On Wednesday my book arrived from England. It was packaged in a box which protected the corners of the book (thank goodness because the box was pretty bashed up, the book was in good condition though) and that was in turn in a big blue airmail sack with a cable tie around it. The sort of sack you get coal delivered in, they type you could fit both of my children and the dog and still have room to tie it shut…. hmmm. Anyway opened it up (since I was sick that day) and the boys and I started leafing through it. Took over half an hour just leafing through the pages.
So having read most of the rules now, most of the rumours are true. There are a few that were just wrong or misinterpretations but most of those were easily seen through anyway. Also the armybook errata/faq’s have been updated now on the gw site for 8th edition.
It is a very nice book. It is full of full colour spreads, heaps of pictures of every armies figures, background, rules, hobbycraft. There are also many many diagrams of how the rules work in certain situations, which is really helpful. It’s quite clear that they (GW) have taken a lot from previous rulebooks, found what works and have tried to write something that is as unambiguous and clear as possible. It’s a great rulebook and a fantastic warhammer resource. It’s also quite large.
It will be interesting to play I think. It still warhammer but the rule changes that they have made will mean things won’t play quite as they did, or at least good units aren’t so great and crap units are kinda good.
Just looking at my wood elves for example. On the bad side of the ledger, there is no mention of skirmishers having 360 degree vision now and they must be spaced out. Well they always were supposed to be spaced out but people just kinda loosely did it and crammed in more to an area than there really should have been. Anyway it seems not a big deal but I think it’s going to have a bit of an impact on how they’re used and given wardancers and dryads are skirmishes and the main fighting units in at least my woodie armies…. The other thing that is a bit of a blow to the woodelves is the stepping up rules. When you’re as tough a 1-ply budget toilet paper and have no real armour to speak of your defence lies in killing everything so it can’t fight back. With no defense and nothing in the way of combat resolution (ranks, standards and outnumbering which is gone now) a protracted battle is not going to go in favour of the woodies. However unless you can completely wipe out a unit because of the stepping up rule they will always attack back. With what will be a predilection toward bigger units because of the advantages you gain (horde and what not) it’s really unlikely a woodelf unit is going to be able to put away such a unit even with tag team help from it’s comrades.
So all of that kinda sucks for the woodelves and is going to make close combat very dicey business, however it’s not all bad. On the plus side we have missile weapons firing in two ranks (no longer do I need those hills), and volley firing for bows (two ranks plus half of each successive rank if you don’t move). Archers are going to be nasty (of course marching can be done more easily and charging can potentially be greater so maybe opportunities to shoot won’t be as many). Treekin are monstrous infantry so can rank up in threes and get stomp attacks. Fast cav and flying cav are still awesome (bought back the vanguard rule for fast cave which elf light cav used to get as a free move at the start of the game). The initiative rules for determining who goes first in combat obviously favour high initiative elves. Also the carefully crafted magic item list for the woodelves where every fantastic combo is like 5pts more than you can spend or can’t be given to that character or can’t be used in conjuction with that item. Or even for example where all the good ward saves have a downside to them and there is no heavy armour. Well that all goes out the window with the common magic item list. At last my woodies can have proper platemail and 4+ward saves with no downsides etc. Of course this is true for all the armies, and from what I’ve seen more recent army books haven’t been so careful with the magic item lists as they were with the wood elves, so I guess it’s just making things more fair, by dragging everything down lol.
Oh yes and the bonus for charging (aside from engaging the enemy) is that you get +1 to combat resolution.
And woods, previously the friends to woodelves. No longer block line of sight no matter how deep (soft cover +1 penalty to shooting and dangerous terrain to a number of things like cavalry moving at speed). Whatsmore with the mysterious forests rule they’re as likely to kill woodelf troops as protect them. About 50/50 chance. Don’t know where I’m going to place those waywatchers now.
