Is there really a need for change?

[Grocklock]

It is not something just restricted to this edition and not only to fantasy but also 40k, this need to change the rules.

I understand changing one or two rules for one off games to get a feel. Or for a campgain to change some rules to protray a story line.

But where I feel after this it gets out of hand. I happened to play a game against a new opponet at the local gaming club and after a well placed cannon ball from my dwarf cannon I took out his general on the zombie dragon, the army crumbled to death shortly after this. after shaking his hand he said 'that wouldn't of happened in my local club'. then proceeded to hand me a document comprising of around 25 pages with rule changes.

Alot of the rules in the pack seamed to come about because another rule had been changed, for example all of the top spells had been taken out, such as the dreded 13th, and spells where not allowed more then 6 dice allocated to them. they had also allowed a miscast on a double 1 as well as double 6.

but then the horde rule was abolished, and supporting attacks as well, as they where now to powerful.

Is changing the rules too much, bringing up its own problems whichthen need to be fixed. Sometimes I feel that a rule is changed not because there is anything wrong with it but because it would force them to play the game differently. This is a harsh assesment i know but it sometimes feels this way.

Maybe it is best when the rule changes exceed half a page you should stop and think does this really need to be done, and certinally if you have reached 25 pages why not write the other 250 and create your own game.

[spaghettyhoop]

I dont think I would have wanted to play at his club

[Lord Dan]

Why wouldn't that have happened in his local club? Did they ban cannons there, too, or anything else that might cause them to lose? No matter how many rules you change, you can't fix stupid.

[DaemonReign]

That's an extreme example. Up there with the ETC comp, for example.
It's almost always a detriment to be changing rules from what I've seen.
8th Edition is an awesome rules-set. Some minor flaws here and there of course. That we can all have our private pet-peeves about. But the general structure and intent of the rules is just great.

Some people want to feed their own ego's by pretending they were in charge of the actual rules though. It quickly gets out of hand - and anyone watching the process/results from the outside quickly spots the futility of such efforts.

[Malorian]

Change is needed and is what keeps GW alive.

Systems that don't change die as people get bored and move on to the next thing.

[Mr Ogre]

When it comes to changes, GW may not be perfect, but I find fan changes are far worse. Sorry if this comes off as overly negative, or plain atagonistic, but many changes made by clubs etc are done to suit specific play styles. And when done by individuals, it's usually covering some kind of tactical situation that player finds tricky.

Now don't get me wrong, GW positively encourage this sort of thing. The rules are their take on what makes a game fun. But to attempt to force your own house rule on someone on neutral turf is a little.....off. For instance, 25 pages of rules, all pretty much reverting back to 7th Edition, it does beg the question 'why not just play 7th?'

[Bikhu]

It actually seems like those house-rules were trying to achieve 7th with step-up, as they keep step-up but ban hordes and supporting attacks.

Some minor tweaks I could see experimenting with, as long as it is optional and not required by the club itself. For example, changing the nasty unit destroyers to 1 wound instead of model death would not be overly ambitious, or having disruption cancel steadfast, or granting charging units +2 initiative on the charge. These would change the overall tactics and play of the game but perhaps not require a host of compensating rules added in along with them. That being said, although these are all things I would have liked GW to have built into the system, and I am willing to experiment with them here and there, I am generally happy with 8th ed rules as is.

[theunwantedbeing]

25 pages single or double sided?
Were they bullet pointed and to the point or convoluted and wordy?
Did his list exploit weaknesses within that document of changes?

It does sound like they approached things from the wrong end, throwing around all encompassing rules to fix what is merely a handful of issues.
Also it's a lot like 7th edition....so why not just play 7th edition with less alterations?

I don't mind change as a whole unless it strays too far from what I am willing to live with in a single go.
8th irked me more for my opponents attitudes of being able to do different things, so they did just because they could and not because there was any point to it.
ie. the whole scenery deployment debacle where most opponents just built a wall across the middle of the board
Made me realise that a lot of my opponents are idiots who really aren't worth playing against if the rules aren't going to allow things like that.

Even if you want to do a quick simple errata of your own on the more abusive things in fantasy it eats up a fair bit of space, although not 25 pages worth.....

[Quinzy]

Change as many rules as you want, so long as both parties are consensual adults. In a pick-up game on neutral ground, it's generally an idea to either play by the grounds' rules or better yet, by the actual rules.

I'm a fan of changing what you don't like, so long as everyone agrees to it.
The trouble with changing so many core rules, as stated above, is they tend to generate more problems.
Also, you may lose the ability to play a core game against someone not in your club if you routinely play a different game (which is what changing the rules is).

At least he didn't force you to play by his rules for the game.

[Fieos]

People always think they can/should improve upon someone else's work. We deal with the same challenges in our local gaming circle and Warhammer Fantasy is typically a hot topic. Very seldom do I find people who want to make rules changes that actually know the rules. I'm not just talking the BRB, I'm talking Army Books, Errata, and FAQ clarifications as well. If you want to make your own game; make your own game. If you want mutually agreed rules changes; do it. The reality is for the casual player it doesn't matter. But those people who play with their custom rules honestly play at a disadvantage in standard rules tournament play simply because they practice differently (local league game) than they perform (official rules).

If you can't get past the rules then you probably shouldn't play the game.

[Lord Inquisitor]

House rules are terrific things. Newsflash: WFB isn't perfect and more than that, it isn't necessarily catering for what you want in a game. People play with house rules all over the world, from literal house rules around someone's basement games to house rules adopted by multiple GTs around the world. Often they have different uses - people bitch about ETC rules, for example, but many of them make a lot of sense in the team format they are designed for. You can clearly see that the Design Team get things wrong from time to time. Usually they will just let mistakes lie if they don't break the system, but they do attempt to prevent prior mistakes setting precedents. Storm of Magic hydra are vastly more expensive than Dark Elf ones and the army book lores are much less powerful than the equivalent spells from the rulebook lores. It isn't terrible to want to standardise things.

25 pages? Eliminating the step up rule? Not to my taste at all. But different strokes I guess. I've seen many good house rules. I can well understand a desire to make ridden monsters more attractive to prevent turn 1 splat-death. Not much fun all around. It could be as simple as saying a cannon hits rider or mount but not both or you could rebuild the cannon mechanics from the ground up. I know my Inquisitor house rules amounted to more or less an entire new edition of the rules since I had messed with so many aspects of the rules, although that game was a GM-mediated pseudo-roleplaying game so it was easier to deal with as only I needed to handle all my own rules.

The only advantage to not tinkering is WFB is an antagonistic game played all over the place and it is good to have a common set of rules to play from and agree upon. The easiest is just to play "out of the box" as it were, although a lot of people have a few common restrictions (e.g. no special characters) that they like to play with. As such I like to play with minimal restrictions just because I don't want to get too used to, say, getting a look out sir roll from dwellers so I don't get complacent in a tournament. I know I attended a GT with heavy restrictions and pretty extensive house rules (at least, for a tournament) and it was a bit of a shock to the system to get back to "standard" Warhammer.

Edit: I do get a bit annoyed by people who seem to treat the designers as infallible, though, or that the game is perfect. I remember suggesting a house rule back in 7th that units might fight in three ranks and strike regardless of casualties and people generally jumped up and down saying it was absurd and would never happen. 8th rolled around and now people seem to think it's perfect too? The suggestion that to want to house rule elements of the game merely means you can't play the game and want to adapt the game to help you win is insulting and irritating. One can analyse the game objectively. When I dislike the prevalence of the stubborn crown, think cannons are too effective against ridden monsters or say the Masque is too cheap, don't think for a second I don't use the stubborn crown, cannons or the Masque myself.

[Sexiest_hero]

I saw a daemon rule set people use because people see to think 8th nerfed them. its a lot easier to fix things you don't like than change tactics. for the OP All that vampire had to do was line up some MI or a rare Ghist in front to catch a cannon ball. I bet there are no nerfs to a Vampire lord on dragon when it hits troops.You can't fix bad players by making bad rules. house rules are ok till you start favoring one style of play over another.

[zak]

House rules are all good and well, but this seems a little OTT. I'm sure with 25 pages of alterations that people get confused about what rules that they are using (is it 7th, 8th or a new rule?).

[Lord Inquisitor]

I saw a daemon rule set people use because people see to think 8th nerfed them. its a lot easier to fix things you don't like than change tactics. for the OP All that vampire had to do was line up some MI or a rare Ghist in front to catch a cannon ball. I bet there are no nerfs to a Vampire lord on dragon when it hits troops.You can't fix bad players by making bad rules.

See what I mean? Nothing wrong with the rules, just need to learn to play better!

The odds of hitting the zombie dragon in the open is 7/9 (78%), it goes down to 57% with two crypt horrors in front (best cannon blockers available to undead), but that includes a 5% chance you'll hit the target and kill a crypt horror and a 1% chance you'll kill two and still hit the dragon.

With three cannons firing, that's an 85% chance at least one will wound and 42% the dragon will be killed and (assuming a charmed shield and a 4+ ward), a 28% chance of blowing the vampire away. For a total 58% chance that the dragon or the rider bite it.

While this is better than the alternative (without cover, three cannons have over an 80% chance of killing rider or mount) but I'm not going to be sticking my general from a army that relies on its general out there with a 42% chance I won't get blasted stone dead turn 1. While using crypt horrors is much better than not using crypt horrors, it's still just an unacceptable risk to use a zombie dragon at all.

[Mercules]

The main problem I have with house rules is dealing with someone when they leave their "house rules" and come play the rest of us. Far, far, far, faaaaaaaar... to many house rules end up in some people's minds as the actual rules and they will argue them till you open the book and show them the actual rules. Then you get a, "Oh, well that isn't how we play it." not, "Oh, sorry I got confused because we play differently." but the feeling that by playing by the rule book you are playing it "incorrectly". Very often it goes hand in hand with, "X is broken when you go by the rules."

[Sexiest_hero]

But you risk a Vampire lord in combat, casting magic, or being Dwellered, pitted. A vampire lord is risky, you can mitigate this by magic items, blocking troops, terrain, a fall back caster and Ld boosting heroes. Sometimes "Tipping the odds" in your favor is the best you can do. I'm sure you have seen what a Vamp lord does in combat. He and his mount can be healed and get regeneration and you have little over 40% chance to stop him before he owns you. I think thats fair.

[Cherrystone]

The beauty of table games is that they can be easily modified to a players tastes, change what they dont like or just to create a different experience, its all great fun creating or changing rules and see how that affects the game play and with more games these rules can be developed or dropped if they dont work.
Been developing warhammer house rules ever since 4th edition so theyre pretty well play tested these days (except for the small changes that are needed for each edition change).

[Sexiest_hero]

I' fine for lil rule changes like MR for 6th spells and cannons hitting monster or rider, pretty much Gentlemen's agreements. It's when you write it down and make the the "Offical rules". I play eastmen and I don't want cannons nerfed. I'd wreck face with monsters, with no steadfast, step up. I'd slam Core chariots, Razorgor chariots and flying doombulls around with wild abandon. I don't want to be broken. A simple Use SoM monster costs works just fine.

[Urgat]

House rules are fine as long as they remain "house" rules and not "exported" rules.

[Sexiest_hero]

Until they start nerfing Non Op armies, then it's just unfair.