Monday, September 8, 2014

WHFB: What 9th Ed. will hopefully bring

Bring on 9th Ed., but not yet.

There's a lot of talk on the streets right now about what will happen after this whole The End Times thing comes to an end.  Several rumor sources hint at 9th Ed. being less than a year away and that makes total sense to me.  I don't think GW will spring 9th Ed. WHFB on us mid-way through their end of the world campaign, but it will make perfect sense to whip it out right after.  That way, the players have time to digest what has happened and be ready to embrace a new edition.  With that said, I have high hopes for 9th.  What would make 9th great for me would only be a couple of minor changes, since I think 8th is pretty good except for some major issues.

Here is what I want to see in 9th:
  • Allies is definitely the most probable from what I see right now.  I'm not sure how the rules are going to be for WHFB, but you will definitely be able to take different components from other army books.  Whether or not this will resemble Undead Legions or not, I don't know.  All I know is that it's the most reliable change.
  • Simpler rules for movement, as seen in Kings of War.  You will still have the core fantasy mechanics, but more streamlined movement rules will reduce the amount of clutter you have for funky movement issues while preserving battlefield tactics and maneuver war.
  • Magic needs to be looked at to be not as killy.  There's just too many kill spells in the current edition of the game and it's not fun for anyone, in fact, it's quite frustrating.  I think spells like Dwellers, Mindrazor, Final Transmutation, and other spells of that sort will be reduced in power.
  • They might limit the amount of PD wizards can cast again; so instead of 6-dicing spells in hopes of getting IF, they might bring back the older system where wizards can only cast with max dice equal to their power level +1.
  • Perhaps a change to Steadfast, making it so more things are able to disrupt ranks from the flank or rear.  The current playstyle of Steadfast just makes the game turn into a grind fest instead of letting of letting you outplay your opponents via maneuver.
  • Cannons and Stonethrowers will also need to be reduced in effectiveness if larger, more expensive models are to be played.  I'm anticipating maybe a scatter or damage reduction for the cannons, but I can't be so sure.  All I know is that if these things don't change, all those centerpiece models GW is selling right now will be collecting dust real soon.

Overall, 8th Ed. is a pretty solid edition.  It just needs a few fixes here and there, much like what 7th Ed. is compared to 6th.  I'm pretty stoked.

8 comments:

  1. Good post and my response here isn't trolling or a refutation of what you've posted, it is just my two cents ... (devalued to .0000001 cent ... sadly) ...

    Allies would be HORRIBLE!!! Allies has RUINED 40K 100%!!!! An allies with opponent permission ruleset would be great, but having tourney legal dwarf-goblin-skaven team up armies would blow the game out of the water and = the final end of WHFB. For the love of god I hope they don't do allies or massive amounts of contrived $150.00 must have single models for the game. If WHFB goes the way of 7th ed. 40k I forsee the utter and final end for GW.

    That said what the end times has brought forth so far has been very cool. I love to see some actual story advancement and the return of several big characters. Chaos was far too powerful and needed to be pushed back somehow and it seems like they figured out a way to reset things. My hope is that the changes to WHFB focus mainly on reducing the barrier of entry for new players, yet, they preserve the feel of the previous editions which were far better, more playable and fun than 40k since 5th ed. WHFB is not broken and doesn't need to be "fixed" 40k style ... ugh!!

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  2. I think alliances will be done tastefully, and hopefully not Dwarfs+Goblins+Skaven like you suggested. That will never happen I think.

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  3. I think tasteful allies could work. I just hope GW do some serious playtesting and implement appropriate restrictions. Noone wants to see Dwarfs+Goblins+Skaven nonsense.

    On a similar line of thought, I would like to see armies capable of not requiring allies by being able to deal with threats on their own. Each army should have a couple of ways of meeting any threat and have a reasonable chance/reliability (e.g. doesn't rely on getting a single magic spell off or having access to warmachines to survive/kill).

    In fixing magic, there needs to be a change that stops the level 4 magic arms- race. The changing of the big spells will help I think.

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  4. If 40K sets any kind of precedent, those pairings will be some equivalent of 'Come the Apocalypse' and effectively gimp the army - effectively stating "you /can/ do it, you just won't like it." You know, like fielding a Dragon. ;)

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  5. Except, they already aren't. The "undead" alliance is just a combination of the two armies, as if they came in one book, but with some of the restrictions removed. It's definitely a step in power level.

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  6. I would hope so. Combined Chaos worries me a lot, though. There's a reason why WoC don't have cheap shooting available to them--a pair of skull cannons in their lists would not help game balance. If the combined book includes Beastmen, then you're also talking about two armies that lack cheap, effective chaff suddenly having an abundance of it. We've moved on to a best-in-slot kind of army construction that existing books can't match.


    That's also the force I'm BY FAR most worried about 50% lords in. For most armies, that would be a waste. WoC and Daemons both can put out characters which are as efficient as units at killing units, and harder to kill themselves. The current books don't seem to have much way of handling that.

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  7. True, but this could be an exception, since the lore suggests that both armies are bound to the will of Nagash. We'll have to wait and see until all the books have been released, but I'm not really feeling a DE + HE battle brothers kinda thing the way I'm seeing Chaos.

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