A lot of people I have spoken too are dead set to keep Warhammer Fantasy Battles alive in some way. I applaud them for the effort as this will be a tough road moving forward. If your one of those people, then this post is for you!

2015-07-04 13.04.02

So, what can you do to help talk your fellow players into playing this game still?

  • For right now, it’s not much work. Sure, there are people trying out Age of Sigmar to see what it is and how they can make it work (or make it fail) but the vast majority of players just don’t know enough about this new game and are just as happy playing the game that is within their comfort level.
  • Next up, let’s face it, 6 months from now the scope of what models and rulebooks that are going to be available on the shelf at your local Games-Workshop or Local Game Store is going to be much different. If you are going to grow your armies and maybe even talk a new player into the game, look to companies like Mantic, Avatar’s of War, Raging Heroes, and more for models.
  • Address some of the balance and rules issues as a greater community. People will need to keep things fresh so I wouldn’t be surprised to see local groups start to add in units/rules based on their experiences with the game and models they can get from other manufacturers. Don’t forget to go back and help out armies like Tomb Kings and maybe tone down some things that you don’t enjoy in your games.

So here are some rules ideas I have for changes to 8th that I would like to see fans make/address:

  • Cannons. Yeah, I hate and love these things. They are just too good and reliable. Should black powder be? Yeah probably. There is a reason why the world moved away from crossbows and swords and went to cannons and artillery after all. However, in the magical world of Warhammer where we are playing tabletop games these big guns ruin games more often then they help. My suggested rule is to have the player who is firing a cannon roll to hit as normal, factoring in penalties for shooting as normal. If the player rolls a hit, then the cannon fires as normal. If the player rolls a miss, then for each point they failed by the opposing player can adjust the trajectory of the cannon to the left/right/forward/backwards in one direction a number of inches equal to 1 inch for every 1 point the roll was failed. Needed a 6 to hit and rolled a 4, well that is 2 points and thus 2 inches that roll can be adjusted.
  • Big Spells. No spell should grant no ward saves. Allowing Ward saves on all spells is a big thing. I would also adjust spells like Dweller’s Below and Purple Sun so that instead of removing the whole model, it was 1 wound and look out sir rolls would apply.
  • Terrain. A big beef with me is how the game treats terrain. Throw out the mysterious table for Forests and change them so that all Forests block line of site if more then 3 inches of forest is between the two points. Flyers may choose to ignore this, but must be declared that they are doing so at the end of their move and may not ignore this at the end of pursuit/charge/overrun moves. Hills are another point that I haven’t seen a hill that works the way a hill would. For hills, a unit on a hill ignore’s penalties for interposing units within 12 inches, but further then this, the angle is too steep and any interposing units are thus treated as light cover. Units on a hill may also shoot with one additional rank. Now all of a suddon, these two common pieces of terrain start to matter as much as the buildings do in this game. You can still add a mysterious forest or special hill to the game, just these become special locations rather then the norm.
  • Unit Caps. Certain units need to have a unit cap to help bring them back into balance. These death star units or tar pit units break the fun of the game in fundamental manners. In my opinion, units that consist of more then 50 wounds for a unit considered tar pit like goblins or skaven slaves is just too much and units. Death star units should have roughly the same cap, so that no unit on the table can have more then 50 wounds joined to it at any time, including characters.

Hey, as always, we would love to hear your feedback on these or any other rules changes you would like to see to 8th edition Warhammer so please send us your thoughts to [email protected].