Is this the WHFB apocolypse

Well I’d like to think I’m reasonably objective about GW and their decision making having been both a vocal critic and advocate of their past decisions.

As a commercially minded person I’ve supported the price rises and down sizing of the product range, hell I even supported the lack of support of sideline games that I thoroughly enjoyed knowing it makes zero sense to throw resources behind a game with very low revenue opportunities.

I’ve also panned their CEO for failing to have a clear cut strategy on how to turn 10% to 20% of their young burn and churn players into long term customers and the outright idiotic decision to purchase the LOTR rights because “we couldn’t afford someone else to”. [Tip for young players – never pay above the value you think you can derive for an asset this is called stupidity, clearly someone failed their LD check at the start of negotiations.]

So now I’m stuck here at a cross roads which GW has forced upon me. Warhammer Fantasy battles, the hobby I’ve enjoyed sine I was 12 years old and have toiled at through 4 editions is standing on the precipice of moving from a hobby to simply another board game.

GW’s costing of the past two army books have in my view dramatically unbalanced the game and as a result is forcing it away from being a viable system in which to have genuine competition.

In my 17 years of gaming the VC book is by far and away the most poorly constructed rule set I have seen produced, and there have been some humdingers in that time. Either the rule makers lack the basic understanding of how much regeneration, unbreakable, immune to pysch, fear causing, terror, efficient magic and weapon skill impact the game or they have applied, at best, arbitrary values to these.

Sure it is natural that just after a book is released to hear the tales of anguish about how much GW has gotten it wrong, but the more time goes on the more my, and others, opinions grow that they have flat out gotten this wrong.

I would like to think it was simple aberration the part shot of incompetence from the designer in question but alas GW followed it up with the Demon army which is once again substantially more efficient than the pre VC armies.

Incorporating the discussions with experienced players who have/do play VC/Demons have lead to me forming the conclusion that VC is probably costed at about a discount of 10% to 20%. A wide range to be sure, and prone to both exaggeration or conservatism depending on which side of the fence you lie, but either way a significant pick up in “true points”.

So where has this arisen from? I’d say the most obvious elements that have been under costed are the immune to pysch, unbreakable, cause fear and survivability of the units. The elements ensure that the units are exceptionally reliable and can overcome what was supposed to be the best offensive in warhammer, a well executed charge.

So why do I care and why don’t I just change armies? Well there are two reasons.

The first is the long term survivability of the game. GW is already a company which has been poorly performing during the strongest economic boom in living memory and now faces a more uncertain trading environment.

Now they’ve introduce an escalated army race of army books. Whilst this may increase the churn and burn revenue generation of casual gamers who have smaller armies or move to the next big thing, it only further alienates the loyal customer base that previous management ignored. If you have a product where loyal customers are relatively inelastic due to sunk costs and a “unique” system then wouldn’t a major strategic concern be maximising the amount of those customers?

There are better strategies for turning over books than ones which, almost deliberately, force existing customers to chose between buy this now or leave. [Second tip for young players: there are two choices in an ultimatum when issuing one you’d better be able to live with both]

The second being that I just I love the tournament scene. Whilst I have many hobbies it is the one I spend the most time and money on. The scene has gone form strength to strength over the past two decades and it has been a great hobby to be involved in. Sure the game has always been the victim of a moderate level of power creep but I think Australia’s composition systems have generally kept this in check and the imbalance was never this exaggerated.

I strongly fear that going forward the top half of tourney fields will be dominated by a select few armies. I’ve always believed that whilst this has always been the perception it has seldom been the reality (when you look at the results) but going forward I do believe that unless players simply stop playing them (I’m not suggesting that by the way) VC and demon armies will be dominant as they are simply too poorly costed to be adjusted by composition.

This in turn I believe will drive less variety on the tournament scene, and for this gamer at least, dramatically decrease the enjoyment of attending tourneys.

Is it the VC or demon players’ fault? No, they are simply playing the list they were given, rather I feel it is either a lack of diligence in the design process or disgraceful strategy intentionally implemented by GW that has driven this change.