Warhammer Racing League

Posted On April 17, 2023

Warhammer Fantasy Battles has a reputation, at least so far as I’m aware of it, as a game that tends toward the line-’em-up and run-’em-straight at each other.  After a whopping two whole games of 6th edition under my belt, I’m now an expert.  So it’s safe for me to pronounce this an urban myth.  Both of my games featured a mix of melee, missile, and mounted troops, and both of my games saw some wild swings of cavalry both in terms of forward and lateral movement.

So what gives?

As my mate, , pointed out, my games so far have been intimate little affairs of just 500 points.  Hey, I’m learning and need to take it slow.  Played on a regulation 6 x 4 table, that gives me plenty of elbow room to toss units hither and yon.  The guys plonking 3,000 points on a side quickly run out of space in which to maneuver, just from a logistics standpoint.

Interestingly, my Warhammer games have seen a lot more motion than my One Page Rules games.  In the latter case, the standard fight is for objectives, which generally wind up spread across the width of the table.  Placing objectives at wide distances in an effort to spread your opponent’s forces thin doesn’t have as much effect as you might think.  Each army will tend to drop a throw-away unit on one side of the table and concentrate on the other side, and this simply condenses the real fight to a third of the table as all forces converge on the few contested objectives.  The four turn limit doesn’t help either, as there simply isn’t time to adjust your plans based on the results of the first couple of turns.

In contrast, WFB fights – the standard line fight where the objective is to count coup on half the opposition before they do the same to you – leads to a lot more chances for feints and adjustments.  With two more turns to adjust, players can take a little more time swinging wide around flanks, or even pulling back along the front line to set up successive waves of attack.

That really surprises me, and make me glad that I’ve given WFB a chance.  This game is proving itself worthy of a 40-year reign of terror in the hobby.  It’s a lot of fun, and features a tremendous amount of tactical decision making, rules to explore, and re-playability.