Definitely worth a watch…I haven’t played a game of ToW yet, but after reading the rules, I can’t find any fault with his logic and interpretation of a serious loophole in the game… Welcome to LineHammer 
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terrain should fix this problem
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The only way to play any edition of warhammer without shit like this is the same way to play every edition for all time: with mates who enjoy it the same as you, and agree before the game not to do shit like this
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100% what @chitzkoi said. Any version of warhammer is broken if you play against paople wo NEED to win at any cost, no matter the amount of cheese
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I watch this guy a lot. He’s on the…eccentric side. I really love his 3rd edition style Chaos Army.
He’s an exceptionally intelligent fellow, with a lot of experience with different rule-sets. In my mind, I think he’s right; played competitively, it’s broken. This certainly wasn’t the case for 6th, 8th, 9th, WAB…that could be played competitively.
There are/going to be worse examples of this. The lines of Dwarf Crossbowmen that will pepper an army to death, and then linehammer them to death with axes once melee fighting commences.
That said…if you have enough blunderbusses!
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I was thinking swordmasters who likely strike 1st even if charged would be terrible.
Needs to be limited to no more than 1 or 2 supporting attacks from either side with a longer frontage
The disdain he has for his beautiful chaos warriors…i find it distressing lol
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a simple rule that could be made to fix it is something like a unit can only add 2+ width to say a base of 8 wide per rank, so you could have 10x1 deep 12x2 deep 14x3 deep 16x4 deep and so on.
Great, you do that and I win the game. Easily.
Here’s how you do it:
- You kill 2-3 models with shooting so that mega-line doesn’t stretch from edge to edge anymore. Shouldn’t be a problem
- You use ambushers / scouts / vanguard / something like a great eagle to charge in the flank
- Idiot’s fighting rank is now: 1 model. You easily win combat. Even with “giving ground”, as soon as one model just touches the table edge, the whole unit is destroyed.
Most imporant is of course what Chitz and Michael said: Don’t. Play. People. Who. Play. Like. This.
Respectfully disagree. All of those editions could be gamed this way, that’s why there were always things like the comp system or pages full of tournament rules to balance it out. You want to play 8th competitively? Great. You play Daemons of Chaos, I play High Elves. Good luck killing my block of 50 Phoenix Guard with Banner of the World Dragon, a level 4, my General and BSB in it. You want to play 6th? Great, meet my Dark Elves Deathstar… You see where I’m going with this.
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Is this Dr Blaxil? Been to a few events that he’s attended before. Very nice chap. I find his on screen persona a bit much but in person he’s quite chill 
Now the line hammer thing.
Haven’t watched the vid but had read the theory. My take:
Ability to manoeuvre this unit will be low. If you charged it with everything you’ve got at once as well it would suffer.
Also who would play like that? Some kinda socially inept loser? Someone I wouldn’t play basically haha. If this becomes an actual issue comp organisers need simply add one line in their rules pack to limit unit width to a given number and the problem goes away.
Dr Blaxil is a nice man, and I doubt he’s advocating this linehammer thing as a good thing, but at every event I’ve been at with him he’s been top table and event winner or close. He’s in the world of competitive gaming so he views the game through that lens. I’d imagine even a friendly game against him would be pretty hardcore.
People in that mindset are not looking at a battle simulator that can tell stories but are looking at a gaming system that can be exploited to make interesting and sometimes unbeatable results.
Warhammer fantasy is such a crunchy wonky system and so old at its core that it’s always exploitable.
Games like age of sigmar are better tournament games. They’ve learned from warmachine and hordes that it’s a game of combos and bubbles and trying to win. Fantasy is role playing as a general of some orcs or elves or whatever - it’s a very different game.
I’m rambling now. Not sure I was trying to make a point.
Maybe my point is this: play like a dick and play against dicks. Maybe you’ll find your people at hyper competitive events. Have a great time 
…or play like a gentlemen against gentlemen in my shed. Everyone welcome. Especially Eddy.
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You’ve all brought up excellent points.
@harvestmouse
Yes! I watch him a lot too, and he’s quite eccentric, which is part of his charm.
@Zoddtheimmortal
I too was cringing as he casually knocked about his miniatures, but I do remember an actual old GW printed rule (4th edition? 5th?) that gave a gameplay tip that when you lose a lot of ranked minis in a round of combat, just casually toss them aside off the table as if you don’t care about your losses, just to unnerve your opponent 
And as pointed out, house rules and common sense should preempt bullshit loopholes.
But it sucks that GW left open such an obvious broken rules system…lets face it, even smaller “lines” that don’t extend so far will still give advantage to certain types of troops and armies.
And Todd, wherever you are, you shameless Orc and Goblin player from my old game store…you’re still an ass for making your own clear plastic Foot of Gork template which allowed you to set it on top of opponents units, so that you could pivot and tweak the placement of the clear template, peering down through it, to maximise how many base edges you could touch even with a just half a millimeter touching.
And @Oxymandias
Well said good Sir! 
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Yes, you now have to decide whether you go for more attacks or static combat res. Personally I would have preferred 8th style supporting attacks (and step-up, grrr) over fighting rank too, but if this is where we are right now, I’ll make it work. Linehammer certainly is a good counter against first charge heavy cavalry.
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I think you’re right tho fuggit, theyve built SUCH a complex structure of rules in this one, but this is pretty glaring. I think it is fragile tho - i think there are tools in the army toolkit to make a fool of someone doing this. But as it stands we will all be fine, playing with the sane among sane environments. The early period of a rules system is a good time to be surfacing shit like this so community solutions can be found and errata prompted.
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All systems can be gamed and have a meta, sure. I agree with that. You can’t really get around it, look at professional E-Sports, where no matter how much tinkering, there will always be more powerful units and meta teams/armies.
However, we’re not talking about a meta/army/unit here. I haven’t seen something like this, which looks totally broken. We’re talking about the mechanics of the game.
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As I said, I don’t think it’s that broken, as it has some big weaknesses. A charge in the flank or rear is the death of linehammer, as is a simultaneous charge by multiple units. The whole formation only makes sense for missile troops, which tend to be less effective in close combat, so I wouldn’t hesitate charging with something like Chaos Warriors or the like. Ironically I think Infernal Guard with Fireglaives would be quite good in a line! It seems like a great idea, but I don’t think it will hold up.
All in all this reminds me a lot of this most famous 40k tournament moment.
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Dammit… i just spent 2 minutes googling this exact image to post it here haha
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Dumb meme is dumb.
Mathhammer means little when exposed to actual gameplay.
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As far as I know, Games Workshop has never managed to produce a balanced wargame except for Lord of the Rings (Haradrim poison arrows excepted). Of course it’s broken. Either the new edition is broken from the start, or it becomes broken as the army books are rolled out. This is a law of nature by this point.
My brother has filled me in on new rules as he is reading through the rulebook. Lots of fun new stuff, lots of interesting ideas outside the box of previous editions of Warhammer Fantasy. And lots of obvious loopholes and bad ruleswork, to the extent that @Eisenhans has been deterred from the game for the time being. Oh, and Verminlord isn’t even in the game, meaning @Jaberoo does not possess enough Skaven points to play his army in a premiere tournament in March (proxying did solve this issue, however). As always, parts of the rules and army lists are not terribly professionally made.
As someone who almost only gets to play on tournaments, I as usual expect to experience the full spectrum of broken rules and loopholes. There is no such thing as agreements before games on tournaments. But the company can still be enjoyable even if the enemy march their army through giant loopholes. Just laugh and lap it up. The vinegar is bitter because it tastes like good vinegar should taste like. 
I expect there to be a new Swedish Composition system or community errata adressing all the worst offenses of rules design.
Warhammer’s strengths have always been its background, art and miniatures. The stories and aesthetics are great. Warhammer rules should never, ever be expected to come close to the level of Warhammer’s aesthetics. The rules are cool because they let you play with the miniatures in the world, with wacky stuff like Night Goblin fanatics adding a lot of spice. But the rules have never been that good to begin with, on the face of it. But as long as it’s fun enough, that’s good enough.
Alea iacta est.
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It’s so easily fixed with a houserule: Maximum number of ranks or files for a unit are 20.
Not that it’s all that broken, it’s not hard to deal with. You’re relying on a single large unit so the rest of your army isn’t going to be all that strong and can’t do anything if it’s trapped behind it. You can’t maneuver the unit at all, it flees as easily as a small unit.
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So a big line coukd be very close to a table edge if it flees its off the table. I need to see if it retreats a few inches is it removed if a model goes off the table?
So a chaos dwarf hero on flying carpet could get perfect flank charge on this. Just kill 1 or 2 with missle fire 1st
Ahh man i thought of a good counter with the line regiment…ffs
Have a hero with a different base size in it. He auto moves in contact with the combat outside of the rank…
Ambushing sneaky gits are probably not hard enough to kill dwarfs or swordmasters from behind…hmm
Imagine a cannon shot going down the line somehow or a few bolt throwers. Ud have to send in a juicy target to be charged(but they cant charge due to scenery most likely)
GW should make a different set of, competitive play rules for free (as if) online where they can fine tune it in relation to feedback/meta. Keep the other rules as the generic casual play for the edition. Ofc they won’t do any of this but hey ho.
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