WFB: Do You Feel Lucky Punk?
A guest editorial by WileyOne
The newest edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles offers a great deal of changes and many arguments can be made as to whether or not they are positive or negative. Today lets focus on what I am calling Chaoshammer – the role of luck in 8th Edition.
We have all had the opportunity to scour through the 8th Edition book for quite some time now. Those of us here in my local gaming area have noticed that luck is playing a much larger factor than it did in 7th Edition. It appears that between the random charge distances, casting/dispel dice, it seems that we must now pay our due to lady luck. Fortuna, the Goddess of luck in Roman Religion, is who we must count on to make that charge, or have an amazingly powerful magic phase. If I only roll a five I will fail the charge. If I roll average I make the charge. Should I stay or should I go?
In our local community alone I saw the same guy fail 5 charge attempts in one game. At no point was he being greedy, I know what many of you might have been thinking. For most of the charges he declared, he only needed to roll slightly BELOW average, and he still failed. I in no way contest that being the one to charge is nearly as devastating as it was in 7th Edition. Though, I have seen plans ruined by a player ending up with only two power dice for his magic phase.
I have heard people talking as to whether or not 8th Edition is a tournament worthy rules set. It seems that their concerns are if so much is based on luck now, how do we fit in our strategies and plans? How much does the list matter now? Out of the hundreds of games that have been played in our area I wonder how many of them exactly have been won or lost on luck alone. I am of the mindset that strategy out weighs luck in 8th edition, but by the narrowest of margins. However, we can’t deny that the first thing we blame when things aren’t going our way is luck. I guess we have to ask ourselves one question. Do we feel lucky?
In the last year Wiley One has an Indy GT record of 14-4-1 and finished 3rd overall in the ‘Ard Boys Finals for Fantasy.
We ask you the readers, what are your thoughts? Is 8th Edition all about luck compared to 7th? Can we really play tournament caliber Warhammer with so much chaos? Can we count on the probabilities we all used to base our strategies around? Or is there now so much luck involved that we are all just along for the ride? You decide.
