Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Not if they were foolish enough to charge a bunch of infantry in the front. Thats a one way ticket to losing all your cavalry.

Cavalry could not break line infantry in the front historically. They had to either flank them or hope and pray the infantry lost their nerve.

8th edition portrays this perfectly.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not if they were foolish enough to charge a bunch of infantry in the front. Thats a one way ticket to losing all your cavalry.

Cavalry could not break line infantry in the front historically. They had to either flank them or hope and pray the infantry lost their nerve.

8th edition portrays this perfectly.

But thanks to steadfast, infantry never breaks from cavalry. Doesn't matter how hard the cavalry hits, most infantry units can more than soak the casualties and keep their steadfast. Cavalry tend to lose wars of attrition, which 8th edition basically is.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not if they were foolish enough to charge a bunch of infantry in the front. Thats a one way ticket to losing all your cavalry.

Cavalry could not break line infantry in the front historically. They had to either flank them or hope and pray the infantry lost their nerve.

8th edition portrays this perfectly.

But thanks to steadfast, infantry never breaks from cavalry. Doesn't matter how hard the cavalry hits, most infantry units can more than soak the casualties and keep their steadfast. Cavalry tend to lose wars of attrition, which 8th edition basically is.

You act like that isn't what really happened historically.

Even when cavalry did break infantry, they almost never broke them immediately after the charge. Cavalry would have to charge and then immediately withdraw, and then charge again. Rinse and repeat till the infantry lose.

I think you're really arguing that cavalry should have some sort of hit and run ability and not that steadfast is a problem, steadfast perfectly represents what its supposed to represent.

If you mean that steadfast is supposed to represent people buying craploads of overpriced infantry models, I would agree whole-heartedly.

The game is an abstraction designed to favor tactics. I'd like to be able to use tactics other than throwing a bunch of guys at another bunch of guys.

Movement and placement of units used to really mean something in this game.

 Flashman wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
So, who wants to play 8th and ignore this abomination of a new game?

8th already is an abomination

Its far superior to the previous editions of fantasy. No 25+ power dice magic phases, better unit type rules, no cavalry automatically winning their combats, etc...

Cavalry should automatically win their combats. That's the point of cavalry.

A single tactical squad of marines should lay waste to enemy armies. That's the point of Space Marines

Background=/=rules.

Fantasy was ruined with random charges.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
So, who wants to play 8th and ignore this abomination of a new game?

8th already is an abomination

Its far superior to the previous editions of fantasy. No 25+ power dice magic phases, better unit type rules, no cavalry automatically winning their combats, etc...

Cavalry should automatically win their combats. That's the point of cavalry.

A single tactical squad of marines should lay waste to enemy armies. That's the point of Space Marines

Background=/=rules.

I dunno... in 40K, 10 Space Marines can hold their own against 40 Orks., whereas in Fantasy cavalry does not make much of a dent against a moderately size infantry regiment. I don't expect reality in a game, but I do expect a dash of realism.

I think talking about what happened historically is not super relevant when talking about velociraptor cavalry or goblins riding giant wolves.

7th and 6th minus the worst army books were more satisfying for me tactically because of the variety of different things that you could try and do, and the importance of positioning. I feel that with 8th, those things are much less important and your "build" is much more important. That is a difference that some may enjoy, and that's cool, but it wasn't for me.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think talking about what happened historically is not super relevant when talking about velociraptor cavalry or goblins riding giant wolves.

7th and 6th minus the worst army books were more satisfying for me tactically because of the variety of different things that you could try and do, and the importance of positioning. I feel that with 8th, those things are much less important and your "build" is much more important. That is a difference that some may enjoy, and that's cool, but it wasn't for me.

This is what I'm talking about. In 6/7, you could make up for having a 'weaker' list by being better. Now, it's more like Listhammer, like 40k is.

Nah, let's go back to 5th edition and spend over half our army's points on Dwarven anvils and other characters!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nah, let's go back to 5th edition and spent over half our army's points on Dwarven anvils and other characters!

That means we need better points balancing for characters/units then...

 Kanluwen wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nah, let's go back to 5th edition and spent over half our army's points on Dwarven anvils and other characters!

That means we need better points balancing for characters/units then...

Or a sense of humour. Whichever comes first.

Points balancing it is.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Nah, let's go back to 5th edition and spend over half our army's points on Dwarven anvils and other characters!

5th rules with some well placed restrictions to magical items (i.e. captains up to 25p, heroes up to 35 and commanders up to 50) and a few tweaks here and there (mostly some nice ideas from later editions, like 6th flight) is a pretty decent ruleset for dark ages scale battles.

And by "dark ages" I mean the times when a well timed charge by 8 or 10 horsemen could change the tide of a battle. Which is what happens in WHFB.

 Flashman wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
So, who wants to play 8th and ignore this abomination of a new game?

8th already is an abomination

Its far superior to the previous editions of fantasy. No 25+ power dice magic phases, better unit type rules, no cavalry automatically winning their combats, etc...

Cavalry should automatically win their combats. That's the point of cavalry.

Not really, Cavalry is usually there to harress and exploit weaknesses and can't nromally deal with formed and discplined troops - its very rare historically that they even charged formed units that were not weakened or disrupted by terrain, thirst, arrows etc -cavalry is also great against weak disored troops or those fleeing, and of course other cavalry

 Mr Morden wrote:
Not really, Cavalry is usually there to harress and exploit weaknesses and can't nromally deal with formed and discplined troops - its very rare historically that they even charged formed units that were not weakened or disrupted by terrain, thirst, arrows etc -cavalry is also great against weak disored troops or those fleeing, and of course other cavalry

It depends on the time period.

Heavy cavalry in early-to-mid medieval western european battles could be devastating, mostly because many armies lacked effective infantry equipped with the suitable pole weapons to deal with cavalry. Also well trained, equipped and organised infantry regiments were uncommon.

The problem with some editions' cavhammer is that, traditionally, pole weapons in WHFB have got rules equivalent to "gak on a stick".

In other words, five bretonnian knights of the realm should be able to crush fifteen to twenty poorly equipped and disciplined goblins or human militiamen, but they should be turned into shreds if foolish enough to charge into a well trained and geared pike or even spear defensive formation.

Sadly, as I said, pole weapons have always been neglected rules-wise in WHFB, while two-handed weapons have always been able to deal with almost everything. It's silly, but I guess models with two handed weapons look cooler and sell more.

On the other hand, rules-wise mounts are mostly useless, while in the charge they should be as dangerous (or more) than their riders. A huge armored battle steed (who has been bred and trained to be nothing short of a psychopathic beast) is the last thing an infantryman wants to see galloping straight at him. Specially if you don't have a pike, or at least a spear/halberd at hand.

These are things WHFB has never really got around, and they shouldn't be that difficult to fix. But again, GW game developers probably never had (nor currently have) a clue about what real medieval warfare looked like, so it's to be expected.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Flashman wrote:

 Crazyterran wrote:
So, who wants to play 8th and ignore this abomination of a new game?

8th already is an abomination

Its far superior to the previous editions of fantasy.

Except 6th. 6th was clearly better than 8th.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not if they were foolish enough to charge a bunch of infantry in the front. Thats a one way ticket to losing all your cavalry.

Cavalry could not break line infantry in the front historically. They had to either flank them or hope and pray the infantry lost their nerve.

8th edition portrays this perfectly.

But thanks to steadfast, infantry never breaks from cavalry. Doesn't matter how hard the cavalry hits, most infantry units can more than soak the casualties and keep their steadfast. Cavalry tend to lose wars of attrition, which 8th edition basically is.

You act like that isn't what really happened historically.

Historically, were there Elves on dragon back or short angry alcoholics with magic hammers?

It is above all else a game. Furthermore it is a game without the burden of needing to represent anything that actually happened or existed. It is irrelevant how cavalry worked when cavalry was still relevant, because what we all want is a solid, balanced representation of how we feel cavalry should work. (ie a majestic sweeping charge, devastating all that they come into contact with.)

If a player feels compelled to seek out a truer tabletop representation them I'm sure there's one or two systems out there that do a better job, and without the trolls and drug crazed, ball and chain wielding gobbos getting in the way of all the authenticity.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Not if they were foolish enough to charge a bunch of infantry in the front. Thats a one way ticket to losing all your cavalry.

Cavalry could not break line infantry in the front historically. They had to either flank them or hope and pray the infantry lost their nerve.

8th edition portrays this perfectly.

But thanks to steadfast, infantry never breaks from cavalry. Doesn't matter how hard the cavalry hits, most infantry units can more than soak the casualties and keep their steadfast. Cavalry tend to lose wars of attrition, which 8th edition basically is.

You act like that isn't what really happened historically.

Historically, were there Elves on dragon back or short angry alcoholics with magic hammers?

It is above all else a game. Furthermore it is a game without the burden of needing to represent anything that actually happened or existed. It is irrelevant how cavalry worked when cavalry was still relevant, because what we all want is a solid, balanced representation of how we feel cavalry should work. (ie a majestic sweeping charge, devastating all that they come into contact with.)

If a player feels compelled to seek out a truer tabletop representation them I'm sure there's one or two systems out there that do a better job, and without the trolls and drug crazed, ball and chain wielding gobbos getting in the way of all the authenticity.

Yes its a game of fantasy, but like all good fantasy it has a plenty of realism. Like real weaponry, following the rules of physics(except where its not desired), etc...

Cavalry is cavalry, weather they be riding horses or a raptor the principles would be the same. the raptor just is a little better in the actual melee.

If a player feels compelled to seek out a truer tabletop representation them I'm sure there's one or two systems out there that do a better job, and without the trolls and drug crazed, ball and chain wielding gobbos getting in the way of all the authenticity.

Or there are systems that let you have at least a bit of both, more or less. Who said it had to be either/or? Why does the mere existence of a dragon or a wizard make the basic interaction of hurtling horse + bunched grunts so much different?

But the truth is, it's not because of a romantic or realistic notion of cavalry, and it's not even because it's a game. It's because GW's beancounters like shaking up 'the product' because amazingly, that'll get previous customers to buy and rebuy and re-rebuy and so on, so forth; and some of them will give up and move to something a big more stable or sensible, but others will sit around and piss and moan until the next shakeup arbitrarily changes how cavalry interacts with infantry again. By, I dunno, making you count your ranks or some such nonsense. And then they get to piss and moan all over again.

If you don't want to live in a world where an eagle can pull a chariot without it falling out of the fething sky every time the eagle slows even slightly, then go play a historical and leave the completely silly and suspension-of-disbelief-breaking eagle-chariots to the rest of it.

Edit: Y'know, not sure if serious. Trolling can sound too much like real GWombie rhetoric at times.

There is in any fantasy work a balance to be struck between the fantastical and verisimilitude. You have something like Lord of the Rings, which tends towards a fairly mundane (safer word than 'realistic') depiction: no flying eagle chariots here! Then you get the more extravagant stuff like Warcraft, where realism plays no role. In the middle is WFB, but it definitely tends towards the fantastical side of things, what with all the flying stone monsters and wildly over the top magic.

Do the cavalry rules in WFB reflect historical reality? Not exactly, and I doubt that the rules designers are trying to make them an accurate depiction. But they do have a reasonably close adherence - cavalry are good on the charge, move fast, don't like getting into long drawn out melees with infantry, and are more expensive per guy than the same dude on foot. This is all about right, and I think has been consistent for many editions. The question of how they should do on the charge versus infantry blocks is one that WFB has always tinkered with, and we should probably not view this as anything to do with realism: it is all about their in-game purpose. Having established cavalry in a relatively realistic place, the need to balance the game (in part to sell infantry or cavalry models, as mentioned by posters above) takes over for the minutiae of the charge rules.

Of course, you can desire greater verisimilitude than we are getting from the cavalry rules (though I'd suggest that the BSB rules, and panic/fear rules in general, are more in need of addressing on that front), and that is a valid desire, being subjective and all. Unfortunately I think that you'd want to head into Historicals to scratch that itch; I don't think that other fantasy games like Hordes have even as much concern about verisimilitude as WFB.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
But they do have a reasonably close adherence - cavalry... move fast

Blimey, I'd hope so.

Unfortunately I think that you'd want to head into Historicals to scratch that itch; I don't think that other fantasy games like Hordes have even as much concern about verisimilitude as WFB.

If you're just looking at the handful of other fantasy minis+rules packages driven by unsubtle image and kooky character-centred rules, and - more to the point - mostly turn out to be skirmish games like Hordes, you might not scratch that itch. But like I said, there are others.

It's a fantastic setting with flying chariots pulled by eagles, fine*

Still, we have heavy chainmail cavalry charging into spearmen formations. It's not that difficult to tweak the rules towards making that a realistic clash. Claiming "it's fantasy!" does not constitute a valid excuse for poor and lazy rules design.

* well, no, really, not fine. The eagle chariots rank very high among the most slowed ideas I've ever seen. How that got made into a model is beyond me.

 Korinov wrote:
It's a fantastic setting with flying chariots pulled by eagles, fine*

* well, no, really, not fine. The eagle chariots rank very high among the most slowed ideas I've ever seen. How that got made into a model is beyond me.

Even the concept isn't the problem - all they needed to do is make it less boat and more kite, so the flying chariot looked like a feasible towed glider.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
It's a fantastic setting with flying chariots pulled by eagles, fine*

* well, no, really, not fine. The eagle chariots rank very high among the most slowed ideas I've ever seen. How that got made into a model is beyond me.

Even the concept isn't the problem - all they needed to do is make it less boat and more kite, so the flying chariot looked like a feasible towed glider.

What they need to do is break all of the molds and pretend that aberration never happened.

It was a terrible idea that ended up getting a terrible model.

The Auld Grump

47 pages in - are we out of rumors?

We seem to be out of news...

I'm thinking this thread needs to be closed, and when we actually have some new rumors or...news, we can start another one?

Sounds good if it means I don't have to have a look every hour to see if there I any rumours.

Although you know as soon as this is locked somebody will start a new one.....

may be better to keep it all in one place