"Is Warhammer Fantasy old ?" Topic

There is a discussion raging on the french Warhammer Forum about the Warhammer Fantasy game engine (that discussion started after the first rumours about the next edition of WFB were published).
Some people find it old, in comparison with more recent game systems and that the game must/should be "cleaned" of some antiquated features like distance estimations, or buckets of dice to roll etc. etc.

I must say I have no real idea if the system is "old and should be dusted" or not although I do think that Warhammer (I mean : the Warhammer game system), has only little evolved since the very first edition some twenty or so years ago.

Do you also think that the game system is old ? What are the old-fashioned features that need to be revised, without transforming Warhammer into some another game ?

I wouldn't call it old fashioned, just stale after 20 games or so.

I would, if I had to choose, remove the guessing of Distance. If an archer whos been training all his life knows how far his bows shoot, would know when to strike. Of course this would further help what types of bows the unit is using (crossbow, longbow, composite bow, etc). Removing the guessing of the distance in this way would help improve the game.

The game system is old.

However that doesn't mean the features mentioned above are "antiquated" just because some people don't like them.

Wheels are pretty old too.

I haven't played Warhammer since the early 90's, yet if folks are enjoying it why change it?

It is old. I don't have a problem with buckets of dice and prefer distance estimation. The things that make me disinterested in the game include: the morale system, the way multiple dice rolls are used for combat, the special abilities, the army books, the structure of the army lists, the movement system, particularly the relative speed of cavalry to infantry, the use of troops as walking hit points for heroes, the focus on tournaments and the style of writing used in the rulebooks. I guess fixing all of those would make it a different game.

I've never progressed from 3rd edition, just before they started dumbing it down, do as far as i'm concerned it's still failry fresh. Never had a problem with the multiple dice rolls and third edition has the most complicated rules of all, movement, morale, spells, characters, it was all downhill from there. Distances were fixed by weapon type, so i'm not sure what you mean by estimation, unless in later versions you aren't allowed to pre-measure ranges before shooting.

Distance estimation is a bit of a swiz with old hands in Warhammer. They use standards sized boards so a bot of observation gives them a good rule by which to measure ditance

Definitely old. To hit and To wound charts that make a mockery of the odds of the factors. A reverse numbers Ballistic skill chart. Two numbers for Defense: Toughness and Armor.
Modern systems tend to be much more streamlined.

Chess is old. Checkers is old. Poker is old. So what? Why should that matter? Do gamers require "Ooooh! Shiny!" to have an enjoyable game? Screw that.

John the OFM is Old :)

It's not just that it's old, but that it's full of sacred cows that are holdovers from previous editions which have no role in supporting the type of play experience the game could have. I don't even think the design goals have been clarified beyond the creation of a system to sell models first and foremost and all other considerations are secondary.

The game is old in regards to some of the mechanics. This doesn't necessarily mean its a bad game…

…however its not one that I would play voluntarily. Lots of other games do this scale and size better and for cheaper.

As an aside, I think a to hit, then to wound, then to save slows the system down with no obvious benefit.

As an aside, I think a to hit, then to wound, then to save slows the system down

It seems like it ought to, but my constant observation from club nights and tournaments over the years is that WFB and WAB play their games in a lot less time than systems with tables-and-opposed-rolls or whatever.

It's kinda funny, the first minis game I played was Column, Line and Square in about '78. Everyone agrees it's old, yet there are still people who enjoy playing it. New game mechanics and simulation techniques have improved over the years, but the concept of a game being "old" doesn't imply it's obsolete, just a comment on its age.

It's full of bad mechanics…. many of which went out of fashion years back.
Range guessing – bit of a joke.
Then there's holding your template over a unit and trying to agree with an opponent which figure is touched and which not.
Very little command control model.

Warhammer was 'old' when it first appeared. Most of the mechanics can be traced back to the likes of Featherstone, Wise and Grant from the 60's.

John is right as usual … but a great part of the rules is the stat system which, like Sword and the Flame, you can take it to any genre with some tweaks and it works perfectly fine, i.e. Wild West, pirates, medievals, ancients: we've even adopted it for Indian Mutiny to great effect.

Ok, thank you all.
So the game engine is old, but not "unenjoyable" at all, if such a word exist.

But do you think it is now obsolete ? There have been many new games published these last years, more recent, more modern (I suppose). Does Warhammer need some more or less profound evolution to keep with the competition ?
I think of that kind of evolution that happened to Warhammer 40k a few years ago now, and which made War 40k a lot more successful than WFB today.

It's old. So what? When did old become bad? I'm going to agree with OFM, right after I shove this pin vice through my eye.

"Does Warhammer need some more or less profound evolution to keep with the competition?"

Er. Most of the competition in the "single figure removal, block formation, Late-Medieval Fantasy" category are worse, and come nowhere close to WFB in sales. Evolution away from that category means fewer miniature sales for GW, so it won't happen. Simpler conflict mechanics will lose the nuances that allow the game to be "fantasy". Movement is already about as simple as a game that needs to represent block troop movement can be at a tactical level.

Honestly, if you vastly change it in those ways, WFB stops being WFB. They've already changed the base army selection mechanic to a simpler model.

"Keeping up" is strictly a personal preference thing in this case. If people want to play fantasy games with 100-300 individually mounted models, simplification is not their answer beyond a certain point. If you want to play a fantasy battle game in 90 minutes average instead of several hours, you may have already left GW's target audience, because "simple and fast" doesn't sell $300 USD armies.

I don't even think the design goals have been clarified beyond the creation of a system to sell models first and foremost and all other considerations are secondary.

I haven't played any version of the rules, but from what I've seen and read this strikes me as truth… and is one of the reasons I've never much wanted to try it.
That and I've been plenty happy with Fantasy Rules! which works just fine with Warhammer minis and fluff.

Er. Most of the competition in the "single figure removal, block formation, Late-Medieval Fantasy" category are worse

Er, what games are you referring to? and why are they 'worse'?

On the template thing and arguing/compromising with your opponent over how many got killed, I did like what GW did with WOTR on this. An artillery piece that hits does xd6 worth of wounds, depending on how well you roll on a table.
Takes the argument out of it and something I wish WHFB would adopt.

I don't know about the 'old' thing, though :)

Old it may be, but it's still great fun! I've rarely had a bad game of Fantasy or WAB. Many of the ones saying it's no good here are the same old guys who are ALWAYS slamming anything by GW, and as such their opinions here are suspect…

Some rule mechanics seem old. Seems very very old.

Take this WHFB rule mechanic for instance:

"Roll to hit" + "roll to wound" + "roll armor save" + "roll special save" (and if your model has the ability + "roll regeneration".

Rolling 3 to 5 dice FOR EACH SINGLE WOUND seems like too much for my taste.

That's one of the reasons I haven't played WHFB for years now, but several of my friends do.

IMO, there are better ways to represent massed conflict and magic systems, that's why my game of choice is ARMIES OF ARCANA.

Best wishes.

"Rolling 3 to 5 dice FOR EACH SINGLE WOUND seems like too much for my taste."

Except that you aren't doing more than 3 for anything on the table except the occasional character. If my attack frontage is giving me 12 dice, that whole batch gets rolled once. Most players will have already established what results hit, so the misses are pulled and only the hits rolled again to wound. Then the defender rolls in response to the wounds.

Anyone who thinks this is the complex part of Warhammer, or that this has not aged well (whatever that means) is really not paying attention. Attention to what gets argued about; attention to what takes time; attention to what parts of Warhammer get re-written every time.

The dice are not the problem.

My criticism to WHFB is that it is too slow to play. The multiple die rolls aren't the problem though (W40K has as many DRs as WFB, and it's a faster game by a long shot). No, my problem with WFB is that it lacks Drama, which in a Fantasy game is a major problem in my opinion.

Recently I played a game of the new GW system for LOTR big battles (well, 'big' is an overstatement, because you can play with as few as 120 miniatures each side, even less if you field Elven or Dwarfs). I liked a lot. The game was fast, full of drama, the heroes were powerful, but not decisive -many of the special abilities of the heroes are related to command, not to combat; like, for instance, they can use their "heroic points" (a fixed amount for all the game) to bolster the morale of a unit, allowing it to ignore casualties; or improving unit's ability to fight with two, instead two ranks, ecc.

I have been tempted to adapt the system to WFB and just play with it instead with the 'official' WFB rules.

I'm working ( albeit slowly ) on a sort of add on for Impetus.
link

Whilst my additions may or not be particularly brilliant, Impetus is an excellent (historicals) ruleset.
So the likelihood is that even if I screw it up the game will still be pretty good.

Warhammer was old after the first game….

GW's War of the Ring rules are a major improvement over WHFB. Unfortunately, they are attached to a "sinking" product line, and probably won't ever become the WHFB rules.

I guess I will have to pick up a copy of War of the Ring, then…

I'd looked at the store copy a couple times and thought the hero mechanics were better in WotR than in Warhamster Fantasy.

I don't think the rules are old, per se, but there are several things that they could do better.

I prefer a single die-roll for casualty resolution, but then you get really weird kill probabilities on anything less than d10s (see Space Hulk and Legions of Steel/Planetstorm). two-dice works pretty well (see Flames of War), and saves a set of rolls.

With practice, the GW statline is quick enough to resolve in combat (frankly, Infinity uses a similar roll to-hit, roll to-save, roll morale mechanic), but it doesn't necessarily feel elegant in high model-count games.

The real recurring failure in GW games is the Command and Morale system. 40k and WFB use pretty much the same rules (which are loaded with exceptions). Epic: Armageddon's Blast Marker system is better, but still has exceptions written into every army list (Marines take double BMs and often have a 'leader', everyone else has a 'leader' in just about every formation), as opposed to getting the core rules working correctly in the first place.