WHFB 8th Edition: One Year Later

I was sitting around listening to HeelanHammer's retrospective on the first year of 8th edition last night.  It made me think of that time last year when I was watching the Beasts of War videos and my mailbox for the new rule book.  Then, I was stuck waiting for the club to start up in the fall in order to get a game in.  Meanwhile, Australia had decided to rage quit before I had even played the darned thing.

As I've mentioned before, I am not a long time Warhammer player.  I was actually one of those people that walked by the Games Workshop store and sneered at the "nerds" hunched over their painting inside.  It wasn't until almost two years ago that I embraced my inner nerd and took Warhammer out for a spin.  Mike, otherwise known as FBRoundup, lent me the first Horus Heresy book and I dug the story.  I dabbled in 40K for a small game or two, but the aesthetics of the game didn't appeal to me.  Mike is a missionary on a mission to convert the world to WHFB, and he pointed me in that direction.  I loved the minis and picked the High Elves and am still painting that damned army to this day.

While I loved the minis, I must say that I hated playing 7th edition.  The fiddly mechanics and the byzantine movement/charging rules gave me a headache when I played.  I reluctantly played when Mike asked.  I much preferred to stay at home and paint the minis.  I predict that if 8th edition had been in the same vein as 7th, I would be playing Warmachine/Hordes now instead.

I love the flow of 8th edition.  I love the more intuitive way the rules work.  Much as Dan Heelan said, the rules generally make sense if one puts some common sense toward it.  Of course it has it's problems.  No rules set survives being played unscathed.  But generally, I picked up the rules and nuances of 8th much faster than I ever did 7th.

I also like the fact that due to magic or a giant melee, the game's momentum can swing wildly during the course of a game.  A player is rarely out of the game until the very end.  I also like the magic phase and how it can lead to those wild swings of momentum.  I like the fact that the game has gone from preplanning your phases and an emphasis on estimating distances to risk management and adaptation to a given situation.

I find that to play 8th, you need to take the whole thing with a pinch of salt.  There is always the possibility that you will be Dwellered/Purple Sunned/etc. in the first turn and you just have to laugh it off and realize that as in real life, bad things happen to good people sometimes.

In conclusion, I am very, very pleased with 8th edition and credit it with keeping me in the hobby and playing the game far more often.  To those rage quiters, change is hard, but usually worth it in the end.