REVIEW: new Warhammer templates

[General Biakal]

WHATS THE MODEL?


New Templates for Warhammer



PRICE?
£5 (we will come to that later)




WHATS THE THINKING THEN?
The new Warhammer Fantasy Battle is out (you may have heard) to much pomp, and GW have made a real effort to bust out a fair amount of gaming stuff for the Old World geeks.

not much effort to bust it out at reasonable prices though but hey, this IS GW.

the main thing I am interested in is the new templates for the large blast, small blast and flame. Seeing as how i like my geeking all laser'ed up and all, they are the ones i have actually bought.

So you get one huge baroque template with the small template built inside. which is sort of a nice touch as it makes sense. They are painted and weathered and look sort of metallic and chunky.

my major moan is that the templates on mine are  very very slightly  out of shape and mis-sized... to the point of if im attacking a unit i will use the new WHFB one, but if my unit is being shot AT i will use the green one as it is slightly smaller. yes i know im a cheater...

the other stuff in the range is a bit more specialised and a bit more suspect when it come to VFM (value for money).

the first thing that fucked me off was the measuring kit...


Benny wants one of these

now i got to play with one of these at Lenton and I will only say this: it was nice enough but £18 is nothing more than a fucking insult. Dont bother.

the counter set is nice enough but seeing as how i dont play WHFB the counters and resolution thing just blows my mind. it feels a little cheaply made tho.

the dice set is nice enough but probably £3 overpriced which is sad.

the "Gamers Edition" pack is a bit of a mystery to me... you get the new rule book, a fair selection of the new goodies (sans engineers measuring kit) and a bag to put it in... £75. one the one hand it is a nice package but on the other 75 notes is a fair wedge.

Dont worry about the super duper collectors rulebook- its sold out.

i guess the world is full of stupid people.


as ever, make your own minds up but as a 40K player i quite like using the baroque nice shiny templates....



5 GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS MODEL:

1. its nice for the WHFB to get some love
2. its a new direction in templates- they are less a boring abject and more an important part of your collection
3. £5 for the templates is not too bad
4. the Gamers edition pack does sort of have a cool vibe about it
5. it all themes together


5 SHIT THINGS ABOUT THIS MODEL

1. engineers set is chuffing expensive for what it is
2. so are the dice even tho they look nice
3. £75 for the super duper rulebook... hmmmm id rather have the gamers edition
4. the chunkier and thicker the plastic is the cheaper and nastier it feels
5. £45 for the cheapest rulebook is a lot too.


LONG STORY SHORT...

If your a fantasy diehard then i suppose this is a happy time. however... dont get conned. for 40k'ers we can join in by using the templates... woth it!

WORD.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

Actually I've got to disagree with you a bit on this one, out of this new range of WFB game-play accessories, the only one I've really got use for is the Measuring Set. The 4-foot Folding Ruler, while not as compact and portable as the more traditional tape measure is certainly a step up from the bendy red pointy sticks (yes Axl, the 'whippy-sticks'). But the thing I really liked (and the reason I have reserved a set at Triple Helix) is the 'Dividers' tool, great for short distances and (unlike a tape measure or range-ruler) easy to get into the confined spaces between and inside buildings in games of Mordheim and down the narrow corridors of a dungeon set-up. I can also see it being pivoted on one spike and used like a compass to figure out things like the radius of a lantern light in D&D or which troops are close enough to be affected by a character's leadership in Mordheim, ect. Plus come on, it just looks cool, it's like something a 17th century ship's captain would use to plot his voyage to unknown lands or something you'd use to figure out the positions of the stars when Cthulu will rise again. Yea £18 is pretty high, but these are a lot better value than the single units of crappy plastics GW are selling for the same price.

The templates I also like the baroque look of but I probably won't bother getting them because A: I already have all the templates I need B: I like my templates to look like the explosions, jets of flame, rips in the fabric of reality, ect they are supposed to be. C: like you I am a little worried about the accuracy of them, are you supposed to count the radius from the inside of the rings? The outside of the rings? The far reaches of the spikes? This sort of thing is bound to cause arguments among competitive players.

The counter set, yea again they look nice, but I've got no real use for them, aside from maybe as prop coins in WFRP or something. And the Skull Dice, yea nice but I've got plenty of D6's, I'd only buy this if it where a full set of polyhedral dice, which it isn't ... in fact it doesn't even appear to be a full set of Warhammer dice as it doesn't seem to include a Scatter Dice and Artillery Dice

As for the Warhammer Battle Magic cards: didn't you used to be able to download these for free from the website?

Rest assured I will not be buying WFB 8th itself as I already have plenty of perfectly serviceable rule sets in form of all the previous editions (in fact I think I'm going to see if some one will play 3th edition with me some time)  

PS: gotta say I really enjoyed the absence of Spacemarine peddling and the general break from 40k all together in WD367, it's been a while since WFB got more attention than 40k. (I'm sure next month it will be back to Landraiders and Drop-pods on every other page though)
   

[Billiam Babble]

They may be miss-sized and completely unusable, but they are GORGEOUS...
*Hypnotised and duped by shiny baroqueness ...*

[Talsin]

indeed mort there did used to be a download to create magic cards, however these were for the 7th edition rules. with the release of 8th there is a whole new magic system with new spell lists.

Therefore GW, (thinking score!) decided to make you pay for cards for the new lists.

[MortiS-the-Lost]

well thanks to you, I went and bought a pack of the Battle Magic cards for research purposes yesterday

[Talsin]

you could have borrowed mine dude!

[MortiS-the-Lost]

well I was going to ... and then I saw them on the shelf in THW and they called to me
"read about the new spell effects and rules changes ... buy us" they said

[uncle phil]

The calipers look cool, and I was tempted, but then read this post

http://warhammer-empire.com/theforum/index.php?topic=34434.0

Poorly made, inaccurate and overpriced?  GW FAIL!

The templates are rather nice and fun. I got some bronze colour chain from the Bead Shop to join them together and allow them to be hung up