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Darkial wrote:
I would like to also point out that templates are coming back! I understand why some people get competitive and bitter over then but I'm my gaming circles it has always been pretty fair and I like how they introduce a visual factor for the big rocks and explosions.

Agreed. Im not looking for a good tournament set of rules. Just something wirkable for friendly competative.

Being squishy is kind of part and parcel of being an Elf.

I’d advocate them getting rules to allow more of their models to fight. Not just higher than average WS, but represent their martial discipline by allowing an extra rank of attacks.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being squishy is kind of part and parcel of being an Elf.

I’d advocate them getting rules to allow more of their models to fight. Not just higher than average WS, but represent their martial discipline by allowing an extra rank of attacks.

Lorewise Elves are no more squishy than humans, just faster and almost always far more exprienced. They are almost always arrogant and overconfident, not sure how to relect that in rules?

 Hellebore wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You achieve that with high ws and better shield/weapon types.

Not by just once again letting elves get away with not playing the same game.

That's spurious reasoning. Orcs don't play the same game as everyone else because no one else has animosity. Dwarfs don't play the same game because no one else can ignore march blocking like they did. Lizardmen and morale tests on 3D6 etc ad nauseum.

Army wide special rules automatically make an army 'not play the same game' as other people. That's their point. And the elves are no different. I am an ardent disliker of the elf army getting ASF and was since it was introduced in 8th, but that's not the same thing as saying 'elves can't get any special rule that affects their ability to fight or be struck in combat'.

High WS only works if the hit table reflects it - now that's a potentially good bet given the similarities between WFB and HH mechanics and rule names so far shown - the BS hit table is the same in HH. In which case their melee defence won't be bad assuming they're going to be WS4 or higher and no one else's WS has changed. They will be very vulnerable to shooting however, and their bowman plastics don't get shields so counterfire will decimate them.

There is a massive difference between ASF/asf light and just basically ignoring 1/6th of a result, which btw good luck playing a low stat army into elves because then you imported one of the worst problems 8th edition 40k had with negative hit modifiers halfing some armies output whilest others just get mildly inconvenienced.
No high ws and something showing their skill in formation warfare or skirmishing in the case of WE is far better.

WRT Armourbane, doesn’t HH have a USR where you get extra AP on a 6 to wound?

Could be something like that?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being squishy is kind of part and parcel of being an Elf.

I’d advocate them getting rules to allow more of their models to fight. Not just higher than average WS, but represent their martial discipline by allowing an extra rank of attacks.

Didn’t they always get the extra ranks with archers and spears? Or was that just a special unit? Last time I played against high elves was 5th.

Extra initiative and WS, plus good magic and some nice special rules always seemed to make them feel good and elite on the table, at least from the other side of the battlefield.

Erm…possibly?

They had Sea Guard on and off, a combined arms unit with Bows and Spears. And importantly, Shields.

Yeah high elves have had army wide "fight in additional ranks" in some form since at least 6th

 Mr_Rose wrote:
It outright says that longbows have volley fire which means shoot in ranks. I don’t think giving the commonest weapon in the game is “nerfing” it exactly. Restraining it a little, sure.

Besides, very few people actually want 8th edition - the director’s cut anyway so I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing either.

Longbows won't be the "most common" weapons in the game, if past editions are anything to go by, AFAIK only Bretonnian peasant archers and some HE archers gets this (WE also gets this but they had to make their even more special in 8th I guess). Turns out Empire archers in 6th have Longbows but lost it since 7th.

But more to the point all bows gained the volley fire USR in 8th edition, where every unit also gained supporting attacks when attacking with the front rank too. So compared to 8th, TOW bows gets 1 + 1/2 * Ceiling(n-1) ranks, assuming the same Volley Fire rule, whereas in 8th it'd be 2 + 1/2 * Ceiling(n-2) ranks, where n is the number of complete ranks in the unit.

Sure if there are fewer than 3 ranks the USR won't make a difference, but at 3 ranks that's one extra rank in 8th vs. the previous edition that are allowed to shoot.

What's interesting to me is that the longbow entry appears to be directly above the entry for the Screaming Skull Catapult. The latter is something used exclusively by the Tomb Kings. The former is something that the Tomb Kings don't have (or haven't so far, and it wouldn't be fluffy for them to get it). That suggests to me that all of the weapons (so far) are going to be in the main rulebook - even army exclusive stuff like the SSC.

Nevelon wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

That too continues good old tradition of fb era white dwarf pics gw goes retro hard here

Next they return goblin green paint...

They do occasionally release new paints to go with new armies. Releasing a new Goblin Green base paint to tie into the nostalgia would be a great idea. I’d grab a pot; mine is running low.

With the absolute lack of simple green flock at any of the FLGS's in my area I'm hoping this will facilitate a nostalgia push for restocking THAT.

Hellebore wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
You achieve that with high ws and better shield/weapon types.

Not by just once again letting elves get away with not playing the same game.

That's spurious reasoning. Orcs don't play the same game as everyone else because no one else has animosity. Dwarfs don't play the same game because no one else can ignore march blocking like they did. Lizardmen and morale tests on 3D6 etc ad nauseum.

Army wide special rules automatically make an army 'not play the same game' as other people. That's their point. And the elves are no different. I am an ardent disliker of the elf army getting ASF and was since it was introduced in 8th, but that's not the same thing as saying 'elves can't get any special rule that affects their ability to fight or be struck in combat'.

High WS only works if the hit table reflects it - now that's a potentially good bet given the similarities between WFB and HH mechanics and rule names so far shown - the BS hit table is the same in HH. In which case their melee defence won't be bad assuming they're going to be WS4 or higher and no one else's WS has changed. They will be very vulnerable to shooting however, and their bowman plastics don't get shields so counterfire will decimate them.

Agree with all you've said with the exception that ASF/Speed Of Asuryan was introduced in the 7th Ed. rulebook and was basically the start of the Armywide Special Rules War that gave us the 7th Ed Dark Elves book and all the trash that followed.

Nevelon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Being squishy is kind of part and parcel of being an Elf.

I’d advocate them getting rules to allow more of their models to fight. Not just higher than average WS, but represent their martial discipline by allowing an extra rank of attacks.

Didn’t they always get the extra ranks with archers and spears? Or was that just a special unit? Last time I played against high elves was 5th.

Extra initiative and WS, plus good magic and some nice special rules always seemed to make them feel good and elite on the table, at least from the other side of the battlefield.

The two ranks of Archers firing for High Elves last appeared in Ravening Hordes in 6th. It was removed in the 6th Army Book and without checking (I'm at work) wasn't brought back for the 7th or 8th books.

Three ranks of Spearmen fighting never went away unless it got killed in 8th.



Armor Piercing being a separate stat with weapons is going to open up the exact awful issues we had with 40K weapons, in my mind.

 Just Tony wrote:

The two ranks of Archers firing for High Elves last appeared in Ravening Hordes in 6th. It was removed in the 6th Army Book and without checking (I'm at work) wasn't brought back for the 7th or 8th books.

Three ranks of Spearmen fighting never went away unless it got killed in 8th.

8th gave all Elves in the HE army list the Martial Prowess special rule:
https://8th.whfb.app/special-rules/martial-prowess

Which flat out gave them an extra rank to supporting attacks. So, 3 ranks with spears to the front and 3 ranks of shooting with bows even without the volley fire ranks.

P.S.: didn't see the AP value on the SSC, just noticed the S8 hit only gave -3 AP, which would have been -5 if the older strength-to-AP rules are kept; so yeah, AP seems to have been completely decoupled from S.

 DarkBlack wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The risk in random charges can be managed. The risk of Animosity largely can't. Why is the manageable risk 'too random' and the unmanageable risk 'fun'?

No, that's a serious question. Because of the two, Animosity seems to be far better at wrecking battle plans than failing a long-shot random charge. Especially as we don't know yet whether charging will be as combat-wrecking as it was in 7th, or merely a trivial +1 bonus to combat res as in 8th.

I hate random charges because they make no sense. I can't think of a single battle where one side charged the other and then, you know, got winded and stopped. Units have refused to charge, or drifted away from the intended target, but GW is unique in the notion that troops otherwise in position to engage will fail to do so.

Yea. Troops always start the charge run precisely at right distance. Never ever too early. Humans are infallible after all carrying laser pointers in middle ages after all.

There is not such thing as a set distance that someone can charge. You keep running until you get there.
The danger is if troops ran too far, then they would get exhausted and be ineffective when they got to the enemy.

So... instead of your unit failing to make it into combat, you'd rather see it successfully charge, and take some hefty penalty like being reduced to WS1 or some such?

 lcmiracle wrote:
Which flat out gave them an extra rank to supporting attacks. So, 3 ranks with spears to the front and 3 ranks of shooting with bows even without the volley fire ranks.

What this says is that the stats reflecting quality were simply not sufficient to create the desire outcome. Put simply, ten elf models should dust ten goblin models, and it shouldn't be close. The extra ranks were an admission that the core combat factors (specifically WS) was not all that important. Skill didn't count for more than mass.

This was a major catalyst for my design philosophy. I wanted elf units to have enough of a qualitative superiority that they didn't need extra ranks of spear or archer to win against horde armies.

I'm very interested to see how GW approaches this in the new edition. Will they fix the core mechanics, or continue their longstanding practice of using special rules to fix the design deficiency?

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
Which flat out gave them an extra rank to supporting attacks. So, 3 ranks with spears to the front and 3 ranks of shooting with bows even without the volley fire ranks.

What this says is that the stats reflecting quality were simply not sufficient to create the desire outcome. Put simply, ten elf models should dust ten goblin models, and it shouldn't be close. The extra ranks were an admission that the core combat factors (specifically WS) was not all that important. Skill didn't count for more than mass.

This was a major catalyst for my design philosophy. I wanted elf units to have enough of a qualitative superiority that they didn't need extra ranks of spear or archer to win against horde armies.

I'm very interested to see how GW approaches this in the new edition. Will they fix the core mechanics, or continue their longstanding practice of using special rules to fix the design deficiency?

Disagree, the Elves WS4 would have dusted the Goblins but some of the defining quality of Goblins is superior numericality. The Elves shouldn't have some kind of army wide ASF precisely because they already have all the tools to help them be qualitatively better, objectively, with above average weapons skills, above average leadership, above average initiative, above average fighting capacities demonstrated in long-standing rules to represent their ability to fight in extra ranks.

They should be overwhelmed by numbers, they should be killed against numerically superior foes, they shouldn't have some rule to overcome that deficiency as that's one of the Elves' defining deficiencies. They have a strength, and they have a weakness. Good. Army wide ASF? Not so good.

 Just Tony wrote:

With the absolute lack of simple green flock at any of the FLGS's in my area I'm hoping this will facilitate a nostalgia push for restocking THAT.

I’ve always picked up my flock from model train stores. Better selection and volume/price then what you will find at most FLGS.

I wonder how many TOW armies are going to lean into retro paint/bases?

Interesting history on bows and ranks. The ranked firing was always the HE thing in my eyes. DE had shorter range, but better RoF, WE had better range and AP, but HE didn’t need to be all strung out in a line to shoot, and the rank bonus was nice if light harassment units came over to mess with you.

I realise I'm not a fantasy player, but I've never understood the limitations of ranged units being unable to fire in ranks.

Why even have ranks then?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I realise I'm not a fantasy player, but I've never understood the limitations of ranged units being unable to fire in ranks.

Why even have ranks then?

When your front rank models gets killed/removed, the back ranks models fill up the holes so you don't lose firing power.

Ofc ranks also affect combat resolution so more ranks gets advantage in melee to represent numeral superiority and psychological impact of being outnumbered. But if you are shooting, and have just one single rank of models, every model killed is at least one fewer attack.

Two points there:

1. If I have 20 guys, and only 10 of them can fire because 10 of them are standing behind, why wouldn't I just put them in a line of 20 and fire all 20 at once? Who cares about "losing firepower" if I'm already at 50% theoretical firepower because of ranks.

2. Something tells me if my weakling archers are in melee, having two ranks ain't going to help very much.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Two points there:

1. If I have 20 guys, and only 10 of them can fire because 10 of them are standing behind, why wouldn't I just put them in a line of 20 and fire all 20 at once? Who cares about "losing firepower" if I'm already at 50% theoretical firepower because of ranks.

2. Something tells me if my weakling archers are in melee, having two ranks ain't going to help very much.

The battlefield isn't infinitely wide, nor infinitely flat. In practice, in WHFB you tended to take your archers in smaller units exactly for this reason; having a deep unit of archers doesn't help much and it's much easier to maneuver a five-wide unit to get line of sight on whatever you're shooting without other units getting in the way.

(There are, of course, exceptions; Sea Guard could volley fire three or four ranks deep in some editions.)

Vulcan wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:
The risk in random charges can be managed. The risk of Animosity largely can't. Why is the manageable risk 'too random' and the unmanageable risk 'fun'?

No, that's a serious question. Because of the two, Animosity seems to be far better at wrecking battle plans than failing a long-shot random charge. Especially as we don't know yet whether charging will be as combat-wrecking as it was in 7th, or merely a trivial +1 bonus to combat res as in 8th.

I hate random charges because they make no sense. I can't think of a single battle where one side charged the other and then, you know, got winded and stopped. Units have refused to charge, or drifted away from the intended target, but GW is unique in the notion that troops otherwise in position to engage will fail to do so.

Yea. Troops always start the charge run precisely at right distance. Never ever too early. Humans are infallible after all carrying laser pointers in middle ages after all.

There is not such thing as a set distance that someone can charge. You keep running until you get there.
The danger is if troops ran too far, then they would get exhausted and be ineffective when they got to the enemy.

So... instead of your unit failing to make it into combat, you'd rather see it successfully charge, and take some hefty penalty like being reduced to WS1 or some such?

You don't need everything spelled out. Have a charge/threat range. When troops charge in they roll dice, which represent how well charging in went.
If they roll poorly then you can say they exhausted themselves while charging.

Same effect for half the rules, rolls and moving units.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Two points there:
1. If I have 20 guys, and only 10 of them can fire because 10 of them are standing behind, why wouldn't I just put them in a line of 20 and fire all 20 at once? Who cares about "losing firepower" if I'm already at 50% theoretical firepower because of ranks.
2. Something tells me if my weakling archers are in melee, having two ranks ain't going to help very much.

that is why people put them in line (put instead of 1 unit of 20 you used 4 units of 5)

there was no reason not doing it except for old Edition units with reload that needed to pause a turn and could shoot every turn in 2 ranks (which actually was never a rule but a fluff text suggestion as many other "rules" of that time)

this is also why things like volley fire can tip the balance because you only get 3 of the 20 model lines on the table and not everyone can see everything
firing from 2 ranks means you get 6 of those on the table as you don't need to stand in line of 20 but lines of 10

if volley fire simply means everyone can shoot we are going to see Archer blocks with 5x4 for 20 models

A downside to have small 5 or 10 man archer units is that you only need 2 or 3 casualties from shooting to force a panic test on them while if you had a 20 man unit they would need to kill 5 or more models to force a panic test. Still wasn't worth having large units just for that if the models in the back couldn't shoot but at least it was one small reason to have larger unit sizes.

Would also help a bit if they were charged by a smaller skirmish/light cav unit. A 5/10 man unit were likely to get destroyed but a 20 man unit would have some rank and outnumber bonuses and be able to stave those small annoying units off.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Two points there:

1. If I have 20 guys, and only 10 of them can fire because 10 of them are standing behind, why wouldn't I just put them in a line of 20 and fire all 20 at once? Who cares about "losing firepower" if I'm already at 50% theoretical firepower because of ranks

You stick them on a hill (if one is available), which allows the second rank to fire.

Also, a unit that's twenty models wide is going to be in the way of a good-sized chunk of your troops, and the massive amount of frontage that it has will give your opponent the ability to charge it with multiple units at the same time. The worst situation would be your missile troops getting smashed into by multiple melee formations, which will rout the missile unit, causing it to rout through friendly troops directly behind it (forcing leadership checks), and the enemy will simultaneously pursue (read: Charge) into the units directly behind where the missile troops were located.

If you could keep the unit out on the flank, it might work. Maybe. Assuming that it would fit. But otherwise, no.

Maybe not so bad for Tomb Kings, who don't route (assuming that the unit doesn't evaporate from instability). But otherwise not a good idea. And even Tomb Kings would have to deal with a huge frontage friendly unit that's blocking the rest of the army.

My standard dwarf army in 6th had a Thane leading a quarreler regiment that I always deployed in a line 21 wide, only reforming into a block when the enemy got closer.

The thane carried an axe with the master rune of swiftness and rune of cleaving and a crossbow.

They'd deliberately stay in a line for as long as possible and then reform with the thane smashing whoever charges them first.

Sometimes I'd leave them in a line if the enemy wasnt too tough

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Two points there:

1. If I have 20 guys, and only 10 of them can fire because 10 of them are standing behind, why wouldn't I just put them in a line of 20 and fire all 20 at once? Who cares about "losing firepower" if I'm already at 50% theoretical firepower because of ranks.

2. Something tells me if my weakling archers are in melee, having two ranks ain't going to help very much.

The battlefield isn't infinitely wide, nor infinitely flat. In practice, in WHFB you tended to take your archers in smaller units exactly for this reason; having a deep unit of archers doesn't help much and it's much easier to maneuver a five-wide unit to get line of sight on whatever you're shooting without other units getting in the way.

(There are, of course, exceptions; Sea Guard could volley fire three or four ranks deep in some editions.)

With larger bases and template stonethrowers back in business I worry about the size of the board. Hoping for 6 footx4.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
One thing I wonder is if anyone sees themselves fielding infantry 4x4? For example Longbeards or Hammerers?or will the lack of frontage hurt their attack output?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I realise I'm not a fantasy player, but I've never understood the limitations of ranged units being unable to fire in ranks.

Why even have ranks then?

This has been answered already, but I'll throw something else in.

One reason why I always liked 40k better than Fantasy was that a large part of your models in Fantasy were nothing more than wound counters, there to contribute to an abstract combat resolution system and to be removed as casualties. Skeleton 23 never gets to have his heroic moment of taking the last wound off a Bloodthirster after his buddies got massacred because Skeleton 23 is always the third guy to die and never gets to step up and do any fighting.

I don't think you can have a good time with a rank and file game if you can't get into that mentality. You kind of have to let go of the idea that the contribution of a model is primarily defined by its value as a fighter (or even just a supporter with tangible abilities).

Also, the limitation to ranged combat is a fairly decent idea in a game that is meant to focus on maneuver and close combat. Some of the bigger issues of later editions of Fantasy was ranged lethality, even though magic stood out more than shooting. But even so, gunlines aren't much fun to play, not the least because only some factions can actually create such armies while others are entirely reliant on close combat (and magic). Giving only a part of the armies the necessary tools to dominate their enemies and then buffing those tools hasn't worked out in Fantasy any better than increased ranged lethality has in 40k.

It's why I'm a fan of the idea of decreasing armor penetration and ranged attacks (and nuke spells) compared to 8th ed. GW is terrible at this, generally speaking, but their games would benefit a lot from getting reined in so you actually have five or six meaningful turns in you six turn game.

Which is why the ranged article has me cautiously hopeful. This might actually happen to The Old World.

Eumerin wrote:
Maybe not so bad for Tomb Kings, who don't route (assuming that the unit doesn't evaporate from instability). But otherwise not a good idea. And even Tomb Kings would have to deal with a huge frontage friendly unit that's blocking the rest of the army.

Skeleton archers had a minimum size of ten. I never saw any reason to take more than that. Ten models wide takes up a lot of space and wasting points on extra ranks or even a banner was pointless due to the skeletons' abysmal melee performance. Add instability and it doesn't matter much if you have ten or twenty models in the unit. If they're charged by just about any actual combat unit, they're just gone.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I realise I'm not a fantasy player, but I've never understood the limitations of ranged units being unable to fire in ranks.

Why even have ranks then?

To reduce/mitigate the power of ranged units.

Combat units tended to be quite compact to maximise rank bonus, and minimise its footprint to make wheeling and that more manageable, and not get in each other’s way.

If ranged units could rank up four or five deep with no loss of firepower? They gain rank bonus for no loss of efficiency at their main job.

Do that? And High Elves might as well take nothing but Longbows, because those units whilst not great in combat, are going to have a say in every game turn thanks to a 30” range, making them disproportionately powerful compared to combat infantry who may only see a couple of rounds of combat.

It also limited your deployment options. A single 20 wide rank? That has to be deployed behind your combat units, otherwise it’ll block them from doing anything. Let them rank up and still get their 20 shots? You’re back to them having disproportionate power compared to combat units.

This gets more pronounced across different armies. Dark Elf Repeater crossbows for instance could be upgraded to shields, which in the end gave me WS4, S3, 4+ Save infantry, who could also kick out a disgusting number of shots, hitting on between a 5+ and a 4+ depending on range. If those could deploy 5 wide, 4 deep? There’s absolutely no good reason for me to take Spears, as their extra rank of attacks simply doesn’t offset 20 Repeater Crossbows farting out 40 shots a turn, and being able to stand and fire.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, let’s say I took 4 units of 20 Longbows.

Unless there’s a hill, to maximise shots that’s 4 wide ranks of 20 - which sooner or later are going to block each other’s LoS.

If I could shoot with every rank regardless? All four in 5x4 occupies slightly more real estate than a single wide rank of 20.

It does make sense when you’ve played!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It does make sense when you’ve played!

I know this can be an "8th edition was another country" thread - but is this a bad time to point out that a High Elf Archer 5*4 brick got to shoot 18 shots?
And while this may have been just another way 8th edition High Elves were comically overpowered, I feel it was quite a way down the list of problems.

I guess bricks of Repeater Crossbows would have been interesting - but again, typically you did 2 times 2*5 (as two ranks could shoot) and then 3*5 dark riders. I think that would get you to your requirements.

Going back to only the first rank being able to fire is actually quite a nerf. I'm intrigued if we see the same for close combat.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Lots of good stuff - hope the WS chart is also old school with high WS hitting on 2+ on even auto hitting.

Can't be much worse than Woof Elves getting 30" Arcane Bodkins (at -3!)

Was there anything about the WE that was fun to play against ever

Nop. I love drink my opponents tears with my full shooting avoidance hahahh