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Unified Warhammer Fantasy thread

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I noticed lack of one general thread regarding Warhammer Fantasy, so I decided to create a one. :)

Not only Warhammer Fantasy Battle discussions welcomed, but also all things related to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (regardless of edition).

If anyone has questions regarding Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's second edition, feel free to ask since I own most of its sourcebooks.


Warhammer 40,000 has its own thread here

Edited by Mrph1 on Apr 22nd 2024 at 5:35:40 PM

CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#201: Jun 27th 2015 at 11:50:16 AM

@theLibrarian: People will tend to hope that something they like about a franchise survives a reboot of that franchise. (I don't really get that at this point, but that's because by now I've lost all hope in GW as a company.)

Put another way: If someone did a reboot of Firefly, dressed everyone in slacks and Rush t-shirts, got rid of the ship and the sci-fi elements, set it in an office building and had Keanu Reeves in full sleepwalk mode as Mal, it would be natural to expect a bit of disappointment. The complaints are because all of us fell in love with something about this world in the first place, and now we each individually get to watch those things we fell in love with get stripped away, especially when they're being removed due to the economic unsustainability of the egregious incompetence I have pissed and moaned about on too many occasions already.

YoKab Since: Jan, 2015
#202: Jun 27th 2015 at 12:00:34 PM

The issue was that Warhammer Fantasy had this gothic german vibe when it comes to the units. Here they look like demigods or "Medieval Space Marines". While the old world minatures looked cartoonish, the armor design was spot on, historical gritty and german vibe, and could used being modified to look more realistic.

By this point there is nothing, Warhammer Fantasy now looks like a spin-off of Warhammer 40,000. By this point they just want to appeal to the 40k guys rather than make both setting thier own thing as previous edition did.

Where are my renaissance germany knights? they say. I say if this is a sign of things to come, everything that made WFB what it was, did indeed get killed by "The End Times". People are trying to keep hope because of the setting and all that.

Funnily enough, these days I'm playing the tabletops of Fantasy Flight Games (Deathwatch, Dark Heresy, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, etc...)

edited 27th Jun '15 12:06:53 PM by YoKab

CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#203: Jun 27th 2015 at 12:06:14 PM

When GW sets out to piss people off, it doesn't do it half-heartedly.

YoKab Since: Jan, 2015
#204: Jun 27th 2015 at 12:07:41 PM

Games Orkshop, we anger humies!

Meanwhile Wizards of the Coast took notes and are improving, not a big jump but still getting tha hang of it.

edited 27th Jun '15 12:12:38 PM by YoKab

CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#205: Jun 27th 2015 at 12:10:50 PM

I'm inclined to suspect that most of GW's top executives have one giant spike of hair ascending skywards from just above each ear.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#206: Jun 27th 2015 at 6:49:50 PM

...is this why everyone is upset? it looks fucking cool, but I will wait and see waht is happen but for the rest is part GW pissing everyone off and part....well everyone bean piss of for whatever

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Laithelryn Since: Mar, 2015
#207: Jun 27th 2015 at 7:10:17 PM

It is very embittering when you have spent money and time creating an army for a setting only to have it all changed. My favourite part of the game was naming all the soldiers in my army and giving the backstories but now all of that has been ruined. It is as if you were playing a roleplaying game and several months into the campaign the GM kills off everyone's character, drastically modifies the setting and expects all of the players to be happy and excited about it.

edited 27th Jun '15 7:10:52 PM by Laithelryn

CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#208: Jun 27th 2015 at 7:13:02 PM

[up][up] Oh, they're good-looking Space Marine models. The problem is that none of us got into WHFB to collect Space Marines.

theLibrarian Since: Jul, 2009
#209: Jun 27th 2015 at 7:30:29 PM

Considering it's a new world and no one living there has no recollection of the Empire or anything of course they'd look different.

Tacitus Since: Jan, 2001
#210: Jun 27th 2015 at 7:40:20 PM

Couple more pics of the new minis, and some other AoS releases. Who wants to pay $130 for a limited edition GW carrying case?

Something that's been mentioned in the comments section for these articles is the idea that Age of Sigmar is just the first phase in the Warhammer reboot, a skirmish-level game intended to attract new players who will then expand their forces into a proper army for a more Warhammer-y Warhammer game.

Here's my question, though: how would that work with these bases? The idea of units ranking up in neat squares has been part of Warhammer for so long that it's hard to imagine breaking from it (even if some of the rumors are suggesting exactly that), but if they don't make that change, then how are you supposed to use these skirmish forces in your proper army?

Also, it looks like every model's base has a skull on it. Just a little absurd.

CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#211: Jun 27th 2015 at 7:51:26 PM

[up][up] Yes, you're right, GW is allowed to strip away everything that made their world unique or interesting and redesign their leadoff faction as Space Marines Minus Backpacks.

At the same time, however, we as (soon-to-be-former) fans are allowed to express our disappointment that they decided on Space Marines Minus Backpacks rather than capitalising on the things that made their original world unique and interesting.

Put another way: They're allowed to suck, and we're allowed to say they suck. Reminding us again and again that they're allowed to suck is not discouraging us from thinking they suck, and it is not magically making them suck less.

Rotpar Always 3:00 am in the Filth (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Always 3:00 am in the Filth
#212: Jun 28th 2015 at 1:44:37 AM

Like I said a few months ago, the two factions I liked the most were just curb-stomped by End Times and it may be safe to assume that they will not be returning. I'm still behind on my 40k models so I wasn't in any rush to get WFB but the Tomb Kings and Bretonnia were the two that really held my interest.

So, at the moment, I am less likely to delve into a radical new version of the game. And I don't know if those two factions were really "iconic" as some as the others—like how many people would be angry if the Dark Eldar were Squatted versus the Space Marines all becoming Master Chef, Doomguy, or Samus Aran?

Since I'm barely a WFB fan, I'm much more willing to be generous and hope for the best. But then again, I'm also not the guy at the risk of the new game basically throwing out my over-priced, time-devouring, customized army of Steampunk Holy Roman Empire dudes for Spess Knights.

edited 28th Jun '15 1:45:55 AM by Rotpar

But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#213: Jun 28th 2015 at 12:40:41 PM

"fans are allowed to express our disappointment that they decided on Space Marines Minus Backpacks rather than capitalising on the things that made their original world unique and interesting."

the same one everyone else said it pretty much a pastiche of everything else? that original world? ughhh...

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#214: Jun 28th 2015 at 12:52:05 PM

In my experience, upwards of 90% of fantasy writing is either a pastiche of history, a pastiche of other fantasy, or both. What the old WHFB setting did was try and include bits of history that you don't normally see in fantasy, and try and have fun with the bits you do. Like the Empire's dress sense and the Elector Count system of appointing Emperors. Like the attention paid to Bretonnian peasantry as well as the noble knights. Like the overplayed bat motifs on Vampire Counts models. Like the utter lack of Fantasy Gun Control. They tried to make it different from a D&D setting, which is something a surprisingly long list of fantasy authors never even try.

math792d Since: Jun, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#215: Jun 28th 2015 at 12:53:10 PM

[up][up] There's a difference between something being a pastiche and ripping off your own game in an effort to increase sales. Methinks the people who want to play with big burly armored humans will play Space Marines, and the guys who wanted a rank-and-file miniature game with the occasionally giant hydra will play Fantasy.

edited 28th Jun '15 12:53:20 PM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#216: Jun 28th 2015 at 12:57:11 PM

[up]Exept the chaos warriors or brettonian who are pretty much typical armour factions, or imperial guard who is pretty much normal human(replace animals with tanks and is pretty much the same)

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#217: Jun 28th 2015 at 1:02:28 PM

Well, yes, if you deliberately ignore all the ways things function differently, they start to look very similar.

For example, in 40K, tanks are mostly invulnerable to small arms fire. In WHFB, monsters usually are not. In addition, tanks are suited more to ranged fire, while monsters generally prefer to get in and tear stuff up. This means that in 40K tank battles mostly consist of trying to shoot down their tankbusters before they shoot you down, while in WHFB monsters are expected to move in with support because they can deal a ton of damage but don't have the combat bonuses to win drawn-out fights.

Edit: The opening of this was ruder than I intended. I'm sorry. I should probably just back away for a bit. I'm just...I didn't think GW even had the ability to disappoint me any more, and they had to go and prove me wrong.

edited 28th Jun '15 1:22:48 PM by CountDorku

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#218: Jun 28th 2015 at 9:16:02 PM

[up]thing is, that is not even the thing that make warhammer stand of their own, in warhammer 40.000 it is his gothic visual that shred all the factions: citys that cover world, cathedral-factories, strange a bizarre worlds, for me this is even better than all generic sci fi who have lifeless air around them.

warhammer fantasy have this? this let said sirit of their own? even if age of sigmar is wrong(im not going to said anything about this) what the old warhammer world have that make it what it is

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
CountDorku Behold my legal acumen! from the depths of insanity (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Behold my legal acumen!
#219: Jun 28th 2015 at 10:23:14 PM

It had a world with actual change - not the traditionally static fantasy settings, but one where the Empire was on the cusp of industrialising fully - and yet it was still in the artisan stage, so every Engineer would turn up packing their own kitbag of designs. (Even the much-derided clockwork horse was at least interesting.) It had that awkward balance between the nobles, the various religions, and the mages.

It had the three kindreds of elves, at once so alike and so different - each one starting from the same base aesthetic and twisting it to suit their appearances: while every other fantasy setting has had high, dark and wood elves, Warhammer's had those distinctive visual cues - high elf and dark elf armour clearly came from the same base design. (Also, dark elves riding velociraptors rather than spiders.)

It had the gnarled and festering caverns of the Skaven, dotted with crudely stitched together monsters and a relentless fog of mad science.

It had the Lizardmen, not the crude swamp-dwelling savages of D&D but an ancient and noble culture, broken by the disappearance of its gods and trying to hold together into an increasingly uncertain future.

It had Albion, its England-equivalent, not as the centre of the world as in most English-written fantasy novels but a nowhere backwater that was interesting for a while in the early 2000's and rarely spoken of again.

It had the Ogres, whose religious veneration of hunger expressed itself in giant gut armour. Whose god was a gnashing maw embedded in the Earth itself. Who gave bloody praise to it with every cannibalistic feast.

It had the Vampire Counts, whose devotion to outdoing every vampire movie ever led to them getting a ship in Dreadfleet that was literally a castle with sails bolted on.

It had the Beastmen and the Fimir, early children of Chaos, left to stew in resentment as the Dark Gods courted the fickle humans and abandoned them.

It had the Trolls, ever-mutating, a new variant spawning whenever a pack of trolls camps in an area for too long - the crude and blocky stone trolls, the fishlike swamp trolls and so on.

It had the Forest Goblins, stalking through the woods on the backs of the giant spiders they revere.

It had Khemri, its mummified nobles awakening in the belief that they would have life everlasting in a paradise...and being pissed as hell to learn that actually they get life everlasting as dessicated corpses with their internal organs in jars.

So yes, WHFB had its own identity. It may not have been as blatant as 40K's "even our most boring office building is covered in Gothic columns and has 4892332 skulls because our architects are the most morbid people on the planet", but it had its own identity.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#220: Jun 29th 2015 at 12:15:14 AM

[up]Almost everything you said can be resumed in one sentence: warhammer is VERY over the top.

I mean is actually a god choice, GW know very well they fecture are not the most original of all, neither they do the typical "standar fantasy with some twist" like warmachine or warcraft so instead they go up to elven and make that a distinct race of the own: dwarf are grumpy into the point of fatalim and respect the older into the very ground of in-universe mediaval stasis, while elf arrogance is actually a thing here and not a informed flaw,ogre are typical hungry and etc.

Also, the world of warhammer dosent change that much, is just that it have a very good backstory, after all one of the mayor complains against the setting is that it was so static and many of this changes you speak come from the fact the setting wasnt moving forward so you have to explore.

is true, the equivalent of england was barely there, but that is becaue it kept changing between editions(if you look the older wants, albion wasnt as backwars as it show today, something it sore a lot of fans) and the empire is pretty much england with germany tramplings.

Againt this is good but it come from a feature bot games have: instead of trying twisting and been "cleaver"(I never like this critic of the setting) they go for the most over the top thing and make them fit the setting, it works better to WH 40 K because...well is a galaxy after all. but not something it makes stand fantasy on his own

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
YoKab Since: Jan, 2015
#221: Jun 29th 2015 at 3:04:07 AM

The whole problem is that Games Workshop is still incompetant as last year, and they'll probably not fix the concern about edition rules, it's all about the minis! Warhammer 40,000 is the spin-off, but then it was trying to be its own thing. Now Warhammer Fnatasy is trying to copy paste designs from 40k instead of, I dunno... retaining the asthetic that made it its own thing. What both have in common was the black humor and the over the top presentatiom, but other than that they weren't coppastas when it comes to units.

Even if we ignore all that, look at the rules. Armies are getting expensive, some others are being ignored and are almostdated, specialist games being shutdown because reason. There are many issues the company needs to sort out. Especially when it comes to listenng to the community and feedback. How do you think Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition got fan acclaim? Wizards of the Coast did a whole year of testing and listening.

Of course, this is a company where its CEO says "We hire people for attitude not skill" in a corporate letter and tried to "save face" by claiming the year where they lost a lot on stock was a good one because reasons, and will hit you with copyright if your book said "Space Marines" as if they created the term, and will not hire a designer to make a more modern, better logo.

edited 29th Jun '15 3:15:06 AM by YoKab

theLibrarian Since: Jul, 2009
#223: Jun 29th 2015 at 11:00:59 AM

"It was never so easy to get into the hobby" says the company that charges at least 50 dollars for a single group of units.

YoKab Since: Jan, 2015
#224: Jun 29th 2015 at 12:02:28 PM

One funny comment about the whole pricing was "Guys, just save money for a good PC and buy Total War: Warhammer"

Tacitus Since: Jan, 2001
#225: Jun 29th 2015 at 1:58:36 PM

[up][up] One of the complaints I've heard from 40k players is that with the onslaught of new codices, supplements and data-slates, it's very hard to stay on top of all the rules. Nothing like showing up to a game only to be blindsided by a formation or something from that $54 supplement you didn't feel like shelling out for.

AoS at least doesn't have that problem, since there's a whopping two armies at the moment. And it sounds like the rules might be free.

What I am dubious about is the fourth promise, that "all models from the old Warhammer Fantasy armybooks will receive new rules and can be used in the new game." Nothing about the armies themselves all carrying over into the new setting, just that those figures will count as something. I'm imagining a scenario like those Spider Riders becoming Wolf Riders when an Orcs and Goblins army book dropped the Forest Gobbos.

Also, this Khorne Bloodtide counts as a "completely new" army? Pffft.

Hey, can we expect to see a Nurgle Pustide and Tzeentch Flametide in the near future? And what sort of tide will Slaanesh be bringing? Something sure to delight the kiddies, I bet.

Also, the world of warhammer dosent change that much, is just that it have a very good backstory, after all one of the mayor complains against the setting is that it was so static and many of this changes you speak come from the fact the setting wasnt moving forward so you have to explore.

I'm sympathetic to criticisms that GW likes to throw "big" events that don't actually affect the status quo, less so to complaints about the setting as a whole changing too little. I mean, what do you want them to do? Or the better question is what can they do in any of their properties? Wiping out a faction like Bretonnia or the Harlequins isn't fair to customers who have spent years and hundreds of dollars building up their armies. Even killing off characters is annoying (especially if they're a $53 Karl Franz on Deathclaw). The "compromise" of sorts is to do something like kill Eldrad in the 13th Black Crusade, but keep his rules in subsequent codices and more or less ignore that whole campaign. But that's kind of lame.

There was incremental change, in the form of new units like the Empire's rocket artillery, a Chaos Dwarf war machine for the Warriors of Chaos, and new Skaven abominations. I'm not sure how the fluff evolved for Warhammer, but they presumably weren't bound by the same "year 999 of M41" restriction like its counterpart was. The setting was capable of evolving, just not in a way that invalidated the miniatures it supported.

The alternative is to do what GW just did, go all End Times on everyone. Kill the cast, merge some factions and destroy others, burn everything to the ground and start over. And I don't have any poll numbers, but I think more people are upset about that than there were complaining about the setting not changing.


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