Marching Towards the Old World: 7th Edition

Hi All, this is the second installment of our series as we look at what aspects of the older Warhammer Fantasy Editions should be adapted in the new Old World game. We are moving on from 6th edition to 7th. This is actually the first edition of fantasy I played, starting out with the brand new Skaven book many moons ago. My initial impressions of the game largely involved fighting dark elves with the wonders of the Hellpit Abomination (years before it ever had a model) and the Doomwheel, while pretty much everything else just died.

7th edition didn’t bring too many major changes to the game. There were a number of tweaks to various rules but not as many overhauls as seen from 5th to 6th. It was closer to the transition from 8th ed warhammer 40k to 9th ed. As I stated earlier my experience in this edition was limited and the following is based only on my opinions. So what things should they keep from 7th edition?

Things to Keep:

• The bonus to armor saves from a shield and hand weapon only works if attacked from the front.
• Lapping around units is gone (a complicated maneuver that was useful if you had a hoard of models but was very time consuming.
• Swarms lose wounds if they lose combat, similar to the crumbling system for undead or daemons.
• The BSB bonus to combat resolution now stacks with a regular banner for +2.
• The removal of randomized hits if a template hits both friendly and enemy units in combat.
• Units with a unit strength of 5 or less (based on the type of models, infantry units have a strength of 1 for each model, cavalry 2, etc.) cannot hold table quarters.
• Flyers can pursue over enemy units when chasing rather then having to go through them.
• Rolling double “1’s” for morale auto passes any test.

While there are many things to like I think that they also introduced some aspects that can be dropped too.

• For cavalry great weapons only add +1 strength rather then +2.
• In certain circumstances units can fight multiple combats in one turn (I dislike this as it tends to encourage players to build one or two doom-stack units).
• Units must use the BSB morale re-roll I prefer that the player have the option, but it’s not a hill I will die on.
• Units with regeneration can take it after a ward save, I think this just makes regeneration too good.

Overall I think there is a lot to like from 7th edition. Given how it was largely a revision of 6th the core rules, (as I recall) were pretty solid although the specific armybooks for each race rapidly distorted the balance (40k players shocked to hear this /s). I must confess my experience with fantasy at this point was highly localized and I am sure some of the things I disliked were introduced to nerf specific units that i wasn’t aware of so take it all with a grain of salt.

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