 W6 A4 with only a 6+ regen. It goes down pretty quick if you throw anything decent at it.

Cavalry needs to have a bonus on the turn it charges, perhaps like a -2 to leadership when charged by cavalry. This could be negated if you take spears/pikes. Plus elite units could have special rules to counter this. It would help cavalry to bust core infantry on the charge without effecting elite infantry. Spears are often not the optimal choice for core infantry so it would be nice to see them with a reason to be taken.

 lobbywatson wrote:
Cannons not scattering at all. I wish my stuff in 40k was as accurate as cannons in WFB.

I don't see how it would scatter tho? You just pivot and aim it straight out of the barrel....the bounce effect works nicely. Scattering it wouldn't make any sense (unless it misfires and the drunk empire crew member stumbles and points the cannon at his own general).

 Warptide wrote:
Terrorgheist and banshee screams. They don't wound like normal meaning monster and isolataed generals can easily be sniped, they ignore armor, and can also do it into combat.

I find that rule to not actually be that bad when you consider the army has no access to warmachines or other shooting. And aren't exactly stellar in combat or magic.


Also I think in a combat you should always have the option to attack the unit. For example I've recently been seeing multiple dwarf lords on shield bearers in the same unit, taking up the entire front rank. This means the unit has to roll to wound against t7+ so 6's. Also the unit can't direct all it's attacks against the same dwarf lord so killing them is even harder. Also all ethereal units in the front rank is equally dumb, but at least hard countered by even a single character with a magic weapon

Rx8Speed wrote:
]Also all ethereal units in the front rank is equally dumb, but at least hard countered by even a single character with a magic weapon

Nah man. Unit of zombies, 2 wide. Standard musician take front rank, 2 banshees in 2nd rank. 2x the screams 10x the frustration.

Cannons: roll to hit using BS, if you hit you do either 'x' hits or 'x' per rank', whichever is more.

ASF & ASL, these rules need to translate as +/- 2 on Initiative, then let them stack. Drop the re-rolls, instead have a system whereby if you are I+2 you can take a +1 to hit or a re-roll, I+4 you get both.

Ranged weapons, these need to fire more often - maybe allow ranged units to fire on both player turns (not 'slow to fire', though they can then move & fire if not a war machine) - this as a part to adjust for the increased speed of armies on the charge

Remove 'removes models from play', everything causing wounds - with or without saves as required, makes one shotting characters and monsters harder.

Allow inanimate or dead models to ignore poison

among others.

 Shas'O Dorian wrote:

Rx8Speed wrote:
]Also all ethereal units in the front rank is equally dumb, but at least hard countered by even a single character with a magic weapon

Nah man. Unit of zombies, 2 wide. Standard musician take front rank, 2 banshees in 2nd rank. 2x the screams 10x the frustration.

Hmm. So you would still be killing zombies but just not a lot I guess because it's only 2 wide? Meanwhile the banshees scream at you? Might have to use that one . just have to not get flanked lol

Also why can't cannon's just scatter? Like, nominate a point, BS based scatter with the artillery die, then bounce as normal? Would make cannons less sniper-ish

 Redbad wrote:
Skaven cheese.

Everything in the book breaks a core rule, and is nearly impossible to combat.

The cheesy players have it down to science of about 100 slaves, 2 engineers, doom rockets, double warp lightning, and if they can fit it, plague monks and a furnace.

There goes 200 victory points right off the bat.

Thanks
Austin

too many people complain about the skaven book but its one of the only books whose rules reflect its fluff almost to the letter, Its something that the new additions of WHFB and WH40K is losing steadily IMHO, to0 many armies are becoming generic and less about the fluff which is what most people love about the game and ts a shame

 kencotter wrote:

 Redbad wrote:
Skaven cheese.

Everything in the book breaks a core rule, and is nearly impossible to combat.

The cheesy players have it down to science of about 100 slaves, 2 engineers, doom rockets, double warp lightning, and if they can fit it, plague monks and a furnace.

There goes 200 victory points right off the bat.

Thanks
Austin

too many people complain about the skaven book but its one of the only books whose rules reflect its fluff almost to the letter, Its something that the new additions of WHFB and WH40K is losing steadily IMHO, to0 many armies are becoming generic and less about the fluff which is what most people love about the game and ts a shame

I have to agree with this. The rules match the fluff so well its awesome!
Everything is expendable and I like blowing myself up in the name of the great horned one!

With the Dark and High Elf books, and now the combined Undead and Chaos Legions, I can't believe people are still complaining about Skaven.

Steadfast is tough, sure. But I've never seen it hinder a serious unit overmuch. "Oh, you held this turn? Well, I took out 30% of the unit on the charge. Next phase, I'll do it again, and you'll break". A few little modifiers is all it needs. Cutting the Ld modifier in half is worthless. If I lose by 14, and cut that to 7, I still might as well have lost by 2,000.

The Abomination does not need "Too Horrible To Die". It also doesn't need it's weird "if you roll triples for Movement" chart, either. Beyond that, he's totally fair. 235pts for T5 and potentially 5 or less attacks is far from reliable. His other stuff rocks, of course, but that's how monsters should be. Other monsters should be built around that.

The magic phases is weird, sure.

Dwarfs? Seriously? I mean...yeah. They're boring and uninspired. I agree, 100%. But they're not broken. Nine Hells, they're not even that good! Their supposed "anti-magic" involves the ability to take more than one Dispel Scroll, a 50-50 shot at stealing a Power Die, and a a smattering of MR1 and a 2+ to Dispel that, at great sacrifice, can be bumped up to a 4+...like everyone else.

Deathstars, gunlines, and complete avoidance-style armies. Do any of these a little bit. That's fine with me. But if you do one of them, and nothing else, the game becomes so rock-paper-scissors I don't even want to play.
I don't care if I lose a bloody, hard-fought game. That's still fun. But I don't want to get steamrolled because you put all your eggs in one basket and--heyo!--those 5 dice you rolled were with you. And I don't want to steamroll you because those five dice decided to spit in your eye, either. Boring!

Warpsolution wrote:
With the Dark and High Elf books, and now the combined Undead and Chaos Legions, I can't believe people are still complaining about Skaven.

Steadfast is tough, sure. But I've never seen it hinder a serious unit overmuch. "Oh, you held this turn? Well, I took out 30% of the unit on the charge. Next phase, I'll do it again, and you'll break". A few little modifiers is all it needs. Cutting the Ld modifier in half is worthless. If I lose by 14, and cut that to 7, I still might as well have lost by 2,000.

The Abomination does not need "Too Horrible To Die". It also doesn't need it's weird "if you roll triples for Movement" chart, either. Beyond that, he's totally fair. 235pts for T5 and potentially 5 or less attacks is far from reliable. His other stuff rocks, of course, but that's how monsters should be. Other monsters should be built around that.

The magic phases is weird, sure.

Dwarfs? Seriously? I mean...yeah. They're boring and uninspired. I agree, 100%. But they're not broken. Nine Hells, they're not even that good! Their supposed "anti-magic" involves the ability to take more than one Dispel Scroll, a 50-50 shot at stealing a Power Die, and a a smattering of MR1 and a 2+ to Dispel that, at great sacrifice, can be bumped up to a 4+...like everyone else.

Deathstars, gunlines, and complete avoidance-style armies. Do any of these a little bit. That's fine with me. But if you do one of them, and nothing else, the game becomes so rock-paper-scissors I don't even want to play.
I don't care if I lose a bloody, hard-fought game. That's still fun. But I don't want to get steamrolled because you put all your eggs in one basket and--heyo!--those 5 dice you rolled were with you. And I don't want to steamroll you because those five dice decided to spit in your eye, either. Boring!

Now do you see what i was getting at with these strange people that seem to still insist Skaven are OP. Seriously i dunno what planet they're from anymore. I'm a fairly experienced person of over 5 years of fantasy gaming and a couple of 40k with most of the fantasy knowledge being 8th edition and i have trouble winning with skaven and our heavily FAQ'd and errata'd book. Against wood elves and even dark elves it's so tough to even handle sisters of thorn and warlocks without just swarming them off the board. I even saw a more experienced bretonnia player get owned by a dark elf player with just his warlocks left pretty much. He just couldn't pin them down and had nothing left to handle them. Not to mention all our large targets that can be sniped so easily i don't even bother with the screaming bell in case somebody takes 'dwellers below' or something.

Then we have the combining of elves and all this end times crap trying to break the game or something. As if elves weren't broken enough we need to break em more. To think i actually had a guy not want to play against my skaven with his wood elves for my skaven being OP and thinking i catered to him just because i need to actually prepare to face his faction.

Oh and btw for all steadfast complainers just use forests or rivers. Chances are even if the opponent doesn't have half their unit in the forest when you're done annihilating 20 dudes the majority of the skaven unit will be in the forest and you'll win combat without them getting steadfast. Also a big deal is skaven rank-and-file have all our high leadership so stuff like censers, rat ogres and all other hard hitting units tend to have crap leadership and tend to do poorly. I actually managed to beat trolls in combat and take them down to under steadfast with censers (charging him in his flanks no less) and the trolls rolled insane courage away from the general and everything (and i think he needed insane courage). Course after the first combat flails suck and hatred goes away so they're not doing much more than normal plague monks. So i had to charge in a 2nd censer bearer unit which almost got torn up. So i did win but it was at heavy cost.

Then there's the deal with rat ogres where they have crap leadership and if i lost all packmasters (which is easy) then they suffer from stupidity and their frenzy checks so good luck with that. The abomination is powerful still sure but it's one of our only good units. To say skaven need the abomination taken away is like saying skaven players should forfeit any hope of victory in the name of another army.

Oh and on the topic of slave blocks? I had a unit of about 50 in 5 man ranks gets eaten by an ironguts unit in about 2 rounds of combat. You can quit complaining now about steadfast.

@flamingkillamajig: oookay. Easy, now. There's no "now do you see what I was getting at", here. I always saw. The Skaven book has a few really good choices that are tough to counter with certain popular armies. and people piled on the hate because of their bias.
...that, and some tournament players straight-up roll better than others. I don't believe in luck or any of that drivel, but there are teams around here who consistently build incredibly one-sided armies, and then have all the dice come up in their favor. To roll 10 Power Dice, successfully Plague one of my units, then have it bounce to two more, then to Dreaded 13th a unit off the board, then to land dead-on with the Doomrocket and one Cannon...that's enough to make me hate Skaven, if that crap happens more often than it should. And the smaller the die pool, the more extreme the outliers.

But. I digress. This is NOT a thread about Skaven. It's about rules that people don't like.

I didn't mean to derail it with my comments on skaven.
I've had nothing bad bad experiences, with the 3 seperate skaven player I've played. it's the same net list WAAC bull every time.

I appreciate that it matches the fluff, I too play an army that matches their fluff.
I was actually encouraging a new player to buy a skaven army today, because I really like the fluff and want to live vicariously through that person.

Warpsolution you nailed it on the head

Thanks
Austin

Thanks
Austin

As far as magic goes:

- The Dwellers Below. A spell that takes out 30% of a unit and has a 50-50 shot of taking out the average Wizard that's sitting in it is absurd.

- Soul Blight. Strength and Toughness are both stats that yield almost immediate results when modified in any way, unlike Weapon Skill, Initiative, Attacks, or Movement. Having one spell that effects both is very good. Having one spell that effects both in a large radius for a casting value under 20+ is too good.

- Purple Sun of Xereus. Initiative is the major weakness of more models than any other stat (most Undead, Ogres, Orcs, Dwarfs, Lizardmen). A large template that exploits that is very good. A large template that does so whilst it zooms across the battlefield is insane. And a large template that does both of those things and happens to have Death's Lore Attribute is stupid.
Look at the boosted Purple Sun. Look at it. Now, kindly never complain to me about the Dreaded 13th (which has the same casting value, and a more limited target range) ever again.

With that said, however, a second note on the mechanics that represent two ways of doing the same thing:

There are two ways to hurt a unit. One is to roll up a number of attacks or hits against it. That might be by attacking it with another unit, or hitting it with a Fireball, an Organ Gun, or a banshee's wail.
The other is to effect a number of models in the unit once. Like stone throwers, breath weaons or The Dwellers Below.

The second way is good for taking out huge chunks of large units. The first way, though, can be waaay too good at targeting small units or single models. Focused-fire.
The examples that come to mind: (1) the Vampire Count's Deathshriek, as described above. It's stupid.
I'm okay with a giant bat-monster screaming at some troops, and a handful of them die as their hearts explode in their chest or they age a hundred years in an instant or whatever. I'm not okay with that same bat-monster screaming at a Dragon, and the Dragon keeling over dead.
(2) The Dreaded 13th. Whittling a unit down to 14 or less models, with a super-tough character or two in there, and then BAM! Your level 4 Wizard and your BSB are now Clanrats.

I think the best way to get around this would be to avoid having those set number of attacks/hits/wounds take on qualities like "with no saves of any kind" and the like. Fireball is fine. My lone character might survive, if he's tough and/or lucky.

Um...other things...you know what? I'm cool with magical fast cavalry. You know what they don't need, though? Poisoned ASF spears that re-roll 1's to wound and are immune to Miscasts.
And the other ones don't need a spell that kills 30% of my models when I move ANYWHERE and also happens to give me an additional penalty. Pretty sure Curse was not meant to work that way. As it stands, it is in all but one way a better, easier-to-cast version of the #6 Metal spell. The only thing going against it is that your opponent can avoid the damage by holding still. But if the caster is a block of fast cavalry, that will prove to be problematic.

Um...other things....yeah, Steadfast needs to be changed up. We've beat that horse to death.

Battle Standards should be for break tests only.

Spears should be as good as the hand weapon/shield combo.

End the favoritism heaped upon Warriors of Chaos, Vampire Counts, and Dark Elves. Beastmen, Tomb Kings, and Wood Elves need love, too!
And don't even get me started on Orcs & Goblins.

Dwarfs are still boring!

And the Banner of the World Dragon. Make it 100pts, change it, or get rid of it all together.

For me the worst single rule is cannons hitting a monster mount and then playing pinball with every one on it most annoying. In a close second is int attack spells purple sun etc as i play dwarfs ogres and both undead having a large chunk of your army die from one spell is nuts, more so with my ogres as there not cheap in points and even my general only has i4 or 3 if using a slaughtmaster.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

 namiel wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

And yet, the Blightkings were not "worthless" despite being Infantry rather than MI...

And you just brought up the biggest reason I hate that rule. Ogre Kingdoms.
An entire special rule(Killing Blow) is invalidated because of the MI rule.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 namiel wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

And yet, the Blightkings were not "worthless" despite being Infantry rather than MI...

And you just brought up the biggest reason I hate that rule. Ogre Kingdoms.
An entire special rule(Killing Blow) is invalidated because of the MI rule.

And Blightkings are better then anything that costs the same in OK, or even if it costs more (better then Maneaters or any other elite unit), so what is your point?

Also yeah it invalidates it, because having something 3-5 times more costly die to a rule that is relatively common in some armies would utterly break the balance.

Warpsolution wrote:
Spears should be as good as the hand weapon/shield combo.

Are you suggesting spears should give a Parry save like a hand weapon as well as retaining their ability to fight in an extra rank? If so, no they shouldn't.

End the favoritism heaped upon Warriors of Chaos, Vampire Counts, and Dark Elves. Beastmen, Tomb Kings, and Wood Elves need love, too!
And don't even get me started on Orcs & Goblins.

Don't really understand this. Granted, Beastmen do need a new book, but that will happen in time. There's no favouritism.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 namiel wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

And yet, the Blightkings were not "worthless" despite being Infantry rather than MI...

And you just brought up the biggest reason I hate that rule. Ogre Kingdoms.
An entire special rule(Killing Blow) is invalidated because of the MI rule.

And Blightkings are better then anything that costs the same in OK, or even if it costs more (better then Maneaters or any other elite unit), so what is your point?

Also yeah it invalidates it, because having something 3-5 times more costly die to a rule that is relatively common in some armies would utterly break the balance.

What armies have Killing Blow as "relatively common"(read: more than two rank and file units or characters)?

And quite frankly, it's not like Killing Blow is so reliable that you can count on it to "break the balance".

I think it could be a bit more balanced to say "Killing blow: Any roll to wound of 6 ignores armor & will slay the model outright, regardless of how many wounds they have remaining"

"Monster(ous): Are immune to being slain outright by killing blow" This way KB still ignores the armor & has some benefit.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 namiel wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

And yet, the Blightkings were not "worthless" despite being Infantry rather than MI...

And you just brought up the biggest reason I hate that rule. Ogre Kingdoms.
An entire special rule(Killing Blow) is invalidated because of the MI rule.

And Blightkings are better then anything that costs the same in OK, or even if it costs more (better then Maneaters or any other elite unit), so what is your point?

Also yeah it invalidates it, because having something 3-5 times more costly die to a rule that is relatively common in some armies would utterly break the balance.

What armies have Killing Blow as "relatively common"(read: more than two rank and file units or characters)?

And quite frankly, it's not like Killing Blow is so reliable that you can count on it to "break the balance".

Getting rid of MI will push KB far over the top, as it will make units like grave guard and executioners so good against ogres.

Ogres won't go near executioners unless they get the charge anyway. Making them vulnerable to killing blow will mean that they can't go near executioners at all.

Grave guard are more iffy due to asl.

VC - Grave Guard, Black Knights, Krell (just off the top of my head)

TK - Potentially every melee unit with the right spell off, and the Kings themselves.

It's not particularly widespread, but when an entire unit has it (especially in the Special slot), it's enough to be enormously problematic. I had the good graces to watch a block of TK spearmen tear their way through Blight Kings and a ~20 odd block of Warriors without breaking a sweat.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 namiel wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
Monstrous Infantry.

It's a stupid as hell rule and it needs to go away.

This rule going away will completely invalidate the whole ogre armybook and will make EVERY single MI unit virtually worthless. MI is not broken at all.

And yet, the Blightkings were not "worthless" despite being Infantry rather than MI...

And you just brought up the biggest reason I hate that rule. Ogre Kingdoms.
An entire special rule(Killing Blow) is invalidated because of the MI rule.

Blightkings if MI should be at least 60 points a piece. They are very good and are frankly under costed by ~5 points or so.

If MI goes away then everything in the OK book needs to drop by 15 points due to the loss of those supporting attacks, killing blow, the horde rules, ect. Since they lose all of that id say the points difference should be a good 15 points per model. If MI was that "broken" then ogres would be taking GT after GT and that is NOT the case at all. While ogres are competitive and quite a good army they are by no means broken. The best armor save we can get on rank and file is a 5+ with a parry. How easy is that to crush. A simple block of empire halberds can break ogres whilist staying steadfast themselves. Oh and thats another thing, rarely do MI ever get steadfast. If they do, it loses tons of killing power and wouldnt likely win combat and in a grind would lose overall.

Your argument that a few units in the game dont quickly destroy ONE of 15 armies thus the whole army in question must be destroyed is silly. Executioners still butcher ogres just fine without killing blow.

alex87 wrote:
Are you suggesting spears should give a Parry save like a hand weapon as well as retaining their ability to fight in an extra rank? If so, no they shouldn't.

I said "as good as" not "have the same effect and have more as well".
Show me a unit that might actually want to upgrade to spears. I'll show you the one and only case: Saurus.

alex87 wrote:
There's no favouritism.

...really? Seriously?
Look at the Orcs & Goblins book. Look at the Tomb Kings book. Look at the Wood Elf book.
Now, look at the Dark Elf book.

The fact that the Dark Elves fared so well compared to books that came out before and after them is a pretty strong indicator that at least someone in the design team has the "I like these guys therefore they should be awesome!" goggles on. The fact that the last Dark Elf book was more of the same all but proves it.
Same thing with Vampire Counts.
And same thing, to a lesser extent, with Warriors of Chaos and High Elves.

When's the last time these armies were terrible? I mean, come on! Compare them to Ogre Kingdoms. Their book was in rough shape, back in 7th. They're doing pretty well, now! And then Daemons of Chaos are the opposite; the designers seemed to say, "well, we certainly don't want to make THAT mistake again!", and planned accordingly. And that's how it should be. Attempting to find balance and improve the game.

It may seem like favoritism but you have to realize the books are written by different authors with different playtesters in different areas during different years in relation to different armybooks it is against. There's also no formula for points it's mostly trial and error.

Matt Ward wrote the DE book, Matt Ward was a notorious escalator. He almost always (new daemons lol) ADDED power to an army. This can be good in the short term but in the long run just creates an unfixable arms race.

Some authors may view WHFB from a competitive lets make this tough as nails Matt Wardish perspective. Some may be from a softer view. The reality is the books will never be truly balanced, there are far too many variables.

No book should ever be terrible. As for daemons yes, it was a swing too far in the opposite direction. It's almost like they took a great 7th army (Daemons) tried to nerf it down, realized they nerfed it too much & then made sure they didn't do it again with the next great 7th army (DE).

The other thing daemons suffer from is they transcend 40k & Fantasy so the designer tries to make things similar in both, which I feel is wrong.

I fully realize that there are a lot of variables in play...and the design team doesn't always take them into account.

A designer taking a competitive view is fine. It's good, even. But that doesn't mean "hey, I'm designing this army, so I'm going to make it DA BEST". Designing a competitive army means attempting to design an army that is balanced with the others (except the more outdated ones, etc), to encourage competitive play.
Anyone who wants to make Their Army awesome has no business in designing it.

And no, true and perfect balance will never be a thing (mostly because there's no way to quantify it). But we can try.

Warpsolution wrote:

alex87 wrote:
Are you suggesting spears should give a Parry save like a hand weapon as well as retaining their ability to fight in an extra rank? If so, no they shouldn't.

I said "as good as" not "have the same effect and have more as well".
Show me a unit that might actually want to upgrade to spears. I'll show you the one and only case: Saurus.

alex87 wrote:
There's no favouritism.

...really? Seriously?
Look at the Orcs & Goblins book. Look at the Tomb Kings book. Look at the Wood Elf book.
Now, look at the Dark Elf book.

The fact that the Dark Elves fared so well compared to books that came out before and after them is a pretty strong indicator that at least someone in the design team has the "I like these guys therefore they should be awesome!" goggles on. The fact that the last Dark Elf book was more of the same all but proves it.
Same thing with Vampire Counts.
And same thing, to a lesser extent, with Warriors of Chaos and High Elves.

When's the last time these armies were terrible? I mean, come on! Compare them to Ogre Kingdoms. Their book was in rough shape, back in 7th. They're doing pretty well, now! And then Daemons of Chaos are the opposite; the designers seemed to say, "well, we certainly don't want to make THAT mistake again!", and planned accordingly. And that's how it should be. Attempting to find balance and improve the game.

Since you asked, both High & Dark Elves especially were near to unplayable in 6th edition as their books were so lackluster. Dark Elves were so bad, GW actually printed a full-on Errata in WD for them to give them a break!
Both High & Dark Elves as well required a lot more refurbishing of their model line to boot. While both are in great shape now, (High Elves especially so), it's been a long haul waiting game for their player base to get the bulk of their units converted over to plastic from a nearly all-metal/finecrap range.

Vampires were gross in 7th yes, but very bland overall with little in the way of real unit choices. Most armies looked fairly similar, and this was massively compounded when 8th edition came out, to the point the core mechanics gakked all over Undead in general that the poor VC's were reduced into a strict "one list to rule them all" level of pure suckage. (sure the aptly named 'Dickenhof Guard' deathstar was amazaballs, but it was literally the only real play VC's had!)
Not to mention, VC's required a great deal more love on the model front as only Dwarfs, Brets & Tomb Kings had a model that was as outright ancient as VC players were putting up with.

Overall, the only armies that have been consistently 'strong' across the various editions have been:
- Skaven
- Chaos Warriors and to a lesser extent, Daemons. (broken-good in 5th, horrible in 6th until the Storm of Chaos list, helped to completely break 7th, utterly dysfunctional in 8th)
- Bretonnians (no, seriously! These guys were filth in 5th, ended off very well in 6th, and in the right hands are still filth despite being 2 full editions out of date!)
- High Elves (they were to 5th edition what DoC were to 7th, they began the 'uber arms race of 7th, and they're a top dog in 8th... 6th was just a hiccup for the HE in all honesty.)

Everyone else has had major ups & downs across the various editions, or else have always been a simply 'average' army, such as O&G's... sure they get a lot of model-love, but they've never really had a super powered book or been accused of destroying the game in the way other armies have.

Anvil of Doom!
Whats the point its so sad yes it was slightly broken in the way it allowed out of sequence moves but lets be honest how much does that extra 6 inches really give dwarves (hur hur).
Only way you are getting spells off with it now is double sixes or if your opponent doesnt bring a Wizard!