Loadjax343

Would anyone be willing to give me a rundown or a link that explains the differences and evolution of the various Warhammer Fantasy Battles editions? Id be very curious from a historical/game design perspective.

Thanks! :D

I can only really contribute from 5th to 6th edition and then Age of Sigmar.

5th edition was a mass battle game that focused on the heroes. There were cards that were used for magic items, individual units had champions that were fairly cusomizable. If you had a tough enough hero he could wipe out entire units on the first turn of combat, it didn't even need to be a hero on a monstrous mount, a Lord of Chaos could do it on his own if mounted and given the right equipment.

The game had a complex magic system that was almost a game in itself with spell cards and winds of magic cards.

The change to 6th edition was to make the units more powerful vis-a-vis the heroes, more focus on needing certain types of units and to make the magic system a little more simple.

The rules were scaled down to only one boxed set vs. the 5th edition one that also had a supplemental boxed set for the magic stuff.

Heroes were no longer so powerful that they could wipe out entire units by themselves for the most part.

One thing that helped with this was adding an additional bonus to combat resolution for outnumbering the enemy.

So in 5th edition you had the number of wounds you inflicted + rank bonus (up to 3) and standard plus possibly army standard if he was in the unit.

Typically a unit was looking at a combat resolution of 4 + wounds in the first combat it was in.

In 6th edition to the addition of the outnumbering rule gave them a 5 + wounds in the first combat round.

6th edition also toned back the number of bonus attacks characters could get from magic items, reduced the effects of special rules on them and made units more powerful by giving them special rules that sometimes kept the elite units hanging of for a big longer, like stubborn, which meant that they took leadership tests on their base leadership rather than a test on the leadership modified based on combat results.

All in all it worked a lot better than 5th edition as a mass battle game. If you liked games where the heroes were the alpha and omega of strategy then it wasn't for you.

The magic system got rid of the cards and instead relied on dice, each magic user in your army generated so many casting and dispelling dice and you rolled to see if you managed your spell. It was a lot quicker than the card based system in 5th edition without significantly increasing or decreasing the effect of magic.

You had a slightly higher chance of getting a spell off than not each turn because the wizards typically generated 2 dice for casting vs. 1 for dispelling.

Age of Sigmar is a different kettle of fish entirely. I never played 8th edition but it seems to have differed significantly from previous editions. That being said, AoS is a total overhaul.

The biggest differences are the potential simplicity of the rules and the lack of ranked units. However these differences are deceptive. The units are still the central part of the game, much like in 6th edition and even more so in some ways as you can no longer make super units with heroes in them, nor can you hide heroes by attaching them to units.

Magic is very much simplified and spells are cast on a single roll of 2d6 and can be dispelled by the same roll achieving a higher result than the casting roll.

The simplicity of the game is deceptive. It can be simple. If you play with a small number of different units and don't use scenarios or Battlescroll Battalions (basically special rules that apply to a certain formation or grouping of units) then it is very simplistic. There are only four pages of rules and much of that is devoted to victory conditions or army/terrain set up.

However, once you start putting more diverse units on the table, add in scenario special rules, special rules for the terrain you are fighting over, realm rules for the environment in which you are fighting and Battlescroll battalions it can get very complex.

Fortunately you can add as much or as little of this as you like.

A game between a beastman and dwarf army where you have 4 units of Gors, a beastlord, a shaman, an ungor unit and a bestigor unit taking on 4 Dwarf warrior units, a Dwarf lord, a runepriest, a unit of quarellers and a unit of iron breakers all fought out in a wooded area around the entrance to a mine would be pretty straight forward.

The same game with a Cygor, Minotaurs, Ungor raiders and Centigors added to the Beastmen side and a Gyrocopter, a cannon, some Longbeards and a unit of miners added to the dwarf side, played in the Green Torc with each side utilizing multiple battlescroll battalions and having five pieces of terrain on the table each of which have special rules would be complex as all get out.

AIUI….

There was a very skeletal system issued for free by GW main order, so much like an alpha or beta release.

This then became 1st Edition.
A boxed set of three booklets, all black and white in a greyish box.
The basics were all there, though some stats used alphabetical values !
Races listed were based on Citadel's ranges, which pretty much mirrored the common D&D races. The set included basic RPG/skirmish based rules as well, along with the 'Redwake' valley background which was a simple scenario structure.

This 1st Edition, was then updated with a much better boxed set called 'Forces of Fantasy'. Again this comprised three rule books Forces, Rules and Magic) This consolidated most of the races and types It included rudimentary unit types that have continued since then, along with some basic rules for war machines, buildings, more scenarios, painting guides and expanded magic/magic time lists. A free bonus booklet 'the Book of Battalions' that list exemplar armies from many of the Citadel/GW staff.

Shortly after, the system was revised for 2nd Edition, which came in a red box, again of three books (Rules, Forces, Magic) that much more resembled later editions with fully numeric stats, unit movement and manoeuvre and so on. Champions/Minor Heroes/Major heroes were introduced. However unit types as introduced in FoF were absent. This also came with the 'Magnificent Sven' scenario and cardboard counters.

Ravening Hordes was the first 'army' supplement.
Many of the armies listed were pretty much historical equivalents with fantasy elements tacked on. Skaven made their appearance about this time.

Third edition was much more complex, with five levels of character type (+5, 10, 15, 20, 25). More troop types, special rules and war machines were introduced.
Warhammer Armies was produced, doing what it said.
IIRC Warhammer Seige also came out about then, along with the Realms of Chaos supplements.

HTH
Gilles

Kinda simple flow:

Army Focus Game with many figures => Hero Focus Game requiring expensive special figures and back again, cycle and repeat based upon GW's need to drive new sales. Pick the Edition you enjoy the most, and have fun!

4th Edition was the first boxed set that came with two armies and introduced the card-based magic system.

4th was much, much simpler than 3rd. It also introduced the Colleges of Magic, 'wargear' magic item cards (most generic, some character or faction-specific), and individual army books.

Outside the rulebook aspect, sculpting styles became more simple and in many cases somewhat toylike than previously (this is especially evident in 2nd Ed. Epic and Man-o-War), and someone up top was apparently pushing that studio painters use red, A LOT. Miniatures in WD articles were often given clean but very simple paint jobs. I assumed this was done to discourage novice painters from feeling inadequate.

3rd Edition there were certain requirements in the way of troops before you could bring on other units.

Characters came in different levels, like Level 5, Level 10 etc…

Army Lists came into being and the set came in several Hardback books that were about the size of what a Army Book was prior to GW killing off WFB.

There were many different spells that you could buy depending on what Level of Magic user you got.

It was coming to an end just as I was getting into it.

4th Edition, as others have pointed out it was the beginning of what is called Herohammer.

Rules were steamlined and the Magic System was totally re-worked into the Card Based system. The key was to get the Total Power card and wait until the perfect moment to cast your most power spell. There were Schools of magic that could be used.

Instead of a single book for the Army List GW released separate books for each Army.

4th Edition last for four years 1992-1996

5th Edition was a new box set that came out in 1996 and even more so pushed the Herohammer age.

Herohammer was were you made sure that your Lord was the most badass and expensive unit in your army. He/she had the best weapon (Hydra Sword), Armor (shooting for a 1/2+ save) plus whatever else you sought you needed to keep them alive, like; the Black Amulet wounds were rebounded back to whatever you were fighting. Oh and you usually took a Monster as a mount usually one that had wings as well.

But taking that flying mount did come with a risk since if you went up into the sky your opponent could charge you and do a fly by attack. Many a Lord/Hero died a horrible death after their mount was killed while they were still flying.

So many players heroes stayed on the ground.

Also in 5th they tweaked the rules a bit and put in challenges (that is were the Hydra Sword shined because each hit turned into one D6 hits).

Also the Magic was tweaked again as well and the schools of magic were replaced with a 20 Card Battle Magic Deck. This really hosed over Empire Players since their 4th Level Wizard could end up with four spells that really will not help them.

4th & 5th Edition was the Golden age of Warhammer Fantasy but GW came out with 6th Edition in 2000.

Gone were the days of Herohammer and Troops were the thing.

Magic System was changed again to the dice system that was used until GW killed off WFB.

Also the Force Composition chart came worth as well and the days of Min/Max came about.

Armies were really no longer balanced and a few came to the fore front because they could get more magic dice or were able to use Terror/Fear.

It was with 6th Edition that it was no longer fun to play WFB due to these issues.

Actually in my area WFB died completely.

It did not get anything better with 7th Edition but GW did change things with 8th Edition somewhat but they had hosed over WFB so bad by then that they ended up killing it off.

Then they came out with their new Fantasy Space Marine game Age of Sigmar.

Best Edition were 3rd to about midway through 5th.

I never understood the focus on the Hydra blade; great at inflicting lots of hits on fairly weedy unarmoured targets but those are hardly the ones you need help with are they? A Vampire or Greater Daemon would laugh at you if you poked them with that. And it didnt let you kill more targets than you had attacks on your profile, so it was no good at culling the hordes either.

Preferred a Sword of Heroes or a Slayer Sword for roughing up the really tough stuff. Or if I thought I might just sneak a single hit through a Frost Blade or Venom Sword, to make sure I only needed one wounding hit. Generally though I didn't bother with the expensive kit- a Runefang, at 30 points, for ignoring all armour saves was a fantastic bargain…and as an Empire player I could have more than one!

You can really think of the various editions as being grouped into distinct generations:

1/2/3 were all rather detailed (to much so in my mind), in many ways more roleplay games with armies than wargames really. I gelt they got a bit bogged down with all the detail but they were fine for anything up to a sort of warband scale I think.

4/5 were more suited to playing battles but the focus was definitly on the heroes, that perhaps not as much as hindsight would have us believe. Certainly not every game was 'herohammer' and the lowly core infantry of each faction could and did decide the day when properly handled. The main issue with this period is Codex Creep – it wasnt too bad during 4th, but it escalated quickly in 5th with Bretonnians, Lizardmen, Vampirecounts and Chaos all taking powergaming to new and exciting levels in quick succssion. The problem was caused by the whole phenomena of 'special rules'- almost non-existent in a lot of the 4th Ed Army supplements some of the later 5th edition books had pages and pages devoted to making every unit special…and when everyone is special, nobody is. This arms race of special rules made the game practically unplayable by the end…

6/7: 6th was supposed to be the reset button and I think it worked, with a lot of the special stuff becoming stardardised and a lot of fiddly stuff become a bit more abstract. The power level across the game was rebalanced…And it was perfect for all of the 5 minutes it took to start releasing army books again. The arms race of special rules took off again with each army becoming tougher and tougher as they were released, into 7th.

8th- the shark jumping edition which was intended to be another reset but failed miserably- it learned none of the lessons of what had worked in 6th and what hadn't worked in 7th and just mucked up everything. I found it to be near unplayable. I'll give a single example- Initiative: In 6th this stat didnt do much anymore, something of a vestigial number on the profile, and due to its limited uses it didn't matter much if there wasn't much variation across the various creature types. Fair enough. In 8th though it was to take centre stage as the stat that would decide various important things like who got to hit first. Again, in principle thats a good thing- but the execution was off. A sane person might go back to the stats therefore and tweak the I values to get plenty of variation, and might introduce more things that would modify it up and down- instead they introduced two groups of special rules and handed them out to everyone which said they either strike first OR they strike last- nothing in between. And no two troop types had the same wording of the same rule so you have to sit there and work out from the wording and grammer who strikes first in each and every case, which half the tame came down to who had the highest initiative anyway, except they were all the same so it was just a roll off…

…anyway, it was stupid and convoluted and rediculous.

I now play KOW. Much easier on the brain.

And it didnt let you kill more targets than you had attacks on your profile.

True, but I have game with individuals who tried doing just that. Like stating that their 5 attacks can turn in as many attacks from each of the D6's (so like 15-20 or more attacks).

In all of the Editions you had players who would try and game the system, WAACer's.

But it was good at slaughtering that poor Champion to pieces and then getting the Overkill results.

I you sought you would be facing off against a harder opponent will the Potion of Strength did help.

For me it was the 75 point cost of the thing that kept me from using it.

Yes it was Army Book creep that kill the game since there was no balance and the best army was the one that just got it new book.

Certain Armies fell down to the bottom of the list (Wood Elves) since they had to still use a book that was design for 4th Edition.

I am interested in the new Runewars game that Fantasy Flight is coming out with.

Just need to figure out how to convert all of my current armies over to it.

Just wanted to dispel a few misunderstandings. The Wood Elf book should actually probably be considered a 5th edition book, even though it was released in May 1996 and the 5th Edition rulebook didn't come out until October 1996. If you check the rulebook, you'll see that it is only fully compatible with 5th edition (some key differences—the Wood Elf mages, including special characters, are described as using 'Battle Magic,' which wasn't a thing in 4th Edition, despite the fact that there was a box set called Battle Magic). Of course, it was still 95% compatible with 4th Edition… Just ignore the references to 5th Edition magic and you're good to go. For our 4th edition games, I consider the Wood Elves book '4th legal.'

Secondly, the 'Hydra Sword' business was perhaps the most common and most infamous misunderstanding in Warhammer history. The magic item card is extremely clear that each hit becomes d6 hits against the original target. Almost everyone I know played it as simply multiplying the attacks. Why? Well, part of the reason was that we were a bunch of dumb kids that hardly ever read the rules anyway. The other reason is that usually only one person in a club actually owned the Warhammer Battle Magic box set, so there was only ever one Hydra Blade card shared by everyone and often it was lost or misplaced. I have my cards right in front of me, so I will type it out for the sake of completeness:

HYDRA BLADE
Magic Item, 75 points

A sword made from the iron scales of a hydra's tail and quenched in hydra blood. The magical properties of hydras are legendary and a blade forged with hydra scales will bite through flesh and bone with uncanny ease.

A character using this weapon in close combat rolls to hit for each of his attacks as normal. Each attack that hits multiplies into D6 hits, roll to wound for each one. Note, however, that each attack is only against a single creature—so if the creature is killed any excess wounds are wasted.

EACH HIT = D6 HITS

So that nasty Vampire Lord with 5 Attacks and a Hydra Sword? Yep, he can still only kill 5 models a turn. Because he costs nearly 500 points and games last an average of 5 turns, he will need to be targetting very expensive models every turn to earn his point cost back. He was best used as a character-hunter (which seems pretty appropriate for a Vampire). Note, he would not have benefitted from overkilling a unit champion in a duel, since there was no overkill in 4th edition! Yes, that's right, a weedy champion could challenge your Vampire Lord to a duel, wasting his turn for a measely +1 CR from the champion's single wound (and possibly causing the Vampire to lose combat). In fact, this was a standard tactic against tooled out Lord characters.

I personally love 4th edition. It has the distinction of having the most iconic fluff (the Warhammer World as we know it was defined in 4th edition, which was the first edition to have separate army books loaded with setting details, timelines, stories, famous heroes and maps). It also has the distinction of being the fastest, most simple Warhammer Fantasy game ever. It's almost 'Warhammer lite.' I also loved the card-based magic and, to be honest, I loved Herohammerism too. To me, Herohammer has way more pros than cons—it allows new players to build an army very quickly by buying a few special characters and big monster models, it allows games to have super epic battles between dragon-riding generals flinging spells and swinging magic swords and it just makes Warhammer feel epic and big. If you don't want Herohammer, just don't play with special characters or magic items. You'll find that a hero equipped with mundane weapons and armour is perfectly balanced with rank and file troops. But honestly, I think you'd be missing out if you didn't 'throw down' now and then just to see who would win, Teclis or Azhag the Slaughterer. Warhammer ought to be heroic and epic. Those battles between tooled out lords and mages were amazing.

And if you hear that 4th edition wasn't tactical, then that is a bunch of garbage. More tactica guides were written for 4th and 5th than were ever written for every other edition of the game combined. The early days of the internet were loaded with fan pages and army guides galore—more than you could ever read in a lifetime. These were editions that just generated so much enthusiasm.

5th edition was also great. It was super clean, bright and professional-looking. The minor changes to the rules were absolutely fine, and the Siege book was excellent. The only thing I didn't like about 5th edition was the new army books. The Vampire Counts and High Elves books really killed the awesome feel of the 4th edition Undead and High Elves and were completely unnecessary. The Lizardmen book just didn't feel like it belonged. Only the Bretonnia book was interesting to me, although it was probably too powerful (that said, I don't remember Bretonnians winning a lot of tournaments back in the day).

I had a Brettonian army and a Chaos army for 5th edition. They played against each other often. The Brettonians were definitely not the overpowered army in that match up.