Warhammer Fantasy was always my first love, I’m not even sure how I got so sidetracked with 40K to be honest… The first wargaming figures I bought and painted were lizardmen in the 1990s 5th edition Fantasy era. So, like many, I was pleased to see “The World That Was” back again. I finally had a chance to play a game, and my regular opponent (who already has a few games under his belt) ran me through the rules last night.
We played a 1,500 point pitched battle with my High Elves vs his Lizardmen. I lost comprehensively. The game was enjoyable enough and not really that different to most previous versions of the game, though I’m sure I will pick up more nuances as I get more games in. As is the way with Games Workshop these days there are many more special rules to keep track of (every time I rolled any dice, I seemed to need to refer to something called “Armour Bane” which I’m still not entirely sure what that was all about) but otherwise it was mostly ok.
First, the negative. The magic phase doesn’t exist any more. There are no Winds of Magic. The glory days of 5th edition Warhammer: Magic and a card-driven game within a game are long gone but even so this version of magic seems to be the most boring one yet – hopefully as I get more into it and figure out more of the nuances it will get more interesting but on first impression I wasn’t impressed.
Also, as already mentioned the amount of special rules is sort of annoying, for me anyway as I prefer to focus on tactics instead of various abilities and rules of units.
On the positive side the game flows pretty easily and quickly, and is generally fun to play. It feels like, on a first play, that it will reward further immersion and become more enjoyable as you master the nuances and get better at the tactics and movement.
Herohammer seems to be back (or is it…?). Heroes are powerful, but you are limited to 25% of whole army cost on heroes (compared to 50% in 5th edition!). It seems you can create some interesting and tough characters, particularly when mounted as the rider and mount combine profiles (stacking armour saves and toughness/wounds) allowing you to create some quite tough combos…. however, the highest ward save available seems to be 5+ so no one is invincible… Also as already mentioned, this is possibly not the best edition for wizards, but we’ll see…
Overall, good fun and I will report back as we play more games and as I get my High Elves painted. I’m going for a Chrace theme (red and white) allied with Nagarythe (ie the land of the shadow warriors). I’m aiming to get a lot of them painted this year.
Classic Warhammer 40K 
Although I don’t play GW games, it’s good that you’ve had a chance to get back to playing and the chance to work on your armies! :-) I can see all the essential gaming aids are there as well (top left in the first picture)!
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Thank you, John! Yes a good red wine is an essential play-aid. 🙂 Link to the wine in question below…
I don’t really think GW games are very good (with the exception of some of their specialist games like Space Hulk, Battlefleet Gothic, Epic 40K) but Warhammer at least has a lot to think about and is a much more satisfying game than 40K. Longer term my goal is to introduce my gaming group to non-GW games (starting with Second World War… Bolt Action and Chain of Command) but that is going to rely on me getting everything painted as no one else in the group is interested in painting anything except GW stuff, though they have told me that they will play the games if I do the rest…!
Bellevue Estate in the world renown McLaren Vale wine region.
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I’ve passed your wine recommendation on to my wife, since she appreciates it more than me! To be honest, when Space Hulk first came out (so, we’re talking a long time ago) I bought that and thought it was a brilliant game! My regular wargames opponent has his own fantasy wargames rules that he based on Oldhammer and I enjoy the odd game, although I never win! I’ve found that sometimes if you paint some game stuff up and organise games for people, some of them will take them onboard and start themselves – I found that with Crimson Skies and Warmachine back in the noughties!
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Good to have some impressions from old gamers. I’m curious about the whole thing, so thanks for the thoughts! Looking forward to more!
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Thanks Suber. I should have more reports soon 🙂
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I have played a few games myself and have been enjoying the game. The change to the magic system adds some nuance to the game and doesn’t downplay wizards roles, they are now useful in all phases of the game. Although, it does look like you need a level 4 mage, the other levels seem to have lost some of their usefullness.
I also played Fantasy as my primary game, I only actually played a few games of 40k 2nd back in the day!
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Thanks Watchmeister! I will put up some more in depth thoughts on Magic once I have few more games in, but I think you either have to go magic-heavy (with a level 4 mage and at least one more level 2 or 3) or don’t bother at all–so yes I agree with you on that one.
I think perhaps what bothers me most is that you can just attempt to cast your spells each phase without any real penalty, whereas the card or dice winds of magic system in previous editions only gave a limited amount of power each phase and you had to make difficult decisions about casting spells, or saving you power cards for dispelling enemy spells, and so on–so far this version just feels a bit bland (though they have tried to add some wacky elements like the vortexes). Anyway, we need more games to make a proper judgement!
And I don’t know when 40K overtook Fantasy exactly, but most of the people who were kids/tennagers in the 1990s started with Fantasy–and tbh it has always been a far superior game (though the figures and armies for 40K have always been cool; they have always been let down by how crap the game of 40K is, even 2nd ed–though it is the best version–is objectively not a good game).
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I couldn’t get my friends to play 40K, only one jumped in with me back in 2nd, and we never moved on. I stopped fantasy when GW killed it off, my friends went to The Ninth Age but I wasn’t a fan.
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My problem was I didn’t have enough focus. It wasn’t until 3rd edition 40K (and cheaper but worse multipart plastic models) that I managed to put together an entire army that was actually legal. After 8th edition WHFB we went back to 6th or 7th edition and also the occasional game of 5th edition. Never saw the need to try 9th Age. We tried Kings of War and didn’t like it and went back to the rules we did like after that. We realised GW couldn’t force us to stop playing the version we liked!
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