"Warhammer Fantasy 5th" Topic

This was a sort of classic set of rules. Not saying they worked perfectly, but they represent a sorta high point of fun and tactics.

Anyone ever publish an errata of them – my memory of those days is a bit hazy. But, I'm thinking of some Oldhammer, and that or 3rd would be the way to go.

I never liked their path to "heros, magicians and monsters" that were replacing infantry as the unit of choice, so I also hold dear memories to the 3rd edition.

Nowadays, I mainly use the minis with different rule systems. Oathmark or Kings of War, and we will try Saga AoM soon. Just play the minis, not the rules :-)

I enjoyed 2nd and 3rd and I'm currently in the middle of a 2nd edition Oldhammer project and 2nd is my favourite edition these days mostly due to nostalgia.

Having said that my friends and I had fun, back in the day, with games of 4th and 5th editions as well (I seem to recall there wasn't a vast amount of difference between the two it was more minor tweaks than a full overall like 3rd to 4th was)

4th was the start of Herohammer which was fine but different from the earlier editions and of course magic had a big overhaul with magic items becoming a lot more common with the advent of the magic item cards. What WAB did show though was it was possible to have good games of 4/5th edition with out the Herohammer aspect of WFB.

I will be lynched here by the Oldhammer brigade but 3rd was th most complex, slowest playing and least playable edition of the rules. Try reading the rules and you will get a headache. They are a product of their age

4th streamlined it all and made it more decisive but probably reduced some of the toolkit aspect and the freedom to create your own background as 4th was locked into their army books. However, 3rd also had army lists as well

In answer to your question, I am unaware of an errata for those editions. I can't recall one being published back in the day

I was thinking of a modern player-made / fan-made one from the Oldhammer guys.

I'm not above tinkering with it myself, just don't like to reinvent the wheel.

I have a copy of 3rd, but haven't played it – it looks complicated and reminds me of "Universal Soldier" which I own. I liked 5th back in the day, and it was the first one I actually played.

Happy to try new/old things, though!

One thing I have no idea about…2nd edition.

What was that like?

2nd was, imo, a less crunchy version of 3rd the basics are very similar but the rules are spread out of three thin books, in a box set, one of the main rules, one for magic rules and one for lore, race stats and army lists. All three books together are a fraction of the size of the weighty tomb that is the 3rd edition rule book.

The thing that marks out 2nd for me is it much more of a sand box game that is designed for scenario games and campaigns rather than tournament style play. 2nd edition is the era of the classic campaign box sets like McDeth, Bloodbath at Orc's Drift and Terror of the Lichemaster as well as the era of the Classic Regiments of Renown like Bugman's Dwarf rangers, Harboth's Black Mountain Boys and Grom's Goblin Guard.

Anyone ever publish an errata of them

Back in the day, GW had a bit haphazard approach to errata and FAQs, though they occasionally appeared in White Dwarf. There were quite a number of FAQ articles in WD towards the end of the 4th edition, though I think these dried up once the 5th edition came out (the ones for army books would still stay relevant). 6th edition had a more systematic approach (especially with the Annual/Chronicles compilations), but that is another story.

As for fan-made ones, how can a non-author write an actual errata (ie. identify issues in text that do not match with the intent of the authors)? You might want to look instead for fan-made house-rule collections, which might also address issues in the rules that some people find vague.

One thing that the folks in the studio adjusted for official tournaments was the victory point system, which tended to favour certain point value ranges for units (e.g. it was much better to field a unit worth 99 points than one worth 101 points). In the revised system, destroyed units yielded their full points value (rather than one divide by hundred and rounded up), and the other values were multiplied by hundred to match – essentially the same as 6th edition victory points system.

I was thinking of a modern player-made / fan-made one from the Oldhammer guys.

I'm not above tinkering with it myself, just don't like to reinvent the wheel.

I have a copy of 3rd, but haven't played it – it looks complicated and reminds me of "Universal Soldier" which I own. I liked 5th back in the day, and it was the first one I actually played.

Happy to try new/old things, though!

Also managed to locate a bunch of 2nd ed. stuff on line – may have to try that in the future…Old-Oldhammer!

"One thing that the folks in the studio adjusted for official tournaments was the victory point system, which tended to favour certain point value ranges for units (e.g. it was much better to field a unit worth 99 points than one worth 101 points). In the revised system, destroyed units yielded their full points value (rather than one divide by hundred and rounded up), and the other values were multiplied by hundred to match – essentially the same as 6th edition victory points system."

Funny, was just thinking about that last night! Yep, full points would be best. When I think about it, it seems a bunch of the issues revolve around trying to streamline the rules for battles, instead of just saying "actual points of unit" instead of "1 point for each 100 round up" etc.

I agree that 3rd was a bit slow & cumbersome. We used it for large D&D battles (because it played faster than D&D), but never got beyond Chaos war bands with it. 4th was when I got into the armies, but with Hero-hammer coming to it's peak, there was no point in collecting an army when a couple of God-like wizard lords could dominate the game. (We moved over to Warhammer Ancients during the 5th edition).

I still play 7th edition rules using 6th edition army books. It seemed to be where they hit the proper balance.

Have you taken a look at 9th age? the-ninth-age.com

There is an extensive online FAQ for both 5th Edition as well as another one for 4th Edition. These were compiled from the Direwolf Warhammer mailing list. Both FAQs are drawn entirely from official sources, including White Dwarf and questions that were put directly to the Dev team (Rick Priestley, Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson etc.), identified as "the Primarchs." Both FAQs are still very easy to find using the Internet Archive and various similar projects and I tend to reference them regularly. I'll link them here but I recommend you download a copy since these things tend to disappear suddenly:

4th Edition FAQ:
link

5th Edition FAQ:
link

That said, the "errata" for these games is very little. All the errata was published in White Dwarf or in later printings of the books (for example, the later printings of the Dark Elf army book corrected the price of Repeater Bolt Throwers to be 100 pts). The Direwolf FAQs are an extremely useful reference, but don't expect a ton of errata because there just wasn't much to begin with. It's mainly common questions and clarifications.

There is also a much shorter Q&A that has mysterious origins… I seem to remember the White Dwarf people being involved in some capacity, but the answers sound a lot like Rick Priestley… That can be found here:

5e Q&A:
link

A little more information about my previous post, the Q&A turns out to be directly from Jervis Johnson.