Is 8th best? Compare to 6th.

I went from second edition to eight so I don't know that much about the editions in between.
Half our games we limit the level of the magic users to 2 because we want some cool fighter lords. If you use End of Times rules this is not necessary of course.
The only other thing we do is no double steamtank, double Phoenix, double ironblaster.
Personally I try to avoid the dispel scroll because it's boring :-). When playing ogres against a possible death mage, I make an exception :-D

8th in my fav edition. Though while 6th ed. had a decent rules set, there were a number of things that I didn't like. I'll list everything that comes to mind at the moment:

1. Army books: 6th edition army books were the worst. The books were stripped of most of their fluff and many units from their previous incarnations were dropped (i.e. spider riders, steam tanks, the classic special characters, etc.). Additionally, the 6th edition army books for Vampire Counts, Skaven, and Lizardmen were totally insane!

2. Magic dice generation was a disaster. Players could basically tailor their list to ensure a huge number of power dice in their magic phase, and could rely on this. This made magic heavy armies extremely effective and easy to create. For example, I could create an army that (as long as my wizards lived) generated 12 power dice each magic phase, meanwhile my opponent might have 4 dice. If you chose to go light on magic, that could very well put you at an extreme disadvantage. 8th edition fixed this by the random 2D6 magic dice – this was a really well done rule. NOTE, when it comes to a 'broken' magic phase, it's not really the individual spells that matter, it's how a player generates power dice. Imagine in each magic phase you could guaranty rolling double 6s. Sound cool? Great, go play 6th edition and you can do that!

3. Fear and psychology. Prior to 8th edition, psychology was a HUGE part of the game. Fear causing troops were extremely powerful in particular. For example, if a unit lost a round of combat to a Fear causing unit, there would be no break check - your unit would just flee auto. Most people mistakenly though Magic was the greatest strength of an Undead army. While magic was powerful indeed, an entire army that caused Fear was very good, it was the true reason that made Undead totally broken. Some think that in 8th edition psychology, with Fear in particular, were toned down too much. I think they got it just right.

4. Skirmishers, Flying Circuses, and Stupid armies. Standard rank and file was never really that good or important in 6th edition. If you wanted a serious advantage over your enemy, you would take an entire army of skirmishers, flyers, fast cav, or a combination of all three (always supported by heavy magic of course). If you fought a good general with a Tzeentch Flying Circus or a Skink Skirmisher or a Dark Elf Fast Cav army...forget about... you probably lost the game at set up. Again, 8th edition fixed this by making rank and file the solid choices, and toned down the skirmishers and fast fav.

5. A single S7+ hit on a chariot auto destroyed it. I hated that rule. I like chariots.

These are the main issues that come to mind.

Most of the "problems" people have with 8th edition, I don't see as issues. I'm not a huge fan of true LOS, but it's not that big of a deal. I think cannons are far too easy to hit with, but then again, they always were. At the end of the day, I feel like 8th edition takes the best elements of WFB editions 1-7, combined with some new, solid rules (i.e. steadfast for more ranks, 2D6 winds of magic, etc.), for both the most fun and most balanced edition.

Hey, really great responses. Thanks. I've got the rulebooks for both editions so I'll be needing to try several games with both rule sets to really compare them. I do like the Steadfast idea. I guess part of what makes me hesitant about 8th instead of 6th is that one of my favorite armies has been Bretonnia. Not only do the cavalry seem to lose much of their previous advantage (due to Steadfast), but the fact that the Brets book is the only surviving book from 6th also seems pretty painful. But then again, I think Bret players were still respectably holding their own at competitive events before 8th was crushed.

To me all I want for an army to be "competitive" is for it to have a legitimate chance to win. Unlike most loud voices on the Internet, I have never been of the opinion that army X or army Y was "broken" and couldn't ever win. I've also never played at those competitive events though so maybe I don't quite understand where they're coming from. In a casual setting with a friend, I just want to feel I have a chance....and I don't think I ever felt I didn't in 6th, even though my most frequent gaming buddy was a Vampire Counts player

Anyway, just kinda rambling. Thanks for the thoughts.

Wow, fantastic! I didn't realize this kind of thing was happening here on this forum. I will spend some quality time looking through that.

Is the movement to update the lists for 8th happening for any other armies?

And are these updates part of a larger group or organization? Or is it all just stuff happening here on this forum?

I will also add that I love that 8th supports huge units of models. I fully understand that this ultimately hurt WFB as the gaming culture and GWs price increases turned many away from these large investments. However, for me and my gaming crew with large collections of models, this opened up a new dynamic for us. At first I was like "now I have to paint 40 more halberdiers" but once I complete these projects and see the finished units...no regrets. I can still play with units of 10 and 20 and I'm not required to build hordes of 50, but the options are nice.

unsurprising anwers...must have to do with the name of the forum!

I will just add that a big improvement from 6th to 8th is that models actually do get killed in close combat. What I remember from 6th is that even if you had a gentleman's agreement to field rank-and-file infantry blocks, they were mostly just pushing and shoving ineffectively in close combat and generally the unit with the highest static combat resolution won and ran down their opponent.

My main issue with 8th is still TLOS. But, easy to house rule.

Some great posts here. 8th is my favourite Warhammer due to random charges, step up and premeasuring.

Multiple unit battles now have the massive casualties i would expect. 6th edition was solid but the emphasis on cavalry over infantry (first rank striking only, fixed charges) was something i didnt really like.