WHFB: The Difference Between What We Want It To Be And What It Is

GW, for whatever reason, has been pumping out a ton of Fantasy stuff recently, and I have to say how impressed I am with the sculpts.  The new Zombie Dragon thing and the DE Black Dragon are so much better than the old models from the 90’s (80’s?) that they have me salivating.

Fall in love with the Dark Elves all over again

Unfortunately, dragons suck.  Stelek suggests monsters suck because they die turn 1 to cannon fire and they are easily killed by any auto-die template magic spells.  This is all true.  Making matters even worse, they cost a ton of points for what is essentially an easy to kill fighty character.  Compare the cost of a Black Dragon to a War Hydra, and you can see why Dark Elf players aren’t exactly rushing to play dragons.

Plus you have the ages old Fantasy problem: fighty characters aren’t points efficient.  They probably will only be in combat 3 or 4 turns out of the game, and realistically, how much can they kill in 3 turns?  Then compare that to how much a wizard of comparable points can kill over 6 turns.  You can see why competitive players put their character points into magic users rather than fighty characters.  Oh great, you can put a wizard on a dragon.  But you don’t want a squishy wizard in combat.  Wizard in combat = waste of a wizard.  Dragon not in combat = waste of dragon.  So that’s out.

I have more bad news for you.  The 8^th Edition rules nerfed fear/terror and implemented Steadfast.  These changes really hurt monsters.  In 7^th Edition, monsters would charge a block of infantry, kill the first row, auto-break them due to terror and run them down and then kill something again next turn.  Now, monsters will charge infantry, kill the front row, take a wound or two back, and be stuck in for the next couple of turns.  Great, your 700 point imba-monster spent the whole game killing a 400 point infantry unit!  Woohoo.  Or worse, you imba-monster has a bad turn of combat and doesn’t do enough wounds and loses combat resolution and runs off the table.  Bad news there.

I feel in a lot of ways Games Workshop is trying to pull Fantasy in two different directions at the same time.  On one hand they built 8^th Edition rules to favor magic and large blocks of infantry, which by itself is totally fine.  But all the 8^th Edition books released as well as subsequently released kits seem to be pushing big, centerpiece monsters, which is fine too.  The problem for them from a marketing perspective is they sell the game with the monsters, because let’s face it: you’re going to attract new players with the cool large monster kits, not blocks of non-descript infantry.  Unfortunately, the rules don’t support a game based around large centerpiece models.  I imagine a great many new players are disappointed when their awesome looking monster dies turn 1, or perhaps worse, survives all game but achieves nothing.

I’m not going to say 8^th Edition is bad.  It really IS an improvement over 7^th Edition in almost every way.  The issue boils down to marketing and fun.  The game is sold with big, centerpiece kits that make even die-hard 40k players drool.  But the rules don’t encourage you to play units like that.  I think GW realizes this, I mean, they have to realize this since it’s blatantly obvious.  But 9^th Edition is far too far away.  They could issue an FAQ tomorrow to change cannon balls to 1 wound each rather than D6.  They could change it so that Terror causers prevent someone from being steadfast.  They could make it so that the rider’s ward save applies to his monstrous mount.  Any or all of these things would make monsters more playable.  But the big problem of magic characters being simply more points efficient than fighty characters won’t change even with those changes.

If this doesn't make you at least slightly interested in Fantasy, you probably aren't a wargamer

Until then, I will look at the Black Dragon kit and drool at how cool it is.  But it will be a relationship from afar, as the $50 in my wallet will be staying put and the kit will stay on the shelf.