Rumors: We've Done this Before

So the rumors continue to swirl about 9th edition Warhammer, and I had a revelation upon reading the newest Bell of Lost Souls article. The article was discussing the contents of the new starter set, which will supposedly feature a combined Chaos force (two units of Chaos warriors, unit of Daemons, a war machine, and two lords) versus a combined "Forces of Light" force (three Empire units, one Elf unit, 1 war machine that is possibly Dwarf in origin, and two lords). And of course terrain to represent the new storyline, apparently of a broken and ruined world. And I realized to myself that I've done this before.

I've been playing Warhammer long enough to have experienced the Ravening Hordes switch that came with the 6th edition of the game. And I see a lot of similarities to that moment in what has been swirling in the rumors mill.

Warhammer has technically done the Ravening Hordes thing twice... I'm talking about the one one on the right. 

The essence of the Ravening Hordes 6th edition moment was that the game had swollen considerably. There were rules in all sorts of sources, there were different boxes you needed to buy (the Magic box as a good example) to even play the game. People were running lists that were cobbled together from different sources, and there was admittedly (I think) kind of a barrier to entry for newer players.

It was also a time when they were changing the way they did their miniature production--switching to the plastic sets that most everyone loves (I still adore the old metals at times though). That meant a move to finally being able to field bigger units, as opposed to the prior edition where 21 really was the maximum size you saw of almost anything on the field: as many units you had to buy in a pack of 2 models for the rank-and-file, and a blister of 3 command.

And so with the 6th edition, they put out a Ravening Hordes booklet bundled with an issue of White Dwarf magazine. This condensed and clarified every list. It gave unified profiles. It allowed a switch in the magic phase. It represented a change in the game that persisted for multiple editions. And it invalidated a whole lot of stuff.

Most of all these glorious bastards: the Chaos Dwarfs

The list took a lot of the "oomph" out of many armies, and notably cut out all the silly: especially from Orcs and Goblins and Dwarfs. Things were pared down, the rarer metal models were removed from general play (Dragon Ogres anyone?). It was a dramatic change. But what it did do was left everyone a basic scheme to be able to play the game in the current form. No matter what your army (again, except for Chaos Dwarfs), you could at least set some version of it on the table and run the game.

And then what happened? Well, the game expanded back out. Undead got split into two books: Vampire Counts at first, and later Tomb Kings. Most of the models that were "left out" of prior books eventually got a home--screaming skull catapults and skeleton chariots for instance. They took favorite older models and gave them their own lists even (e.g. Ogres--seems like everyone had their one unit of Ogre Mercenaries). Yes, some stuff got cut and never came back. But on the whole most found its way back into the game, which is honestly better than it has ever been. 8th edition of Warhammer really is the greatest version of the game I've played. But it took the convulsions of 6th edition and Ravening Hordes, that moment when we were all screaming that our favorite bits got removed/lumped together/made too bland.

I'm feeling like 9th edition will be something similar. The rumors continue to say "9th is 90% similar to 8th, but mainly with a change in fluff." I'm thinking that there will be a change in books--in where our favorite units are conceptually placed. I'm playing Dwarfs and Skaven right now, so I expect to experience both. Everything points to Skaven being mostly unchanged: they'll likely still be a faction and likely still generally solitary. And the rumors suggest that Dwarfs might be merged with other stuff--combined into unified "Forces of Light" or who knows what. So I'll see both sides of the switch. But then, I did back with Ravening Hordes too. I was playing Skaven and Undead then. One book remained the same. And one book got blown up, with models scattering to different spots and only returning after a long time.

I think if we could remember ourselves at Ravening Hordes, or think about how we'll be a few years after 9th edition when they've had time to "re-populate" the game with supplements, we'll likely have a different view than this moment of crisis. Doesn't mean that I'm already accepting 9th as better than 8th, as sometimes change is bad (cough cough Fourth Edition Dungeons and Dragons cough).

Like really, really bad. Soul-crushingly, quit-the-game, ruined because it was competing with a non-competitor (MMORPGs) bad.

But I'm accepting that a refocus is understandable, particularly when changing notions about production. We're at the final death of metal miniatures for Games Workshop, and finecast/finecrap is gone too. And thus, an edition that connects with that switch in production makes sense from a global view: exactly what Ravening Hordes was. We survived that, because 6th remained a good game at its core. And 9th can be the same, as long as the core is solid. So I for one am banking on the "90% the same" narrative while waiting to see what's coming.

Coping with the Rumor-Mill

So my January has been a lot less productive when it came to painting and gaming. And I know exactly why: all sorts of rumors about Warhammer Fantasy 9th Edition. New editions are always somewhat tumultuous, and in the past year the strange and accelerated pace of Games Workshop's product launches have only made worries worse. The big energy sapping rumors are twofold: first, the rumor that round bases will replace square ones. Which would be an enormous change that would leave the game simply not like its prior editions. Second, the dramatic changes to the Warhammer world. Instead of a traditional fantasy setting, rumors have it going to pockets of isolated reality, with some of the standard races merging or being removed from the game entirely. If rumors are to be believed, the undead will be condensed, all three elf races will be condensed, and the Lizardmen are going to simply fly off into space and not be around anymore.

Many believe this is a picture of a ziggurat-shaped spaceship lifting the Lizardmen army right out of the game of Warhammer Fantasy.

Our own reactions as a group of players have been a part of my concern as well. Some sample comments I wanted to save and share (I'm Andrew):

The questions of the round bases rumor: how could it change the game and how could we be expected to rebase hundreds (or thousands) of bases?

Using the age-old trick, of not saying something new in a blog--just re-expressing your prior opinions.

Why all these rumors have lagged my hobby drive is because I experienced this once before: when Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 was replaced with a Fourth Edition of the game. At the time, I had been playing a great deal of Living Greyhawk--a massive combined game of Dungeons and Dragons with thousands of players across the country. It was an amazing way to play Dungeons and Dragons, and some of my favorite gaming memories are from that era. But with Fourth Edition, the company stopped supporting the prior game. This generated a schism in the gaming community, with some jumping on board with the new game and others trying to play the prior. It was all made worse because Fourth Edition fundamentally changed the way the game played: in an attempt to compete with video games, they made the game more like an MMORPG. So the new product simply wasn't what many of us came to love about the game. I was left with a massive pile of books that governed a great game, but Living Greyhawk was killed and the edition had moved on.

I'm worried about the same with Warhammer, honestly. As I said in that message screenshotted above, the game is something that I've enjoyed relatively unchanged for 19 years: over half of my life. If I trusted that Games Workshop was going to do something similar, just a set of refined rules that make the same game even better, I'd be more enthused. In fact, I think that a 9th edition is absolutely needed to clean up some features of the game: unified mount and rider profiles, changes to some of the spells, and some clarity with certain unit types and situations. And I'm inclined to be okay with the current move of Games Workshop to try and lure newer players by making smaller forces viable (thanks to larger points investments in the large Lord and Hero models and big Monster kits lately). But I'm worried that they've got their eyes more on usurping their competition--all the burgeoning skirmish games like that of Privateer Press--than on refining their own product and making it better.

I already have my Privateer Press force painted as adversaries for a Role Playing Campaign that I run. I enjoy that game, but skirmish isn't as grand as the big armies. 

So I'll be honest. I got all worried. I thought "hmm, maybe I should just sell all my armies." I painted other stuff: a unit of Dark Reapers for my Warhammer 40k Eldar army. I played Fallout New Vegas when I could have been painting.

But I think ultimately the feeling of discouragement has passed, at least for now. I still enjoy painting models, I still laugh whenever I think about how silly my Skaven force will be when it hits the table, and I still smile at the thought of fielding a fully painted force of Skaven yet again (third time's the charm). So I'll proceed with cautious optimism, even in the face of potential changes to a game that I do truly love. 

And if my Skaven fly into space, get onto round bases, and join the 40k universe? Well, then I just have a Hrud army ready to go.