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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ah, the great Achilles heel of classic Undead. Job the Vampire, job the Army.

Not quite as easy as it sounds, and of course your Undead opponent would know that’s your obvious play.

Downside for Undead was your Skellingtons and Zombies really didn’t hit terribly hard, limiting your own tactics.

And, if memory serves? If Zombies lost a fight, the whole unit crumbled.

These changed edition to edition, so apologies if I’m blending editions in my memory.

In 5th it depended on the unit. Some (zombies, wights, wraiths) were all or nothing. They broke, they just all died. Some (skeletons) took extra wounds based on how bad they lost the combat.

IIRC.

Units where there for the rank bonus. You put a nasty character in to get enough kills to do damage, if that was your goal. But if you lost combat to a unit you feared and outnumbered you, you automatically failed your brake check. Undead armies did not win in combat (besides blender vampire lords) but mostly with magic and psychology.

Undead (later VC) in 5th were horrific to play against, particularly for Empire. They could fire off unit-killing spells like t-shirts at a ball game, and the only way to really go against them was to turn your army into The Magnificent Seven with token units to meet minimal requirements.

In 6th things settled down a bit. No more "wave of death" spells, plus the Warrior Priest could turn an otherwise unremarkable Empire spear unit into an anti-undead slaying hedgehog.

Biggest weakness of 6th IMHO was scroll caddies. When it was going away and I decided to make my own fantasy rules, one of the core objectives was NO SCROLL CADDIES. I wanted players to take wizards as an affirmative choice, not just a hedge against the other guy. The other thing was to have "enhancer" spells rather than unit-killers. I hated the way 5th in particular could use magic to escape terrible tactical play.

Alas, the pool of my 40k players is vastly greater than Fantasy, so Conqueror doesn't get a lot of use. I'm hoping to lure some of the 40k guys over with the promise of a stable, customizable ruleset that lets them use whatever unit they can think up.

In the meantime, my 40k CSMs are plotting their revenge.

We had a couple of Empire players. I remember them being a good, jack-of-all trades force. They could do everything, but not as well as the specialist. I remember worrying about their artillery and war machines, but not much else about them. Might just have been what the locals were fielding against my lists (undead and chaos)

Empire were a slightly odd fish.

As said, nothing they had was an exemplar of its type, except maybe the Great Cannon. But none of it was awful.

An experienced Empire general could find where they trumped an opponent in a given field, and exploit it - unless you’d specialised your army list.

Battle Wizards were part of this, as with 8 lores available you could choose your College to best counter your opponent. Though certainly latterly you had to specify at list creation.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Empire were a slightly odd fish.

As said, nothing they had was an exemplar of its type, except maybe the Great Cannon. But none of it was awful.

An experienced Empire general could find where they trumped an opponent in a given field, and exploit it - unless you’d specialised your army list.

Battle Wizards were part of this, as with 8 lores available you could choose your College to best counter your opponent. Though certainly latterly you had to specify at list creation.

As an army, they could do anything. They had a unit on the books that could exploit the weakness of all other factions. The question is did you personally own it as a player, and include it in your army list?

Most of the time you ended up with just midline TAC lists. But if someone with an extensive collection (or just lucky unit pics) decided to hard-counter list tailor you? It was bad.

I remember in 5e we'd written Battle Magic off, allowing Empire and Brettonian players to use the optional color magic in the 5e magic box set.

We didn't actually have many Empire players, as they were generally considered to have an under-powered, old army book. The Empire-as-main guy tended to focus on knights, war machines, and the weird stuff like steam tanks and war wagons over infantry.

Then one of our players decided to do an infantry line army list with heavy handgunner and outrider backup as a second army. And in his first game (again Chaos, of all armies) he decided to take Battle Magic with his wizards, as a lark.

That day, everyone in attendance learned that Net + a black powder gunline was no laughing matter at all, even if you are Chaos Warriors in heavy armor and shields.

 Psychopomp wrote:
Then one of our players decided to do an infantry line army list with heavy handgunner and outrider backup as a second army. And in his first game (again Chaos, of all armies) he decided to take Battle Magic with his wizards, as a lark.

That day, everyone in attendance learned that Net + a black powder gunline was no laughing matter at all, even if you are Chaos Warriors in heavy armor and shields.

The Empire book was very out of date. They were the only army that actually paid the movement penalty for heavy armor, meaning Empire knights got only a 12" charge range. They were my first army and the trick was abandoning any pretense of a "realistic" army and just going with specialty units and various exploits. Such as: Imperial characters were dirt cheap, so you could afford to field an entire front rank of characters. Carpenter-level measurement guessing was also helpful.

That being said, I hated how that game worked and loved the changes brought by 6th. I also thought (and still think) that for most armies, the Ravening Hordes "get you by list" was the greatest, most balanced army list ever produced by GW.

IIRC the only armies that got to ignore the heavy armor thing were chaos, bretonians, and some high elf units. So hardly anyone. And by that I mean 3/4s of the armies you saw on the table.

Edit: probably dwarfs as well, but they started slow and just didn’t get slower.

Anybody who understood how the Detachment rules worked could build brutal Empire lists with very little investment points wise.

Dwarfs weren’t all that slow. When it came to the crunch, the beardy wee gits could March despite enemy proximity.

And let us not forget The Dwarven Gunline Of Mindless Inevitability, which reduced your opponents strategy to “get over there and into combat as soon as possible and hope to heck we have enough to actually hurt the stunties”

Why yes I am traumatised by boring dwarf armies.

 Nevelon wrote:
IIRC the only armies that got to ignore the heavy armor thing were chaos, bretonians, and some high elf units. So hardly anyone. And by that I mean 3/4s of the armies you saw on the table.

Edit: probably dwarfs as well, but they started slow and just didn’t get slower.

That's everyone else who had heavy cavalry. IIRC, having a move of 6" or less meant your pursuit or retreat was 2d6" rather than 3d6", so Emprire cavalry was more likely to be wiped out if it broke and more likely to fail in pursuit if it won.

For that reason I tended to use Kislev cavalry, both the lancers and the archers.

And yes, detachments were great, although the "hits last" rule on greatswords made them less useful than sleeves of handgunners or crossbowmen.

What 6th ed. did was clean up a lot of that nonsense. At long last heavy weapons could swing first on the charge, making them really useful. The "heavy armor makes you walk slow" rule also went away because the way it had been employed in 5th was basically a penalty on the Empire. When I made the "sample lists" for Conqueror, I used Ravening Hordes as the benchmark because the rules were so simple but good. No need for multi-paragraph explanations with two tables to consult.

I referred to the 5th books to find inspiration for fluff and generic special rules.

I fielded a unit of mounted wights as the core of my army. I remember forgoing the extra armor to keep the 7” move and the benefits that came with it.

IIRC heavy armor took an inch, and barding your steed was another. So the Wights of the Realm had heavy armor on unbarded steeds, lead by a vampire lord with either no armor or magic armor, and a barded steed.

I agree that the Empire heavy cav (all the flavors) were not the best.

Man my old Warhammer Fantasy knowledge is lacking!

I’m….I’m gonna have to invest in a set of 4th/5th books and gubbins, aren’t I??

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Man my old Warhammer Fantasy knowledge is lacking!

I’m….I’m gonna have to invest in a set of 4th/5th books and gubbins, aren’t I??

How dedicated are you to legacy rules?

The reason I played only a handful of games of 2nd 40k was the fact that the local scene was all in on 5th WHFB. The two systems had a lot in common. I only have a handful of games of fantasy 6th, because we were more into 3rd of 40k at that time.

While most people wax nostalgic for 2nd 40k, that same space in my mind was leading the hordes of undead/chaos across a swath of destruction in the old world. And I can ramble on with trivia as memories allow.

It’s more the background for me.

I was perusing my 2nd Ed Codex Ultramarines the other day, a book I never had as a Grot.

Given how set in stone Marine background appears? I was genuinely surprised by some of the gubbins in there. I’d need to review it again, but I’m sure it said few First Founding Chapters survived into the 41st Millennium.

As a background junkie, the more obscured and wonky “canon” becomes, the happier I am, as from there interesting conversations and threads can arise.

 Nevelon wrote:
The reason I played only a handful of games of 2nd 40k was the fact that the local scene was all in on 5th WHFB. The two systems had a lot in common. I only have a handful of games of fantasy 6th, because we were more into 3rd of 40k at that time.

While most people wax nostalgic for 2nd 40k, that same space in my mind was leading the hordes of undead/chaos across a swath of destruction in the old world. And I can ramble on with trivia as memories allow.

Total opposite of what happened to my group. We went all-in on Fantasy, everyone got armies (some more than one) and then the reality of Herohammer dawned on us. All those pretty infantry were really just character and magic item delivery vehicles. The fancy Empire knights were the worst heavy cavalry in the game.

The end result was a lot of players drifted away but those who stuck around dove in to 40k, which felt more realistic and was a lot more fun. Basic troopers could do stuff! That Doomlord over there could actually be dropped by a humble heavy weapons team. How cool was that!?

When 6th came out, Fantasy made a comeback, but 3rd crushed interest in 40k. At that point life (jobs, marriages, kids) broke up the gaming set. A smaller circle was reconstituted to play 2nd ed. 40k, but it's a chore to keep the calendar clear.

Which runs counter to my experiences. Both 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB showed significant growth in every game store/club I participated in.

 Just Tony wrote:
Which runs counter to my experiences. Both 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB showed significant growth in every game store/club I participated in.

I got into 40K in 3rd and it was already hugely popular, i was looking at getting into WHFBs in 6th just as it switched to 7th and i lost interest because they removed my army build from the game.

 aphyon wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Which runs counter to my experiences. Both 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB showed significant growth in every game store/club I participated in.

I got into 40K in 3rd and it was already hugely popular, i was looking at getting into WHFBs in 6th just as it switched to 7th and i lost interest because they removed my army build from the game.

Which build was that?

Chaos beastmen


IIRC the base list was something like

.doom bull
.X4 minotaur squads 2 with mark of khorne + great weapons, 2 with mark of slaneesh + 2 weapons
.X2 shaggoth/dragon ogres

 aphyon wrote:
Chaos beastmen


IIRC the base list was something like

.doom bull
.X4 minotaur squads 2 with mark of khorne + great weapons, 2 with mark of slaneesh + 2 weapons
.X2 shaggoth/dragon ogres

I feel your pain, I ran a Minotaur heavy list myself. But I also had other armies so the hit wasn't so bad.

 Just Tony wrote:
Which runs counter to my experiences. Both 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB showed significant growth in every game store/club I participated in.

I do not claim that my group was in any way representative of the larger gaming public. It very much was not. Everyone in it came from a prior wargaming background - either historicals or board games. What WHFB did was provide an agreed-upon platform that appealed to everyone.

Obviously 3rd saw huge growth in 40k gaming and that was probably the point at which 40k overtook WHFB as the flagship setting.

The sharp break between the two lines probably contributed to the decline of Fantasy because there was no longer as much crossover potential. Much easier to switch between them when the unit profiles and core mechanics were the same.

When 40k switched to 3rd, we lost a lot of players.

One army I recall that was basically murdered was SoB. They went from being SM-lite to guardsmen with better gear. With the rise of the game size and the relative cheapening of the troops I remember our local Sister’s player saying he’d have to quadruple the size of his army, so he noped! out for a bit (he came back)

It was the first major reset of the game, and some people did not take it well.

That said, as 3rd rolled on, we got a lot of fresh blood.

It played better as a wargame. More and better plastics were being released. That was a major point. Before people had to make armies mostly out of limited, hard to work with, relatively expensive models. With the larger game size/armies of 3rd this was a major stumbling block. As more kits came out, this barrier was lowered.

On the topic of model prices, I recall some PTW aspects of 5th WHFB. My beloved mounted wights were all metal. There was a box with the command set, but if you wanted more than a single row, you needed to buy them by the blister. Which were relatively expensive. But oh man how they worked on the table. Prices being what they were, I probably could have bought a whole chaos army for the money sunk into them. I remember at the time you could put together a pretty tight chaos list on the cheep due to their low model count and good plastic range at the time.

Popping this channel recommendation here, as it’s fairly new (just 4 videos) but the format is fun and presentation is decent. Reckon other SOGs will get a kick from it.

The battle report he put up was from the first issue of WD I ever bought - 175.

And the reason the Marines killed so many Gretchin during the final turn is because they moved up and switched to frag grenades.

I’m particularly hopeful not just for other “historical” battle reports from WD, but for this guy to do his own battle reports in the same format.

Probably just my vintage, but that map and unit key system was the clearest I ever found Battle reports to be.

That form of Battle Report was the best. The only thing I wish they'd added was a "post-game" map where we could see the final results of the last turn.

Very cool. Possibly nostalgia, but I always thought the battle reps of that era were the best. Having several hundred words of text on a page explaining why they had chosen particular units and their battle plans was just awesome, I used to devour that stuff as a kid (actually still do if I look through an old mag!) I understand it probably doesn't have the same presentation appeal as modern equivalents, but I much preferred it.

 Nevelon wrote:
We had a couple of Empire players. I remember them being a good, jack-of-all trades force. They could do everything, but not as well as the specialist. I remember worrying about their artillery and war machines, but not much else about them. Might just have been what the locals were fielding against my lists (undead and chaos)

I played almost exclusively against Empire. Their knights were pretty decent and the support units counter-charging your unit when you made contact with their big regiment were quite annoying..

 Pacific wrote:
Very cool. Possibly nostalgia, but I always thought the battle reps of that era were the best. Having several hundred words of text on a page explaining why they had chosen particular units and their battle plans was just awesome, I used to devour that stuff as a kid (actually still do if I look through an old mag!) I understand it probably doesn't have the same presentation appeal as modern equivalents, but I much preferred it.

I can't remember what issue number it was - 217 perhaps? - but there was a dark day towards the end of 2nd Ed (after the Sisters book had come out) where there was a Battle Report that consisted of two isometric photos of a table, and then a page with the two players explaining what went wrong/right with the battle.

I was so shocked that I went back to check if I'd somehow missed the "report" part of the battle report. Up until that point I used to get WD every month. I've bought maybe 15 issues in the 26 years since.