"Which WHFB edition for someone starting the hobby" Topic

This may invite some torment, but after 20 years of historical gaming, I have decided to enter the WHFB realm again. Not since high school have I played the old 1st or second edition roleplaying game. I read a lot about editions and that things seem to be headed for doom at GW regarding the impending shake up with 9th edition and a world of chaos, "bubbles" of reality. None of this invokes fond sentiment on my part. Still, the WH world and it's depth and breadth of game is impressive. I'm wondering if I should play the 8th ed. which seems to be considered as a good rules system but dominated by masses of infantry or if I should play the 7th ed. rules with 6th edition books that would still allow a good Bretonnian army and also more emphasis on characters. I will say that my preference is on using good tactics not super-characters though as I've heard 5th edition was all about super hero type characters. I'm looking at a significant investment but one worth making I think as long as I pick the right point in the editions. Any comments welcome!

It depends on your gaming goals and tastes. If you intend to get back into the tournament scene you need the latest release. Otherwise ask the people you intend to play what version of the rules they like unless you are planning on playing solo all the time.

I would go with 6th. I started with 5th edition and that was hero hammer all the way. A Chaos lord could take out an entire Elven army by himself.

6th was fun, brought in bigger units as character stoppers, toned down characters, made the magic item system more compact, manageable and characterful. The books are cheap now.

I think it balanced characters with units very well in that a character could have a serious impact on a combat but they were unlikely to be able to take on an entire unit of anything but the weakest stuff by themselves. Most characters didn't have the killing power to mass enough wounds to overcome a standard, rank bonus AND outnumbering bonus.

I don't know if there were any that could fighting against a fresh unit. I guess a chaos lord on a dragon might be able to do so.

Bretonnians were probably a little rough then, I had stopped playing them with 5th edition, but I bet that with a character at their head a lance of knights could still knock someone for a blackberry sundae.

Thanks, this is what I've been reading. I'm a little confused though on sixth-seventh. They seem to have been considered as software release 1.0 and 1.1. Then Eighth was 2.0. Thus, have read that can use 7th edition rules with sixth codex army books. Is that true? As to gaming community. The 40K people who have not done this before at our local gaming group are interested and they consider me to be able to seriously bring terrain and well painted stuff to the fore. They are familiar also with WH old world environment. We are not interested in tournaments, just a group of collectors/players/friends with competition being limited amongst our own chosen time period within WH evolution.

People who criticize 7th edition mostly seem to focus on the Dark Elf and Chaos Daemons army books as being broken. In terms of ease of entry and plentiful resources, 6th edition is the way to go because any of the army books and most supplements are available very cheap on Ebay. I have read many people say that you should use all the 6th edition books and supplements with the base 7th edition rules.

3rd Edition offers great flexibility in terms of designing your own armies and characters. Excellent for the painters out there as the figure requirement is low compared to others giving you chance to really pay attention to each figure you paint. It is growing in popularity with a strong following under the title "Oldhammer".

6th- Would agree with other comments on 6th edition.

8th edition- If you like rolling lots of dice then this is the edition for you. The strong feature in this edition is that virtually all figures get to fight and units are not just bodyguards for characters.

All other editions I didn't enjoy that much. The above have their negative issues as well of course, but all in all are good editions imho.

I don't play WHFB often these days, but from what I'm hearing about 9th it looks like I'll stay with 8th when I do play.

Christopher

I'd say that one of the problems with 7th was the Daemons. I really liked how they put Chaos together in 6th edition. It had a lot of flavour. It made sense. You could mix and match beastmen, chaos warriors and daemons but you had to have a majority of stuff from the army the leader came from. So if your general was a daemon you needed more daemons.

With 6th and 7th you have the option of dispensing with the army books and potential balance issues and use the Ravening Hordes lists which are probably the most balanced army lists ever produced for Warhammer.

Also, is it possible to play with Dogs of War in sixth/seventh? I love the feel of them as they seem Condotierre like.

"Ravening Hordes lists which are probably the most balanced army lists ever produced for Warhammer."

Yep, I'd second that.

Christopher

I'd say 3rd or 8th, but the next one is right around the corner if you can wait a few months.

I'm shocked at the number of players recommending that a newbie to WHFB play old editions. Well, I would be shocked if TMP weren't stocked with folks who remember the past fondly (myself included).

The truth is that if you're going to invest in Warhammer and it's very expensive figures, you're already paying a high premium for the only truely unique thing that Warhammer has going for it. That is, a large, built in player base. If you're going to make any use of that player base then there's absolutely no reason to use any edition other than the most current. Despite the number of fans on TMP of older editions, you will likely have a VERY hard time finding local players of older editions.

You can always pick up older rulebooks and army books for cheap afterward, but I'd strongly recommend going with the most recent which in this case means waiting a couple months for the release of 9th edition.

The only complicating factor is that there is some rumor that Brettonians may be dropped in the 9th edition. If that turns out to be the case, you have a few options.
-Go to the trouble of sourcing models and players for a previous edition.
-Use the Empire army list with Brettonian or similar historical miniatures
-Skip WHFB altogether.

5th/6th and play for fun, collect oldschool figures and where you can't get non TM units that give the right Oldschool feel to your units, try not to be griffed by sellers of these older miniatures either. Have a look at alternate not canon books as well, I'm doing a Estilian style army (sort of Spanish style) to as well, this feeds my historical sweetooth as well as giving the usual fantastical units that I enjoy.
Do a bit of surfing you will find most of these books as PDF downloads too.
Cheers happy collecting and gaming.

My preferred edition was 7th. It did away with the (IMO) fiddly wrapping of units. I thought the core rules were solid and the first few army books were reasonably balanced-ish. Later army books, the dark elf, demons & vampire counts IIRC, were less so.

Thanks for so many comments, of course it makes sense to wait for 9th and then invest, however, from reading around I get a funny feel that GW sort of plans to wreck the entire world and playing in this weird system with the types of end times characters seems very far fetched for my taste.

You do know there are two editions of Ravening Hordes, which are we talking here?

What ordinarybass said: the point of playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle is the large player base, who all play the current edition.

Except I think you would be safe going with 8th edition now. Either buy the 8th edition hardback, or get the paperback on eBay (it only comes in the box sets).

It's not really clear what GW will do and not all the rumors can be trusted. But GW has a history of new releases available to purchase for the holidays, so I think the release date rumor is probably solid: 9/2015 preorders, 10/2015 box set releases, and 11/2015 book release. This means you have *at*least* 6 months until anyone can play 9th edition, and 8 months before many players will consider switching over.

Also many players have been ignoring the current End Times releases that update 8th edition. It's possible that attitude of "we're just sticking with 8th edition for now" will be sustainable into next year.

And, using economics and past publishing schedules as a reality check, GW will take years to replace the current plastic kits and army books so it's very unlikely any of those purchases will be obsolete any time soon.

You can do Dogs of Wars with Ravening Hordes. I am talking of the booklet that was produced with the 6th edition.

This one

If you are interested PM me or join the Ravening Hordes yahoo group.

Play the game you like and the one you can find a player for. The current editions have the largest base it is true. But all you need is one more mate.

"however, from reading around I get a funny feel that GW sort of plans to wreck the entire world and playing in this weird system with the types of end times characters seems very far fetched for my taste"

I wouldn't place too much faith in the rumors. Even if some of the fluff goes badly, that's easily transferrable. Getting a used 8th edition mini-book is a good idea.

"who all play the current edition."

Indeed. If you don't want the advantage of being able to find lots of people who play then the answer is obvious -- "Fantasy Warriors"… Free rules, no miniatures restrictions, better medieval command system…

Liking the 8th edition, not so much the terrain (or lack thereof) rules and pretty much ignore the Hordes rule. Like the Magic system in the 8th. Have been completely out of the loop regarding a ninth edition.

Id wait until May when the rumored new edition is supposed to release. Then you can see how things shake out.

I agree that if having a large player base is not an issue, go with third edition or with another game system entirely.

With the release of the disliked 8th edition, our local group dumped the Warhammer rules altogether and moved on to Kings of War. KoW is faster and more fun than any version of Warhammer we've played, you can easily customize your armies and use whatever minis you want, and the units are element-based so you don't end up with a giant pile of dead individual minis off to the side of the battle. The KoW 2.0 rulebook should be out in a month or two.

link

That's actually an excellent solution. KoW could be a great ruleset to hold you over until you see what 9th edition looks like. I really like KoW and it has rules to cover most every WHFB army.

Also the rules and army lists are free here: link

Just to supplement the above, Kings of War is published by Mantic Games, and while they do manufacture their own line of fantasy miniatures, the rules are relatively agnostic about it because the game came out to woo people into using their Warhammer armies for the game (at first).

Kings of War utilizes units of 5, 10, 20 or more figures onto a single unit base or movement tray--presumably you are using individually-based figures ala Warhammer, but you are not required to do this, for the determinative issue is the size of the unit base. Casualties are not removed, instead they add up as a modifier to morale tests after each combat to determine if the unit disorders or routs (I am simplifying, but this is essentially it). The rules are extremely flexible on movement and other issues--really a delightful set of introductory rules that yet have some meat in them. Magic is handled as just special combat attacks or abilities for magic-using characters, very simple compared to having an elaborate spell system--some complain about this but it does make it easy to play.

>>I'd say 3rd or 8th, but the next one is right around the corner if you can wait a few months.

This.
I was all hot to trot about getting bacck in to WFB but the impending release of the next edition made me put it on hold and pick up 40k again while we wait.

That being said, as others have noted, 3rd edition is hard to beat.

Martin
Who was "Oldhammer" before "Oldhammer" was cool….

Great news this thread lives on…. Got a used 6th edition set for $55 USD with rule book in paperback and 10 supplemental army books. A steal, in my view. Also got the ravening hordes booklet for $24. USD Our local group is open to anything that they view as fun and would consider probably 3rd, 6th/7th, or 8th which allegedly will still work with 9th from what I read as pockets of old world may survive where 8th rules could still work….maybe…. Read somewhere that 8th was designed with "object oriented design like they use in software" and it made inheritance mechanisms. What does that mean, I'm no software writer.

To answer your question, Object Oriented Programming means that the game is more like an engine where you have parts that can be taken apart and put back into a different comparable engine and still work. A '57 Corvette engine part can fit into a different Corvette and still work. The opposite is that you cant take Shakespeare and put in Toni Morrison and have the same thing happen.

Honestly you can do that with any edition if you wish. I would recommend to use that sparingly, and only when you have mastered both editions that you are sampling. With that in mind, some editions are based on the previous editions. Most specifically the 7th is basically the 6th with a few buffs, same in that the 5th is to the 4th. Using those pairs interchangeably should not be an issue.

It is great news that you were able to locate a starter set for the 6th. I personally do like that edition better than any of the other ones. If that is engaging you and your group, I encourage you to play it. With all of the different editions, I do find that to be the most balanced and the most back up for it. Were I to start playing WFB once again, it would be with this edition. You can get most of the army books for $5 USD or so on ebay. If you get bogged down and have trouble, please post on here surely someone can help you out. Also if you were ever a WAB fan, try using some of the rules from there that would compliment the rules. I would like to know how it goes.

Normally I would have advised to go with the latest edition because that's where the player base is and just grin and bear it. But 8th is unpopular and soon to be replaced so it seems a poor place to start.

Given 8th problems and worries about where 9th is going a retro movement has arisen and may be worth feeding. If we could all settle on 6th (or some other system) the player base would shift – the only reason to even consider 8th.

Another positive (for you) is that the prior Bretonian Army Book with wedging knights and bow, great special characters (a Robin Hood, Joan of Arc etc.) is perhaps the best ever WH Army Book (and great Perry Brother figures to match).

TomT

Warhammer killed that version of Bretonnia .. hence my complete loss of interest in Warhammer.

Now Warmaster … that's a whole different and positive story; but also alas GW shelved that because it was too good and hence did not need to be upgraded.

Good luck with your decision to go with 6th. It's also my favorite edition of WFB, and I had gotten a few guys into it for a spell. Sadly, my primary opponent wants to jump onto 9th when it releases as he prefers to play whatever the latest version is.
I'm still pushing for 6th with another guy, who prefers Armies Of Arcana. While AoA is good, it lacks the special unit characteristics inherent to Warhammer. He is willing to try out 6th, and I believe he will be hooked after a couple of games.
Otherwise, I'm sticking to Mighty Armies.

Yeah, I would say 3rd, 6th or 8th Edition. My group has been having a TON of fun over the last few years with 8th, more than we have for any previous edition fwiw. 6th was probably one of the most 'all-inclusive' rulesets though it has to be said, and we recently did a siege game using 8th as the base but with the 6th Ed siege rules. 7th was too broken in favor of heavy cavalry which many think the horde rules in 8th were created to counter (and they did!).

Most rumors seem to point at July for 9th Ed but I wouldn't hold out much hope for the Old World, it was (spoilers!) literally torn apart and destroyed in the last End Times book. Nothing about 'bubbles of reality' either (thank God!) but it does end with a 'godlike figure who was once a man' cradling a small spark of life energy – personally I think whoever this is (Sigmar? Nagash?) will try to rebuild a world as they remember it (which gives GW carte blanche to remove poorly selling minis 'because xxx forgot about them') though that's pure speculation on my part lol.

You can certainly try Kings of War; my group did and initially liked the possibilities but the actual gameplay left (in our opinion!) a lot to be desired and we soon went back to Warhammer, which for all it's wonkiness just had a lot more flavor. If 9th blows then I can see my group simply continuing to play 8th with what we have (and hope that GW keeps producing the minis for a while at least!).

Well, if the rumours around the web are true 9th dumps just about everything and resets the entire Warhammer world. No big armies, just small warbands. Seems we've been down this road before.

Wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if 8th lived on as the mass battle system and 9th was an entirely unrelated skirmish system so long as GW carried on producing figures for each version.

Who knows, we may see a massive flood of armies on Ebay in the near future.

I enjoy reading all these comments as they seem more high minded than many of the haters and naysayers on other communities. I have a habit of digging into stuff and doing lots of research, so I've been able to get some good feel for all these editions and the support over time. I am running into more and more people who feel like there is such a massive tome of knowledge and product out there for the whole "Old World" that no matter what you like you can pick out editions and races and minis and have a good experience no matter what GW does in future. This points to a grass roots movement of people who like the good old days when WF was "like the Holy Roman Empire but with magic and orcs". Last weekend I witnessed a bunch of guys in their teens and twenties playing 40K and was not impressed. Not much different from army men lined up in a sand box edge to edge and a shoot em up mentality. They retorted my suggestions of a fantasy game with "That's like chess, too complicated, we don't like that". I see GW trying to entice more people like this into the hobby and a skirmish system fits into this point and shoot game philosophy which substitutes weapon data for an elegant game; and is really the lowest common denominator of gaming. Disappointing to me. But still I admire the success of the GW brand with the Old World and it's Intellectual Property at the center. That's why I can't really believe they are giving it up as it's all they have really. An outside non gamer financial person summed up GW in an article when the company went public as " a business that is successful due to it's unique IP which is hard to reproduce".

Another positive (for you) is that the prior Bretonian Army Book with wedging knights and bow, great special characters (a Robin Hood, Joan of Arc etc.) is perhaps the best ever WH Army Book (and great Perry Brother figures to match).

Just to be clear you mean 6th Bretonnian, or 7th?

Thanks

There seems to be a sixth edition book published in 2000 and one published in 2002. Any difference.

Last weekend I witnessed a bunch of guys in their teens and twenties playing 40K and was not impressed. Not much different from army men lined up in a sand box edge to edge and a shoot em up mentality.

Same thing in our club, Each army probably cost around £300.00 GBP or more and there's nowhere to move to except straight ahead, these guys are in their 30's and the only historical game they look at is FoW.

The only complicating factor is that there is some rumor that Brettonians may be dropped in the 9th edition. If that turns out to be the case, you have a few options.

From what I've heard the whole world is being dropped, 1 race of "good" humans, 1 race of elves etc.

Maybe they've realised that the £300.00 GBP+ armies aren't sustainable any more. Mordheim had a lot going for it.

I'm hoping it will be like 6th Edition in that it includes rules for skirmish gaming but also rules for mass battles, cos I'm all about the mass battles part myself :)

From what I've heard 9th will be skirmish only, 8th may continue to be supported for the time being.

Interesting – most recent rumors I've read suggest that skirmish will be a supported option in the rulebook to help get new players started playing but still not the main focus of the game. Instead, newer miniatures releases will be of the Blightkings/Stormfiends/Skullreapers variety, ie larger models that you need fewer of, but that armies and not warbands are still the focus. It's just that new 9th Ed era armies will have less models (but the optimistic word is that all existing armies will still be usable, even if they won't necessarily receive much in the way of new updates).

Personally I'm trying my hardest to stay positive, and given the above I'm actually intrigued to see what 9th does hold. If it's crap though I'll be going back to 8th :)

The one from the 1990's early to mid.

Starting to go down hill very quickly in the later 1990's.

On several Youtube channels I have seen unofficial news that 9th Edition will become primarily skirmish and also rumors (not confirmed) that Games Workshop is transitioning to ROUND bases. Again, nothing confirmed but if true it is most definitely a financial decision at the top to move into a skirmish game.

Aside from the round bases being a huge GW you to everyone who has armies 100% based on square bases, it seems that 9th might finally spell the death of Warhammer fantasy as far as it being a mass combat game.

Personally I think you made the right choice going back in time to the 6th edition. Very smart move both economically and practically.

I have always kept my fantasy gaming to casual and I have never been involved in the tournament scene. Just kept it to a few select people I know I can play games with and then it's mostly the collecting and displaying aspect.

In my opinion WHFB's finest era was Third Edition. From both a rules standpoint and a miniatures standpoint. It has never been quite the same since.

I really like posts like yours because it reminds us that we don't need GW's permission to do anything! I have always thought it absolutely insane with each edition that all books and supplements become "obsolete", and GW practically acts like its previous editions never existed. Makes me chuckle that they don't think people can go on Ebay and basically completely equip themselves with a previous edition of the game for like one fifth the cost of when it was first released? Lol.

I would also highly recommend looking into Kings of War as some others have eluded to on here. Not to mention that Kings of War makes awesome minis that you can get for about half of what GW minis cost(even less if you can catch an Ebay listing at the right time), and the detail is every bit as good. Right now there are tons of listings on Ebay for KOR starter sets as well as individual regiments.

Best bet is a mix if older GW minis and KOR minis and use the 6th Edition WH rules.

I have all the rule books and army books for WHFB 6th Edition onward.

One other thing that really makes Kings of War so attractive to me is that they actually have updated SIEGE rules. Games Workshop abandoned siege rules with like the 4th edition I think, it's been forever, as in 15+ years forever. That has always baffled me since they still sell the Warhammer Fortress on their website but no longer sell any of the siege attacker or siege defender sets. I guess the fortress is used as building terrain or just eye candy on a table top.

I have really been favoring KOR lately and I just think it's going to become what I primarily play for fantasy in the future. Games Workshop I think just couldn't get out of their own way when it came to fantasy and now they are obliterating it for the sake of entering the skirmish game market. They support 40K way more than fantasy now any way.

As a final note, I absolutely despise what they are doing with "The End Times". The Old World needs to stay The Old World, if it's not broken don't fix it. Another excuse to sell $70 USD supplement books and a new round of $50 USD individual models, and what seems to be a World of Warcraft style cataclysm event.

I'd wait to see what the next month or so brings. There's a lot of rumours and stuff going around. Before you leap into the game wait to see how it pans out. This hobby isn't cheap.

Be careful buying mantic stuff too. Some of thier stuff is good but there's a lot of rubbish too. Only a couple of thier armies are decent. The games ok, it's overly simple though but if that's what you like go for it. It's free after all.

Find out what your local player base is playing and go with that. At least you'll get games in.

"Not to mention that Kings of War makes awesome minis that you can get for about half of what GW minis cost(even less if you can catch an Ebay listing at the right time), and the detail is every bit as good."

Um…no. Maybe some of the better newer mantic models are up there with the older GW ones but otherwise the detail and crispness of the model are usually some way behind the curve. The price is definitely right though, a good example of the 'you get what you pay for' concept, I know I picked up some mantic skeletons to bulk out a Vampire Counts army and they were very useful to be sure.

"One other thing that really makes Kings of War so attractive to me is that they actually have updated SIEGE rules. Games Workshop abandoned siege rules with like the 4th edition I think, it's been forever, as in 15+ years forever. That has always baffled me since they still sell the Warhammer Fortress on their website but no longer sell any of the siege attacker or siege defender sets. I guess the fortress is used as building terrain or just eye candy on a table top."

So I guess you must have missed the specific 6th Edition Warhammer Siege rulebook, and also the siege rules Jervis Johnson wrote for 8th Edition that were in the Blood in the Badlands book. You can still currently buy the Siege Tower model and it was only fairly recently they dropped the Siege Attackers and Siege Defenders boxes (presumably because they were the last of the metal holdouts and never got updated to finecast).

"Be careful buying mantic stuff too. Some of thier stuff is good but there's a lot of rubbish too. Only a couple of thier armies are decent. The games ok, it's overly simple though but if that's what you like go for it. It's free after all."

This – Griveton speaks the truth here.

@Bob Runnicles,

Well, all I can say is that I've seen the Orc and Dwarf armies up close and painted at a pro level and I stand by that they are every bit as good as GW. So I guess it's all relative but they look pretty darn good.

"Be careful buying mantic stuff too"…. but couldn't that be applied to any company? Not everything GW makes is great.

Kings of War is free? You mean the rules as a download? How else is it free? There is a hardcover rule book and supplements, none of those are free. The game is currently in its third edition. The minis aren't free. How is it free? You're making it sound like it's a free PDF game with paper cutouts for toy soldiers.

I've backed almost all of mantic's kickstarters and while yes a nice paint job can certainly help them, on the whole the minis just aren't are nice as those from GW, speaking from personal experience and as a painter who has won the occasional painting contest. Whether or not you prefer the aesthetics of the mantic stuff is entirely a personal choice.

Kings of War, the rules, are currently available as a free download on the mantic site, along with all the army lists. Yes, you can buy (or will be able to) a nicely produced printed rulebook but the game itself is available for free, I'm not sure where the confusion lies. Kinda like Infinity 3rd Ed, the rules are online for free or you can drop a pile of cash and pick up the nicely produced hardcover. Also, that wasn't even my comment, I was just backing up what Griveton said in the post above mine.

Anyway, as I mentioned we tried KoW on several occasions and it simply didn't hold enough depth for us. If it does for you, then great! Have fun! For my group? We're still waiting to see what 9th Ed WFB brings :)