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Vermis wrote:

Waitaminnit, wasn't the gist of your argument that things were balanced and that tabletop tactics made up for stuff?

"Balance" doesn't mean that all list options are created equal. List-building is still an important part of WHFB (just like it is in all tabletop games), and skinks are the more powerful option for a variety of reasons. My point was merely that the "super spells" aren't guaranteed I-WIN buttons like many people seem to think it is. It's just one of many strategies that a person can employ against you, and one that isn't particularly more reliable nor powerful than many others.

JohnHwangDD wrote:I think our resident 8E fanboy meant to say that 8E is perfect, except for the stupid spells and Dorfs and Lizardmen.

Who said 8th is perfect? It's got it's host of issues, and I'm hoping that the new edition fixes them. However it's a substantially better edition than previous ones were, and the sorts of issues I consistently hear non-players complaining about (i.e. steadfast hordes, model bloat, and 6-spells) don't really have much to do with those.

I would rather see attack allocation fixed, to prevent the silly character-wall shenanigans that have been dominating the meta for the past year and a half. I'm expecting that they'll move to unit-on-unit combat, and abstract the characters out of the unit. Ridden monsters also need a boost (hopefully getting the monstrous cav treatment). Fear could use a bit of a boost, as it's rather useless right now. Steadfast is a little too blunt of an instrument (could be modified somehow, say by flank/rear bonuses modifying steadfast/stubborn leadership).

The bigger issues though is objective and scenario play. It's something that TOs have been dealing with by homebrewing interesting scenario objectives, but that's something taht the BRB could really have some assistance with. The random scenarios of 40K aren't really going to work well for fantasy, but I would like to see something in that vein. You get really bored of the same 6 scenarios being played over and over again, and written campaigns rely a little too heavily on odd combinations of units.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:
However it's a substantially better edition than previous ones were

Umm, yeah, that's largely subjective. Given 8th edition mostly killed WHFB around this area I'd say it's substantially worse.

The fact that 8E introduced a host of issues that turned players into non-players pretty much proves how crap 8E is.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The fact that 8E introduced a host of issues that turned players into non-players pretty much proves how crap 8E is.

Or how whiny tabletop players are.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The fact that 8E introduced a host of issues that turned players into non-players pretty much proves how crap 8E is.

Or how whiny tabletop players are.

One of the great conundrums of our age

Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

Fair play, but gamers aren't exactly well-known for taking major changes in stride.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

Fair play, but gamers aren't exactly well-known for taking major changes in stride.

I don't know why this should be considered being whiny or even why it should be considered a bad thing. When you start playing a game it's typically because, ya know, you like that game. When changes come around it should be standard that they are greeted with scepticism. A lot of the reasons I personally stopped playing with 8th is because a lot of the changes have quite simply turned it in to a game that I don't want to play where as previous editions were a game I wanted to play (even though they might not have been perfect).

At the end of the day the most damning thing to me is I rarely hear of how a WHFB community has blossomed under 8th. Not saying some people don't like it or the rules system is junk, but I mostly hear stories of "our WHFB community was struggling under 7th and 8th made things worse".

In terms of popularity, 6th edition was the golden age without a doubt, at least until certain books (i.e. Skaven) broke the balance that had been somewhat achieved (to a degree) by the ravening hordes lists.

The terrible, terrible ending of the Storm of Chaos campaign plus some of the changes introduced in 7th ("now you idiots need 5 models to form a full rank, lol") made it clear which ones were GW's top priorities. 8th edition was (is) so so bad it basically killed Fantasy in most places. Yeah yeah, we all have already read how Fantasy has thrived in your independent store or your GW store under 8th edition, but facts are facts: the game slowly withered away after 8th was released in most places. Every new edition is always guaranteed to infuriate a segment of the player base, some will rage quit and others will (begrudgingly) keep playing, while the new blood will eventually make up for the "desertions". But 8th managed to kill two birds with one single stone, as it just infuriated too much people and the constant price hikes and the "you need moar models, moar, moar" made the entry cost simply too high so no new blood to fill in for the unavoidable losses each new edition will bring.

I'd also like to add that a significant portion of the remaining WHFB "official" players (that is, the ones playing 8th and not "oldhammering"), at this stage, seem to fit the stereotypical "die-hard fanboy" profile: fanatical loyalty to GW, heavy distaste (when not outright hatred) towards everything "non GW" (specially non GW models that make decent alternatives to some GW models) and aggresive attitudes towards anyone daring to criticise GW. In short, "GW gamers". Which then came out as a bunch of elitist douchebags ("I paid this much for my armies and won't play against some cheap knock-offs"), which contributes even more to drive potential newcomers away from Fantasy.

That last paragraph is just a personal feeling based on some things I've seen here and there, mostly on the internet. I don't know if others may feel the same.

In any case, The (hilariously badly written and edited) End Times look like the final nail in the coffin to me.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

Fair play, but gamers aren't exactly well-known for taking major changes in stride.

I don't know why this should be considered being whiny or even why it should be considered a bad thing. When you start playing a game it's typically because, ya know, you like that game. When changes come around it should be standard that they are greeted with scepticism. A lot of the reasons I personally stopped playing with 8th is because a lot of the changes have quite simply turned it in to a game that I don't want to play where as previous editions were a game I wanted to play (even though they might not have been perfect).

At the end of the day the most damning thing to me is I rarely hear of how a WHFB community has blossomed under 8th. Not saying some people don't like it or the rules system is junk, but I mostly hear stories of "our WHFB community was struggling under 7th and 8th made things worse".

My experience with wargaming has always been that a small number of exiting players can have a staggering effect on the community. Often times you have one or two "key" players who are leaders and organizers, and without whom the community built around them would essentially die. If those players decide to switch to a different game the entire community will switch with them.

That is, until the community gets to a certain size where it can survive such a shift. However I feel like many WHFB communities weren't so lucky. Change drove off a couple of those key players early on and the communities never really recovered. Says nothing about the game on any sort of objective basis, only that a few players didn't like that and as a result the ones who did ended up without a community anymore.



THAT SAID, there are a great number of communities that DID survive the switch, or that have since been revitalized by the entrance of new "key players" making concerted efforts to drum up support for the hobby. I've said it before on this thread, but the US Masters circuit has been doing a lot locally to draw people out. We are seeing a large number of players come out of the woodwork here in the Pacific Northwest, who previously went to 1 or 2 tournaments a year locally and are now driving several hours in order to attend double or triple the number of tournaments before. Whereas before nearly all of the tournaments were held in Vancouver and nearby cities, there are now a number of growing tournaments in Seattle, Portland, and a number of smaller cities in between.

We now have 200 players on our roster of tournament participants, and though I don't have real hard numbers to generalize this all of my opponents who are new on the scene talk about having a gaming group of 4-5 other guys who aren't tournament players. All one can really infer from that is that the WHFB scene here is likely at least 3-5 times larger than it would otherwise appear.



I think the biggest struggle for WHFB is growth. It takes a lot more effort to get new people into the hobby than it did before, given the size and complexity of entry. Even though most armies aren't the ridiculously bloated multi-horde lists people in this thread have been suggesting, the game is still much more expensive to enter than it was when I started back in 8th. Any new army I have priced out costs somewhere in the range of $400-900, and that's not even including dud units that you buy, playtest, and then shelf after a bunch of games. That's a tough barrier for new players to get over.

Part of what makes me so excited for these 9th rumours. A dedicated low-level skirmish games would go miles to make this hobby more accessible to get into. 8th edition is pretty awful at point levels below 1,500, and that's the sort of level a new entrant to the hobby is going to play. That injects new blood into the game, who hopefully graduate to a higher level of play like my friends and I did. There's no reason to expect people to escalate to 2,500 point tournament games right off the bat, but that's what the current system is predicated upon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Korinov wrote:

I'd also like to add that a significant portion of the remaining WHFB "official" players (that is, the ones playing 8th and not "oldhammering"), at this stage, seem to fit the stereotypical "die-hard fanboy" profile: fanatical loyalty to GW, heavy distaste (when not outright hatred) towards everything "non GW" (specially non GW models that make decent alternatives to some GW models) and aggresive attitudes towards anyone daring to criticise GW. In short, "GW gamers". Which then came out as a bunch of elitist douchebags ("I paid this much for my armies and won't play against some cheap knock-offs"), which contributes even more to drive potential newcomers away from Fantasy.

That last paragraph is just a personal feeling based on some things I've seen here and there, mostly on the internet. I don't know if others may feel the same.

In any case, The (hilariously badly written and edited) End Times look like the final nail in the coffin to me.

What possible evidence do you base this on? There are myriad of miniature companies whose entire business model is predicated on selling alternative models to WHFB players. Mantic, Raging Heroes, Avatars of War, Mierce, on and on it goes. Almost all of them had recent kickstarters, all of which also met with significant success. Of course, all of these are also starting up games of their own to use these rules with...but they have nowhere near the traction that WHFB does. And they know it...which is why a large portion of their range very clearly mirrors those of current GW armies.

My own army is almost entirely non-GW in core (80 wargames factory skeletons) and heroes (vampires from Enigma and ... another company I can't remember). I also have 80 mantic zombies on the painting queue. In my gaming group there is a guy with an Empire army made entirely of historicals, numerous mantic replacements, Reaper character models, third-party Kdaii Destroyers, and other non-GW minis. But all of them get used in WHFB, because that is the GAME that people enjoy and share in common.

As I said above, the hobby is always going to shed gamers regardless of what is happening with the actual rules. Life circumstances change, tastes change, new shiny wargames come out that pull people away for a month or a year or indefinitely. You need new blood recouping that, and GW's biggest struggle with WHFB has been that the game only really functions in the 2,000 to 3,000 point range, and the price tag for an army at that size will drive new players away.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:
What possible evidence do you base this on? There are myriad of miniature companies whose entire business model is predicated on selling alternative models to WHFB players. Mantic, Raging Heroes, Avatars of War, Mierce, on and on it goes. Almost all of them had recent kickstarters, all of which also met with significant success. Of course, all of these are also starting up games of their own to use these rules with...but they have nowhere near the traction that WHFB does. And they know it...which is why a large portion of their range very clearly mirrors those of current GW armies.

I admit it's difficult to point towards concrete evidence, as no trustworthy data exist, but the same goes either way. We don't really know to what degree all those "new" games (some of them not-that-new, but anyway) combined are that far from WHFB. At least, from current, "official", 8th edition WHFB.

My own army is almost entirely non-GW in core (80 wargames factory skeletons) and heroes (vampires from Enigma and ... another company I can't remember). I also have 80 mantic zombies on the painting queue. In my gaming group there is a guy with an Empire army made entirely of historicals, numerous mantic replacements, Reaper character models, third-party Kdaii Destroyers, and other non-GW minis. But all of them get used in WHFB, because that is the GAME that people enjoy and share in common.

I'm truly glad to read that, seriously. It's almost heartwarming to get reminded not everybody out there still playing 8th is the stereotypical GWombie. Sometimes it's difficult not to forget, having seen the things I've actually seen.

I'm actually intrigued to know something. If you don't mind, can I inquire about the reason a group like yours sticks to 8th edition instead of trying to adapt and house-rule an earlier version of the game? I understand you guys like 8th, you wouldn't be playing if it weren't the case, but I'm curious about this, because IMO 5th edition adding some of 6th improvements and a bit of house-ruling (sometimes taken straight from the tips and advices of the designing team of that time) is still the best ruleset ever released for Fantasy.

As I said above, the hobby is always going to shed gamers regardless of what is happening with the actual rules. Life circumstances change, tastes change, new shiny wargames come out that pull people away for a month or a year or indefinitely. You need new blood recouping that, and GW's biggest struggle with WHFB has been that the game only really functions in the 2,000 to 3,000 point range, and the price tag for an army at that size will drive new players away.

Perhaps that's IMO the problem with 8th edition, it only works properly in the 2k-3k point range but the game system is built upon a base that can't really handle properly anything over 1500 points games. 6th edition was overall a nice job but since then they've just been piling special rules on top of more special rules, and IMO the only result from that is the bloated mess GW games are at the moment (not only Fantasy, but 40k as well).

I actually like 5 models per rank. 3 for full command and a standard trooper on each side.

 Korinov wrote:

I admit it's difficult to point towards concrete evidence, as no trustworthy data exist, but the same goes either way. We don't really know to what degree all those "new" games (some of them not-that-new, but anyway) combined are that far from WHFB. At least, from current, "official", 8th edition WHFB.

Tough to say. It's one thing to get excited about a kickstarter, and another to get into the game enough to spend subsequent hobby dollars on it at full retail. For all of my clubmates who got into Darklands there twice as many sitting around to see whether they a) deliver and b) the game is worth the paper it's written on.

 Korinov wrote:
I'm truly glad to read that, seriously. It's almost heartwarming to get reminded not everybody out there still playing 8th is the stereotypical GWombie. Sometimes it's difficult not to forget, having seen the things I've actually seen.

There will always be cranky people around for sure. I have gotten flack from people for my Nehekharan-themed Vampire Counts army, on the basis that they look like Tomb Kings even though there are no actual TK models in my current roster. However for every person like that there are a dozen more who just think it's awesome.

Really comes down to the strength of your local meta, and whether the good players drown out the bad.

 Korinov wrote:
I'm actually intrigued to know something. If you don't mind, can I inquire about the reason a group like yours sticks to 8th edition instead of trying to adapt and house-rule an earlier version of the game? I understand you guys like 8th, you wouldn't be playing if it weren't the case, but I'm curious about this, because IMO 5th edition adding some of 6th improvements and a bit of house-ruling (sometimes taken straight from the tips and advices of the designing team of that time) is still the best ruleset ever released for Fantasy.

This question has been coming up a lot recently, and the answer is quite honestly that 9/10 players in our local meta think that 8th edition is the best version of WHFB to date. It has some issues, and is getting a little bit stale in certain ways (especially if you're one of the older armybooks), but by and large it is a very deep and interesting game that keeps us all coming back for more.

Part of that is the complexity and depth of decision-making. People dislike the "randomness" of certain aspects of the game, but I really revel in it. Once you understand the probabilities it's really easy to crunch out how things are likely to go. I know that my M8 swiftstride cav bus is almost guaranteed to make a 4-6" charge, can be relied upon to make a 7-9" charge, and is gambling if I push too much higher than that. Means you have to plan ahead a turn or two, and be really careful how much distance you give to people.

Whereas before it was a game of "who is better at judging distances," now it's all about risk allocation, forcing bad decisions, and applying pressure. To me it feels like the difference between 5-card stud and hold'em to me. Both games are primarily about reading and playing the opponent, not the cards, but with Hold'em you get just a little more information to work with. Yeah sometimes your opponent will river that one damned card they needed, on a hand they had no business staying calling you with...but it's a card game. You chose how much of your pot to risk, on the knowledge that sometimes things won't go your way.

 Korinov wrote:
Perhaps that's IMO the problem with 8th edition, it only works properly in the 2k-3k point range but the game system is built upon a base that can't really handle properly anything over 1500 points games. 6th edition was overall a nice job but since then they've just been piling special rules on top of more special rules, and IMO the only result from that is the bloated mess GW games are at the moment (not only Fantasy, but 40k as well).

Perhaps it's just because it's the game I've grown accustomed to, but a 2,500 point army looks like a proper friggin' army on the table. I wouldn't want to go back to a smaller game at this point, even if it was available. Perhaps if I was starting a new army, so that I could play with my army at an earlier state, but I would always eventually be wanting to build to the level it is at now.

It's about variety of options on the tabletop really. Pushing 3 units around the table is nowhere near as fun as the well-honed machine you get at higher levels, comprised of a dozen or so working parts all operating in conjunction. And MSU armies are king right now in 8th edition, outside of certain comp systems that push the armies different ways.

Game definitely needs to be streamlined somewhat, which is what I'm sensing is going on with rumours. Unit vs. unit combat, to get away from the character-wall shenanigans that result from the current system of base-contact attack allocation. There needs to be some way to combat deathstars outside of Dwellers and Final Trans, which tournaments have been doing with homebrew scenarios and objectives that really ought to be in the BRB. Building rules need to be fixed.

6E functioned just fine at 1000-2000 pts (with similar model counts as 5E), but 8E "needs" to be 2000-3000? That's 50% more stuff to buy, build & paint - driving home how 8E is more expensive than 6E.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:
]Says nothing about the game on any sort of objective basis, only that a few players didn't like that and as a result the ones who did ended up without a community anymore.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say it says nothing about the game. Of course it says something about the game. The things it says might be subjective, but they are still there. Requiring significantly larger armies, random charge distances, unbalanced magic phase have all made the game less appealing for a large subset of the existing community and the first one has also made it hard for new players. To think that says nothing about the game is frankly being just a little bit silly. The number of models required to play a game is one of the key metrics when talking about a game, lol.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:
]Says nothing about the game on any sort of objective basis, only that a few players didn't like that and as a result the ones who did ended up without a community anymore.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say it says nothing about the game. Of course it says something about the game. The things it says might be subjective, but they are still there. Requiring significantly larger armies, random charge distances, unbalanced magic phase have all made the game less appealing for a large subset of the existing community and the first one has also made it hard for new players. To think that says nothing about the game is frankly being just a little bit silly. The number of models required to play a game is one of the key metrics when talking about a game, lol.

You missed the "...on any sort of objective basis." Some people *subjectively* not liking rule changes is enough to kill a community that's small enough, or if the number of those people is large enough or those people are important enough in encouraging others to play and join. If all the Tournament Organizers loathe an edition change and quit at once you're going to have troubles sustaining a community unless other players step up.

All of which doesn't require the rules to actually be any worse...just for a few people to not like them.

Does WHFB require a whack of models? Yes. Does it require anywhere near the numbers people suggest they do? No. Not at all. New players seem to gravitate towards hordes of cheap infantry though, which is kind of funny considering that's both a) incredibly expensive and b) really quite gakky on the battlefield. Though I suppose the people who DON'T fall into that category just play WoC.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
6E functioned just fine at 1000-2000 pts (with similar model counts as 5E), but 8E "needs" to be 2000-3000? That's 50% more stuff to buy, build & paint - driving home how 8E is more expensive than 6E.

I'm not saying the game isn't more expensive. It is objectively more expensive. I'm saying the game is better to play.

It's also a problem for growing the hobby, as I've said above. Which is why I hope that 9th edition brings the best of both worlds. A game that scales well between small level games and large-scale mass battles. Because as much as people complain about the cost, a big reason lots of people enjoy WHFB is because it is a MASS battle game. I plunk I'm plunking 140 models onto the board in my "elite MSU" VC army and I love every second of it. If the standard play shrunk to 1,000 to 1,500 points I would be a lot less interested in the system.

50-100 models is still a mass battle game.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:
]Says nothing about the game on any sort of objective basis, only that a few players didn't like that and as a result the ones who did ended up without a community anymore.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to say it says nothing about the game. Of course it says something about the game. The things it says might be subjective, but they are still there. Requiring significantly larger armies, random charge distances, unbalanced magic phase have all made the game less appealing for a large subset of the existing community and the first one has also made it hard for new players. To think that says nothing about the game is frankly being just a little bit silly. The number of models required to play a game is one of the key metrics when talking about a game, lol.

You missed the "...on any sort of objective basis." Some people *subjectively* not liking rule changes is enough to kill a community that's small enough, or if the number of those people is large enough or those people are important enough in encouraging others to play and join. If all the Tournament Organizers loathe an edition change and quit at once you're going to have troubles sustaining a community unless other players step up.

All of which doesn't require the rules to actually be any worse...just for a few people to not like them..

Sorry I am too tired and I missed that part, lol.

But the subjective parts are the important parts. It's the subjective parts that make a community and the community is what makes the game. Especially when, as you pointed out, the number of people that leave because they subjectively don't like the changes outweighs the influx of new players (which is massively hurt by the size of the game).

We can argue whether big games are better or worse, it's subjective, but it's an important metric. We can argue whether the shifting focuses are objectively better or worse and it doesn't really matter if enough people don't like them and leave because of it.

GW always should have put more effort in to things like Warbands, which let you play a game with only a handful of models (and frankly I found those small games quite enjoyable). The worry now is that GW are just going to feth everything up by throwing the baby out with the bath water.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

Fair play, but gamers aren't exactly well-known for taking major changes in stride.

5th to 6th was just as big of a change, if not bigger, than 7th to 8th and the number of players increased by a considerable amount.

People (even gamers) didn't drop simply because there was a change in the game, they dropped because that change turned the game into something that they didn't like any more.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
50-100 models is still a mass battle game.

Not for Skaven it's not. 50-100 models is two or three blocks... out of six or seven.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Nah, players were whiny before, but they were still playing...

Fair play, but gamers aren't exactly well-known for taking major changes in stride.

5th to 6th was just as big of a change, if not bigger, than 7th to 8th and the number of players increased by a considerable amount.

People (even gamers) didn't drop simply because there was a change in the game, they dropped because that change turned the game into something that they didn't like any more.

Went from 3rd through to 8th. I just thought 8th wasn't very good and wasn't very fun after giving it a while, so I cashed out (kept one army for old times sake, having been my only force from 92 through to 2006ish) and moved on.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

Does WHFB require a whack of models? Yes. Does it require anywhere near the numbers people suggest they do? No. Not at all. New players seem to gravitate towards hordes of cheap infantry though, which is kind of funny considering that's both a) incredibly expensive and b) really quite gakky on the battlefield. Though I suppose the people who DON'T fall into that category just play WoC.

This is actually totally true. People want to have whopping great blocks of spearmen. The problem comes when the imagery of the game says historical mass combat, but the price point says skirmish game.

 Charles Rampant wrote:


This is actually totally true. People want to have whopping great blocks of spearmen.

No, I actually don't wan't to have "whopping great blocks of spearmen".

 Charles Rampant wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

Does WHFB require a whack of models? Yes. Does it require anywhere near the numbers people suggest they do? No. Not at all. New players seem to gravitate towards hordes of cheap infantry though, which is kind of funny considering that's both a) incredibly expensive and b) really quite gakky on the battlefield. Though I suppose the people who DON'T fall into that category just play WoC.

This is actually totally true. People want to have whopping great blocks of spearmen. The problem comes when the imagery of the game says historical mass combat, but the price point says skirmish game.

I don't want whopping great blocks of spearmen. Money wise I can afford them, that's not a problem at all for many people.

I meant new people.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
I meant new people.

Wot, the hordes of new people that are buying into WFB in a big way? Both of them?

Lots of touchy people in this thread, it seems. :/

Fenrir Kitsune wrote:Went from 3rd through to 8th. I just thought 8th wasn't very good and wasn't very fun after giving it a while, so I cashed out (kept one army for old times sake, having been my only force from 92 through to 2006ish) and moved on.

This is basically what happened in our small group. We had been trudging through games of WFB, and someone linked to BoLS state of 8E, finally admitting that they weren't having fun. Which was great, because I had been reaching the same position of wanting to hang it up.
____

Charles Rampant wrote:This is actually totally true. People want to have whopping great blocks of spearmen. The problem comes when the imagery of the game says historical mass combat, but the price point says skirmish game.

People like the look of block infantry, but the work of buying and painting of historical volumes of infantry doesn't work. And even then, it's not really right. A historical mass combat is not 100 men in a unit. It's 100s, with 10,000s per side in Europe, 100,000s per side in Asia. Wooden blocks make a lot of sense for historicals.
____

PhantomViper wrote:No, I actually don't wan't to have "whopping great blocks of spearmen".

True, too much work for too little gain.

The grand spectacle isn't gain enough?

I for one enjoy seeing large blocks of troops.