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Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Armies in 8th edition: Fantasy


The majority of you are familiar with my popular (most clicked and linked page of 3++) Armies in 5th article series for 40k. What these articles do is analyse concepts of the armies rather than a direct codex review and how they work in the current edition of 40k. One of the prime purposes of these articles is to de-bunk quite a few of the myths the Internet believes about armies (I.e. what’s effective and not) and promote discussion. I think I’ve been pretty successful with these (and I hope you think so too) and since I’m starting on Fantasy due to their new 8th edition, well it’s time to think about Armies in 8th for them!

These will be a little bit different from the Armies in 5th articles as I am not as intimately involved with the Fantasy world (I.e. I don’t visit forums pertaining to Fantasy often) and am still learning. So whilst the premise is the same, these articles will be a lot more discussion and thinking out-loud posts where you as the readers can see my ‘journey’ (it sounds like I’m in bloody high school English/literature again, ugh). Hopefully the logic of my unfolding experiences will help you as Fantasy players learn more and understand better the points I am trying to get across whilst also providing information for discussion.

Anyway this is just a primer as I wait to put my order in for Island of Blood (3 boxes for me and Vincey; so if anyone wants a mini-rulebook we’ll have one for sale soon :P) and will be starting with posts about Magic shortly. Prime your flaming swords of joy or trolling!

Also, since I'm not very familiar with Fantasy (don't worry, research and effort will be going into these so it won't be half-arsed), what does the Pink Army think are the commonly thought of 'power' and 'crap' armies as perceived by the majority of the internet forums? I don't care if it's right or wrong just some baseline info would be good!

12 pinkments:

Nikephoros said...

Fantasy Tiers according to the internet group think with my comments in parenthesis after...

Top Tier:

1. High Elves (probably rightly)
2. Dwarves (probably slightly overrated)
3. Skaven (probably rightly)
4. Lizardmen (probably rightly)
5. Vampire Counts (probably way overrated)

Middle Tier

6. Dark Elves (probably underrated)
7. Empire (probably rightly)
8. Daemons (probably way underrated)
9. Warriors of Chaos (probably overrated)
10. Ogres (probably way overrated)

Lower Tier

11. Orcs and Goblins (probably way underrated)
12. Beastmen (probably underrated)
13. Tomb Kings (probably rightly)
14. Brettonia (probably rightly)
15. Wood Elves (probably rightly)

Dezzo said...

top is:

1. Dark Elves (Empire on steroids)
2. Skaven
3. Lizardmen
4. Daemons (not as easy as before)
5. Empire

tier II is:

1. O & G
2. Dwarves (totally reliant on the anvil)
3. High Elves
4. Vampire Counts (they are only here because of Forbidden Lore.)
5. Warriors of Chaos

tier III is:

Everything else.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps I'm not going to the right places, but I've been having a hard time finding decent articles about WFB... it seems like everyone is taking the "ZOMG, you should take X cause it's awesomesauce!" - so folks seem to be looking for the gimmicks and not solid list construction. For example, just cause they have a new steadfast rule, does that REALLY mean you have to go 5x4+ for every troop selection?

Nikephoros said...

@clt40k I agree, the Fantasy blogosphere is not anywhere near as developed as 40k's. And the popular forums are just as useless for Fantasy as they are for 40k.

Warseer, to name one of many, WHFB tactics forums are in many ways MORE useless than the 40k forums, because at least in 40k good advice is out there and sometimes trickles down. Fantasy, there is no trickle down because there is little high end discussion happening in the first place.

VT2 said...

Kirby is basically breaking new ground here, since there are 0 good sources for fantasy out there.

Lyracian said...

I have only just started playing Fantasy myself and the only blog I have found that seems decent so far is Heroes - http://lkhero.blogspot.com/

It is mostly High Elves, but it does give some useful insights.

Anonymous said...

So here's a question I pose on my blog... I don't have an answer for it though...

The internet seems to be advocating large blocks of troops to make them steadfast… and everyone says “you need that 5th rank”

But at the same time everyone is bitching about how “broken” magic is now…

So, given that you see a number of spells now that will pretty much NUKE a unit and you’ll have a very difficult time stopping it…. Here are some thoughts…..

1. Will it cause the game to shift towards running more units at the expense of unit size? (ie, if you run 2 units of 25 vs 1 unit of 50 – dwellers won’t hurt you as bad cause you’re mitigated your risk by not running a mega block) Seems to make sense to me… you give up steadfast, but gain a measure of protection vs the nuke

2. How viable is that big “uber unit” when they can get popped pretty easily by devastating magic that you really can’t stop reliably? Will magic will cause a decline in the character heavy pointsink blocks?

Would love to see comments.

Steve said...

I play Lizardmen, so I don't take big blocks. I'll 18-20 Saurus, which I guess is a pretty good size, but I did that in 7th too.

I almost feel bad running my Slaan at 2K. He dominates the magic phase even more than last edition. I always take Life or Light.

I have not had too much of a problem running my Slaan in a 15 Strong Temple Guard bunker. It's a lot of points in one unit, sure. But the Slann can gets a "Look out Sir" and (if I have taken life) can replenish lost Temple Guard and his own wounds.

Chumbalaya said...

It depends on your army. I play Skaven, so fielding multiple big units isn't a problem for me. Lizards or elves can do the MSU thing much better.

Unknown said...

Ground breaking VT2, are you calling me fat?

Big blocks are all the rage on Warseer but so is whining and general fail. I think as Chumb points out, big blocks work for some armies but aren't going to be necessary for others. Big blocks suffer from two things:

1) failing against magic
2) failing against war machines

If you can make a decent sized block which doesn't suffer against those through high T, ward saves and good armor saves, well blocks work well. That's expensive though (i.e. Phoenix Guard w/Life Magic + Banner of whatever). When they're dirt cheap like Skaven you don't care if you lose a whole block as long as your BSB keeps everyone around.

@Lyrcian; I've seen Hero's blog and not a huge fan because a lot of what he says about 40k is so-so and the one HE army list I've seen from him looked like a lot on warseer, large blocks of infantry.

Anonymous said...

@Kirby. I have not read his 40k stuff. See what you think of his Dwarf analysis and let me know what you think? I have only just started Fantasy but it seemed reasonably well thought out to me...

http://lkhero.blogspot.com/2010/07/tactica-high-elves-vs-dwarfs.html

Saramoff said...

I will have to say that Ogres have certainly jumped up in power recently. It's easy to believe that with the right circumstances (ogres charge and somehow losing the feaer roll) that simple Ogre Bulls can go toe to toe with Chaos Warriors. In some ways, they even beat them. Causing more wounds and taking less back.

I will be happy to give a write-up on Ogre Kingdoms sometime, and of course some Skaven. It would be a good perspective, I reckon!

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