Eulogy of Warhammer Ancient Battle.

It is with great sadness that Games Workshop has announced that Warhammer Ancient Battles has passed into the realm of used book stores.  Warhammer Ancient Battle was originally published in 1998 as a stand alone game using most of the rules from Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  The original creators of the game was the Jervis Johnson, Rick Priestley, Michael and Allen Perry.  While very similar to Warhammer Fantasy in game mechanics it had its own flavour and made it a more enjoyable experience by using experimental rules that actually worked well for the game.  I was once told that it was sort of a pet project of the four creators.  It had no miniature support yet sold well enough to last for 14 years and only needed one new edition and a retouch in between.  Not to mention a series of supplements for the various periods that were not covered in the basic rulebook.  It was killed in an apparent car accident when the driver drove Warhammer Ancient Battles off of the cliff.  Ironically everyone else survived. 

Warhammer Ancient Battle is preceeded in death by several less than stellar game systems and several that paved the way for Warhammer Ancient Battles to become the rules that it is.  While the original creators are still alive and kicking, most of them have left Games Workshop, to lead other pursuits.  Warhammer Ancient Battle will be missed by the many fans of the game.  Most hurt will be the gamers that have been waiting on their particular supplement of choice to be created as promised.  Those who are happy with what they have should play the game with honor.  I know that I will.

Woodies Comparison

Finally some content that I want to put on here.  I took a few pictures of what I have left of my Wood Elves.  I did sell the majority of my collection a few months back unfortunatelly.  It is an army that I do have interest and want to collect once again, but there are a problem with that proposition, the older models is what I most likely going to collect.

Now that metal is getting hard to come by for any new models from GW I am going to be buying second hand no matter what I do.  I will put a post on my thoughts on finecast in its own post later on, but lets just say that I am not fond of the idea, and it is not just the obvious.  Honestly if I want to start collecting once again I will most likely put together an army with older models mainly due to their character.

Nevertheless, here are the comparison shots of the two different editions that I have.  I believe that I have 4th/5th metal Wood Elves and 6/7th plastic Wood Elves. 

The first set has two standard new archers, and one metal archer and one kneeling scout>

From the Front:

The second set has two new plastic models, with one metal archer and one scout that is running:

From the Front:







As I have said earler I do tend to like the older metal models with their character.  I believe that the older metal models do have a lot of depth in their range.  Last time that I checked it was atleast a dozen of the standard archers for them. 

It is still something that I want to think on and something that I am not planning on doing any time soon however.