A New Take On WFB 9th

[Mike Lawler]

If you look at it like this.. a new player is interested in.. let's say.. Beastmen.. and wants to add some Minotaurs. Currently, without resorting to outside means (ie bits stores etc), the only way to acquire them is by buying 3 at $47. Granted, that's not as bad as having to sink $70 into Hive Guard.. but it's still an obstacle. Yes, this is a luxury hobby but previously (when I entered this hobby) you could ease into it with single blisters.

[Morquentas]

I suspect you'll still have to buy a new rulebook, which will be at least £30+ I'll reserve judgement and attempt to supress my cynicism but his doesn't seem that different to Island of Blood etc. And if it's a skirmish game where your miniatures can be used in the bigger game, well they have that already. It's called Mordheim.

[crandall87]

Makes a lot of sense really. It's far easier to have a core ruleset that's good for small games and make it bigger with supplements as like 40k than the go big or go home approach it currently is

[Mike Lawler]

Makes a lot of sense really. It's far easier to have a core ruleset that's good for small games and make it bigger with supplements as like 40k than the go big or go home approach it currently is

Even 40k using this approach doesn't make sense to me. Bigger games tend to be tedious and finishing a force that size can be laborious.
Sure Apocalypse was huge when it was released, but 40k in a flash was just a WD article and it was arguably more popular (if you count the variations of smaller 40k related games like Killteam). I have an old WHFB skirmish book around here somewhere and those small missions are a lot more fun than most of the huge battles I have played (at least for me).

I think it would be interesting to see if this approach (opening up more of the smaller unit sizes) will be more effective than if they had kept the unit sizes the way they were and instead lowered cost. I would also very much like to see if just breaking down the more expensive unit boxes into single blisters would have helped..

[Vash108]

I may have to dust off my Tomb Kings army if this is true. The amount of skeletons you needed vs how much you get for a box was pretty ridiculous.

[silashand]

Not keen on the "current pricepoint" idea. Still no way I am ever going to spend what they want for the new Witch Elves.

[eldargal]

I suspect you'll still have to buy a new rulebook, which will be at least £30+ I'll reserve judgement and attempt to supress my cynicism but his doesn't seem that different to Island of Blood etc. And if it's a skirmish game where your miniatures can be used in the bigger game, well they have that already. It's called Mordheim.

Did you read the OP? He quite clearly says it's making small scale Warhammer battles viable, not turning it into a skirmish game:

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

[Wildeybeast]

So, here's my question: how do you make it more viable at smaller scales? Someone has already suggested that is what the ten troop boxes are for, but unless they drop the price (£35 for 10 Witch Elves) that doesn't make it more accessible. You could reduce the points cost of models, especially core, so you need to field less of them, but then that makes larger games prohibitively expensive as you need loads of models. I know I'm not a games designer and with good reason, but I can't imagine how they can make it work better on a smaller scale without a radical overhaul that invariably makes it worse on a larger scale. The obvious way round it would be to basically have two different but linked games, LotR and WotR style.

[Mars Ultor]

Well then I wonder if they'll take out the Horde rule to encourage smaller units. Made sense for some armies like orcs, beastmen, skaven where you have undisciplined troops, but to have a 'horde' of Empire Greatswords is...silly.

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

This would def make Fantasy more appealing to me - I dislike painting and assembling a lot of models as I do not have the time, and if the "hobby" part of my life is spent on sculpting my own stuff, so when it comes to other games I prefer to just get right to the gaming.

I still have that unopened tomb kings batallion somewhere in my house...