flip-flopping
Although between our gaming group we owned both the and 1st and 2nd editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battle the first I really played was the 3rd. It was the only edition not be a boxed set and was a culmulation of what Games Workshop had been working towards with their wargames. It was fairly complicated, even having rules for baggage trains, and lent itself to battles of attrition which could get pretty turgid. It was accompanied by 'Ravening Hordes' which contained all of the official army lists needed to play the game. The 4th edition was the first to be released after GW's change of direction and it marked a change in philosophy in more ways than one. It was designed to be played straight out of the box, containing dice, templates, markers and a handful of basic High Elf and Goblin models. The extra stuff came with a corresponding increase in price as it went for £40 and whilst it was good value if you were planning on playing High Elves or Goblins it was very expensive if you weren't. Adding to the expense each army now had its own individual book that you needed if you wanted to play it. If you only planned on ever playing the one army then it was actually better value than Ravening Hordes but it did mean you were flying somewhat blind when it came to knowing what your opponent could do. Kind of like playing a CCG where the only cards you know are the ones in your deck. The game was also streamlined, significantly. The rules were simplified and the game was now deisgned to be played over just 4 turns. Hand to hand combat became deadly as units were now far more likely to break from combat and in most cases then had a 50/50 chance of being wiped out, even by an inferior foe. It also became much easier for an inferior unit to hit its opponent. Possibly the worst changes though, came with the new army releases. First up were the Wood Elves. Whilst elves were an established Warhammer race this new flavour didn't quite fit. Sporting crazy and cheese-mongous special units and presented with a heavily fae inspired bent they seemed oddly out of place with what had previously been established as the Warhammer setting. The toad-like Slann were an army available in earlier editions of Warhammer and were intimately tied to the setting. They even made a brief appearance in W40K: Rogue Trader. They never really took off though and were rebranded for 4th ed as the Lizardmen. Dinosaur-esque humanoids they drained all of the character out of the Slann army and, were presented with Aztec accoutrements which just seemed weird and anachronistic. When the continent of the Old World was fleshed out for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Bretonnia was presented as a dark country where a decadent and increasingly chaos-infected noble minority ruled over a vast peasant underclass. When turned into an army for 4th ed WFB they were transformed in Arthurian knights, worshipping the Holy Grail and venerating the Lady In the Lake. They could not have been more out of place than Jesse Owens in a Klan rally. They were also ber-roken. As you would expect they were based around cavalry units but as had been already demonstrated, especially by the Empire, cavalry in Warhammer was naff. To account for this and to make than effective army the Bretonnians were given a bunch of special rules and in true Games Workshop style they went from one extreme to another. By the time 5th ed came out with £10 mark up in price and a bunch of plastic Bretonnians and Lizardmen I needed little excuse not to bother. In the intervening decade Games Workshop has continued to add armies to its 40K line but the lessons of the 4th ed armies seem to have been learned. Strictly speaking there has only been one 'new' WFB army in the last 10 years, the Ogre Kingdoms and it fits beautifully into the setting. It also was a very intriguing army to play. An army where even the most basic unit would consist of models that would be specialist troops in any other army. Always likely to have fewer models on the table than any it faces it provides a unique tactical challenge. The remaining new additions to the line are evolutions of previous armies. Two of them having been split and expanded into five. Prior to the introduction of the Wood Elves, the Undead were probably the most anachronistic and out of place army in Warhammer. They had no real point and didn't really do a whole lot and no-one was ever quite sure what they were doing there. Now they are the Tomb Kings and the Vampire Counts. The Tomb Kings are a long lost civilisation approximate with ancient Egypt whose obsession with eternal life was twisted by the necromancer Nagash and brought about the end of their civilisation. They're primarily a control army whose skeletons bog down the opponents best troops while their special units do the damage. They have a theme, a point, a strategy and fit with the game. Tomb Kings and Ogre Kingdoms were the two armies that appealed to me when I decided to get back into the game. Having only the finances to build towards one army I leaned first one way, then another, then back again. Ogre Kingdoms would mean fewer models to paint but skeletons would be easier to paint. The Ogres were a unique challenge but I like the idea of playing an army which is always in the fight. With d-day approaching when I would be forced to make a decision I sat down with the army books, looked at putting together sample 1000 point armies for each and then compared them to what models were cheaply available. Both armies have a 'Battalion' available. A box of plastic miniatures which form the core of an army and are relatively cheap. From using them to base the sample army on it quickly became clear one army was a complete non-starter. A unit in Warhammer must take a Panic test if it loses a quarter of its models in one go. The Ogre Kingdoms Battalion gave you models in units of 4. You do the math. To increase the unit size to 5 would mean buying four more models. Then their general and wizard(-equivalent) models weigh in at £20 each. Finally you could only just scrape the most basic of armies under the 1000 limit. My army, back in the day, was Chaos. Though initially inspired by the works of Michael Moorcroft, Chaos evolved into a true Warhammer original and one of the defining motifs of the line. In 3rd ed they were almost completely unplayable. I still have not-so-fond memories of my Beastmen unit with its movement rate of 1/3. That's right, a third! Along with everything else they were streamlined for 4th ed. Now they were homogonised, cookie-cutter and completely without the character that had made them so compelling. They were also close to useless. Their base models were so expensive you could barely field a competitive army with them. Whilst their stats would seem to justify their expense they were nowhere near as effective in the field as their numbers would indicate making them a lot like the Space Marine army. For the latest edition of Warhammer they have been split into three. Beastmen, Chaos Warriors and Daemons. Three distinct armies with three different strategies for play. The cost of their troops has been reduced (the Bloodthirster by a whopping 350 points), things like Daemonic Gifts have given them back a lot of their flavour and the models are very nice. They don't have Battalions though, making them more expensive than Tomb Kings. What the Daemon army does have though is a lot of variety. With daemons of all four Chaos gods available you can field anything from a fast moving, hard hitting Slaanesh based army to a magic based Tzeentch army to a tough and belligerent Nurgle army. With me likely to be able to build my army faster than my prospective opponent this variation swung it for me. Judicious use of ebay got me 10 Bloodletters, 10 Daemonettes, 3 Flamers and the Khorne and Slaanesh characters for a little over £40 giving me the basis of an army. I've since learned that the lesser Daemon units can be taken as special units in the Beastmen army meaning if and when GW get round to doing a Battalion for them I can easily build a Beastmen army and the daemon models double up for 40K as well.
