Wednesday 22 September 2010

8th Ed Rotten?

What is going on with 8th edition?

I ask this because Jeff at Podhammer has pulled an episode about Skaven, and made it Inner circle only, because according to his Facebook....

"Trent and I were abit down on 8th ed and generally lacking energy for the whole thing. And I dont think its an episode that I want new listeners to hear as the first episode they listen to."

What on earth can this mean? What could they have said?

After all this is a podcast that jokes about making the two backed beast in Jeff's one eyed ex-wife's head. Surely a bit of moaning about 8th ed can't have been a less acceptable face of the show for the new listener?

As a side note I after listening to the Gamers Lounge the other day I had a game of spin the bottle with my old service revolver and a packet of valium. Luckily the pills won out. Bill and Jay were discussing the subject of their falling out of love with 40K.

I guess perhaps the problem both shows have is that they have set themselves up as one thing and perhaps have become a little trapped. After all Jeff recently mentioned that he had played FoW, and Bill and Jay are certainly into Malifaux - which makes me wonder why they don't just do shows about what they like. Ok, I understand that they will attract criticism from anal types complaining that it says on the tin (podcast alley, i-tunes or whatever) that the show is about 40K or WFB, but can anyone who currently listens, honestly say they would stop listening if Jeff started whittering on about his early war French? Or Bill and Jay made it a podcast about Malifaux predominantly?

Anywho...

Back to the topic of 8th.

I happened to pop onto the forum for the local gaming group, to see if there is anything going on in the hope that it would encourage me to get off my backside and get down there and happened to notice that one of the gamers there was selling his stuff. He is someone who plays just about every fantasy and Sci-Fi game going. So I figured I'd have a look to see if there was any Fire Storm Armada or BFG stuff going.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was selling his entire WFB collection?

And not just the figures, but the army books and the rules. Clearly he is someone that has just had enough.

We are talking here about someone who until a few months ago went to WFB tournaments practically every weekend and ran WFB events at Gamesday.

Ok this is not a huge sample on which to draw conclusions, and this being the internut the reaction of many will be 'can I have your stuff?', but I do find myself wondering how many other people are feeling the same about 8th ed?

I know I have lost all enthusiasm for the game. I haven't looked at my Ogres for a month or so, and I have no plans at all to start painting them again, let alone play with them (which is gauranteed to make tomorrows post all about how I started painting my Ogres again). I can't say there is any one thing that has provoked this reaction in me - and it should be remembered that I practically orgasmed when I got the new rules - rather it is just a general feeling of 'meh!' whenever I think of the game.

Perhaps things will pick up in November when Dark Eldar are released and GW move away from flogging the dead horse that is Blood Island, or perhaps not. After all the broken magic system will still be there, as will the meta game of cheating that WFB encourages, as will the unbalanced army books, as will the general feeling of negativity that surrounds the game at the moment.

I guess we will have to wait and see.

peace:)

4 comments:

  1. I did like 8th myshelf and got me very excited. Haven't played many games yet though since I am quite busy with 40k these days.
    Overally I think it's an improvement from 7th (I play O&G and Daemons by the way). Maybe for some people it changed the way their army plays so much that they just gave up (I am guessing Wood Elves and Bretonnians).

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  2. Actually the guy selling his stuff was a Dark Elf player, which was a good army in 7th and probably better in 8th.

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  3. Sorry if you've already written a post about it, if you want to just point me in the right direction I'd like to read instead of making you repost. My question is what do you mean by, "...as will the meta game of cheating that WFB encourages."

    As to this post itself, its been my experience that every addition causes some players to quit. I myself did so with 3rd edition 40k came out. I loved my all termanator army and didn't like force org. I came back for 5th, but saw a lot of people leaving because of the new addition. I've only played fantasy for 2.5 years, but I can't believe it didn't happy for every other addition as well (along with some army books along the way).

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  4. What I mean by the cheating thing is that certain rules are either over-interpreted or ignored in order that certain power builds and player types flourish at the expense of the game as a whole.

    A good for instance of what I mean is the 'strategem' in the current rules of putting cannon behind units of infantry and claiming that because of LoS the cannon can fire through the infantry without a penalty, but that they count as in cover for being shot at.

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