Warhammer 8th Ed: First Impressions

A couple weeks ago I won a tournament over at Hobby Town Dallas and made my way into the finals. But with my winnings I went ahead and picked up the new 8th Ed Warhammer Fantasy book.

After reading through all of the basic rules and advanced rules I've got to say I'm very impressed with the new system, and might well be breaking into it and sharing my time with it and 40k.

You might be wondering what draws me to the new Warhammer systems, so here it goes.

1. There are no Space Marines - 40k is based around the world of the Imperium and that Imperium is filled with a small elite group of Space Marines, a group that shares about 50% of the table space if not more. When reading the through the Fantasy book there did not appear to be one particular army that was the starter army, or the army to get. Which means there should be more variety in play.

2. Modifiers - oh wow, how awesome is it that there are things can go up and down, and it's not so black and white. I like the idea of Str making it easier to punch through armor, then AP values. It never really made sense how you could have a str 6-7 thing that could just be shrugged off.

3. Magic - seems to be a lot more involved then psychic powers in 40k. The complexity and availability of it seems very fun. I've always been a fan of magic, and can't wait to get a game in and see how it really works out. But I wanting to hurl some fireballs across the table ;)

4. Leadership mattering - in 40k LD is so hit and miss, especially with half the units I face being fearless. I can't wait to play a game where your LD actually comes into play. And the fact that other can run because one of your other units ran will be quite interesting hehe.

5. No eternal warrior, no InstaKill - those two things have been pretty annoying in 40k. The fact that some things can take a Deathstrike missile to the face and survive, or fly through a burning sun and come out the other end with only a wound. Well that doesn't exist anymore, and I like it.

6. Just playing something different - Every once in a while you need something different, and I had always though that Fantasy was just 40k but with rank troops, and it really isn't that at all, the only thing that's the same is to hit charts and that's it, even the wound chart is now different, although I'm not sure about always being able to wound, but we'll see.

So those are my first impressions. I'm hoping to get a game in at TGR tonight with the store's army and see how it plays. If it's as fun as I'm thinking it is I'll have to start narrowing down what army to start up.

-CKR