-

[false Kalin]

-

 

[Falksi]

I tried getting into Warhammer as a kid, but it just took SO much time up that I didn't have the patience. One of the thing which put me off were the rule changes, as it just became a chore to re-learn it all again. Not to mention having to plan & start collecting your armies from scratch to adapt to them. As an adult I'd probably have more patience for it, but sadly as an adult I actually have less time anyway.

Fantasy Roleplay was also hard work as kids as you'd start off serious, then after a couple of hours you'd start messing about acting daft. and before you knew it you'd switched your mates health potion for a "felching" potion, and he's be bumming goblins & sucking spunk out their arse instead of killing them.

Some fucking cracking artwork over all the years of all the Games Workshop games. By far & away my favourite aspect of it.

 

[Dayyālu]

Sixth edition too, and (late) third edition for Wh40k. Played with proxies and few painted models 'cause poor and 'cause it was our imagination to push foward the thing. Played Tomb Kings (don't laugh), DaemonHunters (don't laugh) and Guard. I had not the best winning team, methinks. Liked Skaven a lot too.

The degeneration of Warhammer both as a ruleset and a setting began mid '00, methinks. At first, their inspiration ran dry (2000 AD comics, and 80ies refs, gosh, to think Margaret Thatcher is Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka), then they started bleeding designers and then they became a model-toy-focused company. Particularly relevant to notice how the rules started to focus on the Big Next Release and on selling "huge" models (7th and 8th edition fantasy, post 5th edition 40k). Tbh I stopped reading their rulesets quite a while ago, the system has become so messy and unclear to be difficult to enjoy. Now vehicles have wounds, as far as I know, to "simplify". Whatever.
Fluff-wise, the death knell was the obvious change from the original creators to late 00s "new blood", that's frankly all composed by fanfiction writers, and it's rather noticeable. AoS is probably the best example: hilarious fluff, focus on setpiece models, muddy rules.

Death knell for the art was when they were forced to avoid depicting anything that they could not sell: contemporary GW CGI art is by design focused only on sold models, to avoid third-party resellers to get some "inspiration" or to do alternate models. Must be fun to do art like that. And let's not talk about AoS "Quality".

Tbh, even in the good old days most of GW's designers were hacks. Rick priestley and Cavatore have dumped GW for Warlord (what we historical tabletop gamers call "GW for Historicals") after Warhammer Historical (legit good ruleset, that one) got shot down, and we have seen the results: all their rulesets are atrociously written WarMaster derivatives (Black Powder, Hail Caesar, Pike&Shotte) mediocre 40k derivatives (Bolt Action) or simply failed abortions (Beyond the Gates of Antares). We like to joke that Bolt Action is Warhammer40k with Germans instead of Space Marines.

Not as bad as Battlefront and Team Yankee, though.....

 

[Dayyālu]

Check Warhams Historical then, pdfs are easy to find online. Compared to BA, it's a far better job. No wonder it failed to gain success.

Now that I think, probably the best ruleset GW ever released is Epic. It's legit fun.

 

[Galdred]

Now that I think, probably the best ruleset GW ever released is Epic. It's legit fun.

QFT.
I really liked the latest version (epic Armageddon). It played slower, but had a good emphasis on maneuver instead of the artillery duels of Epic 2: Space Marines (I didn't play Epic 40K).
When I tried 40K after epic, I was underwhelmed indeed (I wondered why they had tanks starting at point blank range, and that was before they added super heavy and greater nonsense).

Also, Epic used alternated activations, which made it much harder to lose 1/3rd of your army before you could fire the first shot.

 

[Dayyālu]

Also, Epic used alternated activations, which made it much harder to lose 1/3rd of your army before you could fire the first shot.

If we're talking ruleset design, the only sore point of epic is the reliance on "activating" units, meaning that the game if powerplayed could degenerate into trying to have more unit to activate than your opponent, forcing them into subpar tactical choices. Maybe I wrote that clumsily, but I hope the point came across.

More modern designs usually fix it giving "activation points" or the like, based on the army quality. The Warmaster-inspired system that Warlord uses with random command rolls (that one sadly also finds in WW2 Commander and Cold War Commander) is the shittiest thing ever, though.

Bill King could be better but that is a respectable paragraph. Troke, Thorpe, Ward and all the rest of the later crew mire themselves in cliches, needless heavy adjectives and repetition. That's not a matter of sources or originality. The later writers simply lacked skill.

There was (and still there is) no quality control at GW. I still remember reading about the kerfuffle they had with Storm of Chaos, or the utter failure of Forge World's attempt at a Storm Of Chaos -lite (Tamurkhan). Tbh, better than anything we got afterwards, The End Times were puzzling at best and hilarious at worst. Maybe in an alternate timeline GW would have taken the Tamurkhan approach with the Four Brothers of Chaos and switched the systems into a mass battle line system and a skirmish system for Warhammer Fantasy, but the need for Sigmarines was too great. They could have even stolen some good skirmish ruleset like SAGA and made a completely different system, instead of the cargo cult abomination that's AoS.

Not that 40k fared better. I gave a cursory glance at the new ruleset, and fuck I can't even follow them properly. People play this thing? And they think historicals are more complex?

 

[Galdred]

Also, Epic used alternated activations, which made it much harder to lose 1/3rd of your army before you could fire the first shot.

If we're talking ruleset design, the only sore point of epic is the reliance on "activating" units, meaning that the game if powerplayed could degenerate into trying to have more unit to activate than your opponent, forcing them into subpar tactical choices. Maybe I wrote that clumsily, but I hope the point came across.

More modern designs usually fix it giving "activation points" or the like, based on the army quality. The Warmaster-inspired system that Warlord uses with random command rolls (that one sadly also finds in WW2 Commander and Cold War Commander) is the shittiest thing ever, though.

Epic : Space Marines had alternating activations for fire only, not for movement for which it was side A, then side B, and there was no point in delaying shooting.
Actually, it was the other way around. Eldar Tempest Super heavy tanks had an edge over my shadowsword because they had 3 tanks/unit vs 1, so they would all shoot in the same activation, while I would need 3 to fire with all of my shadowswords (and it seldom happened that the 3rd one would get to fire...)
Epic Armageddon had complete alternating activations, so that was a big problem indeed, and it lacked mechanisms to allow the side with less activations to delay indeed.
Also, leveling whole city blocks in 2nd edition was great fun.

 

[Jugashvili]

Los interest shortly after 6th ed dropped, though I will readily admit it was a better wargame than herohammer ever was (flying high was so ridiculously broken, lol). Anyhow, I think KoW feels a lot more like 6th's spiritual successor (movement phase & spatial intelligence being the most important factors rather than lolrandom 8th ed) but does everything it did a lot better.

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the game ended with 6th edition. 7th heralded the return of heroes eating up 50% or more of your total points, and I always desired the oposite: skelly hordes.