WFB- 8th Edition- Rumor round-up

Hey folks. I just wanted to take few minutes to reconcile a bunch of new rumors on WFB upcoming 8th rules and 2010 releases..this is really shaping up to be the GW's year of Warhammer Fantasy Battles..here locally WFB is a growing game, with more new players showing up all the time, if you havent played WFB in years or have an interest, now is a great time to get in. All of this info is recycled from other sites and I wanted to comment on some of it, given recent discussions I've had with folks and to point out some contradictions with past information that's been leaked. As far as I can tell all this is recycled from threads on Warseer but props to BoLS and specifically Col. Festus for a bunch of this.

8th Ed Rules:

-on Army Building

Army construction is moving back to percentages. (you may have 25% of your points spent on heroes, 25%-50% on core… etc.)

This makes sense to me some people say it didnt work in previous editions but right now we have people blowing huge amounts of points on just characters. This change will limit the number of characters for armies like DoC and VC where overpowered characters get spammed and support characters get ignored. If your playing a 2250 game you've only got 562 points to spend on Heroes, you can take a Greater Daemon or two or three heralds, not a GD and 3 Heralds..or a Level 4 vampire Lord with a Necromancer or Wight King, not a Level 4 Vamp and 3 Level 2 Vampires. While it kind of screws with my next army as well (yes I have decided I am doing Lizardmen (more on that soon) so if you want to Slann..all your getting is the Slann not the Slann and two Engines!!...personally I like this but I can see already this is going to push the standard tourament games up to 2500-3K, it just makes sense...keep the game standard a 2K with these rules would be coolby me...I just dont see the "give me more" masses swallowing 500 pts of characters in 2K game as the norm.


On Combat


1. Infantry now fights in two ranks by default

keep in mind you strike back in 2 ranks as well obvious suggestions of things like "wow so my 5 wide Chaos Warriors with extra hand weapons will be getting a base 30 attacks" That being before champions, frenzy, and or characters, sound absolutely devastating, I am sure some other caveats will apply but in a way it makes sense and makes things like Chaos Warriors (who in the meta game barely show up on the battlefield in current WoC armies) become crazy useful again and actually be what they are supposed to be, the baddest Mofos; in the land and not just some guys who occasionally show up in a Army that is based around them. Point # 1 fits nicely with point 2.-

2. Speeding up of combat in general. A possibility of introducing a type of combat familiar to Flames of War players, something in which there are no multi-turn combats

Instead combat is fought over and over again until one side is dead or breaks, all in the same round of combat.

For example a 6x5 block of Saurus Spearmen fight a 3x6 block of Swordmasters of Hoeth. The Elves attack and kill the front rank of the Lizardmen. The 6 back rank spearmen attack, get luckly and kill the front rank of the Swordmasters, now the next rank of the Elves attacks, and so forth until one side breaks or is wiped out.

Not sure how I feel about this, but Fighting in two ranks and this system will certainly speed things up..I think just infantry changes alone will do that...have to sit on this for a bit it might be cool.

3. Infantry in 40mm+ bases will now gain rank bonuses for ranks that are at least three models wide

makes sense considering the overall speculation of 8th Ed that ranked infantry will count for more and be more powerful, and conveniently help sell more models


4. The rules for Spears are not being changed (makes sense given point 1, spears are still useful)


5. The return of "lapping-around" in combat.- I recently asked how this worked in 6th ed on my local forum..where everyone basically said it didnt work which is why it got canned, how it going to come back and work this time we will have to see.


Artillery

Template changes are pretty much confirmed (no more partials) changes to using the pesky artillery dice are speculated but nothing more than from random commenters


Cavalry

All Cavalry will now cause impact hits making them much more deadly (they need to be with the fight in two ranks thing) again this makes sense given the overall theme of speeding up combat.


On Magic


The magic system is being made more risk/reward oriented

Suggested mechanic is you roll 2d6 to generate PD at start of the game you opponent gets your highest number of one die as dispel dice...so if I rolled a "5" and "6" and generated 11PD, my opponent would start with 6 Dispel Dice, this of course would need to be able to be augement by items/ powers

Dispel scrolls will now just add X "#" of Dispel Dice to your pool

again makes sense with above system.

Expect many changes to the magic phase, including giving irresistable force a downside, while making miscasts harder to have but much more devastating.

On Psychology

Changes to fear and terror -Basically if you cause fear you subtract one to the enemys final CR score, terror by two. Autobreak is gone, as well as having to take leadership checks to fight them (Although I have heard that you may still need a leadership check, but a failed one simply results in needed 6's to hit instead of failing your charge).

So you have a full command, 3 ranks, and you kill two skeletons you would have Banner, 3 for rank bonus, and 2 kills, -1 for fighitng a fear causing opponent. End result 5 instead of 6.


On the Game

No more pitched battles, games will be scenario and mission based with emphasis on having scoring units on the battlefield (ie. core troops)

Overall I must say, in context of all it together speculation aside I'm liking it looking to be a more balanced and faster game, fixing many of the current loopholes that create many of the WAAC abuses out there.



On Releases for 2010

The next two books are Tomb Kings and Ogres no doubt...the order given the rumors should be TK in may/june...Ogres Oct/Nov (so Ogres would be 1st book post 8th ed)
after Ogres signs are pointing to a new Orc and Goblin book.

Given rumors of this summer national WFB campaign...8th ed is either going to come out before or after. Here is the current purposed releases.

The 8th Ed Starter set is now High Elves and Skaven

I dont know whats up with that because I was told at Games Day last year that someone had seen prototypes in Baltimore of the 8th Ed Starter and it was Empire and Orcs with the below new Empire Knights and Orc Boar Boyz in the set..when this changedI dont know, but apparently its been changed...or my source was just speculating on what he saw (totally possible)

* Plastic Griffon
* New Plastic High Elf Spearmen
* Plastic Silver Helms
* Plastic Weapon's team of some sort for Skaven
* Ogre Kingdoms new plastic Rhinox kit
* Tomb Kings new mini
* New Orc Boys are coming (molds spotted being cut)
* New plastic Dark Riders
* New plastic Knights of the Inner Circle
* New plastic Black Knights
* New Orc Boar Boys

Comment away guys, yeah its ALL RUMOR but when combined the big picture is starting to come together.