WFB EDITORIAL: 3 Changes I Want From 8th Edition
A guest column by Iamaddj
Well the rumors are starting to pile up that we are going to see a new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles coming out this summer and I’m pretty pumped about it. Now I’m sure most of you have already complied or started compiling lists of things you want to see changed in the new edition so I thought I would chime in with three changes I would like to see.
– No more guessing with warmachines
Now I know a lot of people out there love guessing. They love getting down on the table, surveying the field and either through math or “instinct” figuring out just where to place the perfect shot. All of these people have something in common – they are good at guess ranges. For a newcomer to the hobby however guessing ranges can be one of the hardest things to master in the game and proves to be very annoying. It creates a learning curve that has nothing to do with how good you are at tactics but how good you are at guessing, it is frustrating and annoying. Aside from turning off new players veterans can also use “poor” guessing to cheat the game and “accidentally” target units they can’t see; something that violates the spirit but not the letter of the rules. Guessing also slows the game down. How many times have you sat across the table from your enemy for 10 minutes while he carefully figures out the perfect rang for each of his 4 great cannons. Scatter is all ready random enough, with several weapons (Cannon, Hellstorm rockets) rolling more then one dice, lets streamline the game and get rid of guessing, just as it was evicted from 40k.
– Increase rank and outnumbering bonuses
I would love to see the maximum bonus for ranks to go up to +6 and an increase in the out numbering bonus. It has always seemed silly to me that outnumbering an enemy by 1 or by 1 billion is exactly the same. This change would accomplish two big things. First off this would increase the usefulness of large ranked infantry units, something you only really see taken now if they are unbreakable/LD 10 stubborn with a reroll and ITP. I would like to see more ranked up infantry units on the battlefield and less tiny units with a few heroes dominating everything left and right. Secondly, and this is the most important one, it would help to bring tactics back to the battlefield. With larger static combat bonuses, especially from ranks, people will have to start playing a more tactical game and flank the enemy, rather then just charging straight in with the uber unit and crushing everything.
– Increase the number of dispel dice
I would like to see wizards generate the same number of dispel dice as they do power dice, i.e. a 2nd level wizard would produce 2 power dice and 2 dispel dice. Back when things where a little more tame wizards producing more power dice then dispel dice was alright. It meant you could have about twice the power dice as the enemy had dispel dice and could sometimes get spells off. However in recent books it has become very easy to get extra casting dice, rerolls on casting dice and bonuses to cast. The ease of access to dispel dice and bonus to dispel has not seen a corresponding increase and has lead to a preponderance of magic heavy armies and a reliance on gimmicky tricks, scrolls, making the enemy miscast, Ring of Hotek, etc. to stop magic. Dispel dice are no longer the primary way of stopping spells. This is simply because people do not have enough of them.
In a non magic heavy army that has two level two wizards the army produces 4 dispel dice. This army will often come up against armies with 12 or more dice, not a hard number for Vampires, Daemons, Dark Elves, Lizardmen and others to reach. This army has little option for increasing its number of dispel dice, and most likely will chose to take a number of dispel scrolls, it can take 4, the same of dispel dice it has. Gimmicky items like the Ring of Hotek and dispel scrolls do not add to the fun of the game. Rather then encouraging players to interact in the magic phase with dice rolls, they simply allow one player to say, no you can’t do that. By increasing the base number of dispel dice a wizard gets the game would encourage more interaction and would make rolling to dispel more important. Since players can still get bonuses to cast easily spells would still go off. In addition it would encourage players to diversify their army. Many armies I see follow a sort of standard formula, a lord, a BSB and 2 wizards/scroll caddies. By increasing the number of dispel dice you might also encourage players to trade one of those scroll caddies out for a cool hero choice.
~Anyway those are just a few thoughts on things I would like to see change. What ideas do you guys have for Fantasy 8th? What do you want to change? What do you want to stay the same? Are you excited for the change? Worried? Lets hear it!
