Thinking about 8th edition WFB, 10+ years later...

Yes! Lol.

At least a Stone thrower has a more random element 😉

I always wondered if there should've been a chart to roll on for hitting a monster, to see how many wounds a stone/bolt thrower & a cannon did to it:

1-2 = limb, D2 wounds
3-4 = body, D3 wounds
5-6 = head, D6 wounds

Maybe I just like rolling more dice, hehe

Was ironblaster and skullcannon new in8ed?

There are lots of things that I would fix about 8th, but I am loath to change something that I really enjoy playing even with that.

It would be great if TOW is an actual play-based upgrade of 8th. I'm 95% sure that it won't be unfortunately, just based on Murphy's Law but I'd like to be surprised.

Yeah they were.

Skullcannon is possibly the most broken single unit in the entire game.

Only 15 more points than a normal cannon for moving (which makes is much harder for monsters to hide) more wounds, less susceptible to missfire, better in combat (although it is kind of funny when the blood letters killing blow something), better armor save and a ward save.

Even at 175 points (what we play them as) they are still really good.

8th is awesome. We tweak/house rule a few things and happy days. Very easy to do with a good group.

So good.

Over a decade of great gaming for me.

Huzzah

With all the talk of cannons in this thread, I decided to write a tactica about dealing with cannons. 

Check it out here: Loose Cannon! A Guide And Analysis of Tactical Defense Considerations Against (Arguably) the Most Dangerous Weapon in WFB

Given that this forum is called Eighth Edition for Life, and hosts a community oriented specifically around playing 8th Edition, I'd better be careful about what I say, but I'm not afraid to give my opinion in full.

On one hand, I do have some complaints about 8th that you've probably heard about already, and given that this is an opinion-based thread, I'll summarise them again here:

• Personally, I really dislike the Horde rule, principally because from what I could see it was simply a money-grabbing scheme employed by GW to prompt players to feel forced to buy lots more models to bulk their units out just so that their armies can remain competitive. I can understand it if the rule was explicitly only given to 'light' infantry units like Goblins, Skaven and State Troopers, as it gives them a way to overcome their poor quality, but it looks particularly ridiculous when used in elite units like Chaos Warriors and Hammerers, because if so many models in those units can be mustered, they no longer then represent the 'elite' compared to their ordinary brethren (aside from profile differences of course). Also hordes gave rise to near-unbeatable infantry deathstars (Warriors of Chaos, I'm looking at you). I always liked the maximum viable unit size of 25 infantry, maybe 30 if you're pushing it, in 7th Edition, and my units remain at those sizes largely for that reason, but 8th works equally well for these too which is a relief

• The fact they sacrificed the viability of non-Monstrous Cavalry in favour of infantry sucks. They should have given some decent mechanic to cavalry as well to balance out the two troop types, instead it's been a history of never getting that balance quite right.
• You all know my dislike of premeasuring, other than for checking when rules like Frenzy and triggering Fanatics occur. I'm sorry to hear about your various friends and relatives with assorted eye conditions or difficulties in gauging distances, but a game shouldn't sacrifice its realism for inclusivity. It'd be like changing the rules of a sport like football to make it easier to play for those who have trouble playing it (of which I am one - I can't seem to master techniques like dribbling as I don't have and my brain takes a while to process the best way to do things, which football rarely allows you to do when you get the ball,  but I simply accepted that football wasn't 'my game' rather than making a song and dance about it). I could just about allow premeasuring in 40K where most races have targeting systems to gauge whether enemies are in range, but in Fantasy where the limit of technology is 15th Century handguns and your average archer knows very little about the maximum range of his weapon, not on your nelly. Apologies if I sound harsh, but a game that starts to lose grasp of realism, even a fantasy game, becomes a bit of a joke in my eye. Fortunately in all my games so far we've ignored premeasuring and things have worked out fine, so it can obviously work without it, so why shouldn't it to make sure common sense is preserved?
• The balance isn't bad in friendly gameplay for the most part, but the competitive scene really shows the dark side of this edition, in particular the idea that some armies have real trouble beating others, and it's unbelievable GW didn't suspect there was something wrong (Warriors of Chaos, I'm looking at you again, and Dak Elves too). The fact that GW conveniently chose to avoid giving Beastmen and Bretonnia 8th Edition releases, yet Dark Elves and Warriors of Chaos both got two (one with the book and another with additional models), and to give Tomb Kings their 8th book early on as a guinea pig so they could revise the undead magic for their Vampire Counts book later also stinks of bias on their part, which I despise. Not to mention the clear absence of support for Chaos Dwarfs bar a piddly Forge World micro-list. Fortunately given the game has now passed into the hands of us fans, it means we can provide erratas and even updated books for armies that are suffering to fix some of the worst mistakes GW made, but the fact that we seem to be doing a better job of it than GW ever did shows they need to work on that part of their games development business (though very recently they've started releasing free PDFs that actively balance factions that have developed an OP streak in 40K, meaning maybe they've finally cracked it)
• Personally I thought changing magic items so that they were mostly generic and each race only had a few unique items was a step backwards, boring and less thematic. At least I can still make unique runic items for my Dwarfs, but all other factions that got an 8th Ed book suffer from this.
• A more recent one I've thought of is the fact that 8th made casting magic uniform for all the factions, compared to 6th, and to a lesser extent 7th, where some factions had different ways of casting magic (Tomb Kings had entirely Bound Spells, Ogres knew all their spells but the casting value of a spell doubled each time it was cast, Greenskins having their own Miscast chart in 7th e.t.c). Again I think this was a step backwards and sacrificed some of the fun nuances about the different factions
• Bound spells were made pretty much pointless other than giving you a bit more choice on what to cast. 
• I'm in two minds about the re-roll to failed hit rolls granted by ASF. On one hand it helps to balance regular Elven units who have to put up with Strength 3 and poor armour in return, but on the other elite units like Witch Elves and Black Guard and characters like the Vampire 'Blender lord' abuse this mechanic to high heaven. I wouldn't shed many tears if this was removed.
• Cannons were too strong, but this has been repeated already. By and large I still use the 7th Ed rules, except for Multiple Wounds being improved to D6.
• Skirmishers were turned into open order troops which made little sense. Again I use the 7th Ed rules for these and it works fine
• Not getting anything for charging except a measly +1 combat resolution gives you much less reason to charge except if you inflict Impact Hits

On the other hand, I am not using this thread purely to pour out my grievances, there are lots of good things about 8th:

• I'm fine with steadfast and the other things they included to boost infantry, and I can understand why they brought those mechanics in after cavalry rocked 6th and 7th.
• Supporting attacks and step-up are excellent additions, and in some respects help to balance out the boost to ASF.
• The increased roster sizes (including the return of many special characters thought lost) are certainly a welcome addition
• The way GW really went to town on more fantastical concepts in 8th was good, in particular with monsters and war machines, without going too far in that direction as you could say AoS has
• Full colour books! GW finally emerged into the 21st century with this luxury, and 8th Edition Fantasy was one of the first beneficiaries, as well as being the first to receive hardback army books.
• I can see why GW removed Unit Strength, as it was bureaucratic, though it does mean a big unit of Gors can panic and run at the deaths of a tiny number of Chaos Warhounds, which is a bit silly.
• Random elements for magic make things more balanced and fun. There are OP elements, but as others have said the randomness does help to keep things under control
• Monstrous Infantry and Monstrous Cavalry became key players. Perhaps they became too much of a key player, but I like to see a good few Rat Ogres, Kroxigors and Minotaurs in my armies adding a bit of beef (literally for the latter)
• Monsters were boosted with Thunderstomp stopping them from getting bogged down in masses of infantry
• As I said above, when playing just for fun by and large battles have always been balanced. Certainly in the one my dad and I played a couple of weeks ago, while luck favoured his High Elves early on, my Greenskins managed to claw back in the later turns with help from Fanatics and Foot of Gork and by the end it was a lot closer than expected (High Elves still won, but I stopped it from becoming a thrashing). That must say something about balancing despite my rant above. I'll be interested to see how my fledgling Beastman army gets on once I've got it up to 1000 points+.
• Expansions were brought into Fantasy for the first time in this edition, even though they'd been part and parcel of 40K for ages, and we got fun stuff like Storm of Magic and Triumph and Treachery.
• The edition is particularly good for writing fan-made army lists. To be fair I've never tried writing 6th and 7th Ed army lists, but 8th just appears to make it particularly easy to do (and I imagine grandmasterwang and KevinC will share my opinion on this ), so maybe there's something else different about this edition that I just can't put my finger on that enabled this to happen.
• Army special rules were particularly impactful and thematic in this edition, which helped to balance out the loss of thematic magic and most of the army-specific magic items a bit. Every army getting at least a couple of special rules tailor-written for them was great, a vast improvement to 6th and to a lesser extent 7th where there were fewer of these per army and they were generally weaker.
• And of course, charging is a lot more uncertain now, which makes that part of the game more exciting, and the increased maximum is very welcome in particular to a dwarf player like myself.

Shameless copy of my assessment of four months of 8th edition from my battle reports thread:

After playing quite regularly now, and having witnessed additional games I think it is a good time for a first recap of WFB 8 for me.
I remember when we founded our playing group, the most veteran player of the group said that in his opinion eighth edition is the best the Warhammer Fantasy game has ever seen, including fanmade successors like T9A. So the hopes were high in the beginning, as I had made my first acquaintance with Warhammer ca. 2000 with 6th edition, which was very fun at first, and I still remember the great time of new army book rumors discussed on forums, attending tournaments etc. But as the advent of 7th edition came, my relationship with the game had become a bit more complicated, as I felt some issues which were not to be remedied by 7th.

But on to 8th now. It is by far the best Warhammer Fantasy that I have played so far. Really almost everything I had an issue with in 6th or 7th is better in 8th.

The games feel much faster, as the "fiddling phase" has been eliminated by random charges and the ability to measure whatever whenever you want. I really like the uncertainty factor random charges bring to the game, and the potential 16" charge of infantry doesn't bother me at all, quite the contrary. Sure, we only play 1500 points now which may make the comparison biased, the regular army size in 6th and 7th edition was 2000pts, sometimes more. But still, I am convinced that the current rules speed up the game.

Also, the focus on getting the charge has been decreased for the better. Charging is still a big advantage, but not the be-all-end-all anymore due to "Step up!" (I so love this rule!) and steadfast. I like that infantry, including non-raisable elite infantry, seems to be playable now.

Breaking of units in the first round of combat is not a regular occurrence anymore, as BSBs are better and widespread than before. Also, there is much more killing than before, again because of "Step up!". It feels infinitely better that everybody alive in the first ranks gets to swing (back) and not like in 6th, regularly packing in after getting charged by medium cavalry and losing four models.
Don't get me wrong, I still do love my cavalry, but it is not the breaking machine it was, and other troop types can be a nice equalizer to cavalry.

Magic is much more balanced than I had expected. Miscasts are a real risk now. I just tend to get lucky with them, but they are a regular occurrence and they do have an effect. The nonlinear availability of power dice is an amazingly balancing factor, and the dreaded killer spells are hard enough to cast to justify their existence. The dispel scroll being now a regular item which can not be duplicated is also a very good step, and actually, I have not taken a Dispel Scroll so far in my games at all and I felt that as a disadvantage only once or twice. Channeling is something I could go without, it is just an additional roll with not much impact. But it gives the defending player something to do in the opponents phase, which may be a positive psychological factor.

We have only a limited array of armies (WoC, DoC, Empire, Skaven, Wood Elves and Vampires; a Tomb King army is in the making, and High Elves are there, but have not been played yet), but this limited sample feels relatively balanced to me. Sure, internal balance still is messed up here and there, but I would say that all of these armies have a good shot a winning against each other.

One thing that I am unsure about are monsters. Playing against Cannons of several varieties and also having them at my disposal, it feels that monsters are generally hardcountered by artillery. I remember taking monsters off the table in the first and second round before doing anything significant, and I also remember a flying monster rampaging the opponents army and winning the game almost single-handedly for me when it was not kept in check by artillery.
That is one thing that feels a little bit too much like "Rock-Paper-Shotgun" to me.
Other than that, I would say that the different troop types all have their merits and their sweet spots where they shine, with Monstrous Cavalry and Monstrous Beasts generally being on the higher end of efficiency, but all others still being very valid choices.

All in all, a very fine game, and I am very happy to play it!

Thanks go also to this community for the great content available here, I especially like to read the tactics and the battle reports section, and also thanks for the encouraging comments!