A New Take On WFB 9th

[Bigred]

Warseer's [URL="http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?388436-Warhammer-Fantasy-Changes-on-the-Horizon"]scoopdeta[/URL] says:

With all the news surrounding Games Workshop over the last couple of weeks I think that it lines up fairly well. I was able to grab lunch with an old friend about a month ago who works for GW (not a local store croney). We talked everything GW and of course my drug of choice Warhammer Fantasy. He said that over the next coupel of months there would be drastic changes to the way GW does business...this was just in general. He didn't give me too many specifics, but now that the White Dwarf changes have hit the street openly and the news of a revamped website with FW product offerings and all it lines up. Once again he didnt come out and say that GW was going to be taking a hit with the earnings, but he stated that many of the changes had to do with new strategies to increase revenue and such. He has been traveling non-stop for new training and meetings, so it was easy to see something was coming down the pipe.

So on to my main point. I have always been a fantasy fanatic...game of choice hands down. He stated that there would be a new release which would change the way fantasy is currently played. Currently, the idea is to have huge blocks of infantry and high priced special characters and beasts which makes for higher costs to players and conceptually more revenue for GW. However this did not work fo rone reason or another. So it was obvious some changes were needed. The new approach will aim at bringing more people back into the game by making it smaller and more affordable. The new rule set would focus on making warhammer more of a small block and skirmish based game with fewer miniatures needed. The new box set would have less miniatures, but would basically set people up to get in the game and playing at a much reduced cost.

So he didnt give me the finer deatails that I would have liked, but he did say this would happen this summer for sure...not next year. He basically said that GW is being forced to make some changes due to some cash flow issues...which has become evident since we had lunch several weeks ago. It seems like he was pretty spot on so far with his vague statements...haha...take it as you will. But I have faith in this for many reasons. It seems with everything going on that it would line up well and make sense. GW needs a way to bring more people back intothe game while also doing soemthing to help bring fanatsy back up to strength.

Followed up by this clarification:

Perhaps my terminology was distorted a bit in my OP. I do not believe my friend was indicating that this would be a "skirmish" game similar to Hordes or infinity. What he had stated was that it would head back in the direction of some older editions where smaller blocks were more viable. Seems people missed the smaller block protion and just focused on the skirmish portion of my OP. I am have no idea if he was saying this would be a new edition or a supplement. But my feeling was that this would be a replacement of the current ruleset. And it does line up with the smaller boxes (10 minis per). People could by a box or two and have a whole unit...instead of having to spend $200 on just one unit at 40 strong. This would allow GW to maintain the current price point while not scaring people away with the overall price of an army as they would now inherently be smaller.

[eldargal]

That makes a lot of sense actually, if you could start playing well balanced games of WFB at 500pts and then scale up to 1000,1500 etc. you would get a lot more people getting into the game and building up their armies rather than feeling the need to drop hundreds of pounds for a 1500pt army on one hit. I mean WFB is reasonably well balanced at 1000pts apart from a few things but it could be better. 40k by contrast is reasonably well balanced at 750pts and then you have Kill Team.

[daboarder]

I would join fantasy we're an army easier to collect thats for sure

[Mr Mystery]

Does make sense.

I for one am a sweeping scale fanatic, but there is absolutely no reason that the game cannot be rejigged to cover smaller game.

[CrAzY424]

I would love to go back to the 6th edition feel for units. I remember my 20 man Ironbreaker unit was one of the toughest nuts to crack. Not so much anymore.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I'm sure the design brief is to make sure it works with both huge armies and smaller ones, yeah. Warhammer isn't really as daunting as people think it is, but the *perception* is a strong one worth combatting. This all sounds pretty legit!

[Mr Mystery]

I think they may have slightly shot themselves in the foot with the sheer coolness that 8th Ed brought to the table.

It enabled massive blocks of infantry and armies of impressive size. And as we Warhammer Fanatics already had long established armies, that was the most common sight for newcomers to see...honking great big armies. In giving us what we've always wanted, the impact of that could not have been predicted fully.

So keep as is, but introduce new smaller scale encouragement and scenarios. Lovely.

[Morgrim]

I'm keen on this. I haven't started WFB because I want to finish and build a small 500-600 point force that I can use to actually learn with, and it'd be nice to know it wasn't horribly unbalanced and that people other than the store redshirts would be willing to give me a game at that points level.

[pgarfunkle]

I'm in for anything that brings more people to playing WFB

[tankbusta]

That makes a lot of sense actually, if you could start playing well balanced games of WFB at 500pts and then scale up to 1000,1500 etc. you would get a lot more people getting into the game and building up their armies rather than feeling the need to drop hundreds of pounds for a 1500pt army on one hit. I mean WFB is reasonably well balanced at 1000pts apart from a few things but it could be better. 40k by contrast is reasonably well balanced at 750pts and then you have Kill Team.

I agree. I am a miniature collector/painter with a gaming problem, so being able to play some games with less minimum buy-in would be nice. I remember about a decade ago how much fun the "Warhammer Skirmish" scenarios were, especially if you threw one in between big games in a WFB campaign. there were even optional rules that the skirmish game results affected the subsequent larger game if you liked.

As with 40K, I think part of the problem is finding people who are willing to play small games. It's great to play a really big battle that takes 3+ hours to reolve, but I seldom have that much time available. The old "40K in 40 minutes" was a lot of fun.