Note: no edition wars in this thread! (Or elsewhere on the site for that matter
It�?Ts been a bit since AoS came along and fractured the WFB landscape. Fractured in the sense that GW was lucky that by and large they were able to get people to move to each new edition with minimal falloff.
My question is why are people Not playing the versions they like? Or like me are they still playing the version they lin? It�?Ts not like their books stopped working when AoS came out. I could see that being an issue for the tournament players perhaps but to me with so many choices from 3rd edition to 8th to KoW to 9th Age, what have you that the hobby is just fine as is.
Or perhaps to jarring of a shakeup for too many people?
Might have to login to Warseer for the first time in ages…
Again no edition is warring, just general discussion.
Though it’s not precisely what you asked for, here is the situation in my group: We almost only play at tournaments in my hobby circle. The Warhammer scene for us is the tournament scene where we meet other hobbyists, look at each others’ conversions, paintjobs and talk about stuff. The tournament crowd in Sweden is a varied one, from competitive ETC players to more relaxed beer and pretzel players (who nevertheless often play cheese lists), through to people who enjoy the creative side of the hobby fully and tinker a lot with their conversions and paintjobs. Many obviously belong to more than one of the mentioned categories. As for many of the more artistically inclined, we usually fight for the last place in the rankings.
As such, when the tournaments and almost all players (who didn’t drop off after the End Times) in middle Sweden per default moved on to 9th Age, we followed suit. Though we enjoy various aspects of earlier Warhammer editions, and my brother in particular has tinkered with rules for them (and 9th Age), in general rules are a jungle as far as I am concerned, and keeping various editions’ different rules sets in mind and relearning them isn’t an inviting prospect. Otherwise we might have played previous Warhammer editions at home.
We’ve been curious to try out other rules sets such as Kings of War, Lotr, Age of Sigmar, Blood Bowl and historicals, and we did test KoW and Lotr a little some years ago. But in general we currently play way too little at home (might change in the coming year) to dabble in other games than the common default edition around here, which is T9A. And at least for me it’s an unwelcome obstacle to learn yet another detailed rules set, so all in all we’ve not put such plans for other game systems in action so far. Instead we’re just doing what we’ve always done, namely follow the crowd to the new standard edition.
Personally I’ve never been too tied to whatever GW is doing. I’ve always enjoyed the good stuff they’ve put out, and ignored the warts. It wasn’t bad quality bits which made me interested in the setting in the first place. So the End Times passed by with a shrug of shoulders for my part, while my brother and many others seems to have been downstruck, disheartened or even embittered at the end of official support for Warhammer Fantasy as we’ve known and appreciated it. If you ask me, that stuff was just all false alarm. Warhammer is too good a setting to be discarded, and so tens of thousands of Warhammer players play Warhammer in their heads, even though the games they play bear different names.
When GW was still producing ranked combat games, everyone knew where they stood - either play the latest GW rules (easy to find an opponent) or haggle to find someone who played the edition/game you wanted (5+ possibilities of varying chances). The former is gone, the latter is still just as fractured, and you can’t play in GW stores any more so if that was your main place for battles then your world got a lot smaller. It’s all about the local shops and local gamers now - if enough moved to 9th Age then your best bet is that, if they stayed at 8th then you are still on that.
I lost all my previous opponents around the time 8th came in and haven’t really made much effort to join a new group, so I’m going with the edition I know best, which is 7th.
A good question, and I think the core answer is that we do end up playing the versions we like best so long as we have a player base interested in the same. Otherwise we make due with what’s on tap. When I lived in California I had a large player group who all played one or multiple armies in 7th ed. I got to know the game and enjoyed that version. 8th ed came out and I moved to Chicago. No player group and no time to play though I picked up about 3 games a year at the local GW. Not enough to learn new rules and it fell by the wayside, even sold my army.
Joined a new miniature manufacturer agnostic group in 2011 and all of us have similar time limitations. A few of us still enjoy mass battle but never have 6 hours to play a game. Hence the transition to Kings of War. Much faster play, efficient ruleset, still fun and challenging and you can play a massive battle in 2-3 hrs.
While I like the game, and it suits my mass battle needs, I am sure if my group played something else in the wfb realm that would be the game I played… Or it would fall to me to interest the group in the version I want to play. Hope this answers the question. Cheers, :cheers
Personally I play what I like and most of the time I like to play the edition where I have the opportunity to play my miniatures regularly, which is easier with some other players around :-).
At the moment this is T9A, because if you find no casual games there is always a tournament now and then. I also like the game because it is rather deep and complex and you won`t get tired of it in a few games.
But for more atmospheric games I am also watching Warhammer CE, 9th edition, Fluffhammer, WHFB 8th and 3rd edition.
For shorter games I usually switch to Skirmishers like Mordheim (and Malifaux) and even AoS. In Malifaux I like the Steampunk/ Horror Setting and the miniatures a lot and the rules are really fluent and innovative (no dice but playing with a card hand). Mordheim has a rich background, nice models (which can be painted in a given time) and I like the campaign rules with a Warband developing. AoS is very easy to learn and I play it sometimes with my son (10 years old) and a friend of mine who plays only AoS.
My gaming circle has shrunk to about 20% of what it once was back in the WHFB days. Some now play 40K, some moved to KoW, some to T9A, etc. Locally we’re not doing a good job of putting ourselves back together and folks have moved on =(
It died here as well with the release of AoS. We still play a lot of Blood Bowl, but other than that people got scattered among different smaller games. Myself and a few others got really hooked on KoW 15mm as you know, wonderfull game and scale IMO.
The answers to me are fascinating and also kinda missing what I�?Tm asking.
I play 3rd edition, I have for years.
What�?Ts to stop people from playing 5th through 8th? It�?Ts not like their books stopped working after a version got superceeded and/or retired.
That�?Ts what I fin so puzzling. People have been playing 1st and 2nd edition D&D for decades without support, 1st edition WFRP works just as well as it did in 1986.
@Willmark: For us I guess it was the hype that the End Times brought and then going full speed ahead into a wall. It killed it for a lot of ppl. If they had released it like they did with the latest edition of Warhammer 40.000 I dont think it would have killed the enthusiam like it did.
What�?Ts to stop people from playing 5th through 8th? It�?Ts not like their books stopped working after a version got superceeded and/or retired.
Willmark
Opponents. If you have no one to play against then you aren't playing any edition.
Doesn't matter if the rules are old, or new, or middle-school fifth grade like junior high, free and online, or bought in a secondhand book,
no players = no game.
Although I�?Tve owned the 7th’ed rulebooks for years and years I actually never played WHFB. I only ever played 40k for years because fantasy had no real following locally - by the time I leap to fantasy war gaming WHFB had already been killed off so I actually started where I am now in Kings of War 2ed (My Chaos Dwarfs are actually my first ever fantasy army).
I had always meant to use my Chaos Daemons for fantasy as well as 40k �?" I have looked over the rules quite a few times (as well as the 9th Age) but frankly for rank and file stuff I don’t think I could ever move to a system with model removal and all that- it feels cumbersome to me and the cost of all the extra models is prohibitive
…Also no force on earth can make Bloodletters rank up properly :mad
I suppose the answer is people are drawn to what’s new because we’ve been conditioned to assume new means better or improved. Why don’t people play Basic & Expert D&D but instead play Pathfinder for example? Why do people play The 9th Age when there are a bunch of WHFB editions one could pick from? We could ask that question about dozens of products and I don’t think the answer is “things are out of print and hard to get now” (though that may contribute). We want to see innovation and new ideas brought forward, to have a game take us to places we haven’t been yet. Speaking only for myself, I had a fantastic time playing WHFB but I have no desire to return to it.
actually my story is different. 8th edition was non existent and no1 played it within 100 miles, AoS on the other hand has a good couple of players and i can actually get a game. the AoS ruleset is bloody great i even rebased my chaos dwarfs!
What�?Ts to stop people from playing 5th through 8th? It�?Ts not like their books stopped working after a version got superceeded and/or retired.
Willmark
Opponents. If you have no one to play against then you aren't playing any edition.
Doesn't matter if the rules are old, or new, or middle-school fifth grade like junior high, free and online, or bought in a secondhand book,
no players = no game.
cornixt
Yes and no.
It seems to me that Warhammer players have been more concerned with playing the latest version (more or less) as opposed to say D&D players. One can argue that RPGs are tougher as it requires more players for s single game.
None of this is implied to be deragatory, rather an observation. Then again I play an older version and dont play in tournaments.
People play for different reasons but all need someone to play with. I�?Tm not a tournament player and played with my kids using a version given to me ( had elves and goblins on the front) and downloaded magic rules for ?7ed from the net. Worked fine had fun. Moved to Aos as the rules were free. But if your oponents move you may have to. They may be tournament players. They may like the changes. They may just like new stuff. Warhammer is a social game. Thats why I like it.
GW are not perfect but they still get the most important rule (or at least claim to).
