Thursday, May 13, 2010

Da Lamentation of da Vimmin: Part 2 - Goddamn Percentages

The 8th edition of Warhammer Fantasy is just around the corner. Lots of rumors have been cropping up. Here are a couple of nearly identical lists with a few different takes on the main bullet points:

Collected Rumors on BoLS
Collected Rumors on Plastic Legions

Lots of stuff in there that would work to speed up the game. A bunch of possible changes that would do wonders to fix and simplify some kludgy rules that have been floating around since I first started playing back in 4th/5th edition. If true, many of these rumors will do wonders for Fantasy.

However, if true, one rumor will just be a big ol' shit in my bowl of cereal.

From BoLS:
Army construction is moving back to percentages. This is looking more like 25% max characters, 25% min core, 25% max special and 25% max rare (anonymous source, but trustworthy ) The 25% characters includes mounts. Edit. Just as I thought this part was looking certain, there have been some rumours/ sources saying 25% max characters, 25% min core, 50% max special and 15% max rare. I will edit one out as it become clear.
If this is legitimate, it may be a while before I consider playing Fantasy again. Assuming they're in, either flavor of the percentages tank my proposed Lizardmen army. An army which I own but is as of yet un-assembled and unpainted. Also my dream Wood Elf list gets kicked to the curb a bit as well.

If percentages are real, then its not so much a matter of what army I'll play or what list I want to build, but whether ebay or Bartertown will net me a better selling price on my Stegadons. This isn't a matter of chest thumping or idle threats vs. GW. It's certainly no Modern Warfare 2 boycot either. I'm simply stating that percentages will remove the impetus I have to play Fantasy.

I really like a touch of the absurd with my Fantasy armies. Not too interested in much else beyond crazy tree army or giant lizard horde, to be honest. Even if they do kinda suck now or in 8th. Wonder how the new fear and terror rules are gonna shake out...

Now I'm well aware that we're still firmly in the rumor stage, so I'm still hanging on to hope. Especially once I looked back on some of the Blood Angel's rumors and saw how laughable they were. But there's always the niggling accuracy of the 5th edition 40k rumors...

Frankly, I'm with Dethtron on this one - with all of GW's attention to simplification, why would GW complicate army design with something like percentages? Seriously, the percentage system made army design an absolute pain in the ass. I can remember many hours of fucking around with a calculator when building army lists. These are not enjoyable memories.

It was incredibly irritating to have to have all these running totals for all the different sections of your army. All the cross checking and goofy attention to wargear to ensure that the troops minimum was met. Plus, all the weird -ass unit sizes and configurations because you were trying to stay within limits on all the fun stuff. Blech.

The percentages thing smells a lot like composition scoring - a scent reminiscent of an old sock full of hangover vomit. Or the smell of rotting Ginko seeds in late fall... if you've had the displeasure of being near a female Ginko tree.

I also don't trust the average gamer to do math correctly.

Oh well. In any case, I don't know enough about the new edition than to do more than fearfully whine at the electronic-masses. I guess I'll see soon enough.

11 comments:

  1. I like a lot of these rumored changes. It will certainly streamline the game and make it a lot more fun now that all your models actually get to fight.

    Percentages, however, kill it for me. I play Skaven so my Heroes are dirt cheap, but percentages will dick over so many armies and just make Fantasy that much blander.

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  2. If percentages are back in, when i'm done eating my spearmen (as promised) i'm going to make a 40 warlock engineer skaven army. because i fucking can... that or ebay all of the fantasy stuff that's growing layers of dust on my shelves.


    comist- the trail left behind the passing of a comet

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  3. i'm loving the rumored new changes (especially percentiles) because they will effectively kill all the fucking ridiculous army lists (500 pt vampire lord invoc spam bullshit list, triple stegadons, bloodthirster + triple tzeentch herald lists etc).

    and i don't think you can take 40 warlock engineers... gw might have dubious business practices / philosophy but their studio & developers aren't that dumb to miss that... xD

    i'm sure there is a cap to how many of one thing you can take but we won't know till the book gets out.

    but i'm damn sure the cap isn't 40. xD

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  4. Lauby, I'm with you on this. My all cav WoC army is on infinite hiatus from being built until I see how crappy the new rules are.

    They could be awesome, but is percentages sneak back in then I am done with fantasy until they get rid of them again. There is no need to do it.

    It seems to me that they want to fix the fact that they put out wildly different qualities of books by changing the core rules. That's a bad idea, imo.

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  5. @dezzo. At 2000 points there's still room for 5 stegadons. Thanks for proving my points about math and comp.

    @everyone else: if percentages are back in, I say we all meet up for some e-beers and then cry in them.

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  6. as long as they're not eIPAs. those give me the acid reflux..

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  7. idc if percentages are in or not, Doesn't change my zombie slog army in the slightest....

    Sadly, if they were trying to balance army books with the main rules, we'll just be whinging about how OP X is as a troop and why Y doesn't have anything like it because it came out 4 books ahead of it. Then we'll cry about another price increase.

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  8. @Lauby: How do you fit 2 EOTGs in 2k pts if you are limited to only 500 pts for Lord/Heros, man?

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  9. and 3 stegs in either special or rare exceeds the % point caps.

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  10. didn't know you were talking about the triple engine list.

    Assuming the 50 percent for specials, there's four right there.

    guess it would have helped if either of us had been clear.

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