Galadrin
Vassal
Morg the Conqueror demands more adoration heaped before the throne of 90's Warhammer Fantasy Battle! Well that's not exactly right... 3e is the Heavy Metal edition... Maybe 4/5e is hair bands and glam rock? We got all the bright colours and big, sharp-toothed grins!
This came up over on Classichammer: 6th Edition was waay more balanced and fair than 90's Hammer. But Morg says this killed the magic! 4/5e was a crazy, chaotic mess that let you build any madcap scenario your twisted, immature teenage mind (addled on soda and pop rocks, no doubt!) could dream up while sitting in 6th period English class. Entire army of Warhawk Riders? Morg approves! Wanna try an army with nothing but catapults? Morg demands satisfaction! Then you hop on the late bus (detention again), trundle along back to your buddy's filthy basement, pour out your unpainted minis on the half-flocked sheet of composite wood you call a gaming table and play to the wee hours of the night.
90's Hammer may have been unrestrained, but it was giddy, glorious fun. Heroes were damn heroes (until struck by 23 simultaneous catapult attacks... See above), Orcs always smiled, artwork only came in cartoon-form, magic was a minigame, every army had special rules (which you always needed to look up during the game), the fluff was at its zenith and fun was the order of the day. Sure, it was broken, but every army could be broken. Everyone had access to the same ridiculously cool magic items, every army could bring crazy force compositions to throw off your opponent (often with a ton of proxying... Hey, we were highschoolers, not millionaires!) and everyone knew that the point of the game was to have fun. In fact, unless you played with a bunch of turds, there was always an unspoken code that the "rule of cool" outweighed "win at all costs." If you played with some downright level-headed and friendly chaps, there was no need for game balance anyway as they would always bring fluffy and fun lists that everyone would enjoy. In the end, the game encouraged you to think about how you would play it, rather than just an exercise in list building (i.e., everything from 6th onwards), precisely because the army composition rules were so loose. It made you think of cool scenarios more than perfectly tweaked armies.
Yes, we all knew it was broken, but we embraced that chaos and the possibilities of a freeform game. Of course, you couldn't be certain to play against your mates in the buzzing tourmament scene of the 90's, but even then, the tournaments always judged your victory points on numerous levels... Points for best painted army, points for fluffiest army, points for gamesmanship, points for most reasonable and balanced army. I mean, we all knew you could do broken stuff in the 90's... We were the ones that came up with the term Herohammer after all. But we also came up with great ways to get around that... I mean, check out the long list of restrictions you can add to your game in the 5th Edition rulebook! No monsters, no lords, no magic items above a certain point value, no level 4 wizards... We got by ok! "Broken" army books and rules were never a problem if you understood the point of the game was to have fun. The ability to embrace that reality and enjoy the ultimate freeform nature of 4th/5th is what made Warhammer Warhammer. Being perfectly balanced and fair just weren't the "fun things," for us! It's like a flat Coca Cola without the fizz... You need the little chaotic bubbles to make the magic happen (even if it is messy, comes put your nose and gives you a brain freeze sometimes)!
This came up over on Classichammer: 6th Edition was waay more balanced and fair than 90's Hammer. But Morg says this killed the magic! 4/5e was a crazy, chaotic mess that let you build any madcap scenario your twisted, immature teenage mind (addled on soda and pop rocks, no doubt!) could dream up while sitting in 6th period English class. Entire army of Warhawk Riders? Morg approves! Wanna try an army with nothing but catapults? Morg demands satisfaction! Then you hop on the late bus (detention again), trundle along back to your buddy's filthy basement, pour out your unpainted minis on the half-flocked sheet of composite wood you call a gaming table and play to the wee hours of the night.
90's Hammer may have been unrestrained, but it was giddy, glorious fun. Heroes were damn heroes (until struck by 23 simultaneous catapult attacks... See above), Orcs always smiled, artwork only came in cartoon-form, magic was a minigame, every army had special rules (which you always needed to look up during the game), the fluff was at its zenith and fun was the order of the day. Sure, it was broken, but every army could be broken. Everyone had access to the same ridiculously cool magic items, every army could bring crazy force compositions to throw off your opponent (often with a ton of proxying... Hey, we were highschoolers, not millionaires!) and everyone knew that the point of the game was to have fun. In fact, unless you played with a bunch of turds, there was always an unspoken code that the "rule of cool" outweighed "win at all costs." If you played with some downright level-headed and friendly chaps, there was no need for game balance anyway as they would always bring fluffy and fun lists that everyone would enjoy. In the end, the game encouraged you to think about how you would play it, rather than just an exercise in list building (i.e., everything from 6th onwards), precisely because the army composition rules were so loose. It made you think of cool scenarios more than perfectly tweaked armies.
Yes, we all knew it was broken, but we embraced that chaos and the possibilities of a freeform game. Of course, you couldn't be certain to play against your mates in the buzzing tourmament scene of the 90's, but even then, the tournaments always judged your victory points on numerous levels... Points for best painted army, points for fluffiest army, points for gamesmanship, points for most reasonable and balanced army. I mean, we all knew you could do broken stuff in the 90's... We were the ones that came up with the term Herohammer after all. But we also came up with great ways to get around that... I mean, check out the long list of restrictions you can add to your game in the 5th Edition rulebook! No monsters, no lords, no magic items above a certain point value, no level 4 wizards... We got by ok! "Broken" army books and rules were never a problem if you understood the point of the game was to have fun. The ability to embrace that reality and enjoy the ultimate freeform nature of 4th/5th is what made Warhammer Warhammer. Being perfectly balanced and fair just weren't the "fun things," for us! It's like a flat Coca Cola without the fizz... You need the little chaotic bubbles to make the magic happen (even if it is messy, comes put your nose and gives you a brain freeze sometimes)!