# Restoring my clubs faith in WHFB



## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

So a while ago, my club was pretty much exclusively warhammer centric. In fact pretty much the only game that people played was WHFB. I liked and disliked this because I play a few other games but it gave us focus and we went to events all over pretty regularly.

When 8th ed came out we were all very excited to try the new rules. At first it was very refreshing, but it changed very quickly. We all began to hate the game because of how drastic a change it was from 7th ed. Things like hordes, steadfast, ease of reforming and the 6th spells for most lores really left a bad taste in everyones mouth. So we abandoned the game and went on to other games.

Now a ways down the road here I am. I started to crave epic fantasy combat and looked for alternatives to WHFB to fill that void. Then I really thought about it and decided to give it a try again, partly at the insistence of 1 guy who recently joined our group. I approached it thinking of it as a totally new game rather than a rules update to an old one. And I absolutely loved it! It was everything I had been missing! I no longer looked at the rules changes and thought of them as horrible but rather as incredibly fun and necessary rules changes. It is still a game (for the most part) about how you use your army and not so much how you build it.

Right now me and this other guy play fairly regularly and I can sometimes get a game from 1 other person who is also new to the club. But what I want is for my gaming community to embrace the awesomeness that is WHFB. What do you think is the best way to drum up interest in this game? A good portion of my club has multiple armies for the game but they are reluctant to play.

How should I go about getting the old players back into the game and draw in new ones while I'm at it?


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## DivineEdge (May 31, 2012)

To be honest, it is tough. A lot of veterans cried and whined and ragequit when 7th ran out because the game changed - like it ALWAYS does. 

I know quite a few people who play with the 7th ed rules among themselves. Get their feet wet with that?

But, in all honesty, 8th ed is better then 7th in almost every way. With the way charging works now, as well as cavalry and overrun, there is no auto-win or a point during turn 2 where you can't come back. It would be easier to get a bunch of, say, 40k players to get into it as they can't bitch about the game. 

You could try to power down the magic phase somehow as that is everyone's favorite whine-fest. 

But the dynamics of the game changed. Hordes are good, but not even close to unbeatable. Their are a lot more checks and balances on the game then last edition.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

Could add a couple of house rules:

1- ban certain spells (purple sun, Okkam's, Dwellers), provide look out sirs to characters to protect against them or my personal choice allow magic resisitance to enhance characteristics against such spells (so MR2 S3 model would test at S5 for dwellers).

2- disruption removes steadfast (stupid that it doesn't), possibly allowing smaller units to disrupt (5+ models or monster etc)


Using just those 2 makes the game feel a lot more stable without 'unbeatable' hordes (the 60 man HE spearman block used to be a local plague) and less uber-spells ruining otherwise interesting games.
The main thing I miss from 7th is the importance of getting the charge leaving the game, without it I feel a big part of the game is missing. I really used to enjoy the stand offs you could get where either side could win if they got the charge... but you could always house rule something back in if you wanted to get that feel back into the game.


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## Wiccus (Jun 2, 2008)

I feel the game is pretty much perfect as is. I don't necessarily think that it needs modifications though it may be good for people to dip their toes back in with some kind of 7th ed rules.

Its just kind of frustrating since it seems like a lot of the world had this problem initially with people being put off shortly after 8th dropped. Then they came to realize the error of their ways and picked the game back up. However the Pacific North West hasn't really. Its kind of coming back in BC and a little bit in Portland but nothing is happening with WHFB at all in Washington state where I live.

Its all Warmahordes here. I liked that game for a while as a replacement for Fantasy but its gotten very old and doesn't rely on strategy very much at all so much as how you build your list. The same is true to an extent about 40k. I still love 40k but after coming back to fantasy it just seems dull by comparison.

Fantasy is much more about how you play your army than what list you bring though there are obviously exceptions. The game is great without any modifications and I wish that my part of the world would realize that.


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## DivineEdge (May 31, 2012)

I never change anything ruleswise in my club. There, if you dislike fantasy, then play 40k. I will pretty often do battleline and straight up kill instead of a book mission, but that is for newer players and speed. With all the fantasy pregame, setting up can take an hour.


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## Tim/Steve (Jan 25, 2009)

I think that there is a lot of fun in 8th, just as much as in 7th... and happily play by the standard rules (though I've never yet played a game using the proper set up rules: we throw on scenery and then any woods/rivers are mysterious, never use any other magical scenery). The only 2 things that really annoy me with this edition are that steadfast can't be removed by disruption (its pushed my ogres to needing to play a big horde as being tactical with smaller units just won't get it done against big enough enemy blocks) and the fact that dwellers below is a better character snipe then every spell in the lore of death... and it just so happens to take out the unit and other characters at the same time.

But on the plus side, I love random charges and that step up means that the game isn't about having the most elite unit any more. the magic phase is also a lot more fun: you can have a decent round of magic just with a single Lv2 or be really powerful with a lv4 without needing to take the 4-5 mages you might have seen in armies in 7th.
At the end of the day WFB is always going to be an amazing game and I doubt I'll ever stop. Its a bit out of fashion in my local club for now but almost everyone has an army and it'll come back round again at some point.


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## Turnip86 (Oct 7, 2011)

Usually things like campaigns drum up interest in long neglected games. You could run a campaign (or tournament but with people who aren't familiar with all the rules any more it could be a bad idea) where you just play a set amount of games at a set points level over say, a month and have some kind of leader board that keeps people motivated. It might get a few people back into the game and the more games being played the more people's interest is piqued.


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## asianavatar (Aug 20, 2007)

Try smaller games first maybe. It might limit some of the crazier units and things that can happen in the game.


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