Stuck between a Dwarven shield wall and a horde of orcs.

Your reliable narrator delving into the more
 obscure Warhammer Fantasy canon

 GW is planning to re-release Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Attempting to make their entire fantasy player base happy with a single ruleset is a fool's errand.

Buckle up for the ravings and opinions (backed by DATA!) of a random dude on the internet talking obsessively about his hobby...



I am going to state my thesis from the get go:

GW will not be able to avoid criticism for its choices recreating WFB because there isn't a single target audience that just wants one single thing. Literally every choice will upset someone. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. It cannot be done - at least not with a single game that is. 

In this post I will explain why I think this is the case. Provide data to support it. And then, I will explain what I would do if somehow I magically had the power to actually choose what happened, which I don't :( 

Warhammer Fantasy isn't a single unified thing. It's not like monopoly where it has effectively remained unchanged since oral traditions about the rules began (after all, who among us has actually read the rules to monopoly??). Rather, Warhammer Fantasy and the nerding community writ large, has changed substantially over time. I won't rehash the history of Warhammer or GW, that's been done. It will be sufficient instead to note that for most of us, (at least those nerdy enough to be reading this) Warhammer Fantasy is a totem of nostalgia for us; that crystalized uniquely in each of our minds at different times. Like many of our preferences in music, Warhammer "peaked" when we were developing our sense of self and identity, and suffered a heightened emotional vulnerability in highschool. And it's all (warhammer, music, society etc) been downhill ever since. Full disclosure: I first started playing warhammer with my brothers the Summer after 8th grade during the 6th edition only a few years before 7th edition came along. 

Since Warhammer fantasy was ended by GW (some will say murdered by GW), most of its fans have continued to interact with the game in their own idiom. Some of us have gone on to play Age of Sigmar (I didn't), some of us kept the flame alive through the Total War series (I didn't), some of us kept playing 8th ed or moved on to 9th age or other similar fan rules (I didn't), and some of us went back to other older editions and got into the retro-content and started collecting oldhammer lead from the 80s. For each of us, that means there is this idealized kernel of what Warhammer Fantasy really is. 

What Warhammer Fantasy is to you, has multifaceted implications for the type of game you would like to see GW create. This sets up staggering expectations for the game, expectations that cannot be met by a single game. Within the community there are wide ranging answers to questions such as:

Should the game be designed for tournament play? campaigns? or around cooperative/emergent storytelling?

Can you trust your opponent to be interested in you having fun and cooperating to interpret the rules, even to their disadvantage?

How streamlined or crunchy should the rules be?

How long should a game be?

How big should armies be? Skirmish games seem pretty popular right now; what barriers to entry are acceptable?

Is Warhammer high fantasy? Gritty Sword and sorcery? low fantasy? What's the right vibe?

Which miniature style is best? hand sculpted with greenstuff? 90's monopose? multipart kits? computer sculpted kits? metal? plastic? resin?

Where does Warhammer fit on the war simulation to abstract game spectrum? I.E. is it "just a game" or is it trying to realistically represent war (y'know, realistic but with Wizards and dragons and such)?


And then there is the baggage that some of us bring from other traditions such as:

Should play proceed I go you go, or borrow from other activation mechanics like form Bolt Action, Lion Rampant, or the Game of Thrones board game

Should Warhammer fantasy rules parallel or borrow from 40k?

Should Warhammer's mechanics borrow from the decade of game development since its demise or should it be an eternal Karak weathering the storms of time and fleeting preferences and fads?

To help answer this question of what GW ought to do, I conducted a poll. I received 584 responses (number of answers vary by question). The poll was extensive. Questions covered player's experience with various games, aesthetics, particular rules questions, army composition, model count, whether their should be army books, etc. 

Many of the answers to this survey would be completely useless to someone trying to make a single set of warhammer rules. Take, for example, whether you may march to within 8" of the enemy. 51.2% of those surveyed said you should be able to march to within 8" of the enemy. While 48.8% said that marchers should stop marching 8" from the enemy. From a rule-writing standpoint, picking either choice will upset  (or, if we are being less hyperbolic, mildly irk) the other half. 

As an aside, the survey results also suggest that my personal perspective on what warhammer should be is also not reflective of the majority of players. So I will be doing my best to set aside what I want Warhammer to be and speak to what it seems the player base is actually champing for. 

So, who is the old player base? (that is, the survey presumes anyone participating has experience with the old games)

The largest touchstone for the community was Warhammer 6th edition, followed by those who had also played Warhammer 40k. This raises some interesting points immediately, first we always have to be cognizant of the crosspollination between fantasy and 40k players. Second, we have to consider whether a rule is "good" or not, or whether fans will respond well to it based on their experiences. For example many of the rules questions in the survey include rules from 3rd edition. As we can see 3rd edition is very underrepresented in the data; does this mean that when rules from 3rd edition have low preferences in polling questions that players don't like the rule or that they aren't familiar with it? It raises the question whether answers to questions should be controlled for whether players played a given edition, or if we need to model the rules after what the majority is after. 

Next, which edition is regarded as best? (here, those surveyed could provide multiple answers)

The clear winner is 6th edition. Lagging substantially in 2nd place is 8th edition, and to note, 7th edition with 6th ed army books comes in 3rd before 7th edition. This really tells us something about 7th edition. Remember, there is no "vote stealing" here. Survey participants could select as many "best editions" as they wanted so ravening hordes did not "steal votes" from 6th editions. 

Now, here is where the data gets interesting, if we control the data from the second question with the first one, that is, we are now asking, among people who actually played a given edition, what percentage of them said it was the best edition? Here we get similar but interesting results.

Again, we see that 6th edition shines. Nearly three quarters of people who played 6th edition chose it as a best edition. But! Perhaps unexpectedly, the 2nd place contender is 3rd edition. That is, when people actually played 3rd edition they were very likely to select it as a best edition. 

Another surprise from the survey is the appetite for rules from Warhammer 3rd edition and Warhammer Historical/Ancient Battles despite their general underrepresentation among the player base. Consider the following results:

These results indicate that despite Warhammer 3rd edition only coming in with about 24% of players having played it and 19% having played historical these crunchier rules receive inordinate preference from the player base. This means that anyone looking to remake Warhammer should definitely take a hard look at these more obscure editions. 

And now, for perhaps the most important survey question:

 

The plurality result is that GW should make 3 rulesets. (we will set that aside for the moment) In my mind I conflate streamlined rules and rules written for tournaments - those ideas seem connected to me. Whereas I also group traditional historical gaming with crunchy with lots of charts. The purpose of these groupings isn't to conveniently stack numbers to favor my ideal version of warhammer that is more crunchy and like a historical wargame, rather I think that it speaks to the larger split in the player base. I think the player base generally (speaking very broadly, mind you) splits into two fuzzy broad camps (this is what us data people would call a bi-modal distribution). They aren't two clearly distinct groups, but if you walk far enough away from the crowd and squint funny it's definitely a thing. 

On the one hand there are people who see it as a game, their models are placeholders for stats, points values and army lists should be balanced, realism doesn't matter, so much as the rules as written, the rules should be clear, logical and categorical so that everyone comes to the table with the same expectations. Among this number also lurk the tournament players - they need their rules to be quick, simplified, and involve as little interpretation as possible. They have no need for the fluff pages of the army books etc. More equipment choices, rolls on charts, etc all act to slow the game down. To them the decision to roll another dice on their ratling gun is a statistical choice.

On the other hand, there are the people who see the rules as a tool for emergent story telling, a semi-collaborative process that tells us about the struggles of our soldiers on the table, how they quake in their boots in fear, squabble amongst themselves, or how they bravely overcome terrible odds. These players love charts with narratives and pithy humor. They plan their afternoon or evening to leisurely play a scenario with a friend over a beer (or sodas for our younger enthusiasts), and they welcome thematic army lists and meticulously name their characters and regiments. To these players, the choice to roll another dice on their ratling gun has them greedily cranking the warpstone pump and grabbing another dice to kill their enemy. 

So what's the answer? 3 different rulesets

3 rulesets? Yes. I understand that that is a huge lift, but I think it is better to create 2 rules that really speak to the needs of the player base and a 3rd category to engage new players and help filter them between the two larger game systems. This is what I have in mind:

Ruleset 1: The Tournament Rules

    Imagine a ruleset that is a combination of 4th edition, 6th and 8th edition. 

Ruleset 2: The Oldhammer Rules

    Imagine a ruleset that is a combination of 3rd, 6th, Warmaster, and warhammer historical/ancient battles

Ruleset 3: The Intro Game

    This would be a low model count series of games. It would be a low stakes space for GW to explore different rules, aesthetics, and aspects (time periods, locales, and scenarios) of the warhammer world. Imagine an evolving series of standalone or short lived games in the ball park of mordheim, heroquest, Warhammer roleplay. 

Let's take a deeper look at what each of these rulesets could look like. 

Tournament Rules

This rulebook should be brief (for a warhammer rulebook anyways). It should aim to be under 80 pages in length, like an only marginally truncated version of the 4th edition rulebook. It should be written in the manner of the 8th edition rulebook. The 8th edition rulebook was a complete overhaul of the rules. Where previous editions had altered, amended, and reorganized the rules, 8th edition re-wrote all of the language of the rules. One of the goals of 8th edition (in addition to selling more models with the massed ranks of infantry attack rules) was to treat the game and models as a series of categories and attributes in a closed universe - similar to the rules of Magic the Gathering. The advantage of this approach is that is reduces ambiguities. This edition would also adopt many of the streamlined rules across the various editions such as:

• Chariots as a single model
• the 8th edition rules for buildings
• No lap around
• Treating war machines as a single model with point and scatter rules
• Free measuring rules
• No armor encumbrance and minimal weapon modifiers (e.g. no initiative modifers)
• Simplified charging and maneuver rules
• When rolling to wound a 6 always wounds
• Chargers attack first
• Poison simplified to a 6 on the to-hit roll
• being able to march within 8" of the enemy.
• magic should be volatile and potent, and as equally decisive as close combat and ranged weapons
• Re-rolls and command points systems would likely be borrowed from 40k to reduce volatility

Further, the aesthetic of these rules should be between 6th edition grim darkness and Age of Sigmar. The games should be high fantasy, with lots of monsters and epic characters. 

Oldhammer Rules

This rulebook would be on the longer side. It should aim to be in the ballpark of 300 pages - including fluff. The writing style of the rules should be akin to the 3rd and 6th edition rules. These rules would focus on telling a story, realism and command and control. 

It would use rules like:

• armor encumbrance
• command and control
• Ld tests to maneuver units
• skirmishers being afraid of blocks of troops
• emphasis on psychology
• heroes and monsters with relatively muted stats (think characters from warhammer historical)
• no single rule for poison, but a case by case rule for each type
• lap around and free hacks
• Each big monster having attack charts like giants
• push back and rules for being unformed
• Retreat in good order and unit formations
• shield walls, pike phalanxes that stop cavalry
• more specific gear options
• chariots and war machines as multiple models with separate stat lines
• Magic should be small scale and a minor force
• baggage trains

The oldhammer aesthetic would be a mix between 6th edition and 3rd edition - imagine similar to the way that the Forgotten Realms MTG set featured retro line art. The game would be more low fantasy/historical meets sword and sorcery. 

The Intro Game

The purpose of the intro game, or rather games, would be to introduce players to core warhammer rules in a low model count setting while providing GW a space to explore different aspects of the Warhammer World. Each iteration of the intro game should rely on the core mechanics of turn phases, charges, rolling to hit, rolling to wound, rolling to save, and some element of psychology. The intro game should experiment in varying degrees of complexity and adjacent game types. For example, the intro game should dabble in non-army formats like HeroQuest, Mordheim, Necromunda, Warhammer RPG, Space Hulk. Additionally, it should be used as an opportunity to experiment with new Warhammer mechanics. 

The secondary purpose of the Intro game series would be to explore different aspects of the Warhammer world as well as different writing tones and artistic styles:

• Imperial grave robbers/explorers in Khemri in the style of Heroquest or Space Hulk
• Bretonnian Peasants with torches hunting (or being hunted by) the local forest monster as a grim dark hidden movement game
• A game of apprentice wizards and their familiars battling in a library
• Orc and Goblin pirates vs Undead pirates
• Realm of Chaos - a campaign skirmish game of gaining favor from the gods of Chaos - snap fit models with sprues of mutations that could be popped in and out to keep up with the mutations could be fun
• Hellpit - a bleak gladiatorial combat game set in the Skaven city of Hellpit, where players are made to fight each other and grotesque skaven abominations
• Maybe a call back to Battle Cars and Ben Hurr with a chariot race game
• Estallian explorers and looters in the New World trying to survive and make it back to their ship or get through a temple complex
• Assassins - a all vs 1 game where one player takes on the role of the assassin in a hidden movement game trying to kill a dignitary
• Snotlings fighting over a dungheap
• night goblins, dwarves, and Skaven tunneling teams - with a card deck of tunnel sections so the players can dig tunnels to try and get at eachother's loot
• Maybe a Conan the Barbarian-like small battle game set in the time of Sigmar
• A Clue/221 B Baker Street crossover with Warhammer minis collecting clues and brawling in the streets of a town or across a old world landscape

Importantly, all of these games should include minis that are compatible with the Warhammer Fantasy game.

Conclusion

The data is very clear that the player base lacks consensus on most rules questions. Therefore any attempt to make a single version of the rules will inherently be divisive. A single ruleset cannot cater to both the historical/crunchy players and the streamlined/tournament players at the same time. Therefore, the best approach is to segment the player base with two rulesets targeting those two groups. Finally, a model-lite introductory game series is needed to bring in new players and function as an experimental  workshop for new rules. 

If you disagree or would like to offer any addendums please feel free to hash it out in the comments below.