Help the cabbage Abaddon learn warhammer fantasy

SPIEL WARNING!!

Hmm. In theory WHFB (warhammer fantasy battle) is set on a small backwater planet in the 40K world. Hence most of the races are the same most of the gods (anyone ever wonder if Sigmar was a Space Marine Primach that was never “revealed”?) are the same so anyone who has played 40k would immediately feel at home with the ethos. It’s a dark, dirty, dangerous & depraved kind of place. One of the best things about WHFB is that it has a huge history to draw on; 3 generations of codex, maps of the world, computer games, and of course the fantasy role-play game, all of which means masses of background for people wanting to create something unique.

The game itself has avoided the misery that befell 40K (that of having to release an entire new set of rules because the old ones were so bad) and the 3 versions of it I have played have always been tweaks rather than a re-writing, invariably each version has been better (although the previous version had hundreds of magic items and spells to choose from and now they are all race specific which is ok but not so much fun… we used to spend far too much time shuffling through all the magic item cards to find what we wanted.)

The rules themselves are excellent. They are more complex than LOTR but still quite easy to get a handle on. It’s easy to start playing with the basic rules and then add in the more complex ones later. There is also a much greater variety of units than LOTR in that you’ve got troops + cavalry + monsters but then you get canons, catapults, chariots and some really weird creations (Snotling Pump Wagon springs to mind) plus within each group is more variety again (light & heavy cavalry) and many types of monsters. The way you pick armies is similar to 40K in that you have Heros, Core, Special & Elite troops and the number of each you may/must take is controlled by the size of the battle.

Movement rules are a bit different to 40K in that each unit has its own movement stat (elves M5, Humans M4, Horses M8) and then you can move (normal), march(double M) or charge (charges are done in the movement phase in WHFB). You also get a dedicated Magic phase, where you get to throw around beastie great spells (not those feeble psychic powers you get in 40K) that can annihilate entire regiments! It’s also more complicated with having different casting values and being able to roll different numbers of die + the opponent having a dispel chance etc. Shooting is more limited in WHFB, you’ve got quite a range of weapons but your normal bowmen are unlikely to damage a big regiment very much and its very difficult to win a game with shooting alone. Of course the exception to this is war machines some of which can easily see off an entire regiment or destroy chariots in a single shot.

With shooting being a bit limited the main phase is combat, the combat system is quite simple (compare WS = a dice roll to hit, compare S/T = dice roll to wound, make armour save, remove the dead) but the main feature of this phase is combat resolution (which Im not going to explain here), lets just say you could cause no wounds at all and still win the combat, at which point the enemy has to take a break test and run off. Part of the combat resolution is unit size, that’s why Goblins can beat heavy cavalry! As they say all things count in numbers.

That’s basically a turn. I think WHFB is a very good game, the rules are excellent, there is enough detail (both ruleswise and storywise) to keep me happy. Things have gotten a little silly with Ogre Kingdoms but most of the races have fun rules and some really good models which makes them fun to collect.

BUT

It is very very expensive!!

A standard 1500 pt battle your probably looking at 3 heros ($20ea) probably 3 large regiments of foot troops(20+) ($55ea + one you’ll want to be special which = blisters! 3 in a pack $20 a pop = $140), a regiment of cavalry ($55-85), a regiment of 3 monsters ($35ea), some skirmishing troops ($120 (as they normally only come in blisters)), and a catapult ($75). So we’ve got what… $650, which is the smaller standard army size, you really want to get to 2000pts to get that Lord lvl char + the extra special & Elite unit which of course carries all the cost up again.

This is based on my memories of Tomb Kings of which may be a little off.
Obviously it varies depending on which army you collect some take more models (Skaven & Orcs) some less (Elves & Chaos) but generally GW is pretty rude about this and includes fewer models in each box Ie Goblins get 20, Elves get 16, Chaos get 12 (all $55). So you cant really win…<br>
Still this is a brilliant game. If you like the fantasy genre (cause genre is what you’ll be choosing your war games on) you can’t go wrong with this game, its very very good (better rules than 40K). But then if you like fantasy download mordheim for free, buy 20-25 models and you can play skirmish campaigns to your hearts content!