The Making of Warhammer | Seventh Edition: Marking Time

hello there have been additions of Warhammer fantasy battles that remade the game from the ground up that rewrote the rules and reimagined the Very World in which it's set and then there have been additions that really didn't do that when the fifth edition of the game was released it was an incremental change aiming not to invalidate any of the existing supplements or Army books and the same could be said of seventh edition it was a refresh not a revolution but unfortunately over the course of this Edition it would become clear just how essential a Revolution was becoming because instead of moving forwards and upwards the game was standing still and coming up first behind it was a rival Fantasy game from Games Workshop and some dangerous times I'm Jordan This is Jordan sorcery and this is part six of the the making of Warhammer [Music] fantasy in 2006 Warhammer fantasy battle reached its seventh edition a celebration of more than two decades of fantasy battling it was supposed to be about refining and tweaking the rules making it an easier game to play that was more immersive and fun it really wasn't about upending the entire system or revolutionizing the entire thing but if this Edition was all about celebrating the legacy of Warhammer fantasy and making sure that it was solidified and Rock Solid it kind of unfortunately would go another way the initial rule book was beautiful and well received D there would be many great models released over the course of this Edition but it would also be the modern Edition with probably the fewest supplements the fewest updated armies a decrease in release volumes overall and an increase in demands on players ultimately the seventh edition didn't Herald reinforcements as much as it might have heralded Retreat as much of that was probably due to the external factors of the world into which Warhammer fantasy battle 7th edition was released as it was due to Warhammer fantasy battles 7th edition itself this was a Games Workshop that was in flux one that was facing phenomenal business challenges and undergoing changes there were new Personalities in the Executive Suite and the design studio and new games that would be Rivals to Fantasy were emerging both in-house and out ever since its release in 1987 Warhammer 40,000 had overshadowed its it older sibling it had grown exponentially and 40K was incredibly popular but at least Warhammer fantasy battle was Secure in its footing as the fantasy alternative oh wait of course there is no one single factor that defines an addition of a game or an era of a company no neat linear story that explains the evolution of something as big as Warhammer the best we can often hope to do is try and piece things together with hindsight and maybe understand just a little bit better what went right and what went wrong but before we delve too greedily and too deeply into the history of Warhammer fantasy why don't you give this video a like And subscribe to the channel if you don't do so already and if you've not watched my earlier Parts on the previous editions of Warhammer fantasy battle you can do so right here the other thing that I will say about about this Edition is that it's a quite complex story it's been difficult to try and bring it together into something a little bit more understandable and to do that it can be really tough not to spend all of my time comparing and contrasting the seventh edition to the ones that would come later and the ones that came before it so I'm going to do my best not to do that the sixth edition of Warhammer fantasy battle is often cited as a favorite for many fans of the game that saw a full range refresh for Army rules that reworked and rebalanced the game that introduced new factions and offered up Global campaigns that had an ongoing story with consequences for the events that unfolded within them over its lifetime there were 16 armies books released two campaign Books five supplemental books multiple background books and an enormous amount more of content besides the seventh edition meanwhile would receive just 10 Army books and a campaign map which which left me asking why well one of the factors is that between the two additions things changed considerably for Warhammer fantasy so considerably in fact the Games Workshop itself was practically reshaped to accommodate something new something that didn't just predate Warhammer fantasy it had inspired It Games Workshop had secured the rights to the Lord of the Rings a year after the release of Warhammer fantasy battle sixth edition Games Workshop released something brand new Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring this was a miniature war game set in tolkien's Middle Earth adapting Peter Jackson's Trilogy to the tabletop the game was a phenomenal success and with each year and each movie sequel a new Bas set was released by GW the workshop also partnered with di agustini to release a bi-weekly partwork magazine a magazine that was so successful it had its run extended twice and went to 91 issues at one point white dwarf was split into two parts so that you had to flip the magazine over to read one half about Lord of the Rings and the other half about everything else there was an extensive range of Miniatures and new sets released regularly to support the game The Lord of the Rings was huge for Games Workshop with the company enjoying massive Middle Earth success the design studio was expanded and the retail arm grew as well this was a good time for Games Workshop and a validating next step in CEO and or chairman Tom Kirby's vision for the future of Games Workshop after taking over from Brian anel in 1991 with a management byout Kirby had grown the international operations of the company with moves like taking over the French distributor agmat and turning them into Games Workshop France by the mid99s Kirby had taken the company public and had his sight set on total global domination that was literally The Games Workshop corporate strategy you would find it written on employee handbooks and annual reports and though at the time it might have seemed a little bit overly ambitious or even self aggrandizing it's hard to argue with its long-term results back in the '90s it may have seemed a long way off but the vision was crystal clear Tom Kirby's mantra for the Games Workshop business model was that we make the best fantasy miniatures in the world and sell them globally at a profit and we intend to do this forever it's probably fair to say that most of the public at large have no relationship with Tom Kirby at all but that those that do have a complex one he wasn't a particularly public facing figure at the company but he did write some unusually candid and philosophical preambles to the company's annual shareholder reports he was responsible in his roles as CEO and or chairman for 20 years worth of decision- making and strategy at Games Workshop both for good and for ill one aspect of his leadership that has provoked plenty of debate is his creation of two books of power one black and one red Tom Kirby's little black book as it was known was published in the '90s and provided the then small number of managers in Games Workshop with a set of tools techniques and tips on how to manage their staff in line with the expectations of the company and of Kirby himself in the early 2000s a second book was written to supersede the original and which was more applicable to the by then much larger employee base this was the Little Red Book to some it seems that these books were simply management tools that distilled a very particular way of thinking for easy consumption and many senior members of the organization still seem to view them as a useful and effective work the books talk about the ethos and behaviors and beliefs that should be important to the company and to the employees as well Mark Wells was appointed chief executive officer at Games Workshop in 2007 and when I spoke to him he reflected on the value he saw in the Kirby little books and by the way the author of The Black Book is Tom Kirby and I know you know lots of people say stuff about Tom Kirby that black book is the best management book I have ever read it is absolutely Fant fantastic and I completely subscribe to everything in it um I've done NBAs you know Cambridge educated MBA the whole lot you know been trained by boots to the nth degree I can tell you that's the best management book I've ever seen and the common sense and the practical application of what's in there is just brilliant for some others though these books represent an outdated approach to people management and a document used for cult-like indoctrination writing on his altor blog in 2014 former white dwarf writer Nick Davis said the day I was issued with this book we sat through a videotaped speech that was bizarre to say the least and worryingly nurenberg rally like along with the book I was given a piece of paper by a very fanatical Games Workshop middle manager who was quite literally teary eyed and drooling and stated I should sign and hand in the paper as receipt of my book in short the book is a very real modern HR Nightmare and if you are ever around my studio I will let you look through it it will make you wonder how GW ever survived itself possibly due to the fact that staff members seem to have had to turn in their book with their badge when leaving the organization the black book has so far eluded me but I have been able to read the red book and whilst there are some overly reductive management aphorisms and perhaps pretentious quotes of Shakespeare Harriet Beacher stow and inexplicably George Clooney's Danny ocean it also seems to me that this is the honest work of a passionate business leader attempting perhaps awkwardly to articulate a candid business philosophy that is Thoroughly committed to the idea of Games Workshop achieving its aims of total global domination in some ways I kind of feel like this is a refreshingly honest thing for a CEO to write a candid and seemingly genuine attempt for a senior leader to articulate just how they think about their business what they really want that organization to do in order for them to succeed but as ever with this kind of tool it's very much about the power that is given to it by how it's used daytoday on The Not So unwashed blog author Tim described how the Little Red Book was used in part to justify his firing from Games Workshop in 2009 you see that top left corner that he explained was where I was talented yes but not a good fit you've read the book Tim he said said you know what Games Workshop policy is about this oh yes I do talking about the black and red books might seem like some meaningless salacious gossip or an unnecessary tangent into management minutia at Games Workshop but I think that there is relevance to the history of Warhammer fantasy and that's because these books speak to how much the company had changed by the time 7th edition was released this was no longer The Games Workshop of the entrepreneurial Gamers Steve Jackson and Sir Ian Livingston it wasn't even the experimental and explosive Games Workshop that Brian anel had run this was very very different Gams Workshop has been through many incarnations and you will hear people say Warhammer is 25 years old roughly true but the group of companies you work in really started life in December 1991 the company that is quoted on the stock exchange is called Games Workshop group PLC once that was synonymous with Games Workshop the company that creates manufactures and sells fantasy tabletop War Games The Hobby it no longer is okay by now I am sure you are all throwing null oil at the screen and telling me to get on with the history of fantasy battle but we can't just yet because the point here is that Games Workshop was now a formal company it was a professional organization and it served new Masters the shareholders whilst Games Workshop had always understandably been about selling Toy Soldiers to make a profit after all that's why briyan anel wanted Warhammer to exist in the first place now the sales and the decisions and the mistakes had bigger consequences the Lord of the Rings games had brought in huge sales and that had made shareholders very happy but with the end of the movies the sales had slumped and now the shareholders weren't so Keen this left Games Workshop in a more precarious position than ever before so when the when the bubble burst we were we were overstaffed we got bloated um we we' forgotten a lot of our core disciplines and sales and and also there was a bit of a gap in our product development line in Warhammer and 40K you know because you know War you know L of things have just become so huge and and think I think there had been there had been this sort of um it it happened before my time I remember a couple of you know the the experienced guys have been talking quite a lot when I came in about we wanted the Third Leg of the stool you know there was the Warhammer 40K they'd sort of been looking for the Third Leg of the stool you know things like M time and so forth was that so third was that going to be the third leg of the stool and for a while you know we had a third leg which is Lord of the Rings but what became really clear was that the Lord of the Rings Universe was limited there were plenty of other changes happening during this period too whether as part of writing the ship or for some other reason fanatic was more or less closed out in 2004 and its work was incorporated into the specialist game Studio Forge World continued to go great guns with the Imperial Armor Series becoming a Mainstay and their range of mammoth-sized resin Miniatures growing considerably at the time they seemed to cost an awful lot but looking back now they feel like a steal and 40K as you might expect continued its Barn Burning success that had started all the way back at the Battle of the farm and continued right up to and P the fourth edition that was released in 2004 through the '90s there had been a cycle developed for core games releases at Games Workshop that dictated that a new core set should be released every four years alternating between Warhammer 4000 and Warhammer fantasy with the introduction of The Lord of the Rings as an extra core game the Third Leg of the stool as Mark Wells described it the cycle was disrupted it would actually be 6 years between the third and fourth editions of 40K it had also been a six-year gap before the next edition of Warhammer fantasy battles had released which does in part explain why sixth edition received so much support but not why the next Edition would see such short shrift though there had been the two towers and the Return of the King star sets in between it would be 4 years from the release of The Fellowship of the Ring game until the release of the revised edition of The Lord of the Rings games and even after sales dips because of the end of the movies the game remained popular Rick Priestley had increasingly stepped back from the development of Warhammer after the fifth edition of fantasy taking on more and more day-to-day responsibility for managing the entire design studio and his executive role he was no longer developing games directly with the notable exception of the the Lord of the Rings game for the sequel games designer alesio cavatore took over from Priestley as the lead developer for the game and then in 2005 cavatore with designer Matt Ward would develop the combined and revised Lord of the Rings strategy battle game that updated the core rules and set the stage for future battles in Middle Earth the Lord of the Rings was actually the first in a Trilogy of core games revisions that alesio cavatore would design for Games Workshop in quick succession he would take responsibility for all three legs of the stool in 2005 it was The Lord of the Rings in 2008 his fifth edition of Warhammer 4000 was released and between them came the game that we're actually here to talk about Warhammer fantasy battles 7th [Music] edition Warhammer the game of fantasy battles 7eventh Edition was released in September 2006 written by a team of writers led by games designer alesio cavatore like new editions before it there was a lot of fanfare around the release it would contain some rules revisions refreshes of army books and miniature ranges and it could be seen as the beginning of a new era for the game in retrospect though it seems clear that this Edition wouldn't be quite as successful an era as many may have hoped for the release strategy for this edition of the game followed quite closely the recent release of Warhammer 4k's fourth edition there was a hard cover rule book and a starter set featuring two armies and a cut down digest version of the rules plus a super duper limited edition hard cover as well the limited and numbered hard cover rule book featured an unreasonably oversized and embossed presentation box seriously look at how big this thing is but when you see the book itself it is definitely worth the Shelf tax a beautifully rendered full cover artwork in tapestry style copper blocked page edges and a thicker more luxurious Paper Stock yes I sound like an M&S advert but truly this may be one of the most beautiful rulebooks Games Workshop has ever made although the approach had been the same as 4k's fourth edition it's clear that by fantasy 7th there was a consolidation and better understanding of this technique the limited edition was positioned front and Center in the advertising material and emphasized more than ever and there was even a special Gamers bundle available that featured a satchel and token set exclusive for the release much as with 40 K's battle for mcra the new starter box for this Edition the battle for skull pass was framed around a specific narrative event rather than just being two Anonymous armies lining up against each other joining cavatore to refine the rules and write the background was a team that included gav Thorp Jeremy VTO Dominic Murray and gram Davey and there were of course a huge number of other designers artists play testers and other Personnel involved in the creation of the base book for this Edition with alesio cavatore taking responsibility for all three core Games Workshop games over the course of a 4-year period it's perhaps no surprise that the specific detail has been lost to time especially given that it's 20 years ago but when I spoke to alesio last year he did have this to say about seventh edition so yeah I think you were you were sort of heading up the seventh edition is my understanding so right yeah yeah so again apologies I really for me well it's a long a lot of supplements and books and rules followed by years of the same thing so obviously he gets a b jumbled up to I remember one of the main things I did was when I started a job uh was taking all the profiles of all the units in all the Army books at the time when I start saw more or less after the the account book I just meant the points values they're they're all a bit strange and so I took all the profiles all the points values and put them all in a big giant spreadsheet and compare them all I just went discuss as many points so I started to chair numbers and theories about points values because in my head I had that thing of clearly there must be a perfect way of getting everything balanced Etc which you know you keep trying I keep trying today to the war games and board games I designed but after I realize again there's so many variables there's so many intangible things where actually you know how how much is fear worth you know when you're talking about stats numbers is easier but then you're going to you know this causes fear this causes Terror this is ethereal this isn't de how many points is that so there is a degree of judgment call so he not rocket science but um yeah that was you know that if anything explains the drive that was push like find the balance find the and then cut down the rules so it's easier to find that balance kind of thing you don't need long cative rules and thankfully he also wrote some designers notes for the new edition's launch in white dwarf 321 and they explain a little bit more about the intention and remit for this edition of the game there are no huge differences between the last edition of Warhammer and this one let's say that right away there are two reasons for this first there was nothing substantially wrong with Warhammer sure there were some areas I felt needed tightening up and clarifying but making big sweeping changes for changes sake would have most likely resulted in making the game worse the second reason that cavor had given for not making big changes to the game was the same one that Rick Priestley had mentioned in 1996 just before the release of fifth edition the second point is that I needed to make sure that the new edition was going to be compatible with the Army books out there in order not to invalidate any of the books currently in print I made certain we did not change rules and terminology that are used or referenced elsewhere so from a rules perspective the seventh edition was following the old adage that Rick Priestley had laid down in the '90s if it ain't broke don't revise it amongst the various tweaks and changes that were introduced in the addition some of them were slightly more significant and included things like wizards no longer pooling their magic dice basically meaning that having loads of wizards didn't make all of the Wizards more powerful and the miscar table was also made more dangerous plus from now on double ones would always pass leadership tests even for morale one of the changes that has been subsumed into a broader narrative is that in combat resolution you now gain a rank bonus only for complete ranks of five models or more not four models as had been the case in every Edition since third the theory that is sometimes cited is that this along with points changes and some other rules tweaks was intended to encourage larger units and therefore larger armies which would of course mean that players would be more likely to buy more Miniatures according to the designer notes this was both an aesthetic change because wider ranked units look more attractive but also because the number five was already a strong recurr theme in many of the rules for Warhammer the minimum unit size for almost all units is a five or a multiple of five the minimum unit strength required for a unit to achieve a successful flank or rear attack is five and so on it's still not entirely clear to me if this was the case that there was a mandate at GW of pushing players to purchase more Miniatures through mechanical changes but it does seem that the next edition of fantasy battle would test that theory to its limits because the rules had been designed with backwards compatibility in mind there were actually very few instances of rules being invalidated by the update alesio cavatore actually called out the only two instances he'd been able to find when he launched the new edition one was a brettonian magic item and one was a beastman ranking rule pretty impressive to be fair the launch was accompanied by some shiny new web pages that featured training exercises and introductory scenarios to help new players learn the rules and get to grips with the game of Warhammer one of the scenarios was actually themed around the contents of the new starter set the battle for sko par box featured two complete armies dwarf miners against night goblins and it was a particularly generous set with the classic over 100 minis badge and the inclusion of several objective and terrain Miniatures like the dwarf mining cart Pony and a captured Slayer looking more worse for wear than usual the condensed rule book was still 144 four pages and provided all of the core rules required to play and there was even a short starter booklet that offered profiles for the units included in the Box speaking of which the dwarf throng features a unit of 12 Warriors 10 thunderers eight miners a thinge a dragon slayer and a cannon with Crew That's a total of 35 models and conservatively equipped would cost about 636 points meanwhile the night Goblin rabble is comprised of two units of 20 spearmen a unit of 20 archers 10 Spider Riders a big boss a shaman and a hearty looking troll all told that comes to 73 Miniatures and with pretty standard equipment about 530 points of course you could play around with the equipment that those units have been given but a difference of about 100 points is not ideal for a starter box especially after the sixth edition had been almost bang on the money of equal forces but at the end of the day this was just to get you started so I suppose it's all swings and blunder buses anyway there was also something else released to support the start of the game a novel much like the limited rulebook editions the tiin novel would become a more common occurrence in the future Battle of skull pass the novel was written by Nathan long and by all accounts is a short but very effective introduction to the world of Warhammer and the forces present in the starter box high in the mountains the dwarves fight an eternal battle against their green skin enemies the Orcs And the Goblins when the ambitious dag scar a scraper sets his sights on taking skull pass the conflict between Goblin and dwarf is reignited can the stoic dwarves led by gundry led by godre thunderbrand fend off the greenskin Invaders and save the fledgling settlement of carak Grom or with the banner of the crooked Moon boys fly high above skull pass which sounds like a pretty solid background story for an introductory starter box what did surprise me though was that the broader Narrative of the seventh edition didn't build on the climactic events of sixth edition the storm of chaos but instead was something of a soft reset Thomas pinin had left Games Workshop after delivering the sixth edition core book and the role of Warhammer lawm had been taken up by gav Thorp under thorp's Direction the storm of chaos was built up to over the course of several supplements and releases with an interactive Global campaign pitting the Empire and its allies against a full-blown chaos Invasion from the north led by Aron the ever chosen ultimately the fall of the Empire had only been avoided thanks to the timely intervention of the orc warlord grimore what set that particular event apart was that it had an aftermath ostensibly the Warhammer world had been affected by it the timeline had moved forward and the consequences had changed the status quo this was reflected in the setting used for the second edition of Warhammer fantasy roleplay that was released in 2005 a world explicitly dealing with the Fallout from the storm of chaos whilst Wolf's second edition took place in the ashes of that event over the course of the next 5 years the seventh edition of fantasy battle would see the storm of chaos already receding from the tabletop with only minor passsing references included in the core book and occasionally in the Army's books in an interview for my website black Library author and former member of the GW Design Studio gram mcneel reflected on why that may have been the case there was always a tension between the visions of the old world as being either a story or a setting in one version the world develops changes and big moments will have consequences going forward in the other things never change and move forward in the design studio we had a lot of double threat developers guys who were exceptional storytellers as well as talented games developers and so we kept trying to ease things forward in a way that respected what had gone before paid off some built-up law debt and didn't do anything so extreme that it would paint us into a narrative culdesac but over time it became clear that was a losing fight and that the old world was considered by those above our pay grade to be a setting one that had to remain constantly at 2 minutes to midnight and gav Thorp law Master for Warhammer during the sixth and start of seventh edition also had some thoughts my goal my aims for background has always been pretty straightforward actually which is the background takes people to a certain point and they can just enjoy those stories and what you know lots of people just enjoy the background and read the novels and things like that and that's cool but actually if you're a gamer you finish the story in your games that's your power the power of t games that you can get in a monkey around with them you can convert them Ines you can invent your own rules and I think it's important you create your own stories cuz that's what brought me into it I was a Storyteller with Miniatures you know that's what I realize now is like the games are always that vehicle for me to tell to invent characters to tell stories that kind of stuff and if you centralize that too much if too much narrative is in the center you're actually draining that power away from players away from hobbyists um and so that was always that's why would I was never too keen on that just having this ring story line was just that but it was a case of like here's a bunch of cool ideas now everyone you know uh again and it doesn't have to be in a literally summer campaign your results count but it's just that every time you take to the field with KL FR Carl Fran is your Carl FR yeah it doesn't matter who else is playing from that day you're telling the story call Frans in that battle and so it was that for subsequent books released in seventh edition the story was very much set to one side and the setting was given pride of place the first official Army's book released for the seventh edition was Orcs and goblins which came out about a month after the core rule book dropped but there had already been an unofficial sort of army book released for seventh edition during sixth edition waram Army Dwarfs released about 6 months earlier the second version of the dwarf armies book for sixth edition was designed very much with the future of Warhammer in mind in the 300 and 13th issue of white dwarf gav Thorp confessed that the second dwarf Army book was not so much the end of a previous range but the beginning of a new one it is the shape of army books to come over the years we've done different things different presentation Styles background and color sections we've taken all of those different elements and added some extra material the release of the Orcs and goblins book would showcase that new look and feel once again the books hadn't changed that much from their sixth Edition equivalents but they did feature consistent beautiful art and a continued feel of darkness and grimness and it also featured a relatively consistent change that would appear in most of the new Army books during seventh edition slight decreases in the points values for basic troops Arab boys dropped a point each most Empire infantry did as well High Elves and dark elves each dropped by two or three points in some cases there were plenty of points increases across armies to offset this of course and things may well have come out in the wash across an entire Army list but with the implicit rank increase and basic troops being cheaper in general it could be argued that the expectation for bigger units was beginning to gather Pace the Army's books had been introduced for the fourth edition of Warhammer and because of its backwards compatibility the fifth edition had used those books as the basis of its range as well reint introducing other lost armies like the brettonian and the lizard men the sixth edition had completely refreshed the entire range and introduced even more new armies like the ogre kingdoms whilst seeing other armies like the undead split out into subactions as well there would be fewer armies books than ever it seemed with the seventh edition though just 10 were released across the entire life cycle and there would be no new armies added to the range the 10 new Warhammer armies books published between 2006 and 2010 featured most of the core factions we'd seen before just by the Numbers though there were several factions that would not see an update in this Edition like the ogre kingdoms and some that would never see an updated armies book ever again like the brettonian at least until the old world released and sadly Bonus Army lists like the dogs of war and kislev were not updated in this Edition either and perhaps what's worse is that whilst the Army's books released for sixth edition were on the whole considered relatively balanced some of the army books released for seventh edition were considered excessively grotesquely overpowered vampire counts and dark elves were amongst these books but probably the most frequently cited book as an example of seventh edition power creep and imbalance was Warhammer Army's Demons of chaos this was the first time time the Demons of chaos had been split out from the Warriors of chaos continuing the trend that had seen beasts of chaos get their own book in the sixth edition due to lower than reasonable points costs higher than average stat lines cheap yet powerful special characters and a host of nasty special rules the demons were a formidable force on the battlefield too formidable and general consensus at the time though still unconfirmed is that the book received little to no effective play testing from interviews and articles it seems very unlikely that any of the Army's books were ever really the work of just one individual despite many of them featuring only one or two names on the credits that's because the design studio was very much a collaborative space and different contributions for Army's books would come from different writers and designers the reason this is worth remembering is that during this period there was an unfortunate and wholly unacceptable optic in the amount of harassment that was directed at different designers at Games Workshop the ramifications of which are that games workshops still refuse to credit all of their writers and artists on their books even today and it seems like the design studio at Games Workshop has always been a creative atmosphere of shared ideas but the personel within it has changed many times over the years and during this era there would be many great names that left the company some of what might be called games workshop's second generation of core games designers left during the decade Nigel Stillman Andy Chambers Thomas pinin and gav Thorp all left before or during seventh edition's life cycle game designer Matt Ward was interviewed in 2019 by the elector counts podcast and he reflected on changes to the design studio culture over that period for about 10 years of my time there we were all very much multi-disciplined so we would do law we would do rules we would do a little bit of project management and all the other bits and pieces by the time we got to that point very definitely some of us were law writers and some of us were rules writers but of course it's not just books that make an addition during the Run of this Edition there were a great many amazing Miniatures sculpted by many great sculptors some of my favorites include the high elf Lord riding a drag and the Empire engineer on a mechanical Steed incredible Warhammer stuff but one other thing that's interesting about the new Miniatures released for Warhammer fantasy during the 7th edition is that there overall seems to have been fewer of them in fact the number of months with no new Warhammer fantasy releases increased dramatically over the course of seventh edition this is by no means a rigorous forensic analysis of the numbers but they were quite interesting during the roughly 6 years of sixth edition there were 21 months in total where there were no products released or only one over the roughly 4 years of sth Edition there were 23 months with zero or just one product released this is based on new release data gathered and archived by timl on the old warere forums and shared by sge on the eighth edition for Life forums it's not a complete list it's not everything that's ever been released but it's a very good start and the overall picture is quite clear there were just fewer Miniatures available for seventh edition besides the Army books and what new Miniatures they were there was not a lot more content released for the seventh edition of the game white dwarf of course continued to print some articles throughout the addition with fun stuff like a massive dark elf Siege of a bretonian fortress and an excellent article on wargaming terrain that covered the newly released and still absolutely stunning fortified an terrain set but alas there were no new annuals or generals compendiums released for this Edition but in 2007 there was a new campaign system for Warhammer released well I say new the mighty Empire's box provided sculpted 3D hex tiles with which players could build interesting and diverse campaign maps and also included simple rules for running successful campaigns the box was of course inspired by the 1990 game written by Nigel Stillman and Rick Priestley that also used a hex map system for Warhammer campaigning but did feature an extra Empire management game as well something that was dropped with this new 2007 edition but at least the tiles are very nice although the seventh edition had walked away from the narrative outcomes of probably the most famous SL Infamous event in global campaign history for Fantasy battle this would not stop GW from doing a another Global campaign in 2007 the Nemesis Crown event told the story of an ancient artifact of power created by dwarf Master runesmith Al the Mad the crown once lost had been found in the great Forest at the heart of the Empire and the many forces of War Hammer's known world would descend on the dangerous place each with their own aim to claim the magic item the Nemesis Crown may have had lower Stakes but it still had player participation and a fun story sadly though this would be the final Global campaign run for Warhammer fantasy which perhaps further confirmed that Warhammer was a setting and not a story at least for now there was plenty more going on in and around Games Workshop during the lifetime of seventh edition spacehulk received a new edition as well a mere 13 years since it had last been on shelves 40K apocalypse was released a set of r tools and accessories designed to enable huge scale battles in the 41st Millennial Citadel scenery continued to evolve with some awesome new sets and of course forgeworld and the Citadel sculpting teams continued to produce ever larger centerpiece Miniatures there were more Lord of the Rings releases and alesio cavatore's fifth edition of 40K would soon hit shelves oh actually there were a couple of other small things as well in 2008 Warhammer celebrated its 25th anniversary to Mark the occasion there was a recreation miniature of Harry the hammer the star of the cover of the first edition of the game and alongside him there was a newer fancier and even more limited edition of the core rule book released this one was leatherbound and it came in another enormously massive oversized presentation box but the bonus here was that it came with a fa simil reprint of the first edition rules a genuinely lovely example of GW honoring the legacy of their once Flagship game during Warhammer fantasy battle 7th edition Warhammer itself turned 25 years old but by Tom Kirby's Reckoning the company that now made it was only 17 but in those 17 years that company had become multiple companies it had become a group of companies an organization that was truly International that had professionalized its business practices and come up with an idiosyn itic book of values behaviors and culture Games Workshop had changed enormously over that period and Warhammer in recent times had barely seemed to change at all this was not an addition with a vital Vision that offered an essential experience it was an addition that was created seemingly because it was just time to create one at the same time 40K was going from strength to strength Lord of the Rings had stumbled but recovered and Warhammer fancy well it was at best standing still and potentially at worst moving backwards the three legs of the stool had become increasingly uneven and it really wasn't clear just how long they could keep supporting Games Workshop with unbalanced and divisive armies books fewer of them than the previous Edition and far less supplemental support overall the game was not nearly as vibrant as it had been just a few years earlier armies were growing in size but miniature releases were slowing and the general sense seems to be that the game was increasingly stuck in the mud fortunately by some the seventh edition is considered to be a brief lull in games workshops focus on its Premier fantasy setting with the next Edition there would be a full-throated rallying cry and an effort to restore the game to its former glory there would be rules revisions massive new rules rewrites new law new armies and a new approach to the world of Warhammer of course we now know in retrospect that the seventh edition was actually the Calm before the true storm of chaos because pretty soon Warhammer wouldn't be marking time it would be ending it I hope that you have enjoyed my exploration of the influences and events of the making of Warhammer 7th edition truthfully this has been a difficult one for me to get my arms around and I'm pretty convinced there will be some key details and events that I've missed or got wrong so if you have noticed anything please do leave a comment below and let me know if you don't find anything that I've missed why not leave a comment and tell me what were your favorite memories of seventh edition what was great about it what Miniatures what rules what games how did you enjoy the seventh edition of Warhammer fantasy battles when it was available if you want to support the work I do here on the Channel please feel free to check out my patreon my Kofi and to join my Discord you can find links to all of them in the description below you will also find my affiliate links for element games so you can go and spend money on the Hobby and support the channel at the same time it's a great help and I really appreciate it of course we have got in the future the next edition of Warhammer fantasy to come the eighth edition and I will be covering that soon enough but hopefully it won't take me as long to get round to as this one did thank you very much for watching I am Jordan and this is Jordan sorcery [Music] this book is absolutely beautiful this book is also beautiful but it's a beast and I've got a lot of reading to do

Channel: Jordan Sorcery

Views: 16,886

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer fantasy, games workshop, reaper, citadel miniatures, tabletop gaming, wargaming, Rick Priestley, Bryan Ansell, miniatures gaming, 40k, warhammer 40000, alessio cavatore, lord of the rings, little black book, little red book, gav thorpe, storm of chaos, space marine, horus heresy

Id: v5A6WpHI4qU

Length: 46min 55sec (2815 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024