9th Edition is (supposedly) coming

8th rulebook, not that it ever says that's what it's called

And for an old fart like me what better than to look back at what has gone before rather than panicking about what is about to come.  I’m really thinking just 8^th ed when I start writing this but it’s worth remembering I started Warhammer back at 3^rd Ed so have a long familiarity with edition changes and all that jazz. 

So 8^th edition dropped on 10 July 2010, on that basis will be closing on 5 years old assuming 9^th comes out this year as forecast.  Looking back over the editions this is broadly in line with the frequency of updates, 6^th was the longest with 6 years but I’d say that was largely due to them hitting the reset button on army books that edition so everything was being reworked.

At Release

So how was the transition to 8^th received?  Well there was much gnashing of teeth and wailing from certain aspects of the community, plenty of people claiming it was too random to be competitive, Yahtzee being a frequently used moniker and that premeasuring took the skill out the game. Other parts of the community hailed it as the best thing to ever happen to the game pointing to the fact that it finally made infantry viable choices for armies and helped balance the game.  There were many other significant changes too, I’d say it was the biggest step change through the editions of any, though you could argue 5^th to 6^th and the total overhaul of armies & the magic system from cards to dice was greater but I’d not put that solely down to the rules though.

Personally I was still playing dwarfs at the time and the change from max 6” charge including the distance for the wheel to 15” max measure to closest point was amazing!  Suddenly I was taking part in a large chunk of the game which had basically not been an option in the past.  As a dwarf player I could guess warmachine accurate to ½” going most of the way across the table so being able to just pick a point didn’t really change much. I never considered the ability to guess ranges a gaming skill so it was nice that what was considered tactical/strategic skill was actually more important than micromanagement and being able to eyeball distances. 

At the end of 7^th all the armies were 2x10 horrors 3x5-6 fleshhounds, 2x single fiends, billy the bloodthirster and the Masque of slannesh (or variants upon that theme) or shooty DE with a pendant of khaleth dreadlord on a dragon.  The fact that the ‘tactical’ skill in most of these armies was having a longer charge range than most people and being able to spot that 2” gap where you could charge and your opponent couldn’t never really struck me as particularly skilful so I wasn’t overly disappointed to see it go. So yes I was a fan of the new edition from the get go.

Now have a look at what armies appeared.  You had some early tournament wins by Vampires with the graveguard horde (hitting on 2’s), Daemons with 2 big hordes later becoming up to 3 hordes of bloodletters as standard netlists.  Combat infantry DE with mindrazor with hordes of corsairs became common.  Infantry was king. 

Cavalry were written off as worthless as they couldn’t break steadfast and would just get ground out.  Combat characters were deemed too vulnerable to the attacks coming back (ohh that was another big one, 7^th ed models killed didn’t get to strike back, so you wiped front ranks out and were safe from any return damage) and mages became the character of preference, the new ‘super spells’ were identified as ‘autowin buttons as you could delete half a horde of infantry and the characters hiding in there by just spamming 6 dice.

A rather hideous proxy army, it's meant to be ogres.

Early Books (up to Ogres)

That ran along for a while and after 6m people were complaining of the game being stagnant as we’d had no new books then O&G came out, everyone complained about only 8 magic items in the book, TK dropped and the same, plus their unique magic lore got nerfed but T8 beasties were supposedly going to break the game (guess what, they didn’t and are now considered junk). Then we got Ogres.

Ogres changed the environment.  They went from being a pitiful weak army filled with pointless limitations on their build to a powerhouse and that powerhouse had a name… It was mournfang.  All of a sudden there was a unit with so much damage output it could blow it’s way through the infantry hordes steadfast in a round or two tops, they didn’t even require the charge to be effective.  Plus with a 2+ save and parry were survivable (unlike the TK necropolis knights, which lacked the save or the manoeuvrability to dominate the game).  Monstrous Cavalry just became the game changer.

VC came out and were as ever comped to death over ethereals and screams but didn’t overly change much then Empire followed and added to the MC trend which basically sealed the fate of infanty armies.  Now you needed to be either manoeuvrable to avoid the MC or survivable enough to take a charge from them and not get broken, which really meant a 1+ AS and not getting stomped, so suddenly cavalry units started to have a purpose, but they also needed damage output to beat the MC so combat characters started to feed back into the game.  And we got 10 months without a book at this point so the ‘meta’ settled down.  Largely I think this is the period on which most people base their views of 8^th being a reasonably balanced game.

The Rise of Chaos

Skullcrushers - they crushed peoples fun

After that we got warriors and daemons in quick succession early 2013 and skullcrushers were a big thing.  The daemons book release was hilarious, people declared it nerfed to the point of being one of the bottom tier armies (I actually bought them at this point buying from ragequitters thinking I was getting a middlish army) wow did that reaction get proven wrong.  It wasn’t really until the ETC that the UK cottoned on but the wall of Nurgle style army became very popular and very common.  It was one of the few counters to the super-fast & hard hitting WoC armies as they tended to win the grind.  Suddenly the power of the O&G book becomes an all-time high due to their abilty to ignore armour and just delete WoC and ogres with relative ease but they don’t fare terribly well against daemons putting a balancing check in place.

The year of the Elf

Elves, pointy shoes & hats, hated by everyone.

Then came the time of the Elves HE in May 2013, DE in Oct 2013 and basically it turned everything around again. Bolt throwers & mobility meant the smashy WoC were no longer dominant, Monst Cav were relatively easy picking too.  By now it’s worth noting the “powerhouse” book of ogres have been well and truly put in their place as each of these books basically trumped them.  Power creep? I’d guess you say yes but at the same time there is a bit more of a rock, paper, scissors scenario at play.  You can design a list which will comfortably beat an all comer list for one of these armies but that will conversely be hugely weak against another.

Dwarfs and WE rounded out the releases under 8^th, neither hugely changed the status of affairs though both add to the Rock/paper/scissors matchup consideration for list design. With that we come to where we are now (ignoring ET as a entirely different topic), I suppose the one thing to mention is the FAQ which bumped the character allowance to 50% of your army in each of lords & heroes being the next big meta shift but it’s not a huge issue where ET characters are banned as comp generally hits the 4-5 armies that get the biggest bonus from it.

The End (of) Times (bro)

Game over man, game over.

The ET stuff has been a bit of silly fun in many peoples’ opinion bringing us all to the brink of a new edition ready to reset everything to a fresh start.  And you know what, I’m still really enjoying playing 8^th ed, so through all of this they’ve not lost me, the game has kept fun and fresh challenges over the course of 5 years.  I’ve heard a few people bemoaning the staleness of the game (I was pretty much there just before ET released and it gave me a new lease of life) but when I look back at 7^th I know I was sick of it for a good 18m before it went and that simply hasn’t been the case for me in 8^th.  Do I like the super characters, no not really, they completely change the nature of the game.  But all the other stuff is generally quite cool as long as not taken to silly extremes, restrictions (or self-restraint) make it fun.

Overall Thoughts on 8^th

Warhammer 9th, please select a new world.

So there we have it, armies went from all infantry hordes, though monstrous cavalry round to cavalry buses and now often into character hammer through the cycle of the edition.  I’ve even noticed a few hordes coming back into the game recently.  It does make me wonder are the much maligned GW design team really as bad at what they do as we think?  They’ve incentivised gamers at different points in the cycle of 8^th ed to buy pretty much every unit type from every book in the game and not done it in a way what has had people calling them out for forcing them to buy new things, to me it feels like they deserve a round of applause for a job well done. 

In conclusion I say bravo GW, WFB has been a wonderful ride through 8^th and whoever has been the hand at the tiller over that time (the much maligned Matt Ward is certainly responsible for elves onwards from what I understand) have given me a great deal of pleasure from playing their game.  Now for 9^th I have only one wish, please make it as fun a journey as 8^th was.