Hey guys, Jive Professor here. Some of you may know me (hello all two of you!), but for those who don’t I’m a regular contributor over at Yes the Truth Hurts. Tasty has extended the invitation to write for Blood of Kittens, and I gladly took him up on the offer. Over at YTTH, I’m one of the Fantasy guys and unless you haven’t heard, there’s a new edition on the way.
Also, the USSR collapsed a few years back, and they have phones without cords now!
OH MY GOD IT’S FULL OF STARS
With the release of any new edition there will be a mix of emotions. People will decry some changes, applaud others. Some will leap headlong into the new edition regardless of its quality, others will hold steadfast to the current version for, well, pretty much the same reason. Prerelease copies are beginning to make their way into FLGS’s across the world, and already lines are being drawn in the sand.
But before we start hacking apart 8th edition with a rusty hatchet and using its innards to paint Revelation 14:8 on the asphalt of a high school parking lot, let us look back on 7th edition and see what we learned, what we saw, and what can glean from it all.
Here are the 7 big highlights and lessons learned from 7th Edition.
1) Don’t trust the Big Red Bastard
The Basic Rulebook, or BRB, for 7th edition is not really much to write home about in terms of rules. A lot of players were confused as to why we needed an entirely new edition at all. The rules aren’t drastically different from 6th. Lapping around was gone, 5-wide ranks became the norm, there were more universal special rules and what have you, but many of the core mechanics were quite similar. Was this really going to be that different of an edition? We wouldn’t have the answer to that until we saw the…
2) Army Books
I wonder if we have ever seen an edition so defined by its codices. Things started out pretty mundane. The 6.5 Dwarf book was good for its time, but not really world-changing. The Empire book was better but still pretty run of the mill. The Orc and Goblin book was so bad it was but a butchered shadow of its former self, actually a step down in power. 7th was looking more and more like 6.5 and less like an entirely new edition.
Then High Elves hit.
The High Elf release made it seems like everything else was just a joke. Now don’t take that to mean that I think the HE book is one of the OMG MOST POWERFUL ARMIES EVAR, and in some ways it was less powerful than the Empire book even. Probably one of the more balanced books GW has made. But man GW really cranked it up to 11 for Rule of Cool.
Army wide Always Strike First? More Special and Rare than anybody else? Two dragons in a normal game? Holy hell! They really put the meedly-meedly-mreow! back in Warhammer Fantameedlymeedlymreow!sy.
Pictured: Meedly, Not Pictured: Mreow
Each release just kept upping the ante. While the 7th edition book made us think that the game was largely going to be like 6th edition (i.e. if it isn’t a S3 T3 spearman it’s penalized for being too much fun >=[), the army books took things in a whole new direction.
3) Points Denial
While 6th edition was dominated by cavalry, 7th edition has become the edition of points denial. Some people refer to this as Deathstars, and while in some cases that is an accurate depiction, most of the time the big units in 7th were more about not dying than they were about killing. Plaguebearers with Herald, Black Guard, Shadestar, Dire Wolves, Grave Guard, the list goes on. Because 7th edition really only has 1 scenario, pitched battle, which is purely VP based, many people looked to the safety of Points Denial units to sink a quarter or half of their points in a unit that could not be taken, thereby denying their opponent the win if not necessarily winning the game themselves.
4) “Theme” Special Rules
It seems 7th edition has started a trend whereby particular universal special rules are doled out to each army in varying about. For example in 5th edition 40k we have Feel No Pain, which every army seems to have but with varying degrees of access.
7th edition had Always Strikes First and Regeneration. These were two big rules that defined a lot of a unit’s capability to deal damage and to avoid it, respectively. Every army has at least some access to it, and the more they had generally the more they were used.
In addition we saw more use of army-wide special rules to add a layer of theme to the armies that pure stats may not have conveyed. Speed of Asuryan, Cold-Blooded, Eternal Hatred, The Will of Chaos, and so on. These rules made it so that superficially similar units, such as Chaos Marauders with hand weapon/shield and Empire Swordsmen who are pound-for-pound almost the same models, really stood out as unique within their respective armies.
5) Monster Mash
Beasties were back in style in 7th. Fast, maneuverable, hard-hitting, generally terror-causing, and some absolutely phenomenal plastic kits, there were a lot reasons to love the return of the nasty critters. We even saw Lizardmen have access to so many they could field almost an entire army of them through Stegadons (my favorite wargaming model of all time).
6) Unlimited Power
Magic was the single most important phase of the game. Most competitive armies could not leave the gate without at least three of their four character slots taken up with Mages. The Power Dice arms race also vastly outpaced the Dispell Dice race, and there was no middle ground any more – you either took maximum magic to weather the storm or took nothing and hoped more bodies would do the trick (PROTIP – the latter option was usually a great way to spend a lot of time and money-getting dolled up for a forceful raping behind a bookstore dumpster). Dwarf armies were still well regarded for the 10 dispell dice they could bring to a 2k/2250 encounter, while some Tzeentchian lists could bring upwards of 26/28 Power dice. The disparity was vast and completely altered the way the game was played.
7) Heebie-Jeebies
Fear, Terror, and Immune to Psychology were the Holy Trinity of 7th edition. Possessing one, both, or all three of these rules was often enough to define a good unit.
You see 7th edition, in being not that different from 6th at its core, had a lot of old rules that made perfect sense in say a Black Library novel, but which had a rating on the Funometer of somewhere between 0 and -100 Billion.
Auto-breaking from an outnumbering Fear or Terror causer nullified entire armies, while lifting up others. Shock units of far less models sweep in, rack up a quick clutch of kills for the combat res bonuses while simultaneously keeping the enemy from fighting back and dropping their model count low enough that they immediate fail (well, unless then got snake eyes *HERE IS WHERE I ROLL MY EYES AND I MEAN THE ONES IN MY HEAD NOT THE ONES ON THE DICE*) their leadership check and get run down and thrown in the garbage can.
Being Immune to Psychology meant you could actually avoid such horribly penalties and hell, I dunno, get to play some Warhammer?
Entire armies were getting swept away without ever having a shot at fighting back. I watched a good friend of mine use his Demons at a tournament to beat an Orc and Goblin player so badly, he never got to roll a die in his favor. Obviously the best army in the game versus the worst is going to be a lot of agony for one player, but really? Come on.
Yeah. I’m glad it’s gone in 8th. How could you tell?
– So Long, and thanks for all the bloodshed.
Looking back on it all, I can definitely say I enjoyed myself. For all its blemishes I still very much loved 7th edition, and got many many hours of enjoyment out of it. As with all things though I think it is time for a change, and I cannot wait for 8th edition. I should get a look at my store’s preview copy very soon, and while over on YTTH I’ll have a definite blow-by-blow analysis of every mechanic from the movement of troops to how to resolve butterfly farts, in the future look for some more concise and broad-strokes opinion from yours truly here on Blood of Kittens.
So what do you guys think? Did you like 7th edition? Are you looking forward to 8th? Is there anything else you think was a major part of 7th and didn’t make it on the above list? Have at it!