I’m not huge into Warhammer miniatures, but the stuff has always interested me in a roundabout way because so much of it bleeds into videogames. This is sort of big news. Not the fiction. I mean, I guess lore guys are into the changes there, but as far as I can see, the story stuff isn’t really that different. (It’s still Chaos versus orcs versus humans versus elves versus dwarfs etc, just now in “pocket universes” instead of one place.) The big change may be the rules themselves.
9th edition (Age of Sigmar) is moving from gigantic regimented armies facing off against one another to smaller skirmishes like Warhammer 40k.
(Edit: That 4-page pdf isn’t some summary or intro ruleset, that’s actually the full rules!)
This is kind of huge, right? From what I’m reading from fans, this is like 4th Ed D&D. Some people reaaaaally hate the changes. Some people are saying it was time for the rules to be updated to a “more casual” style of play.
I haven’t played Warhammer for 15 years or so, but that sounds like a positive change. My recollection is that the rules system was never particularly well-balanced or tactically interesting. The appeal was always more in the miniatures and the spectacle and fantasy of big army clashes than in strategy mechanics.
Some of the stuff sounds pretty cool to me. (Keep in mind that I’ve only ever played a couple of games of WH40K in real life. Never any WHFB.)
Model rules come on “Warscrolls” packaged with the models.
All rules - including the Warscrolls - will be free as pdfs.
No more regimental formation movement required.
Emphasis on heroes and unique models in armies.
Some of it, I just don’t know.
No point values for units. Balance is just sort of agreed on by players.
Army sizes are basically determined by players daring each other to go over a “sudden death” rule that lets the person with the much smaller (one player has 1/3 more units) army pick a victory condition like “kill the enemy general” for an insta-win.
Orcs will become “Orruks” and ogres will become “Ogors” eventually. Rumors are that Slaanesh is going away entirely or being retooled into a generic Chaos god to make him more “family friendly.”
GW will create new models for greenskins that apparently look very different.
Measurements no longer use the base as the anchor. You measure from the closest point on the model to the closest point on the target model, so an arm raised up holding a spear, or a dragon tail that extends past the base, counts.
No, really. Here is the text of how to balance the fight:
The players then alternate setting up units,
one at a time, starting with the player that
won the earlier dice roll. Models must be
set up in their own territory, more than 12"
from enemy territory.
You can continue setting up units until you
have set up all the units you want to fight in
this battle, or have run out of space. This is
your army. Count the number of models in
your army – this may come in useful later.
Any remaining units are held in reserve,
playing no part unless fate lends a hand.
The opposing player can continue to set up
units. When they have finished, set-up is
complete. The player that finishes setting up
first always chooses who takes the first turn
in the first battle round.
This is the Sudden Death rule that balances the players’ armies:
Sometimes a player may attempt to achieve
a sudden death victory. If one army has
a third more models than the other, the
outnumbered player can choose one
objective from the sudden death table
aŽ er generals are nominated. A major
victory can be claimed immediately
when the objective is achieved by the
outnumbered*player.
Basically, it’s a dare. The first player puts as many units down as he wishes. The second player then puts as many units down as he wishes, but if he outnumbers the first player’s units by more than a third, the first player can choose to enact Sudden Death rules, giving him a much easier path to victory.
What keeps you from using all ogres or whatever? Nothing as far as I can see.
Um… so you put out an army of orcs. I put out like… dragons or other huge units and only insane heroes or whatever. Then I declare I just have to kill your general. Sounds fair to me.
As a guy who loves reading rules – seriously! – this does sound pretty awful. But there are two kinds of people in this world I’ll never understand: people who watch The Big Bang Theory and miniatures gamers. So who knows.
Tom, I know in my heart of hearts that you would love playing Warmachine. You might not dig the buying, assembling or painting of the models, but playing the actual game is fantastic.
I enjoy more reading between the lines than the actual details of the changes. And it seems like perhaps that the old fashioned idea of $50 and $75 rule books which can be instead pirated for free is an untenable situation. And to be brutally honest most of the rule books weren’t that great either - neither the art, which existed on a bell curve range, nor the rules, which were were silly, nor the fiction, which in general was nothing more than a superficial outline. It also seems like perhaps their Warhammer fantasy stuff just isn’t selling enough anymore either.
Back before college i used to play Battletech with some friends, and it was hilarious how bad the rules actually were. There was no reason when playing as a mercenary Mechwarrior to pick anything other than the largest, most expensive vehicle, and you had to really buy into the fiction to rationalize suboptimal picks.
I never played Warhammer but i did buy a couple of the rule books and a few novels after getting into the Dawn of War RTS games. And frankly those games were far more compelling than the rule books or most of the Black Library faff which were by-the-numbers bullet points of units and faction ‘traits and special abilities’ with a little bit of characterization.
I think it looks great, but then I am more a hobbyist than a gamer when it comes to tabletop war games. For me these games are more an excuse to put my army of models on the table and march them to their inevitable doom than anything else. With that sort of dedication to the game 4 pages sounds pretty nice (as opposed to the mountain of info I am supposed to remember for a game of Warmachine…which I invariably forget anyway).
Pew, pew, pew…
(Tom, you know you wish you had your very own army of little blue army men)
I guess they just finally, completely, and utterly threw in the towel. They never were remotely good at balancing. The cynics, like me in this case, saw it as marketing rather than flawed game design. Others just claim that things are different on the other side of the pond in regards to min/maxing. Anyway, I am not surprised that rules seemed half baked. I am surprised at the theoretical desire to go for smaller armies. This runs very much against the status quo in their business practices.
[Or is it somehow supposed to be the same universe with Warhammer Fantasy somehow leading to the modern era followed by Warhammer 40K? The Chaos gods are the same in both right? Or is it a multiverse with shared gods.]
Its always been interesting to me, that Games Workshp is as faceless as it is - Magic had Richard Garriot, PC gaming has countless “heroes” and “villains”, but I’ve never once heard anyone talk about who is actually behind Warhammer Fantasy, or 40K or any of the other Games Workshop games. Its always been “GW” and “Them” and “They”. Or is it just because I’m not enough of a fan?
Not so sure about this. While the system is indeed scalable to an extent the previous one wasn´t the only size indication in the rules speaks of 100 per side (which is not a skirmish in my book).
But yes, except for the balance issue, it seems GW is basically trying to embrace more modern design techniques (the Warscrolls -or the rules are in the cards school of design- is particularly useful to reduce clot and keep everything manageable). I might try a game with paper stand-ins to see how the game handles. Certainly looks flexible and lightweight enough for my present self (which doesn´t have that much time anyways).
Regarding balance: I think a lot of miniature gamers are not that interested about balance (at least I know I wasn´t when I played miniatures). You don´t play that much to win as to put your army on the field and see what happens. Besides, I don´t think you can properly balance such an extensive game as this (too many moving pieces) so maybe the cop-out of saying just have fun and see what you can do is better than the min-max borefest that the competitive version of WH tends to degenerate into…
Those 4 page rules are now very basic. I remember WH:FB containing things like flanking etc. But I last looked at it 15 years ago so who knows what’s changed since then.
I don’t agree with this. The game is no more complex than an RTS or indeed any strategy game that allows you to “buy” units. It’s basically health/attack/number of models per unit/spells. They could balance that stuff if they put their mind to it.
There was a time when GW supported tournaments and some people were very into it and very competitive. GW moved away from that a few years ago - stopped supporting tournaments. I cannot imagine those kind of people would be thrilled with this change, but i don’t think GW views them as their target demographic.
I know Adepticon, a fan run convention of not just GW stuff, still had warhammer/wh40k tournaments. It will be interesting to see how they handle these changes.
