So, it looks like The fantasy side of tabletop Warhammer joins those things that got a “reboot”. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that it turned into shit.
It doesn’t take very long, looking at the internet, to see that the response for this reboot has been almost universally negative. The Warhammer fantasy universe has been reset, so all established lore has been canceled, and it was also an opportunity to rewrite the rules and, guess what, make them more “casual”.
The main differences are the focus on a smaller amount of units and more importance given to heroes with special abilities. So a smaller scale to manage where single units make the difference. Beside that, everyone complains that the removal of army points makes the battles simply impossible to balance. And it sounds like a gaping hole of an oversight, however you want to look at it.
It should be evident that they now want a toy, and not a wargame.
But I’m pointing this out to underline two basic trends. One is about these “reboots” that systematically alienate the current players yet gain absolutely no one new. The point here is that it doesn’t take any careful analysis to realize these plans are always terrible ones.
The second trend is that I was reading this article that was doing a good job explaining the situation:
http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2015/07/04/age-of-sigmar-and-the-end-of-warhammer/
The problem is that it falls in this trend of the “Social Justice Warrior” angle being forced upon everything, which has the only effect of undermining perfectly reasonable complaints. As I said the article makes very good points, so it really wasn’t necessary to also put the load on that silly angle. I’m linking it because it reads like a parody of those same issues.
One of the new things the new rules seem to do is trying to break the fictional layer of the game to engage directly THE PLAYER as a game mechanic. In some kind of parody game it could even be a good, goofy idea, but on the actual Warhammer? It’s beyond stupid.
But I find even more funny that on one side the game rules themselves break the fictional layer, while on the other side the guy writing that article pushes the political agenda onto a fictional game/product. So I guess two wrongs make a right. And so the result is that perfectly reasonable complaints about a very goofy ruleset turn into very goofy complaints, in a kind of circular way.
And so the accusation:
“encouraging players to straight up mock people who suffer from mental illness”
About this rule:
“if, during your hero phase, you pretend to ride an imaginary horse, you can re-roll failed hit rolls”
Uh-oh. So very offensive. Worthy of a crusade. GRAB THE WARHAMMERS!
P.S.
On a more serious note, this way of thinking is dangerous. It’s a weapon of an argument and it is now pervasive in our culture, in plenty of more subtle ways. Blaming people for imaginary intentions. If you ride an imaginary horse while playing a game your INTENTION for doing so is “mock people who suffer from mental illness”. And of course you cannot even defend yourself from the accusation, because the accusation pretends to reveal an HIDDEN purpose, and so that won’t be admitted. Like a dialectic bullet of entitlement. Beware, because this way of thinking is spreading.