weazil
Moderator
Not adding to the discussion, but it did make me laugh:
Looking at the size of the figures coming out, we're about two editions away from being able to play warhammer with Action Man and Power Rangers. Ninja Turtles of Nurgle, anyone?
I think the thing with 4th edition and the breaking up of army lists into army books was that it moved many 'special' rules from a central place to the army books, meaning
a) you had to have the book to know the rule
b) there was no 'tone' or 'context' (note the ''s) to help establish the application of these rules outside of the army books.
I believe this is what has led to this legalistic establishment of precedent that drives all subsequent versions of warhammer. In the same way that lawyers scour many historical cases in order to describe a precedent, players scour all of the available resources to establish that their interpretation of the army book specific rule is correct. All warhammer forums (its sort of starting on this one, albeit much more slowly and sweetly) are mainly populated with these arguments.
Even though they've actively moved away from this by trying to centralize the special rules in the WFB8 book, too many years of abuse have prevented gamers from capitalizing on that and being able to escape the legal thinking.
Also, 4th ed army books really rammed home these special characters. I don't mind the idea of these as a template, or as a suggestion to have something non-standard, but unfortunately, the legalistic thinking described above basically locked people into the army book definition only, meaning that making your own special characters (and means of developing them) was looked at as an aberration.
I don't recall if 4th ed introduced the idea of turn limits to standard games, but whichever edition introduced that I would consider to be the end of the game. The minute that having 1 human charge a unit of 30 humans because-its-the-last-turn-and-I've-lost-anyway-but-if-he-wins-then-I-might-actually-win-the-game makes sense, then I call bullshit.
Its not all doom and gloom, however. I do have a soft spot for 4th ed. It was the time when I could afford to buy figures, so I fondly remember all of the YMCA poses and massive figures that didn't rank. Loved me those beachball identikit plastic dwarves (or dwarfs, if you prefer) especially.
I am secretly (well, not anymore, I suppose) collecting some 4th ed undead and orcs&goblins. Not a major drive, but 'a long term goal'. I also inquired about buying the original artwork for the 4th ed box, which I would post behind a painted 4th ed boxed set of figures on display (that I've yet to make). At £7000, I decided to pursue other artistic expressions, thus saving myself £6,999 and my marriage.
Looking at the size of the figures coming out, we're about two editions away from being able to play warhammer with Action Man and Power Rangers. Ninja Turtles of Nurgle, anyone?
I think the thing with 4th edition and the breaking up of army lists into army books was that it moved many 'special' rules from a central place to the army books, meaning
a) you had to have the book to know the rule
b) there was no 'tone' or 'context' (note the ''s) to help establish the application of these rules outside of the army books.
I believe this is what has led to this legalistic establishment of precedent that drives all subsequent versions of warhammer. In the same way that lawyers scour many historical cases in order to describe a precedent, players scour all of the available resources to establish that their interpretation of the army book specific rule is correct. All warhammer forums (its sort of starting on this one, albeit much more slowly and sweetly) are mainly populated with these arguments.
Even though they've actively moved away from this by trying to centralize the special rules in the WFB8 book, too many years of abuse have prevented gamers from capitalizing on that and being able to escape the legal thinking.
Also, 4th ed army books really rammed home these special characters. I don't mind the idea of these as a template, or as a suggestion to have something non-standard, but unfortunately, the legalistic thinking described above basically locked people into the army book definition only, meaning that making your own special characters (and means of developing them) was looked at as an aberration.
I don't recall if 4th ed introduced the idea of turn limits to standard games, but whichever edition introduced that I would consider to be the end of the game. The minute that having 1 human charge a unit of 30 humans because-its-the-last-turn-and-I've-lost-anyway-but-if-he-wins-then-I-might-actually-win-the-game makes sense, then I call bullshit.
Its not all doom and gloom, however. I do have a soft spot for 4th ed. It was the time when I could afford to buy figures, so I fondly remember all of the YMCA poses and massive figures that didn't rank. Loved me those beachball identikit plastic dwarves (or dwarfs, if you prefer) especially.
I am secretly (well, not anymore, I suppose) collecting some 4th ed undead and orcs&goblins. Not a major drive, but 'a long term goal'. I also inquired about buying the original artwork for the 4th ed box, which I would post behind a painted 4th ed boxed set of figures on display (that I've yet to make). At £7000, I decided to pursue other artistic expressions, thus saving myself £6,999 and my marriage.
this is why the frame work of fluff I have for the campaign I hope to start this fall with my recruits has very little to do with the actual "known" warhammer world....other than the presence of the same big players...Empire, Chaos etc...
so the idea of buying 8 separate army books at $20+ each was way out of reach for me...we still typically used the old Armies book even while playing 4th ed.
