Harry and Hastings Chime in on the Future of Warhammer

[Coyote81]

I think I would be fine with a compendium for different groups of armies, even if they can work together as well. (As long as it's group with some sense the timeline/story). I think they need to do something to increase the rate at which books are updated/faq'd so that they don't lose players that love their armies due to the armies suddenly becoming bad. (Terrible or unplayable depending on who you ask) I've played the game since 5th ed and I've see all kind of good changes, but some armies always suffer the last army syndrome. By the time they get a book, they are good for about a month then the news of the newest edition comes out and they change the rules slightly (or a lot) and that army that so many people have been waiting on, falls on it's face after only a month.

Having been a long time WE player, as well as Beast of Chaos/Daemons of Chaos (Yes I listed them that way because I was rather irked when all of my daemons models were unplayable because I didn't have enough for a stand alone army), O&G, Vampire Counts, and recently dabbling in Empire. I've seen many of these armies get tons and tons of updates, new models, love in general from GW. The the former two armies, get trounced in the mud. I hope a change to a compendium system where they could reasonably update some 4 book to cover all the armies would fix their issues I've seen develope of the years.

p.s. Have you seen how many models in the WE line are still metal? Core Metal spearmen...........sigh.

[Wildeybeast]

A book every other month seems like a good turnover rate to me. I agree that some books like WE are neglected, but that is due to the way the 'meta' of the current rules works, combined with the way they write the books. Rather than say 'Jervis you take Brets, Ward you take Lizards' and so on, people volunteer taking on a book when they have a good idea of how to freshen it up. People will obviously struggle to come up with ideas of how you make a shooty, skirmishy army like WE competitive in the 'big infantry blocks' culture of 8th without changing the style of the army. As a fellow WE player, I would rather wait and get a proper update than one that completely changes the way the army plays simply for the sake of getting the book out according to a schedule. Moving to compendiums wouldn't make it any easier to keep the unique flavour of each army, in fact it would make it harder. Furthermore, it won't increase the release rate of books as you will have to wait until all the models for four different armies are ready.

[Learn2Eel]

I agree that if an author feels they can do justice to an army, let them take their time to do it rather than conform to a schedule. Though the recent releases have been clustered, the significant gap between the release of Necrons to Chaos Space Marines and Empire to Warriors of Chaos tickles me enough to think that they have taken a lot of time to do this stuff and merely had it all lying around waiting for an appropriate release date. Hence why Chaos Marines released alongside the first Horus Heresy book, and High Elves being followed by Eldar.

[eldargal]

The thing that worries me is that Hastings implied you might be able to pick and mix units from any army book in your army, with HE swordmasters alongside Lizardmen. The great thing about WFB is that each faction has its own unique aesthetic and playstyle, if that gets diluted by allowing people to take pick and mix armies then it will cease to be the game I love. If it is just a more involved Allies system it won't be so bad. I'm not going to pre-judge anything but this does worry me.

[Wildeybeast]

That would worry me too. Most likely we will get something like the 40K allies system and all this has been misinterpreted/blown out of proportion.

[Brakkart]

The only armies that I could see working in a compendium with a pick n mix arrangement would be the various chaos forces, which would be a return to how they used to be all in one big army book (which used to come in a box in at least 1 edition). given that all the various novels and such featuring the Chaos forces speak of hordes of men, beastmen, monsters and daemons all together I've never been much of a fan of them having separate army books. I think they are much better as one vast horde with lots of options for every section of the army, similar to how Orcs & Goblins are.

I don't think any of the other armies would work like that though, they are all too different and frankly that is one of Warhammer's greatest strengths.

[Chronowraith]

These rumors worry me as well. I really don't see how compendiums would work well. Even if every army was separate and distinct from the others within the same compendium the world would lose a great amount of detail and fluff. It would cease being a game setting and become simply a game unless you have the older books.

As for what Eldargal stated with compendiums of units that would allow different factions marching side-by side within the compendiums that worries me even more. If the game balance was off at all you'd end up with 4 cookie cutter armies. I couldn't imagine that helping game sales if suddenly people go from buying the power units of each race to the power units of 4 compendiums. Allies similar to the 40k table would be tricky enough as many factions simply don't work well with others. Tomb Kings? Skaven? Wood Elves? They are either isolationists or simply untrustworthy and it would kill me to see rank-and-file Skeletons being led by a Wood Elf spellweaver with a doomwheel rolling around the backfield.

Overall, regardless of the source of the rumors, I'll believe it when I see it in regards to this. 9th edition is still a ways off but GW certainly needs to control the rumors otherwise it might impact sales for 8th edition. Who wants to buy a new armybook they know will be invalidated in a year? Personally, I think GW should be more transparent about these massive changes. It may hurt their bottom line but I'd be much more willing to accept a massive reboot that replaces everything with these rumored compendiums if GW explained up front what would is happening.

One last note... I really don't get a negative tone from the conversation originally posted by Big Red. Hastings has been negative about GW for quite a while now so that shouldn't be any surprise. It sounds like both individuals are having a very valid discussion on the topic of the health of Warhammer Fantasy but it doesn't seem like this is fueled by any insider knowledge. Hasting's points about GW are some of the same ones we see from posters here on BoLS while Harry remains very optimistic.

[TheCastigator]

I honestly have a hard time believing that they would go back to compendium books, given that they've taken three or four editions to work out the kinks from separating them in the first place. Why would the split hordes of chaos and undead just to jam them back together again, not to mention all the work to differentiate the elf armies. I would buy that they are going to to do allies, which concerns me as well. It's not so easy in fantasy, since all the armies play fairly differently, whereas in 40k you have a full third of the game (and 80+% of players) being marines, which despite their differences all die to roughly the same strategies.

Despite the obvious neglect to some armies, 8th edition is excellent, not perfect, but very well done, and while some of the books are not as competitive, they all have viable builds, pretty good options, and relatively good balance. GW for the first time in a loooooong time has managed to avoid the horrific codex creep that has plagued their games for ages. Eight books in and only a handful of items are bad, I'll take that any day of the week. I would hope that they leave 8th in tact for a couple more years before pushing 9th, but that is just me. I realize they need to make money.

While I know it will never happen, I would like to see actual numbers for fantasy, instead of all this doom and gloom anecdotal nonsense. Everyone's store is either no one plays fantasy or everyone is jumping on the band wagon. Are the sales numbers as dismal as people claim? I have a hard time believing it's so dire they would risk alienating their player base by scrapping the game in it's current form. I think the rules need a bit of tweaking, but in no way do they need a major overhaul. If the numbers are so bad, why would they accelerate the release schedule, as that could end up costing them more money. And yes, more transparency would be helpful from GW in this case.

If they are pushing for 9th next year, fine, I will no doubt play it. But all of this talk seems to be pure conjecture without any real substantive base. All the claims are vague enough to go either way without making the proprietors come off as idiots. Per the usual, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Bigred]

I think they have to do something about the fundamental issue with WFB at this time in the overall wargaming space - its enormous barrier to entry.

No other game out there demands you pay so much, assemble so many miniatures, paint them all up, then face a steep learning curve with the rules before you are up and feeling like a competent player.

Ten years ago, GW could get away with it, but imagine a new gamer wanting to get into the hobby walking into a store with several hundred dollars.

You get the rundown of what it takes to start up:
Warhammer 40,000
Warhammer Fantasy
Warmachine
Infinity
X-Wing
Flames of War
DUST Warfare

I would imagine that WFB is having real problems not with the existing playerbase, but with enticing new players to join the hobby.

The game desperately needs a "smaller scale" version so folks can enter and get up and playing faster. Army book consolidation makes sense from the perspective of manpower resources. If you make triple the revenue from 40k as WFB, how can you justify to the board spending equal development resources on both systems. Now you can't drop any armies, and GW's primary goal is the production and selling of miniatures. So you shrink the development resources by decreasing the product size of the 15+ army books WFB currently demands. Ta-da.

Off the top of my head I could easily see something like:
Forces of Order: Empire, Bret, Dwarves, High Elves, Wood Elves
Forces of Chaos: Daemons, Warriors, Beastmen
Ravening Hordes: Orks, Ogres, Skaven, Lizardmen
Forces of Darkness VC, Khemri, Dark Elves

But yeah, the allies - mixing and matching would be the challenge to balance out.

[Chronowraith]

I disagree with the entry barrier, at least in relation to other games. The cost isn't any more than Warhammer 40,000 from my experience. Costing up my Skaven army without including any E-bay deals, battalion boxes, IoB sets, or other discounts comes to 606 dollars for 2400 points. That's for an army that consists of almost 300 models and is fully competitive. For my semi-competitive Space Marine army I'm looking at 652 dollars for 1850 points and roughly 50ish models (again with no discounts). Both are roughly even in cost.

I agree wholeheartedly that there are more models to assemble and paint and that could very well be seen as a daunting task to anyone entering the hobby. I know that when I started up my Skaven again in 2009 it took me almost 4 years to have a suitable army painted up and I've been in the hobby since 1992.

Rules-wise I find the streamlined 8th edition rules far easier to keep track of and understand than the 6th edition ruleset for 40k. Monsters operate similarly to monstrous creatures which operate similarly to infantry. Essentially everything boils down to infantry and cavalry with a few different small variations. In 40k their are big differences between jump infantry and infantry, vehicles, flyers, etc. I will not say that 8th edition is a perfect ruleset, but short of actually playing a few games, it is a pretty simple system to figure out.

I think Fantasy has a problem attracting new players simply due to popular culture. Sci-Fi is simply far more popular and predominant in today's modern culture. Short of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, when was the last time a good Fantasy movie was at the theaters? Narnia? Harry Potter? Even the fantasy movies that do come out are often grounded in the modern world (such as Harry Potter, Dresden Files, etc). Sci-Fi on the other hand has a number of high budget films EVERY year. TV shows focus on Sci-Fi too and most of the celebrated Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors you see at bookstores are... you guessed it.. sci-fi.

As for the compendiums the Forces of Chaos and the Forces of Order you mentioned make some sense (minus wood elves since they are too insular to be considered anyone's allies on a persistent basis). However I don't see the other ones. Lizardmen wouldn't be caught dead working with Skaven (who have destroyed a number of their cities). I think it's more likely to see Khorne become the chaos god of pink fluffy bunnies before you ever see VC and TK working together. So unless those are convenient groupings based on theme, I really don't see it.