Good ol' days

I started playing Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 1991. At that time, the boxed set featured High Elves and a Goblin horde. Each race had access to nearly all monsters, including the weirdest ones like the Cockatrice, the Giant Scorpion or the Manticore, even if models were scarcely available. Flying monsters were able to "fligh high", meaning they were removed from the tabletop for a turn - gone in the sky - and returned a turn later, landing anywhere on the table. Of course, opponent's Monsters and riders could do the same to engage them in a dogfight, and if a rider's mount was killed there was no parachute!

Magic was very powerful those days, each Wizard being a proven fighter of his own and able to cast spells of devastating effects; some of them could easily dismantle a battle plan and several could win you the battle. For example, Purple Sun of Xereus, the most powerful spell from the Amethyst college, launched a 3" template in a 4D6" straight line; every model covered by the template during its move was turned to crystal (i.e. dead) on a D6 roll of 3+, with no armor save allowed and naturally regardless of remaining wounds or other trivial matters. If, like I did, you managed to get your Wizard at one end of the enemy line on turn one, which was easy with numerous teleport spells, the battle was quite over with a neat crystal line-up.

Your souls will be mine... A pleasant template from the Magic supplement.

Hopefully, each Wizard could still carry handy Dispel scrolls. Everyone had to struggle with the number of items each character was entitled to, from lowly Champions with up to one item to Wizard Lords with up to four. Since there was no point limit on a character equipment, a "tooled up character" was able to carry hundred of points worth of magic items. A powerful magic weapon around 75-100 pts, defensive measures (armor, amulets) at 50 pts a piece, and some utility equipment (to become a spell caster or a better spell caster, get anti-magic, etc.) at 25-50 a piece... You do the math. I was myself very fond of the Empire's Staff of Volans at a measly 75 pts, which made each spell cast with total power, oh my! But the staff's power weared off on a D6 roll of 1-2 after each use. So I suppose it was fair, wasn't it? Just kidding.

Strangely, the game was somehow balanced. Well, only "somehow", and that's why it was nicknamed "HeroHammer". But even when sinking half your army's budget in characters, which was the only limit then, Wizard and other heroes were canceling each other out. The only obvious problem is that gamers were fielding basic troops just because it was mandatory to do so, knowing they would have little or no impact over the final outcome. Lords, heroes, monsters, magic, and a pinch of field artillery decided Battle fate. Everyone was therefore spending the minimum amount of points in rank-and-file troopers, and usually the lowliest one so at least some regiment could look big. And if you lost your characters while your opponent still had some, you were quite doomed.

The game was incredibly fun despite those blatant excesses, but Games Workshop was well aware of the situation. A new magic add-on was thrown in, Warhammer Arcana, with plenty of items to cancel and limit overpowered characters. The Black Gem of Gnar removed two characters dueling from play (a lowly champion wielding it, and his tooled-up Chaos General on Dragon opponent, for example). Van Horstmann's Mirror swapped characteristics in duels; Naloer's Celestial Arrow was the fantasy equivalent of an Anti-Aircraft gun, causing D6 Strength 10 impacts on a high-flying monster on a successful shot from the ground. But there was more than just Anti-Aircraft; there was Nuke.

The Heart of Woe caused what seemed like a nuclear crater when the character wielding it was finally killed. It inflicted [model's strength + D6] strength auto-hits causing D6 wounds each, on every model in a radius of 1" per original wound of the wielder. On a wizard with 4 wounds, it meant every model within 4" was crippled. Warhammer 40,000 players will gleefully remember the vortex grenade, which was the same attempt to level uber-characters into piles of ashes. At least, they tried.

Any player recently involved in Warhammer Fantasy Battle is certainly shocked in awe and horror after reading to that point. But, as strange as it sounds, the game was incredibly fun and not too degenerate. For example, most magic items were making heroes better when fighting other heroes, not troops. There were very potent magic banners for regiments. And if everyone admitted that something was in excess and needed to be fixed, it wasn't seen as a critical measure. The game could be better, it was not plain wrong. Plenty of local house rules limited the amount of points spent in magic items, 10% of the budget for example - or restricted even more their choice, with one item up to 100 points, two up to 50, and others costing no more than 25. Or one item for the whole army. Or none at all. Such simple restrictions were enough to get back from HeroHammer to Warhammer.

Fast forward

For a number of personal reasons, I went under cryogenic sleep for a number of years, disbanding my Empire army. I woke up to Warhammer Fantasy again only in 2004, only to discover that the Fantasy Game I knew had changed beyond recognition... Mostly for the better, but also for the worse. Otherwise this article would not be a rant, would it?

In current Warhammer Fantasy Battle edition, characters are limited by their title (lord, hero) depending on the army size. No lord can show up if you field less than 2,000 pts. Since level 3 & 4 wizards are considered lords, it means that you may only field lowly apprentice in most cases - even if lords are available, you will certainly save those slots for real hitting power. Magic spells has been drastically reduced, the most direct damage a spell can do being 2D6 Strength 4 hits, this kind of stuff - hardly enough to cause a panic test in a bowmen unit. Character profiles have gone down. Prices have gone up. Monsters has been neutered and raised in price.

Wait, there's more! Now, every useful/intereresting/characterful unit of every race has been moved to a category called "rare" or "special", limiting the number of units of that type you can field no matter how much they cost. Bonded Monsters, i.e. without riders, have disappeared. Magic items are restricted heavily: all existing items have been arbitrarily distributed to be race-specific, resulting in fewer choices for each race as there are nearly no useful generic magic items left. Every character has hefty limits in points in what he can carry; usually no more than 50 pts total of magic items for heroes, 100 for lords. Champions can't have any at all. Since magic item costs have not been affected, most of them are forever beyond reach of the characters supposed to use them. Each army list describes the only monster mounts a character can ride, usually one or two choices instead of the twenty or so available in previous editions. Don't search for a Cockatrice or a Spider Queen, it's as if they never existed.

Just to summarize things up, here are the limitations before and after.
Before: