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Surely the point here is that the empire, classically, and bretonnia - the human factions - were pretty low fantasy for the most part, whereas factions like the elves, and the more inhuman races - namely, the more, dare I say... Fantastical? - have a much more ready and fitting way of scratching that high-fantasy itch.

Clearly the big concern here is that he have previewed the first mini for a much loved setting, but the faction - a human one - feels less cohesive with humans in classic Warhammer fantasy, and more fitting with AoS, which is high fantasy for every race, or even classic fantasy elves, who also had high fantasy silliness as a real aesthetic cornerstone from their inception.

A thing that no one brought up regarding the force organization chart was that back in the day, the core units were called "core tax". You brought as many as you had to, just like in the 6th ed you automatically included a cheap wizard with dispel scrolls if you werent going magic-heavy. GW never could provide sufficient reason for core units to exist on the tabletop beyond "balance", so people treated them as necessary evil before getting to the sweet, sweet rare and special selections. You were lucky if your cores did something really useful, like skinks and their skirmishing.

Possibly one of the worst examples you could have used. Skinks where tactically sound. Able to kill monsters with there shooting, great as bait to lure units outs.

Sure it was called by many as a core tax, but that's because like tax you had to have it not necessarily a bad thing.

Sufficient reason for taking core? What empire army would come to battle without it's state troops, it's knightly orders?

Goblin army coming to battle without it's amassed goblins, fanatics, sneaky stabbers?

Maybe I'm saying this as I still play 8th and I use more than my allotted core tax points.

Let's also not forget the tactical value of Skavenslaves/Skellies to tarpit enemy units, cheap core skirmishers/light cav to redirect and so on. Saying core units had no value and were forced upon players is just not true.

I liked things like the old Force Organisation Chart and army restrictions. I think that what it was aiming to achieve were two things

1) Balance for the game. By limiting what can be taken you improve your chances of game balance because you restrict the variations possible and you restrict the spamming of specific units.

2) Provides a structure to armies. If your Empire army has to take minimum in core troops and if you make them infantry then your armies start to achieve an appearance and visual style that the designer can control even whilst letting players build their own armies.
This builds into the "identity" of an army in a visual sense for attracting new customers.


Of course over time, the charts and such started to fail a bit. Also as we've moved into new ages with 40K there have been big shifts. I recall the old chart was starting to break for armies like Tyranids where being heavily restricted on elite slots started to punish the army because all their specialists were in the limited elite slot. I think it was getting to a point where bigger and more diverse armies were starting to almost reach a point where they needed their own "army specific" charts. It also needed an overhaul to allow for the bigger number of models and diversity that we see today.



In contrast where you've game systems with no charts and almost no limits sometimes it can actually be hard to "build" an army. Too much choice can be as damaging as too little.

From 40K I recall when GW did one of the old Tyranid codex (the one where they had their first big rework visually and we got things like Old One eye and the first generation of Raveners). In that there were two versions of the army; the normal and the unlocked. The latter was basically a system for building whatever you wanted and just paying points for it. So you could have a gaunt with synapse; you could take all heavy weapons on a unit of warriors etc.. You could go wild. The potential choices were VAST. Now because they were vast (and because it was GW) it was woefully open to abuse; however the other aspect was it was so much choice for many gamers that actually using it was a challenge. The majority tended to cherry pick the few best (eg synapse on a gaunt) and leave the rest to the default from the main stats in the book.


Too much choice overwhelms just as much as too little restricts.

 howie wrote:
Possibly one of the worst examples you could have used. Skinks where tactically sound. Able to kill monsters with there shooting, great as bait to lure units outs.

Sure it was called by many as a core tax, but that's because like tax you had to have it not necessarily a bad thing.

Sufficient reason for taking core? What empire army would come to battle without it's state troops, it's knightly orders?

Goblin army coming to battle without it's amassed goblins, fanatics, sneaky stabbers?

Maybe I'm saying this as I still play 8th and I use more than my allotted core tax points.

You could have made me take an army of nothing but core and I would've been fine with it in two of the three armies I was getting into. (I had a focus problem).

Cronch wrote:A thing that no one brought up regarding the force organization chart was that back in the day, the core units were called "core tax". You brought as many as you had to, just like in the 6th ed you automatically included a cheap wizard with dispel scrolls if you werent going magic-heavy. GW never could provide sufficient reason for core units to exist on the tabletop beyond "balance", so people treated them as necessary evil before getting to the sweet, sweet rare and special selections. You were lucky if your cores did something really useful, like skinks and their skirmishing.

The only people spouting garbage like "Core Tax" were the powergaming D-Bags from 5th WFB and 2nd 40K who were so used to having little to no restrictions that they threw a tantrum for being forced to take what was considered the backbone of their army in order to spam the "sweet, sweet Rare and Special selections". It was because of THAT sort of min/max crap that events started grading and awarding points on Army Composition. I really wish I still had the print outs for those, or the PDFs. It had a really nifty tally chart to figure out how much someone cheesed, then a grading page to issue an overall score. One of the cool things that the own of Phoenix Rising in Ft. Wayne, IN did was use those to arrange the first round match ups in the tourneys. The two players who scored 0 faced each other right of the bat. Even funnier on the single elimination tourneys.

Overread wrote:I liked things like the old Force Organisation Chart and army restrictions. I think that what it was aiming to achieve were two things

1) Balance for the game. By limiting what can be taken you improve your chances of game balance because you restrict the variations possible and you restrict the spamming of specific units.

2) Provides a structure to armies. If your Empire army has to take minimum in core troops and if you make them infantry then your armies start to achieve an appearance and visual style that the designer can control even whilst letting players build their own armies.
This builds into the "identity" of an army in a visual sense for attracting new customers.


Of course over time, the charts and such started to fail a bit. Also as we've moved into new ages with 40K there have been big shifts. I recall the old chart was starting to break for armies like Tyranids where being heavily restricted on elite slots started to punish the army because all their specialists were in the limited elite slot. I think it was getting to a point where bigger and more diverse armies were starting to almost reach a point where they needed their own "army specific" charts. It also needed an overhaul to allow for the bigger number of models and diversity that we see today.



In contrast where you've game systems with no charts and almost no limits sometimes it can actually be hard to "build" an army. Too much choice can be as damaging as too little.

From 40K I recall when GW did one of the old Tyranid codex (the one where they had their first big rework visually and we got things like Old One eye and the first generation of Raveners). In that there were two versions of the army; the normal and the unlocked. The latter was basically a system for building whatever you wanted and just paying points for it. So you could have a gaunt with synapse; you could take all heavy weapons on a unit of warriors etc.. You could go wild. The potential choices were VAST. Now because they were vast (and because it was GW) it was woefully open to abuse; however the other aspect was it was so much choice for many gamers that actually using it was a challenge. The majority tended to cherry pick the few best (eg synapse on a gaunt) and leave the rest to the default from the main stats in the book.


Too much choice overwhelms just as much as too little restricts.

That Tyranid experience you mention was the 3rd Ed. codex, and it was the start of the whole "Veteran trait" garbage that permeated all the lists from there on out. It was pretty easy to see happening: Tyranids got Mutable Genus, and suddenly Chaos was able to customize every unit in their army with veteran traits. Shockingly the IG got it next which led to Marines getting it, and a whole arms race of "what the hell is across from me?!?!?!?" situations whenever you gamed. The one thing I liked about 5th was knocking that gak out.

I wholeheartedly agree on both your points about FOC. Remember when the only requirement was 25%+ on "regiments"? How many people ran what was considered the basic troops of that army? Only those that HAD to. I think there was a rule that certain units had to be taken first in a High Elf army, but it didn't stop people building an army that was mostly elites. The FOC made it at least a little harder, the problem was that some throwbacks couldn't simply adapt and say "Well, I have to run State Troops, how can I make that work in my battle line?" and eventually those throwbacks started writing the rules at GW, which is why you saw so much 5th Ed. WFB and 2nd Ed. 40K creeping back into the game, to the game's detriment in my opinion.


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pm713 wrote:

 howie wrote:
Possibly one of the worst examples you could have used. Skinks where tactically sound. Able to kill monsters with there shooting, great as bait to lure units outs.

Sure it was called by many as a core tax, but that's because like tax you had to have it not necessarily a bad thing.

Sufficient reason for taking core? What empire army would come to battle without it's state troops, it's knightly orders?

Goblin army coming to battle without it's amassed goblins, fanatics, sneaky stabbers?

Maybe I'm saying this as I still play 8th and I use more than my allotted core tax points.

You could have made me take an army of nothing but core and I would've been fine with it in two of the three armies I was getting into. (I had a focus problem).

You can see tons of battle reports by me over at classichammer.com and you'll notice that I almost always fill out 5 Core before moving on to other things.

 BertBert wrote:
Let's also not forget the tactical value of Skavenslaves/Skellies to tarpit enemy units, cheap core skirmishers/light cav to redirect and so on. Saying core units had no value and were forced upon players is just not true.

I did say most didn't. Skavenslaves were a tarpit, skinks (as i said) were great thanks to cheapness and skirmishing (and poison). But most were only slightly cheaper than similar Special units and had much less utility.

The only people spouting garbage like "Core Tax" were the powergaming D-Bags from 5th WFB and 2nd 40K who were so used to having little to no restrictions that they threw a tantrum for being forced to take what was considered the backbone of their army in order to spam the "sweet, sweet Rare and Special selections"

Or someone that expects the cheaper units to have utility compared to more expensive units. Most game companies can find a way to still make the chaff useful, even if only as chaff, but GW struggled with that (and still does at times), making "core" units bland and unattractive even as tarpits, because they don't cost little enough to be effective at that.

Cronch wrote:
A thing that no one brought up regarding the force organization chart was that back in the day, the core units were called "core tax". You brought as many as you had to, just like in the 6th ed you automatically included a cheap wizard with dispel scrolls if you werent going magic-heavy. GW never could provide sufficient reason for core units to exist on the tabletop beyond "balance", so people treated them as necessary evil before getting to the sweet, sweet rare and special selections. You were lucky if your cores did something really useful, like skinks and their skirmishing.

The thing is if I had access in reality to an entire army of elites all the time, core normal units would never have a place in my battlefield as well if I had that choice. Sometimes you are taking core "tax" because you don't have an endless supply of steam tanks and elite great swords and an entire artillery battalion at your disposal and that reflects in the army restriction rules.

The problem okd Skaven had was that you need a massive number of slaves. It was seriously offputting how many you needed; especially when those units mostly went on the table to then come off the table without "doing much".


that said I think a lot of people don't understand chaff/tarpit units. Or at least they don't understand that not every unit has to "win/buy" back its points in equivalent kills. I put it down to the fact that a lot of people don't understand tactics and that its not something the community reinforces either. It focuses far more on maths and probabilities, but very little on actual gameplay tactics and manoeuvres.

The Doubleturn in AoS has even forced people to learn some of them, which has resulted in them thinking that things like unit screens and such are "doubleturn tactics" when in actuality they are solid tactics for any tactical game. It's just something that the old system never "forced" them to learn.

hat said I think a lot of people don't understand chaff/tarpit units. Or at least they don't understand that not every unit has to "win/buy" back its points in equivalent kills. I put it down to the fact that a lot of people don't understand tactics and that its not something the community reinforces either. It focuses far more on maths and probabilities, but very little on actual gameplay tactics and manoeuvres.

The Doubleturn in AoS has even forced people to learn some of them, which has resulted in them thinking that things like unit screens and such are "doubleturn tactics" when in actuality they are solid tactics for any tactical game. It's just something that the old system never "forced" them to learn.

I agree with most of that (you know I do because in the AOS forum here I said exactly that about double turn tactics).

A lot of that is because GW has made the game so tactics aren't as important as the math you are bringing in your list. You don't need to get good at tactics when you have several nuclear options available to you that you can say "I tap my red fire mage card here and do 18 mortal wounds to your black grimbly card... er... unit of whatever"

Yes there are some tactics. The two main tactics employed are target priority (knowing who to unleash your red fire mage 18 mortal wounds on) and then understanding screens (bubble wrap). At the high tournament levels there is also understanding how to maximize melee positioning instead of just shoving guys forward, but that is rarely seen outside of the end tables.

When the game has for years rewarded you for just taking the purple sun and pit of shades (8th ed) or 200 skaven slaves to take advantage of steadfast (8th ed) or maxing out mortal wounds or maxing out free summoning (AOS) one does not need to really get good at the game, because getting good at the game heavily comes down to what you bring to the table.


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It seems that the more restricted versions of either game should come from the players not GW

That never works well. Especially in today's world of "house rules are evil and shady and are used to push some person's agenda etc etc".

The game itself should enforce restrictions or give you modes to play officially so that they arent' house rules.

Imagine that, Frontline gaming just dropped an interview with one of the Para Bellum Conquest devs who stated that the upcoming rulebook contains... modes of play! Because there are multiple ways of enjoying the game and they understand that trying to shoe horn one in is not going to get everyone excited.

 Elbows wrote:
I've always vastly preferred low-fantasy. While the Old World was not explicitly low fantasy, it was far more prominent, and lent itself very well to that style. I always liked the idea of magic, and special creatures being rather rare amongst human forces, etc. The idea that orks and Chaos were boogey-men...that really existed.

Aesthetically, the old Mark of Chaos trailer is the best thing I've ever seen showing how hopeless a poor Empire recruit would be in that kind of world...but that's what's intriguing about it. I think it's the best CGI ever applied to a GW product personally.

That video is phenomenal but I think you draw the wrong conclusion from it. I mean. Those are not empire recruits. Those are hardened veterans. You can see how they charge with resolve and in the fight scenes, they are too fast and on the background but you can see a good bunch of empire soldiers actually killing chaos warriors.

And even with that they are slaugtherer. (Not that surprising, I mean, in the real world you had things like Teutoburg forest. Ambushes normally end up like that)

 auticus wrote:

It seems that the more restricted versions of either game should come from the players not GW

That never works well. Especially in today's world of "house rules are evil and shady and are used to push some person's agenda etc etc".

The game itself should enforce restrictions or give you modes to play officially so that they arent' house rules.

Imagine that, Frontline gaming just dropped an interview with one of the Para Bellum Conquest devs who stated that the upcoming rulebook contains... modes of play! Because there are multiple ways of enjoying the game and they understand that trying to shoe horn one in is not going to get everyone excited.

The unfortunate reality is that most groups of players focus on the "official" type of play. Once this is established, you have hardly any chance to play something different outside your own little circle, at least in my experience. This would be 2000p matched play for 40k, steamroller for warmachine and whathaveyou for all the other systems. So this heavily influences the way people play and armies look.

Therefore I think it would be great if that is the game mode that has the best balance and at the moment I only have the FOC or similar systems as an idea how to achieve this. Nobody restricts the amount of Stegageddons in open and narrative play, so you can still bring all your toys if you really want to.

As for the "core tax", that is what we have as troop choices in bataillons in 40k at the moment. Sometimes it is truly a tax (e.g. for necrons), sometimes it is basically irrelevant as the choices are either useful or cheap enough. I fully agree that those troops should have a relevant function in the game, But this requires a good balance, which I think is only achievable with multiple small adjustments in relatively short order, just like in video game patches. And this in turn requires digital rules, which opens another can of worms.....

Cronch wrote:

 BertBert wrote:
Let's also not forget the tactical value of Skavenslaves/Skellies to tarpit enemy units, cheap core skirmishers/light cav to redirect and so on. Saying core units had no value and were forced upon players is just not true.

I did say most didn't. Skavenslaves were a tarpit, skinks (as i said) were great thanks to cheapness and skirmishing (and poison). But most were only slightly cheaper than similar Special units and had much less utility.

I can't find the word "most" in your post, but sure. It certainly depended on a lot on the army and the options that existed in it. Skink skirmishers could do things that other units couldn't. And as said, cheap unmoveable units like skeletons or the dreaded big blocks of slaves and clanrats. I also never regretted bringing dryads, glade guard or glade riders, nor did my TK opponent mind bringing his consistent skelly archers. Thing is, we've covered nearly half the armies now, so even your unsaid "most" may be pushing it... More importantly, I don't recall hearing or reading about "core tax" much during 6th. I think it was more in later years, when deathstars were all the rage, and those were typically more useful when created out of better armoured or harder hitting elites than the basic peasants that made up the core slots. But perhaps it was also an issue for people who preferred bringing out the bigger toys? While I personally enjoy the look and playstyle of a varied, combined arms force with some close combat infantry, some missile troops, some cavalry on the flanks, maybe some artillery or flying units or a big monster, I can see that not all might prefer this, which may be why modern 40k, AoS and perhaps the revisited Old World could have fewer restrictions.

Core tax was a term coined in 6th edition. It first started with the vampire count book (the fourth book that dropped that edition) because the popular build was the black knight wight cavalry bus loaded with four vampires.

The "core tax" was taking 3 units of min sized dire wolves or ghouls depending on the player.

From there "core tax" began percolating to all corners of the game as a piece of vernacular. It wasn't until middle of 7th edition that the complaints about having to take crappy non elite troops became a wardrum beating though.

The arguments back in the 6th ed days were the people upset that 25% troops was replaced by slots instead, because 3 units of min size ghouls or dire wolves was very cheap and was not 25% of the overall point cost of a standard game. It came out to be like 200 points or something like that, leaving the VC player 1800 points to powergame.

That argument got rather heated as well as I recall.

I find it strange when people talk about 'core tax', the core units are the heart of the game!
I can understand the appeal of the 'lucky dip/ grab bag' type armies both in historical and fantasy type games, but I do hope that this new system makes them the exception and not the rule.

From a gamists point of view, units that are not ultra efficient and optimal should not be taken. If the system forces you to take them, that is a "tax".

If you don't follow the gamist point of view, it would indeed seem strange. A system written from a gamist perspective will eliminate requiring you taking anything you don't want to and encourage and reward you for going the all elite force. A system written from a historical or simulation perspective will restrict what you can take based on an abstract resource system that would say "you can't take 10 steam tanks because they wouldn't all be in a normal battle like that".

6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 catbarf wrote:
Here's an article from an old White Dwarf about playing 'low fantasy' and 'middle fantasy' games in 7th Ed.

It provides overviews of what units from each race fit into which category, suggests rules for playing a Low Fantasy or Middle Fantasy game, describes some of the challenges involved, and provides sample army lists.

But it pretty much provides the framework for what Auticus is describing. From what I saw it looks like the lower the fantasy, the better for lower points levels- the 2K point 'low fantasy' Empire list was more models than I've painted in my life.

For me, the issue is less the presence of high fantasy elements, and more how games like AoS have reduced the requirement for the low-fantasy elements to support them. When no more than 25% of your points could be spent on Rare choices, you were not taking 5+ Steam Tanks in a single game, and you had to have a reasonably mundane core to your army.

Relaxing of force composition requirements makes it a lot easier to skew towards exclusively the high fantasy stuff, and removal of restrictions on named characters means extremely powerful, narrative-pivotal characters show up much more regularly. Those, I think, did a lot more to erase the 'low fantasy' style than the presence of high fantasy elements did.

Do you remember what issue that was from?

But I remember these debates playing out in WD, Jervis once had an article on his son picking Blood Angels solely on account of a special character and Jarvis concluding that special characters should be accessible all the time and not just opponent's permission.

After all GW games are these so we can have fun (and GW make money) not to be a documentary-like recreation of a world that never existed. It seems that the more restricted versions of either game should come from the players not GW. Otherwise we get into debates about whether Marines should ever be seen on the tabletop.

It was in US WD313 (Feb 2006), not sure about the UK version.

And yeah, that's fair about players getting into it on account of special characters- ultimately if you take the 'let the players have what they want' mindset you get what we currently have, where force organization is loose and if you want to take the all-Steam-Tank army then you can.

I don't think it's intrinsically bad. It's a legitimate approach and a lot of people like it. It just doesn't satisfy the low fantasy itch, which in being heavily restrictive by nature is more akin to classic historical wargames. That mindset seems to be dying out as tabletop games become more and more influenced by CCGs and videogames- you see a lot fewer attempts at 'historical' or fluff-accurate army lists than you do attempts to maximize the effectiveness of rules combos.

I'm a troop guy. The normal mook are my favourite type of unit, always. I tend to spam them to my detriment.

But I can totally understand why people call them a tax. And it is not a problem with the player but with the ones writting the rules. If you can't make your troops relevant, maybe not exciting in the amazing things they can do but cool enough because you feel like they are acomplising something more than dying before better stuff starts to die, then thats a problem. And for most editions of warhammer thats exactly what has happened.

In a videogame, ok. I don't mind. But when you are forcing me to buy 3-5 boxes of basically wound counters that accomplish nothing I won't be happy with spending my money like that.

That Tyranid experience you mention was the 3rd Ed. codex, and it was the start of the whole "Veteran trait" garbage that permeated all the lists from there on out. It was pretty easy to see happening: Tyranids got Mutable Genus, and suddenly Chaos was able to customize every unit in their army with veteran traits. Shockingly the IG got it next which led to Marines getting it, and a whole arms race of "what the hell is across from me?!?!?!?" situations whenever you gamed. The one thing I liked about 5th was knocking that gak out.

Yeah I can tell our views are different in this regard and everything else. I loved those because it allowed you to custom build your army how you enjoyed. A Chaos Warrior was an immutable long warrior of the fight, and to basically be on par with a renegade who popped up ten years ago because he left Space Wolves is.. something else.

 Galas wrote:
I'm a troop guy. The normal mook are my favourite type of unit, always. I tend to spam them to my detriment.

But I can totally understand why people call them a tax. And it is not a problem with the player but with the ones writting the rules. If you can't make your troops relevant, maybe not exciting in the amazing things they can do but cool enough because you feel like they are acomplising something more than dying before better stuff starts to die, then thats a problem. And for most editions of warhammer thats exactly what has happened.

In a videogame, ok. I don't mind. But when you are forcing me to buy 3-5 boxes of basically wound counters that accomplish nothing I won't be happy with spending my money like that.

It's particularly annoying to me because Warhammer is sufficiently grounded that you can look at real history to find what rank-and-file were used for. Just a few examples off the top of my head:
-Occupying space to prevent your elite units from being flanked
-Being brought in as backup so that your elite units can temporarily withdraw, recover, and rally
-Providing additional flankers to amplify the damage caused by your elites
-Acting as rock-paper-scissors counters to particular threats (see: longbows at Agincourt, pikemen in the Thirty Years War)
-Engaging the enemy first to disorder them, before cavalry can charge home
-Serving as anvils to absorb enemy missile fire or charges (well, at least they've always been able to do this on the tabletop...)

A lot of this comes down to fantasy games typically emphasizing base killing power over all else, while downplaying fatigue, morale, flanking, and disordering. It might not be as 'heroic', but history shows us that even the best-trained and best-equipped heavy cavalry could be brought down by simply getting surrounded by peasant levies, being continuously engaged until the men were too exhausted to fight, or charging straight into a block of pikemen in ordered formation. Neuter those sorts of mechanics and you take away a lot of what made 'Core' troops useful IRL.

Or to put it in more real terms: glitzed-up Chaos Knights taking heavy casualties from charging into a block of bog-standard Spearmen might be more true to history, and certainly gives the Spearmen tangible value, but doesn't fit what people expect from a high-fantasy game. And there, I think, is where low-fantasy and high-fantasy start to butt heads.

 auticus wrote:


6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

I think it's more that 8th and AoS were written by the marketing department.

Language like 'we want you to be able to use any and all of your models' are pretty explicit code for 'buy more stuff'

Yeah...no?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 auticus wrote:


6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

I think it's more that 8th and AoS were written by the marketing department.

Language like 'we want you to be able to use any and all of your models' are pretty explicit code for 'buy more stuff'

Having read the TGA fans and developers blogs or watched their interviews, I think that they really really love that approach as well. This is the type of game that they love playing, and that shows in how its developed.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 auticus wrote:


6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

I think it's more that 8th and AoS were written by the marketing department.

Language like 'we want you to be able to use any and all of your models' are pretty explicit code for 'buy more stuff'

Well, no ? It's a business first and foremost.

How this ties into the old world project? We can debate, and attempt to predict that the new project will include a lot of those same design principals.

The "we want you to use any and all of your models" I highly doubt will be diminished, and thus that means little to no restrictions, and more gamist approach to design will be taken.

This game if it resembles WHFB at all will be a hybrid of 8th edition's stupid-powerful magic with 4th/5th editions emphasis on super heroes and their elite cheerleading section.

IMO.

And if I'm being honest with myself ... that is the right business choice to make because that direction I feel sells vastly more than the way I prefer. I say that also as a game dev and having been in those meetings in the past, this topic gets hit often on direction that is taken.

 auticus wrote:
From a gamists point of view, units that are not ultra efficient and optimal should not be taken. If the system forces you to take them, that is a "tax".

If you don't follow the gamist point of view, it would indeed seem strange. A system written from a gamist perspective will eliminate requiring you taking anything you don't want to and encourage and reward you for going the all elite force. A system written from a historical or simulation perspective will restrict what you can take based on an abstract resource system that would say "you can't take 10 steam tanks because they wouldn't all be in a normal battle like that".

6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

The problem with that is in historical wargaming, you can point to examples and say "this was how it went down. Two M4A1s and a platoon of GIs held out against a battalion of experienced Fallschirmjaegers" and that's it. Under "balanced" logic the FJs players is cheesing out, bringing no lowly grenadiers or Volksturm (depending on date) that "should" be the core of German forces. Because IRL armies are "balanced" on a far higher level than gamers are usually expecting to bring. In fantasy and sf gaming there is much greater pressure on "balanced" organization stemming from this unrealistic expectation of "realism" where "no army is made up of elites only".

Cronch wrote:

 auticus wrote:
From a gamists point of view, units that are not ultra efficient and optimal should not be taken. If the system forces you to take them, that is a "tax".

If you don't follow the gamist point of view, it would indeed seem strange. A system written from a gamist perspective will eliminate requiring you taking anything you don't want to and encourage and reward you for going the all elite force. A system written from a historical or simulation perspective will restrict what you can take based on an abstract resource system that would say "you can't take 10 steam tanks because they wouldn't all be in a normal battle like that".

6th edition was written by guys famous for their historical or simulation rulesets.
8th edition and AOS are written by guys that love the gamist perspective. The stark difference in the two is hard to miss.

The problem with that is in historical wargaming, you can point to examples and say "this was how it went down. Two M4A1s and a platoon of GIs held out against a battalion of experienced Fallschirmjaegers" and that's it. Under "balanced" logic the FJs players is cheesing out, bringing no lowly grenadiers or Volksturm (depending on date) that "should" be the core of German forces. Because IRL armies are "balanced" on a far higher level than gamers are usually expecting to bring. In fantasy and sf gaming there is much greater pressure on "balanced" organization stemming from this unrealistic expectation of "realism" where "no army is made up of elites only".

Well there are quite a few "Historical" scenarios in Warhammer and Age of Sigmar in fact most of the AOS scenarios are based around a historical event or variations on them.

Cronch wrote:
The problem with that is in historical wargaming, you can point to examples and say "this was how it went down. Two M4A1s and a platoon of GIs held out against a battalion of experienced Fallschirmjaegers" and that's it. Under "balanced" logic the FJs players is cheesing out, bringing no lowly grenadiers or Volksturm (depending on date) that "should" be the core of German forces. Because IRL armies are "balanced" on a far higher level than gamers are usually expecting to bring. In fantasy and sf gaming there is much greater pressure on "balanced" organization stemming from this unrealistic expectation of "realism" where "no army is made up of elites only".

I don't think that's a good argument.

Taking a Fallschirmjaeger army in something like Flames of War isn't cheesy. It's based on the TOE of a real combat unit. The game has rules for taking a Fallschirmjaeger army; they're not a single unit type in what is expected to be a more varied/balanced army. Beyond history, the game itself tells you what a Fallschirmjaeger deployment typically looks like.

Taking an army composed of more King Tigers than were ever able to assemble in one spot without breaking down, supported by every Stuka Zu Fuss ever constructed, and nothing else, is cheesy. It bears no relation to how these units were historically used.

Alternate army lists are fine in a fantasy context. Remember those variant lists that let you shift certain units from Special to Core, at the cost of making certain Core units Special and certain Special units Rare? Or in 40K, how playing Deathwing made your Terminators Troops choices? That's the equivalent to a Fallschirmjaeger army list. There's nothing stopping the designers from building these alternative army concepts into the rules.

In any case, I don't think many of the 'historically' minded players have an issue with themed armies that ask for gentle liberties on otherwise restrictive rules to accurately represent their subject matter. That's not what we're talking about here; we're talking about loose restrictions catering to skew lists that don't fit the fluff and are chosen for gameplay effectiveness.

Overread wrote:From 40K I recall when GW did one of the old Tyranid codex (the one where they had their first big rework visually and we got things like Old One eye and the first generation of Raveners). In that there were two versions of the army; the normal and the unlocked. The latter was basically a system for building whatever you wanted and just paying points for it. So you could have a gaunt with synapse; you could take all heavy weapons on a unit of warriors etc.. You could go wild. The potential choices were VAST. Now because they were vast (and because it was GW) it was woefully open to abuse; however the other aspect was it was so much choice for many gamers that actually using it was a challenge. The majority tended to cherry pick the few best (eg synapse on a gaunt) and leave the rest to the default from the main stats in the book.


Too much choice overwhelms just as much as too little restricts.

Can confirm. 3rd ed tyranids was where I started eating and breathing 40K for a while. I looked at the mutable rules and was ecstatic about how personal and individual you could make your swarm. Trouble was, a noob like me had no idea what to take, in what combination, and whether it was worth the points.

I also remember it made the humble termagant an endangered species almost overnight. The players with their heads screwed on tighter (the people who did know if it was worth the points; the early mathammerers) quickly noticed that spinegaunts were a point cheaper, and because gaunts were only for fielding as many bodies for as cheap as possible, that's all that anyone took. The multiple choices rapidly became one choice.
It seemed exciting and canny at the time, but now, a bit of a mess. I'd say the best thing to come out of it was the rush of modelling and converting, but even then most of it boiled down to sticking on a million goofy WYSIWYG upgrades, or gluing a set of ridiculously oversized arms on a warrior.